Page 7 of Six More Minutes
He released her hand this time and stood. Clasping his hands behind his head he took a deep breath, exhaled and let his arms fall to his side. “To be honest, I don’t know why you’re thinking like this now.” He’d started walking toward the bar again but stopped and turned back to face her. “I mean, I do know sort of. You want the family you believe your mother was denied.”
She liked knowing that he actually listened to her. Shad hadn’t even been good at faking that part of their relationship.
“But at the same time, you’ve spent months in a dysfunctional situation, enduring one ridiculous scenario after the next with a guy who wasn’t good enough for you from the start.”
And Myles didn’t know the half of it. He had no idea that six weeks ago, Shad had her arrested for theft and vandalism. To be clear, she hadn’t stolen anything from the trifling bastard. She’d paid for those tags on his truck and after he’d put her out of said truck, leaving her stranded on the side of the road she’d decided he no longer deserved the privilege of driving around on her dime. After calling an Uber to take her home she’d gotten into her car and went back to his house. Once there she’d pulled out the pink toolbox she kept in her trunk and went to work removing the tags from the front and back of his truck. As for the vandalism, well, it wasn’t her fault he liked to smoke in the truck and left his windows cracked to air out the interior even when he was parked. The hose that was in his driveway had just been lying there as if in wait for her. If he hadn’t come to his front door shouting obscenities and threats at her, she probably would’ve kept it moving, but Shad never did have the good sense to shut his damn mouth. So she’d shoved that hose through the opening in the window and while he’d ducked back into the house to get his phone to call the police on her, she’d run back up the driveway to the side of the house and turned on the water.
It wasn’t until she was pulling off and spotted Shad’s ten-year-old daughter standing in the doorway looking confused that Gemma felt like a total idiot for letting a man take her to that point.
“And before that you were in another bad relationship,” Myles continued. “Why in the world would you want to put yourself through that again?”
She cleared her throat and stood. “Because my mother believed in love. And after a while, my father realized what he’d lost in her and wanted to find that love again, but it wasn’t meant to be. They both died after losing so much time not embracing what they had. I don’t want that for myself. I want the soul-searing love I see between Gray and Morgan, Garrek and Harper, and Gage and Ava. They’ve all found it and they’re living their best lives in the place where we were all born. I want that kind of happiness too.”
He closed the space between them. “So you want to move back to Temptation?”
She hadn’t said that, or she hadn’t thought she’d said it. That didn’t mean she hadn’t considered it, especially not after seeing how easy it had been for some of her siblings to go back to the town where it had all begun.
“I want to be on the path to finding my happy, Myles. Meeting you only when we both get the itch to sleep together is a dead end.”
He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants and looked as if he didn’t know what to say next.
“But no worries,” she said. “I told you in the beginning that I’d let you know when this arrangement had run its course for me and I’m telling you now.” She stepped closer, lifting a hand to cup his cheek. “But first, I’d like to close out this year here at this lovely cabin.” Leaning in close, she touched her lips lightly to his. “I’d give anything to spend six more minutes with you.”
Six
Myles wascertain he’d surpassed that six-minute mark two days ago and then again numerous times, including this morning before the sun had come up over the mountains. Now, hours later, he was standing near the door dressed in jeans, black Timberland boots, coat, hat and gloves, sweating his ass off while he waited for Gemma who’d insisted they didn’t have time for any sex play while they’d showered.
He grinned at the memory. She was completely uninhibited and immodest, moving freely around him whether she was naked or fully dressed. Goofing around with him as if they’d known each other for years, bringing out a side of him he hadn’t known existed. That last part was what really got him to thinking. None of this was something Myles had ever thought he’d be doing. Spending long weekends with a woman, sleeping in a bed beside her, waking up not only ready to slip his dick inside her warmth, but also to hear her voice, to see her smile. To learn something new about her and to marvel at how good all those things made him feel.
When a heavy weight formed in the center of his chest, he coughed it off. Then shook his arms and rolled his neck. If he couldn’t ignore the weird sensation, he’d physically shake it off.
“Okay, come on. I’m ready.”
He turned at the sound of her voice and paused just to look at her. He’d been doing that a lot in the days since they’d been at this cabin, just watching her move, doing really mundane things like operating the remote to the TV, taking a glass of water from the nightstand each morning so that she could take her birth control pill and the high blood pressure medication she’d been prescribed two years ago.
Today she wore black pants with dark gray snow boots laced tightly up her calf. Her coat was also gray, the white hat with what looked like the world’s largest snowball on top, matched her scarf and gloves. Her pretty face was free of make-up except for a light pink shine to her lips. The grin that spread across his face was simultaneously instinctual and what was fast becoming his natural reaction to seeing her.
“I’m going to show you the best frozen lake in the world. And then, if you’re good I’ll fix you a nice lunch when we return from our little excursion.” She moved past him as she talked, going to the door as if she hadn’t noticed him standing there like an awestruck goofball.
Following behind her Myles stepped out into the frigid December air, closing and locking the cabin door behind him.
“This is a great location,” she continued to talk as they walked down the front steps and she turned opposite the direction of the shoveled driveway. “It’s not too far from the heart of town so that people will feel like it’s a road trip to get here, but it’s just far enough that nothing impedes the grandeur of the resort and scenery.”
He fell into step beside her as their boots crunched over the new snow that had fallen yesterday. They’d been watching the news and weren’t at all shocked by the daily snowfall that was hitting the region. It was Virginia after all, not any of the warmer locations where they’d both lived before.
“How do you still know about this place? You left when you were seven.” He could just imagine how precocious and bossy a seven-year-old Gemma would’ve been.
“We had babysitters, or I guess your family might call them nannies. Anyway, they’d plan little outings for us during the times when the show wasn’t taping but our parents needed to be on hand doing adult things, I guess. In the winter we always came out this way because Ms. Belle said the snow was better out here. She was right.”
If by right she meant the amount of snow out here, then that was accurate. For as far as he could see there was snow covering what he knew were rolling hills beneath. The sky was heavy with clouds so the mountains he was certain were in the distance weren’t visible. “You sure you’re going the right way? I don’t see any lake.”
She looped her arm through his and pulled him along. “Don’t doubt me, Mr. Donovan.” She chuckled as streams of smoke billowed from her lips.
He grinned too and shook his head. If there was one thing he knew for certain it was that he’d never doubt Gemma Taylor. Not her tenacity, her strength or her resilience. There was just no other way to explain how she’d gone through the tumultuous year of make ups and break ups with Shad, watched her brothers find the love and happiness she coveted, listened to him all but tell her he didn’t want anything more with her than sex, and still remain not only smiling, but in good spirits.
In the days since their conversation about the future, she’d been the exact same as she had any other time they’d been together. There was no attitude, no freeze out, no arguments. Myles was well aware of what it looked like when a woman was pissed off. He had sisters and during their teen years he’d been privy to more than one emotional blow up over some boy acting like an idiot or some girl who’d pissed them off because she was getting in the way of their pursuit of a boy, who eventually still acted like an idiot.
“See,” she said just as they walked through a group of trees.
