Worth The Effort (The Worth Series Book 4: A Copper Country Romance) (10 page)

There’d been a few hook-ups with other women since then. All out of town and none more than a couple of nights, if that.

But not one kiss in any of those encounters had affected him like kissing Deni in front of the Commodore.

He’d realized walking along the shore, Lucy sinking into the snow beside him, that what he’d felt kissing Deni had scared the hell out of him.

And he liked that.
 

She hadn’t answered him about how she coped in the Copper Country with the winter driving.

Her hands were still clenched in her lap, and he thought that her breathing sounded heavier than it had a moment ago.

He looked around for someplace to pull off the road. He wasn’t sure she’d make it the next couple of miles to Iron Mountain.

There was a larger commuter lot just before the turnoff from Highway 141 to Highway 2, and Sawyer pulled in. The lot was nearly deserted, being a Saturday. The three cars that were parked had heavy burdens of snow on their hoods and roofs, clearly having been left for longer than just ridesharing to Green Bay for the day.

The lot had been plowed recently, but there were already drifts being formed from the blowing snow. Sawyer stopped near the entrance of the lot and put the truck in park, but keeping it on for the heater.
 

If they were here a while, he’d have to cut the heater or at least get out and make sure snow hadn’t blown a drift onto the tailpipe.

Back in drivers’ ed, they’d told the story of couples parking in the Copper Country and backing into snow banks that covered the cars’ tailpipes enough that the young lovers died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Sawyer had never known if the story—legend? myth?—was a deterrent to kids making out or a safety lesson, but it’d stayed with him.

Not enough to stop high school make-out sessions, but he always checked the tailpipe beforehand.

But there’d be no lengthy make-out session here. Not as silent as Deni had been with him today. Besides, he just wanted to make sure she was all right, then he’d get them to Iron Mountain and some hot coffee and food.

That always helped him.

But where to start? “Deni?” he cautiously started. “Are you—”

“My father was killed in a car accident,” she said. Her shoulders eased a little, making Sawyer realize how tense they’d been.

“Oh. I—”

“In a snowstorm,” she added. Her shoulders fell a little more. She rolled her neck, and he watched her chestnut hair sway across the back of her wool coat. Her hands unclenched and lay limply on her lap. She looked down at them like they were foreign objects. He watched her. And waited.

“He was on a business trip north of Detroit. A trip he took at least a couple of times a month. No big deal, right? But this time… Apparently the visibility was really bad.” Her hands smoothed her coat against her thighs, the flash of her nails mesmerizing to him as he waited for her to continue. He knew exactly how hard this was for her to talk about.

“I was eight, and we were really close. And…and…”

“You still miss him,” he finished.

She nodded, but didn’t look at him. Then she took a deep breath, her shoulders coming down to what he now realized was their normal posture.

“I do miss him. And winter driving has freaked me out at times, when there’s really bad visibility.”

He didn’t say that he’d seen much worse. She’d been in the Copper Country long enough to know this was maybe a five on a scale of one to ten.

“And I know this isn’t that bad,” she added, and he smothered a smile by bringing his hand to his mouth. She finally turned to him, and he could see those big brown eyes. It wasn’t fear so much as resignation that shone through. “And most times it doesn’t even faze me. I’ve gotten used to it. I just seem to be having a hard time with it lately. The roads are bad, or it’s a heavy snow, or poor visibility, and I start thinking about my dad. And then I get on kind of an obsessive loop about it, and it grows into a much bigger fear than normal.” Her eyes broke away from his, but not before he saw a flash of something that resembled embarrassment.

“Hey,” he softly said as he reached a hand out to lay over hers. The heater had been running steadily since they left Green Bay, and the cab was warm to the point of hot. But her hands felt like ice.
 

This must have been what she was seeing Alison for. Residual feelings about her father’s death seemed to be causing her problems.

Well, shit. He knew all about that.

“Hey,” he said again. “It’s okay to still miss him. And to get freaked out about driving in crappy weather. It’s perfectly natural.”

“But it’s more—”

“My wife died in a car accident, too,” he said, shocking himself.

It wasn’t that he kept Molly’s death a secret or anything. It was common knowledge in the Copper Country, but it wasn’t something that he just casually mentioned.

Apparently he did with Deni.

“I’m sorry. And here I’m going on about—”

He pulled his hand from hers and pressed a finger against her mouth—against those magnificent lips. “That’s not what I meant or was going for. I only brought it up to say that it’s been ten years, and there are times when I go crazy thinking about it.” So true. “And then…” He paused, not sure he was ready to put into words the thoughts that he’d been having lately.
 

“There are times when it seems so long ago, like it happened to another person and has no bearing on my life today.” Her head moved in the tiniest of nods, as if she didn’t want to dislodge his fingers from her mouth any more than he did. “And then I feel like a total shit for those feelings…for forgetting her.” He dropped his hand. Her mouth, her skin, felt so good, but to feel so good as he explained his feelings about his dead wife? It didn’t seem right.

“You’re not a total shit. And it’s not about forgetting. It’s about moving on,” she said.

They sat like that for a moment, not precisely looking at each other, but not looking elsewhere either.

“Umm…” she said, just as he was about to suggest they drive on to Iron Mountain.

“Yes?”

“I need to talk about the other night.”

“Yes?” He was hoping it’d be about something Petey said about the project. But he knew it wasn’t. He was about to get called on the carpet, and he deserved it.

“I need to talk about that kiss.”

Yep, just as he’d thought.
 

Well, shit.

Chapter Nine

Depression is when you have lots of love, but no one's taking.

~ Douglas Coupland

W
ell, nuts.

