All Wrapped Up (A Pine Mountain Novel) (12 page)

“Okay, got it. So just add some pressure?” She pushed slowly with both index and middle fingers, and despite his uptight idiot brain, his muscles rippled in relief.

“Uh-huh,” Brennan said, although it came out as
more of a grunt. He pulled in a breath, balancing the racing twitches of pain against the steady strength of Ava’s fingers. She shifted her weight, presumably to settle in, and the warm, brown-sugar scent of her skin filled his senses.

“Your muscles are locked up pretty tight.” Her velvety voice unfolded over his shoulder, tinged with determination as she readjusted the pads of her fingers to
the neediest part of his back. “Does this happen often?”

“Sometimes.” Brennan surprised himself with the admission. But the world didn’t come crashing down because he’d copped to having back spasms, so he added, “If I do a bunch of back-to-back shifts at the bar or there’s stress in my muscles from something else, it can trigger an episode.”

Ava tipped her hands upward for better leverage
with the side of each palm, and God, it was killing him not to see her. “So you really
do
need to relax.”

“Maybe.” He let out a breath between his teeth as the pain slid into a dull throb.

“Try definitely.” Her breath tickled his ear, making the skin on the back of his neck prickle. “How’s this?”

“Better.” Truth. “And definitely is a little extreme,” he tacked on. Not the truth, but any
second now, Ava was going to ask a trillion questions about how he’d ended up like Humpty Dumpty. The best way to fortify his defense was with a good offense.

But Ava simply said, “You know what works for me, when I need to chill out?”

Her hands never faltered, moving steadily over his back, and the tension unspooled with each press and sweep.

“What?”

“Promise you won’t laugh.”

“You
realize that’s like saying
don’t move
or
don’t sneeze
, right?” Of course a smile was already poking at the corners of his mouth. Ridiculous involuntary response.

“Promise,” Ava insisted, although the smile in her own voice was audible and sweet as hell.

“Okay, okay. No laughing. I promise.”

She slid close enough for Brennan to feel the heat of her body, pressing her palms right where he
ached. “This is only for extreme circumstances, mind you, and it’s kind of unusual. But I swear it works. You take four graham cracker squares—”

“Like little kids eat?” he asked, totally baffled, but Ava cut him off with a
shush
.

“Stop interrupting, or I won’t tell you the rest. You smash up the graham crackers, which is kind of cathartic in itself depending on what’s stressing you out. Then
you put the crumbs in a coffee mug.”

Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. Don’t . . .
“A coffee mug,” he repeated, barely stifling his chuckle.

She leaned in, her mouth right beside his ear. “You’re interrupting.”

“Sorry.” For a split second, Brennan was tempted to do it again just to feel the heat of her so close. “So, uh, coffee mug.”

“Mmm-hmm. Next, you take a little milk and heat it in a saucepan,
just until it’s warm. Then pour it over the graham crackers, add a dash of cinnamon on top, stir the whole thing up, and bam. You have the ultimate comfort food.”

His laugh was completely inevitable, and it felt shockingly good rumbling up from his chest. “Seriously? I’m not even sure that’s a thing.”

“Of course it’s a thing.” Ava scoffed. “It’s the
best
thing, even though it sounds weird
at first. And you promised not to laugh.”

Brennan hiked his hands up in apology, although she sounded far from mad. “I know, but you’ve got to admit, it’s totally off the wall. How’d you stumble across the idea of doing that to poor, unsuspecting graham crackers, anyway?”

“I didn’t, actually.” Ava paused, her voice going softer as she readjusted her hands. “My brother and I had to fend for
ourselves for most meals when we were kids, and a lot of times, improvising was the name of the game. Food has always been Pete’s thing, so one night when I was about ten, he got creative and came up with the graham cracker thing. For some reason, no matter how loud our parents yelled or how falling-down drunk they got, that concoction made things a little better. Warm, somehow. The way our home
should’ve been.”

Brennan sat, perfectly still and mesmerized by Ava’s voice, but even in his silence, she didn’t pull back.

