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ChapterTwenty-One
Rick
Rick led Maddie into the diner, making himself think about anything except that all too recent prelude to sex they’d been enjoying in the Two Rivers wedding garden.
Boiled cabbage.The exact measurements of the willow tree spindles he’d been painstakingly carving.The tune played by the most irritating of Toby’s all too numerous musical toys.
What had he been thinking back there?Making her chase him and then rutting her into the grass like—
He hadn’t been thinking.Justdoing.Wanting.
And for her part, Maddie, had been one hundred percent into it.He would have stopped if she wasn’t.Non-consent had never been his thing.
He chose a booth near the back.“Is this okay?”
“Sure.”She slid into the seat opposite him, and he watched her scoop her hair back from her face.The diner strip lights bounced off the shiny-black waves.
She wasbeautiful.
And she lived an ocean and several time zones away.
A fact which just didn’t seem to matter whenever he got close to her.Ever since he’d carried her into his house after the airport, sleepy and sad, something inside him had been drawn to her, inexorably.
He thought about her constantly.Dreamed about her and woke up with a hard-on like steel.
But it was more than sex.It was the timbre of her laugh, her wicked sense of humour, her softness, her vulnerability.
He picked up a menu and passed it to her, then spread one out in front of himself but didn’t look at it.His gaze was on her; the shape of her lashes on her cheeks as she read, the set of her shoulders, the slight smile playing on her lips.
Tori wandered over to them.“Hi, y’all!Second time in a week.That hot brown must’ve been good,” she joked to Maddie.
Maddie grinned.“It was, but I don’t have time to digest that tonight.Can I just have a buffalo chicken wrap and a coffee?”
Tori scribbled it down.“Rick?”
“The same.Thanks.”
She bustled off, humming along to the pop tune that played on the overhead speakers.
Rick slid his hand into the middle of the table.
Maddie met him halfway, lacing their fingers.“I should have talked to you properly earlier.”
He smiled.“Well, yeah.Ain’t like you’ve had anything to do.Not gettin’ over jetlag, dealin’ with the number your fiancé dealt you, helpin’ to run a bakery you ain’t ever worked in before while also learnin’ the ropes for it, and on top of that, running your online platforms….You seem kinda lazy, if you ask me.”
She laughed a little.“Thanks.I needed that.But still.I’ve been meaning to tell you about my ex, Seb.Sebastian Yates was his name.Well, is, he isn’t dead.”
“More’s the pity,” Rick growled.
Maddie frowned.“I don’t wish him dead, you know?I wish that he never gets to have sex with anyone again, or that his dick grows warts, but I don’t wish him dead.I’m more cross at myself for not seeing it.What he was obviously really like inside.”
Rick turned her hand over in his, smoothed his thumb over the life line that curved down her palm.“Tell me.”
Tori brought over their coffee.Rick smiled up his thanks.
Maddie waited for her to leave again, and then cleared her throat, the fingers of her free hand clenched into a loose fist.
As she proceeded to tell him all about how she and Seb had met, their courtship, and her dreams of owning her own shop space, he did his best to listen without interrupting, squeezing her hand when she faltered at several parts in the story, including when Seb had suggested she move in.
