Page 28 of Forever Finds Us
After I dropped Brand at his mama’s house, I drove back into town.
I should’ve gone home to my duplex to shower and sleep, but instead, I parked behind my best friend’s bookstore and let myself in through the back door, narrowly escaping knocking over a human-sized stack of boxes piled near the entryway.
“Who’s there?” Aubrey called from the front main room.
“It’s your best and most beautiful friend.”
Peeking my head around the corner, I saw her standing behind the cash register, closing the drawer as a customer walked out the front door, a tote bag loaded to the brim with the latest bestsellers dangling from their hand.
“Any other customers?” I asked.
“Nope. Just you, but I doubt you’re gonna buy anything.”
Aubrey had recently decided to change her hours of business. She’d been switching up a lot of things to try to increase business. It seemed to be working. Tourists spent Sunday mornings eating breakfast in town and then a lot of them would pop into Your Local Bookie to grab a paperback to read during their vacation or on their flight back to wherever they called home.
“You are correct. Not today, but I’ve got somethin’ better for you than revenue.”
She spun to face me with her hands on her cute, little five-foot-four hips. “What?”
I couldn’t hide my smirk. “A heartbreakin’ tale of a lost girl alone in the mountains, vicious wolves, the brave man and woman who saved the girl, and their tawdry sex affair after it was all said and done in a motel off Highway 191.”
“I heard they found the girl. That was you? Wait. Did you say sex affair?”
I backed up into the storeroom and wilted down to the cold, hard floor, spreading my arms and legs wide like a tab of butter melting on a hot pan.
“You know I haven’t mopped that floor in ages. Get up. You’re gettin’ dirty.”
“Oh, Aubs,” I breathed. “I’m already dirty. So, so dirty.”
“Roxi! You had sex? With whom?” Her eyes narrowed in skepticism. “Seriously, who? And skip the rescue part for now. You can come back to that later.”
“So much sex! I think my hoo-ha might be broken.”
“Does that mean it was good sex?”
Using my core, I sat up and could feel my hair frizzing out behind me. “The. Best. Sex. I’ve. Ever. Had.”
Aubrey pulled her rolling desk chair toward me and sank into it. “Tell me and start with a name. Do I know him?”
“Uh, I think ya might.”
She stomped her supportive and cushy Hoka’s on the floor in rapid succession.
“I slept with Brand. Well, ‘slept’ isn’t exactly the right word.”
“Brand?” Aubrey’s eyebrows rose to her hairline. “Brand Lee?”
When I nodded and purred satisfaction in the back of my throat, she gasped and covered her mouth with her hand. “Does Abey know?”
“No! Not yet. It literally just happened.”
“Why are you makin’ me drag this out of you? Spill right now!”
“Well, he was kinda flirtin’ with me while we looked for the girl, but then we found her. It was crazy, like somethin’ you’d read in one of your books. Anyway, but then they whisked her off to the hospital and everybody lived happily ever after. The rescue teams and cops went home, and it was just Brand and me on the trail.
“He came onto me. I swear to you, he would’ve screwed me up against a tree if I’d let him.”
“If?”