“Anyway, it
is
pretty weird, and I guess a lot of people would say it’s even gross. But to me, graham crackers and milk taste like total comfort.”

For a second, then another, they sat in silence, her hands on his back and his heart in his throat, and everything in his
mind begged him to turn around and kiss her until the sadness infusing her words turned to dust.

But then Ava lifted her fingers, breaking the contact between them as she moved to give him space. “Your muscles feel a lot looser. How’s the pain?”

Brennan turned to look at her, realizing belatedly that his agony had dwindled to a barely there twinge. “Better. Looks like I owe you a little relaxing,
if you’re still up for it.”

“Are you?” she asked, eyeing him with care. “I mean, you said we were going to sweat.”

“No, I said you were going to sweat,” Brennan reminded her, letting a grin unwind over his face. “And I could still use a good stretch.”

He walked to the hall closet by the door, his muscles realigning into normalcy with each careful step. Bending down to grab the necessary
items from their usual resting spot took a little more creativity than usual, but he managed to pull it off before Ava tried to swoop in and help.

“Yoga mats?” A giggle pushed past her lips as he handed one over, and she clapped a hand over her mouth even though the damage was done.

Oh hell. He’d had enough serious for one day, plus, it felt really good to flirt with her a little. “Laugh now,
Spitfire. In twenty minutes, you’ll be begging for mercy.”

She frowned, placing a hand on the hip of her snug, black, knee-length pants. “From yoga? Deep breaths, pretzel poses, find-your-inner-light yoga.”

“Yes, but the pretzels are optional. Have you ever done yoga before?”

“Sure,” she said, her serene smile out of place with the mischievous glint in her eyes. “I’m standing on my head
in a triple knot as we speak.”

Despite the shot of heat percolating through his blood at the mental image of Ava’s limbs curled into sinuous knots, Brennan didn’t budge. The point was for her to relax, not feel put on the spot, and she wore her sarcasm like a suit of smart-assed armor.

“It’s okay if this is your first time. I know enough to get you through the poses.” He nudged his tiny coffee
table aside, unfurling his timeworn yoga mat over the floorboards in front of the TV. “I normally practice alone, obviously, but I think we’ll have just enough room for both of us.”

“Not a lot of guys do yoga,” Ava said after a beat, toeing off her bright red cross-trainers to extend her mat alongside his. She stood stiffly on its surface, knees locked and arms rigid, and whoa. Their need to
unwind was definitely mutual.

“Not a lot of guys have their lumbar vertebrae fused together with enough hardware to set off a courthouse metal detector either.” He heard the words only after they were out, silently cursing himself for dropping his guard even to make a passing joke. Ava was too smart for that.

She cast a sideways glance at him, dark hair sliding over one shoulder. “That sounds
pretty major.”

It was a lead-in, Brennan knew, but he stuffed it aside along with his thoughts of returning to Fairview for Ellie’s wedding. He’d handle that soon enough. Right now, he needed to focus on what was in front of him. Or more specifically, who.

“Maybe when it happened,” he said, turning toward Ava. “But the yoga’s a necessity, and anyway, it really is relaxing.”

“If you say so.”
She tightened her fists, giving the mat beneath her feet a
let’s go
expression. “So what’s first?”

Brennan laughed. “You might want to try breathing, for starters.”

She crinkled her nose with a full dose of
are you kidding me?
“I’m pretty sure I know how to breathe, what with my twenty-nine years of experience in that department.”

He was next to her before he recognized the movement, the
deep, sweet smell of her skin pressing hot in his lungs.

“I’m pretty sure you don’t, sweetheart. Now close your eyes.”

Chapter Twelve

Ava had to hand it to him. When Brennan had promised to make her sweat, he’d meant freaking business.

“You want me to close my eyes?” She shifted her weight, trying to get nice and comfortable, but her heart still pounded like a jackhammer gone horribly awry. When he’d first asked her to come over, she’d thought they’d dip into something gruelingly cathartic, like a short run
or maybe a little kickboxing—both things she’d done before without incident or injury. But yoga required focus, and focus required slowing down. Enough to take a good, close look at everything beneath the surface.

