Last First Kiss (14 page)

She grabbed his shirt in two fistfuls, feeling the hard muscle beneath, and when she rose on tiptoe, another kind of hardness jabbed into her belly.

He crushed her to him and swore. “Shit, sorry.”

“Why?” she whispered. God, his mouth was like a country she never grew tired of exploring.

“The honey, I got your back sticky.”

“It will wash.” She bit him then, right on the fleshiest part of his lower lip, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to take him by surprise. “You’ll be sorrier if you stop doing whatever it is you’re doing.”

“You’re trouble.”

“So what are you going to do, arrest me?” She slid her fingers slow over his ribs to the hard expanse of his abdomen as he shuddered with a muffled groan.

“Ticklish much?” She teased her fingers over his skin and he flinched, burying his face in the top of her neck with a strangled choke.

“Keep that up and I will lock you up and throw away the key.”

“Really?”

“Except there will be a problem.”

“Yes?”

“I’m locking myself in there with you.” He scooped her up and she fastened her hips to his waist as he sat her on a stump, the height of it putting her face-to-face with him. “God, Annie. Every day I look out across this valley and think I’ve seen all the beauty this world has to offer. Then you come back and I realize I haven’t seen anything.”

“Oh, come on.” She slapped his chest.

He bracketed her face with his hands. “You are my best friend, but it’s more than that. Having you back here makes me realize why it’s never worked out with anyone else.” He nuzzled the base of her neck, dragged his face lower to caress his cheek over the swell of her breast as she arched her back. “Let go.”

“Haven’t I?” She removed one of his hands, raising it to her lips and licking the sticky sweetness clean. This was falling from thirty thousand feet without a parachute.

“Damn.” He pushed a hand up the inside of her softly curving thigh, under her dress, parting her legs. “Your pretty dresses do a number on me.”

She gasped as he slipped a thumb into her underwear, and then any other sound was impossible.

“Look at me,” he ordered softly.

She forced her gaze to his face as he pulled and plunged his fingers in a sweet, slow, torturous rhythm. She swallowed hard, throat sore with all the things she wasn’t saying because she didn’t know which words were right when Sawyer stroked her to a place beyond logic.

She started to come apart and a tear escaped, trickling down her cheek. Another joined, and the whole time he kept his gaze fixed on her. She came slow and hard, taking in everything: the bold slash of his brow, the divot above his lip she longed to visit with the tip of her tongue, the chickenpox scar on his chin. He leaned close, fingers hooked inside her, and kissed the corner of her eye.

“These sad or happy?” he murmured, removing his hand, her body shuddering as he left, missing the fullness he gave her.

“Both.” Because this right here was everything she hoped for, she knew it now. That thing she’d been missing for years was a Sawyer-shaped hole. She couldn’t regret where she’d been, or what had happened, because her choices gave her Atticus. But now, between her and Sawyer burned a fire she could either add tinder to or blow out. God knew she’d been so cold, but what if her life blazed into something unrecognizable?

She pushed back a lock of hair from his forehead. “What are you thinking?” How could he do that? Keep his features so distant? His thoughts were secreted away while she was an open book. It wasn’t fair.

She reached as he stepped back, catching him by the belt loops. “Not so fast.”

“Annie,” he said, his eyes darkening. “Wait.”

“Why?” she replied, suddenly angry. “Why can you push me off the edge but I can’t do the same?” She ground down the zipper and he responded with a short, sharp rasp as she gripped the thick root. Her fingers didn’t tremble even if her voice did. “It’s always been you, Sawyer. Always.”

“Same.” His breath grew ragged as she worked him up and down. Good. Let her touch take him to the same places that tortured her with sweet promise.

His hands formed fists and he raised them to the side of his head, the furrow between his brows becoming a chasm. She kept the pace until he seized her shoulders, burying his face in the top of her head, coming while grinding out her name in a hoarse whisper.

She rested her forehead on his shoulder, her own gasp as shuddering and shaky as his. She was a big girl; shouldn’t she know by now what she wanted?

Yeah, she really should. She really, really should. But she didn’t.

