Page 11 of Wild River

There’s a guy out there somewhere looking for his fiance. Or another girl is. Whatever. Whoever they are, they’re probably worried sick about Becca too, and meanwhile I’m here touching her and tearing her dress open and having all thesethoughts, these heated thoughts, that I’ve got no right to be having.

“Wait, no.” Reading the panic in my sudden silence, Becca spins around and grabs my wrists. “No, no, no. It’s not likethat at all.” She puts my hands on her shoulders, and I let her, because I am a weak asshole.

And I cannot stop touching this woman.

Can’t stop wanting her. Can’t stopneedingher, even now that I know she belongs to someone else. My thumbs rub beneath her collarbones, stroking her warm skin. Oh, god. Feels so good.

“It was arranged,” Becca says, raising her chin until I meet her gaze. Her green eyes are calm and steady—everything I’m not right now. “It was arranged by my family, and I didn’t want it but no one cared. So I ran away, and that’s how I wound up in the river in my wedding dress. I barely even knew the guy. You can… you can keep touching me, Jake.”

A shaky breath heaves out of my chest. My thumbs are still stroking small circles beneath her collarbone, and I’ve never been filled with so many conflicting emotions before. They’re crashing around inside me, filling me to the brim.

Relief, possessiveness, confusion, anger, fear. Gratitude that Becca seems to be feeling thisthingbetween us too, and I’m not going crazy.

“You’re a runaway bride,” I say slowly, because that’s not something you hear every day. It’s a lot to process.

“Yeah, I guess so.” Becca bites her lip, still holding my gaze. “I’ve already caused you so much trouble, but my family might cause you even more. If they find me, anyway.”

My spine straightens, and I scowl down at her. “They’re not gonna find you. Fuck that.”

And if they do? They’ll have to go through me first.

She may not be mine, but I’d already do anything for this woman.

Five

Becca

Growing up, what my family lacked in love and care, they made up for with wealth and power. As a baby, I had a huge, fancy nursery all to myself. My first ‘grown up’ bed was a four-poster. All my life, I’ve stayed in huge mansions, penthouse apartments, luxury hotels and ivy-clad townhouses, all bustling with servants and other staff—but I’ve never once felt as at home as I do in Jake’s cabin.

It’s small, compared to what I’m used to. Rustic. Simple.

And it’s filled with so much life and love.

The books on the bookcase aren’t first editions and leather-bound reference books for show, like in the Pritchard library—they’re worn paperbacks of crime novels and plant guides, the spines all creased from being read time and again. The coffee table is clearly hand-carved, but it’s also got padding fixed to the corners and edges, to protect a certain niece that Jake told me all about on the walk over.

There’s a scrawled recipe for peach cobbler pinned to the refrigerator, next to a wobbly crayon drawing of what Ithinkis aspider, but could also be an octopus. Whatever it is, it’s wearing a top hat.

“Love your work,” I tease as Jake stirs a simple stew on the stove, the scent of onions and beef lacing the air. He glances over, eyes crinkling with a smile when he sees the drawing.

“That’s one of Ellie’s.”

“Is it an octopus?”

“Jury’s out. Hunter—her dad—thinks it’s a character from a book. Brooke thinks it’s a hairball. Meanwhile Ellie’s not giving any clues.”

Biting my lip, I smooth down a corner of the paper where it’s starting to curl. It’s crisp beneath my hand, dried out from being pinned in the sunshine.

Jake clearly loves his little niece a whole lot. And picturing this big, gruff mountain man with a toddler, imagining him goofing around with her and padding the corners of his coffee table so she doesn’t get hurt, makes my insides go all fluttery.

Secretly, in my private moments in all those cold, loveless Pritchard properties, I’ve always daydreamed of having a my own brood of laughing, shrieking children. Not like the buttoned-up, anxiously obedient kids of the elite families I grew up around—more like this absent toddler whose messy crayon drawing has taken pride of place on her uncle’s refrigerator.

It always seemed so silly before. So impossible. No one I knew had a home life like that; no one got lucky from their family-approved pairing. I mean, if I had walked down the aisle to Tristan Peters this morning, what are the chances he’d want to finger paint with our kids and attend the school sports day each year? Forget it.

But now, warm from my shower and bundled up in a pair of Jake’s shorts and a gray t-shirt that smells like him, anything seems possible.

“Doing okay over there?”

Feeling Jake’s eyes on me again, I blush.

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