Hence the reason Ava had never set so much as a baby toe on a mat in her entire life.

“You don’t have to, but sometimes closing your eyes can help you get started.” Brennan shrugged,
the strong line of his shoulders lifting easily beneath his black T-shirt, and Ava paused, midbalk. Brennan had said he needed a few stretches to get himself back to normal, and after the back spasm he’d just endured, copping out seemed kind of unfair. She’d already spilled more details about herself today than she’d meant to say out loud in front of anyone, ever, but she’d done it to distract
him from his obvious pain. Surely she was tough enough to finish up their lunch with a little breathe and stretch, especially if it would help Brennan out.

God, that injury had to have been devastating. Maybe even as bad as her past.

“Okay.” Ava discarded her hoodie and commanded her eyes to shut with a determined nod. She could do this. “Now what?”

“Breathe, remember? All the way in,” Brennan
added, before she could point out that she’d
been
breathing since before they’d even started.

“How many times?” She resisted the urge to crack one eye open to at least see where he was. The whole in-the-dark thing was unnerving as hell.

“There’s no rule book, Spitfire. Just breathe.”

“Hey!” Ava coughed out a laugh, unexpected and deep. “That’s twice now. You promised not to call me that.”

His return chuckle vibrated through her, knocking the tension in her shoulders into a free fall. “I know, but I had to get some decent air in you somehow.”

She placed a hand on her belly, the other on her chest, and damn if he hadn’t been spot on. “Sneak.”

“It worked, didn’t it? Now do it again.”

“I didn’t realize yoga was so bossy,” Ava said, unable to rein in her sarcasm.

Of course,
Brennan met it toe-to-toe. “Yoga’s not bossy; I am. Now, are you going to inhale? Because I’d hate to have to tickle you.”

“You wouldn’t dare.” Ava laughed by default this time, her eyes springing open. Brennan stood less than a foot away, armed with a cocky expression and a stare that glittered like warm, black coffee in the sunlit living room.

“You can either breathe in or try me. How do
you like your odds?”

Oh. Lord. Above.

“Um.” Her throat worked over a hard swallow. “Okay, right. Breathing.”

After a few rounds of deep-bodied inhale-exhale, Ava’s heartbeat notched back to a semidecent level. She had to admit, the guided breathing wasn’t really so bad, not even when she let her lids drift back down on the fourth round. Brennan’s voice melted over her left shoulder, talking
her through some simple stretches as he did the same ones right next to her, and the movements sent an unexpected thread of calm around her tap-tapping pulse. The muscles in her shoulders listed gently away from her neck, her breath sliding in and out of her lungs with growing ease, and each pose unraveled the tension in Ava’s chest further.

“See? I told you it was relaxing.” Brennan pressed
his palms together in front of his sternum, bending his knees into a half squat over his worn blue mat. The hard, lean angle of his shoulders flexed snugly beneath his T-shirt, muscles rippling against the cotton, and Ava bit her lip in concentration as she tried to keep her focus in check.

“You also told me I’d sweat,” she said, mimicking his movements, only more deeply. She adjusted her bare
feet on the floor, triumphant. Yoga wasn’t so bad. In fact, she could do this all day, as long as he kept his sexy shoulders and unfair-advantage stubble out of her line of sight.

“Don’t be so competitive.” Brennan stepped to the front of his mat, gesturing for her to stay in place as he grabbed a bottle of water from the small side table next to the couch. “And if you want to sweat, hang on
to that pose for another thirty seconds.”

“I’m always competitive,” Ava snorted, even though her legs were suddenly starting to feel as if they belonged in a Jell-O mold. “Another thirty seconds is a piece of cake.”

She tightened her belly and pulled in a shallow breath. At the five-second mark, her legs gave a twinge and tingle, and she shifted just slightly to offset the growing burn. At
fifteen seconds, her lower body started to quake in earnest, screaming at her to ease up. The muscles in her thighs gripped her bones like survivors on a life raft, and she locked her molars with a determined clack. Brennan had thrown down the thirty-second gauntlet, and she couldn’t just leave the challenge dangling in the breeze. Ava was tough enough to manage thirty seconds of anything, and even
though her legs were starting to visibly shake, surely she could—

Brennan’s hands closed around her waist, fingers tightening into her rib cage in the most merciless tickle on the planet.