Staying here after selling Five Diamonds wouldn’t work. At the moment it sounded good, easy even, but that was an illusion, created from the lust juju Sawyer weaved with bee magic and heart-stopping kisses. He was handy, but she wasn’t something to be fixed. Only she could do that for herself. And there was no denying that if she wanted to advance her career in the long-term, a city would be better, offer so much more opportunity. She didn’t want to rely on a man to provide for her again.

But this wasn’t a random hypothetical man. This was Sawyer.

There were no clear-cut answers. As she hurled to invisible crossroads, everything curled into a question.
Which way will I turn?

Chapter Seventeen

S
AWYER
LEFT
AFTER
they returned from the old apiary. He’d kissed her deep and sure before nipping her earlobe in a way that made her shiver.

“What did you do that for?” She leaned into his chest and inhaled sage soap and cinnamon chewing gum.

He smoothed her hair off her face. “To make it as hard for you to say goodbye as it is for me.”

“I’m not making this situation easy.”
Understatement of the year.

“The best things never are,” he murmured into the top of her hair.

So many things were up in the air, and it was tempting to say screw it and let him kiss her again, because goodbyes were practically impossible when the taste of honey lingered on his tongue.

“I don’t know a lot.” He gave her a slow smile. “But I do know I want you and Atticus to come over to my place for dinner.”

She took a slow, deliberate breath. “Are you asking me on a date, Sawyer Kane?”

“Indeed I am, Miss Carson.” He’d leaned and pressed his mouth against her ear, his hot breath sending a jolt of heat up her thighs. “And you know something else, I’m never going to look at honey the same way again.” He patted her bottom before turning away. She felt a stare and glanced over one shoulder. Claire stood on the porch, giving a thumbs-up.

Annie waved as Sawyer backed out, ignored her sister and headed to the old barn for a moment of breathing space. What happened at the apiary was private, amazing, and nothing she wanted to gossip about. The door was open. Atticus must have been playing in Dad’s studio again. She stepped inside and pressed her back against the old wood, sweat pooling in her bra. Hard to know if it was from the unusual humidity or her own spiking body temperature.

Outside, clouds gathered on the range, thunderheads building, while inside—what a mess. No two ways about it, her father’s studio was a serious disaster, straight from an episode of
Hoarders
. How would she know what to throw out among all this junk? Dad hadn’t left any specific instructions. She had no idea what was important and what wasn’t.

She rubbed her temples. Wasn’t that the trick to everything? Trying to decide what to keep in life and what to throw away?

A furtive noise drew her attention to the back of the barn.
Please don’t let it be a rat.
Instead, a small golden head poked around the corner, giving a tentative whine.

Annie sank to her knees and held out a hand to the shy dog. “Hello, where did you come from?” She must have snuck in through the open door.

The dog scampered forward a few steps, paused and whined again. She was clearly a mutt, possibly a combination of a retriever and dachshund.

“It’s okay, girl,” she coaxed. “It’s okay.”

The dog took another tentative step, tail wagging, then dropped her snout and sniffed the floorboards.

Annie crawled forward to give the sweet little mutt a gentle pat when the wood floor gave a creak. A flash of blue caught her eye through the boards and she pulled a loose plank, gasping to see a metal Pac-Man lunchbox hidden beneath. Stuck to the lid was a strip of masking tape on which was printed, “Do Not Open Until the Year 3000.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “The time capsule.”

When she was a kid, she had gone through a phase where she was obsessed with building a time machine. Dad hadn’t discouraged her, even allowed precious studio space for the project, but product development had never gotten farther than a plastic lawn chair twined with copper wire, connected to a broken car battery. Instead, she downgraded the plan, creating a top-secret time capsule instead.

She opened the latches and peered inside, lifting the carefully folded piece of tissue paper. Inside was a tiny white egg, cracked at the top. The hummingbird egg she’d discovered in an abandoned nest while climbing trees in the orchard. Then there was a beanie baby, a Mariah Carey
Butterfly
CD, her junior ranger badge, a photo of her standing beneath Rainbow Falls, and a torn-out magazine picture of Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Oh, and look, a dog-eared copy of
Island of the Blue Dolphins.
She’d spent hours pretending to be Karana, roaming her island, hunting for edible roots, fashioning spears and building pretend canoes down by the river.

At the bottom was an envelope. She opened it with shaking hands, recognizing her own childish handwriting.

Hello People From the Future!

My name is Annabelle Margaret Carson, but everyone calls me Annie, unless I’m in trouble. I live on Five Diamonds Farm in Brightwater, California, and it’s the best place in the world. Over a hundred years ago, my great-great-great-grandparents were real pioneers and traveled here in a covered wagon. A wheel from the wagon is in the attic, and one time Dad took me and my sister, Claire, up to see it. Claire is my best friend even though she’s bossy and always thinks she’s right (even when she’s not). Our favorite things to do are going for hikes, sewing, and listening to music. She’s afraid of heights, so my other favorite thing to do is just mine, cliff jumping. I don’t know what will happen in the future, but I know that I hope to always live here with my sister. I don’t know what I want to be. I like writing, though, and reading. I don’t know what life is like a thousand years from now. Do robots do all your chores? I’d like that. The only chore I enjoy is feeding the chickens. People probably live on Mars now, huh? I guess that’s where pioneers in the future would go. But I hope my future great-great-million-times-great-grandkids live right here.

Love,
Annie

And here she was, almost two decades later, ready to let it all go. But the fact was, even if she wanted to stay, and she wasn’t positive if she did, Five Diamonds wasn’t hers to keep. Claire and her dad were both on the deed, and they said sell.

She glanced to the strange little dog, but it was gone, having disappeared without a sound. They’d have to keep an eye out. It could be lost, or a stray, or maybe a wanderer from one of the surrounding properties.

She closed the lid and tucked it back beneath the board, then walked to the house under an invisible weight. When wistfulness knotted her throat, she swallowed it away.

She was a mom and couldn’t dream young Annie’s impossible dreams, not anymore. She wasn’t the free-spirited girl who ran around this farm in tutus and yellow rubber boots, but a grown woman with a practical plan to move her son closer to family and focus on growing her career.

She walked into the kitchen as Claire hung up the phone. “That was Hank over at King Realty.”

“Oh yeah?” Annie folded her arms. How much did her sister miss their life here, the simple way things used to be, before adulthood had complicated everything?

“Good news. The house isn’t officially listed and already they have eight expressions of interest. We stand to make a fortune.”

“Sounds great.” Annie walked to the cookie jar and peered inside. Crud. Only crumbs remained. At least she could do some baking for distraction.

“Good walk earlier?” Claire said, unable to keep a straight face.

Annie’s cheeks warmed. “Yeah, it was nice.”

“Nice?” Claire snickered, hoisting herself up onto one of the counters. “You looked like you’d been with a one-eyed trouser snake.”

“Claire—Jesus!” Annie burst out laughing despite herself. “I am going to miss you. Can’t you stay longer?”

“I wish. I’ll miss you too, Lil’ Bit.” Claire’s face turned serious. “But promise me this—once Atticus is off on his little adventure, you won’t wallow.”

Atticus? Annie started. Claire was right. In forty-eight hours her son would depart for a Disneyland vacation with Gregor and Margot. Annie had never spent more than a day without him. Didn’t have the first idea how she’d pass the time. Maybe researching San Francisco real estate? Writing a resume?

Her former self would be aghast that they were selling the farm. Maybe she’d gotten older, but had she really grown any wiser?

A
NNIE
PULLED
IN
front of the small regional airport. “You sure we can’t get out and walk you in?”

“No way, this is easier. I hate goodbyes.” Claire turned and blew a kiss to Atticus. “Be cool, little man.”

He pretended to catch the kiss and flashed a thumbs-up.

“You know, I’ve been thinking—about Brightwater,” Claire said, pushing open the car door. “It’s getting pretty cool, isn’t it?”

“There are a bunch of cute new shops popping up around Main Street,” Annie replied cautiously, not sure where her sister was going with the conversation.

“You seem at home here.”

“I do?” Annie pushed up her sunglasses.

“I know we’re selling and everything, but I don’t know . . . ”

“What?” Annie demanded. “What don’t you know?”

“This trip has given me a lot to think about.” Claire banged the roof of the car. “I’ll see you around, sister.”