“Oh my God!” Ava’s shriek of laughter paved the way for her head-to-toe flail, and she threw both arms around Brennan’s shoulders. For a split second, he froze to his spot in front of her, both palms locked
into place over her thin cotton tank top. But then he slipped his arms all the way around her torso, shifting her back a step to help steady her feet.

“Sorry,” he said, his chuckle vibrating against her chest as he set her back into place on her mat. “But I told you, these poses aren’t competitive. Keeping score isn’t really conducive to positive yoga.”

“Oh, but tickling me is?” Ava pulled
back, fully intending to nail Brennan with a high-level frown—she’d had that pose in the bag! But the unfiltered honesty in his half smile stopped her cold.

“You helped me relax. I just wanted to return the favor.”

“I helped you relax?” The question flew out of her mouth, as unchecked as her shock. She’d unleashed her no-nonsense bedside manner on him when he probably could’ve used some good,
old-fashioned sympathy, then bumbled through a bunch of yoga poses at his side. If anything, Ava would’ve thought she’d been more
de
structive than constructive, but Brennan didn’t let up.

“Yeah. My family and my physical therapist kind of dance around me when my back acts up. I know they mean well, but . . . it was just kind of nice to have someone be cool about it. Like it’s not that big of
a deal.”

Ava had felt the scar tissue the minute she’d put her hands on Brennan’s back, even through his T-shirt, and the severity had sent shivers all the way down her own spine. No way was she buying that his injury was anything less than an extremely big deal. Still . . .

“It’s tough to field all that sympathy sometimes, even when it’s well meant,” she agreed. Lord knew that was familiar
territory from her past. “I’m just glad I could help.”

“You did help. Thanks.” His fingers tightened around the bend of her elbow, the friction of skin on skin sending a spray of goose bumps over Ava’s arm. Something hot and sweet and deeply good broke free in her belly, and as much as she wanted to downplay the sensation, she couldn’t.

Helping him relax, even though it had meant revealing
things she normally kept hidden, had felt deliciously good, just like the laughter he’d coaxed out of her.

And Ava wanted more.

“You’re welcome. But next time, it’s my turn. Meet me on the pier at Big Gap Lake at noon on Sunday. I won’t even make you sweat.”

 

 

Ava slipped past the glass doors to the
Riverside Daily
with her gym bag on her shoulder and about sixteen seconds to spare.
Normally, she’d never even dream of cutting her lunch hour so close, but with her article on the fire sitting pretty on page three of today’s paper and Gary having been mysteriously absent from work all morning, Ava had figured what the hell.

She’d earned a good, relaxing lunch break. One with a stare as sinful as triple-layer chocolate cake . . . and a mouth just full enough to provoke some
really wicked thoughts . . . and a sliver of leanly cut abs, just visible in those arms-overhead yoga poses, that showcased a dusting of dark hair leading all the way down to—

“Oh my God, you had sex!”

Ava jumped about a mile and a half off the commercial-grade carpet lining the main hallway to the newsroom, blushing all the way to the tips of her fingers as she shushed her friend with a hiss.

“Jeez, Layla!” She swiveled a covert glance over both shoulders, relief spiraling through her rib cage at the sight of the empty hallway behind her. “Are you out of your mind?”

“No, but you clearly are, and not in the bad way.” Layla’s perfectly arched light blond eyebrows breached the narrow rims of her glasses, and she fell into step next to Ava with a grin. “Nobody walks around with that
goofy little blush-face unless they’re getting laid. It’s a proven fact.”

“I think you need to check the validity of your source,” Ava whispered, ducking into her cubicle while trying to keep her dignity intact.

If Layla had busted her with the I-had-sex face when all she’d been doing was
thinking
about having sex, then it had been waaaaay too long since Ava’s bedroom had been used for anything
other than catching zzzs.