“Wait, but our plan still stands right? Atticus and I moving to San Francisco? Be neighbors? You’ll dominate the world of food trucks, while I take on the Internet?” Claire made her feel safe in the way only a best girlfriend/sister/ninja could.

“Life is what happens while you’re busy making plans, Lil’ Bit.” Claire threw her arms over her head. “Remember, take some time to find your joy.”

Annie shook her head. “Call me when you land, okay?”

“Will do. Love you.”

“You too.” Annie blew her a kiss, laughing, and drove out of the airport, making her way back toward Brightwater. She passed a ramshackle roadhouse, dry volcanic landscape, and seemingly unscalable mountains.

How could Claire say Annie seemed at home in this wild, harsh climate? And as for Sawyer, a summer fling was one thing, but seasons had a funny way of always changing.

A siren sounded and she looked up. Lights flashed behind her.

What the heck? She’d been going the speed limit, under actually, and obeying all traffic laws—
oh my. . .

Sawyer climbed out of the patrol car and she knocked the back of her head against the seat.
Objects in the rearview are closer than they appear
and he looked close enough to lick. She glanced beside her. The Five Diamonds real estate advertisement from King Realty lay on the passenger seat. On impulse, she flipped the page over before Sawyer reached her window.

“Mama, why are you shaking your wrists?” Atticus piped up from the backseat.

Shoot, she was actually wringing her hands. It wasn’t that selling the property was a big state secret. Sawyer knew her plan. The problem was, the two of them were also playing make-believe, as if there wasn’t a clock counting down above them, and she wasn’t ready to quit that game.

The gravel crunch grew louder and then there he was. His aviator glasses hid his gaze as he peered into her driver’s side window, scruffy jaw and all.

“Sheriff,” she croaked, less sultry than she’d prefer.

“Miss Carson.” Sawyer’s mouth crooked as he ran a thumb under her chin. “You’re under arrest for being too damn cute.”

“Hey, do you carry a gun?” Atticus called out.

She sucked in a breath, trying to recalibrate as he said, “Yeah, I do.”

“For killing bad guys?”

“Atticus,” Annie said, turning around. “That’s a little bloodthirsty, don’t you—”

“No, I haven’t killed any bad guys.”

“Maybe one?” Atticus sounded hopeful.

“Not even one.” He glanced between them. “So, about my dinner invite. I was wondering if you’d both like to come around to my place this evening?”

“Your place.” Everywhere she looked would be Sawyer. Sawyer smells. Things Sawyer liked.

“Yeah, it ain’t fancy, but it’s home.”

“What will you make?” Atticus cut to the chase.

“What do you like?” Sawyer responded.

“Not kale soup.”

“Kale what?” Sawyer squashed his brow in confusion, dismay, or maybe a combination of both.

“Puke soup.”

Annie pursed her lips. “He’s not a fan.”

“Can’t say I blame him.” He cocked his head at Atticus. “How about a burger?”

“A hamburger. Or . . . or . . . one with cheese?”

“However you like it, champ. I’ll even throw in fries.”

“Yes!” Atticus kicked out his feet in delight.

“Sound good?” he said to her, expression quizzical.

“I . . . ” She fiddled with the radio dial. “I actually don’t eat meat.”

“Really?” Sawyer kept his voice neutral. How Switzerland of him. “What about fish?”

She pointed at her face. “Nothing that has one of these.”

He shook his head with a low, rumbling chuckle. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Do you have a time in mind?”

“Any time is Annie Time.”

Why did that phrase swell her heart like helium? “Six, then?”

“Sounds good.” He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek before walking back to the car.

“Mommy?” Atticus asked, jamming his foot into the back of her seat as she resumed driving.

“Yes?”

“Do you love Sheriff Sawyer?”

The engine revved and she eased her foot off the clutch. “What makes you ask that?”

“Whenever you see him you smile.”

“Do I?” She mentally raced through explanations and arrived at the most simple. “I guess he makes me happy.”

“That’s good. I like you happy.” He fell back into silence, absorbed in the comic he’d brought along for the car ride.

Annie’s whisper was quiet. Only for herself really. “I like me happy too.”