“Sell stupid somewhere else, sweetheart.” Layla slipped into the creaky second chair in Ava’s cubicle, propping her elbows on her desk with a knowing stare. “You’re lit up like the seventy-foot Norway spruce going up this week in Rockefeller Center. At the very least, your lunch with Captain America was more than just business.”

Ava sent one last look around the open-air
space of the news floor to make sure no one was within eavesdropping distance. With the long hours logged by most reporters, lunch breaks tended to come later than usual, and today’s appeared to still be in full swing. In fact, the only other person Ava could see was Ian, and his sandy brown head was half covered in the same kind of earphones Ava favored when searching the scanners for a story.

“My lunch was more than business, but not the way you’re thinking.” Finally confident they wouldn’t be overheard, she slid into her ancient desk chair and leaned toward her friend. No way was Layla going to let this drop, and clandestine sexual tension aside, Ava’s thoughts were whirring now more than ever. “Remember when I told you I thought there was more to Brennan’s past than he was letting
on?”

Layla’s expression went from teasing to thoughtful in less than a blink. “Of course.”

“Well, it turns out, I was right.” She recounted the events of the lunch break she’d spent with Brennan, glossing over her sappy admission of the graham cracker story but detailing their exchange and his injury.

“Holy crap.” Layla blew out a breath as soft as her murmur. “So do you think he was a firefighter
after all, and maybe he got hurt on the job?”

“It makes sense. I mean, I’m not an expert, but according to that record, he definitely went to the fire academy, and even he said his injury had been severe. It had to have happened under extreme circumstances, and you and I both saw firsthand that fires definitely qualify.” Ava paused, even though her gut screeched that she wasn’t wrong. “But I
can’t be one hundred percent sure. He also could’ve been hurt in something like a car accident.”

“You don’t believe that, though.”

“No, I don’t. I get that most guys are kind of touchy about being injured, especially badly, but Brennan’s too secretive. About his injury
and
his past.” Ava would bet the bank that if she hadn’t walked in on him midspasm, Brennan wouldn’t have even forked over
the fact that he’d been hurt in the first place. “Plus, he knew way too much about how to get Matthew Wilson out of that grocery store, not to mention he’s a virtual ghost on the Internet, like something’s been covered up. I’m telling you, he has a story. A big one. But it looks like the only way I’m going to uncover it is if Brennan tells me.”

“It definitely sounds like he’s hiding something.
Now more than ever,” Layla agreed.

Ava gestured to the copy of the
Daily
sitting on the corner of her desk, frustration welling in her chest. “I know. I just can’t prove it.” Maybe Gary was right. Maybe she
didn’t
have what it took to work a source and break a really big story.

“Ava, don’t.” Layla shook her head, adamant. “You landed an exclusive no one else in the Blue Ridge could manage,
and your article is a strong account of the facts. It’s good, clean coverage of an impressive story.”

“Sounds to me like today’s article was just the beginning.”

Ava whipped around, thoroughly startled by the cold, masculine voice shooting over her cubicle from the narrow entryway. Gary folded his arms over his chest, the buttons on his rumpled oxford shirt straining at the movement.

“Ex-excuse
me?” Ava stammered, too taken aback to do anything else. Gary was legendary for having his eyes and ears all over the newsroom. She knew better than to get that caught up in out-loud thought.

Oh hell . . . how much had he overheard?

“In my office, Mancuso. Right now.” Gary jerked his thinning comb-over toward the glass-lined space at the head of the newsroom before sending a pointed frown
at Layla. “Ellis, I’m sure you have work to do.”

Layla darted a startled glance in Ava’s direction, but Ava returned it with just the slightest shake of her head. She’d dealt with Gary’s disdain by the truckload, and even though she stood by her story on the fire, a part of her had known he’d find fault with the fact-laden article. She followed Gary to his office, noting with a cringe that while
he made quite a show of shutting the door, he chose to leave the blinds over the floor-to-ceiling view of the newsroom wide open. Everyone coming back from lunch would bear witness to Gary’s obvious disappointment, with only their imaginations as the soundtrack.