Deni watched as Sawyer dodged her stare. It was obvious that he regretted the kiss and didn’t even want to acknowledge it.

And it was all she’d thought about for the entire day as she sat next to him first the warm, cozy truck, then at the meeting with the driving range owners, and now in this deserted parking lot.

Oh, okay. It was all she’d thought about since Wednesday night. Talk about obsessive loops!

She’d been able to put the replay aside for bursts of time to work, go to therapy, and basically lead a normal life, or as normal as her life had been since this funk had overcome her last October.
 

But today, being so close to him—smelling his scent, feeling his physicality beside her. It’d been almost hypnotizing until she’d looked outside and seen nothing but white. It was like a switch had flipped inside her, and a bubble of anxiety rose up, almost suffocating her until he’d pulled into the lot in which they now sat.

“The kiss,” she said again, as if to get herself back on track. The track she’d thought of the whole drive down and most of the way back.

“Listen, I’m really sorry. I was totally out of line. You’re a professional, I’m a professional…”

Did he truly regret it? That would mess everything up. She looked at him, and his sentence died as his gaze dropped to her mouth. Self-consciously, she licked her lips. The flare of hunger she saw in his eyes gave her the courage to go on.

“I’m not,” she said.

“Not what? A professional? I think that meeting we just had proved you wrong.”

“No. I’m not sorry about the kiss.”

“No?” he asked, tilting his head, as if measuring her or waiting for the other shoe to drop. “You got pretty riled up at me.”

“I did, you’re right,” she admitted.
 

That. That was exactly why she needed to do this. “And, honestly, getting riled up at you was the most emotion I’ve felt in a long time. And I…” She looked away. It was all well and good to think she could be so aboveboard with a man, to lay it all on the table. But in reality, she’d never been the aggressor with the guys she’d dated.
 

Not that this was a date. Or that she was asking Sawyer to be her boyfriend or anything. Her mind started to whiz out on tangents, fragmenting her focus. She willed herself to pull it together. This was what she needed right now. All she had to do was ask for it. She stared at him, unable to speak.

“What are you saying, Deni?” he asked. There was confusion in his voice, but also…hope?

“I’m saying, that…um…if you’d maybe want to kiss me again, that…”

“Yes?” He was closer to her now, nearly in the middle of bench seat. His hand moved, and suddenly her seatbelt was unbuckled, sliding over her body to the door.

“I wouldn’t mind—”

He was on her.

She wasn’t sure which delicious sensation she felt first—his hands nestling into her hair or his lips on hers. But the playing in her hair quickly floated out of her mind as her lips opened under his, and she felt the warm glide of his tongue. She tangled hers with his and heard his breath hitch. Her brain turned off, but not in the dull haze of late. It was a haze that fogged her up but no way was it dull.

Lust. A haze of lust. It was the last coherent thought she had before turning everything over to her body and how Sawyer’s kiss was making it come alive.

She wound her arms around his neck, scooching over across the seat, wanting to touch him, to let the haze spread.

Seeming to know what she wanted—or wanting it himself—his hand slid from her hair, over her coat, lifting it up enough to curve a hand around her butt and nudge her body closer.
 

She’d made out with boys in cars before, but it’d been a while, and Sawyer’s truck was nothing like the cars the boys back in Farmington Hills drove.

And Sawyer Beck was in no way a boy.

As he continued to lift her to him, she touched the side of his face. He’d been clean-shaven when they’d met this morning, but now there was a tantalizing amount of stubble that she stroked.

“Jesus,” he mumbled, then kissed her more deeply as he pulled her on top of him while he edged his body to her side so that she’d be able to straddle him.

Breathing heavily, she broke away from the kiss, needing to see his face. The wind howled outside, and the whiteness of the snow seemed to give a glow to the truck’s cab.

His chest was heaving, and she put her hands on him there, pushing aside the lapels of his wool pea coat. It wasn’t enough, so she pushed the coat off him. He leaned forward enough so that she could drag it out from behind him and toss it on the seat next to them. Better. She smoothed her hands down his strong chest, then glanced at his face to find his green eyes on her. She inched closer to him on his lap, her full skirt rising along her thighs. Her tights and his khakis were the only things between them. His breathing had slowed now, but the rise and fall of his firm chest became deeper. The chambray of his shirt felt almost repulsive to her when his skin was just underneath. She started plucking at the buttons, almost in a fury to see his chest.

His movements were slower, more deliberate, as they eased her coat from her, tugging her hands away from his shirt momentarily, before he tossed her coat on top of his.

He began to unwind the scarf that she’d so laboriously configured this morning, using a picture from Pinterest as her guide.
 

“What the…?” He was tangled in the intricate design, yanking at the gossamer material.

“It doesn’t matter. Leave it,” she whispered, having his shirt finally undone. She yanked it free from his waistband and opened it wide. His chest was strong, developed, and covered lightly with hair that her fingers itched to touch. As she reached for his skin, her arms were pulled away by his peeling of her cardigan off her body, leaving her in only her camisole and bra. She wasn’t even sure where her sweater wound up. She certainly didn’t care.

Her hands ran over his chest, and she was delighted when he involuntarily flexed at her slightly colder touch. The muscle was strong and firm, and she leaned forward to nuzzle him. Breathing in the clean, fresh scent of him, she ran her cheek along his chest, up to his throat, then burrowed deeper. Her body was responding, coming out of its funk, and she reveled in the feelings that had been dormant for so long: desire, attraction, and, okay, horniness.

“Holy wah,” he said as she nipped his neck, then put her tongue on him. She smiled at the Yooperism that she hadn’t quite been able to add to her vocabulary, then returned to tasting his skin. She nibbled her way up, his hands pulling her body even closer, then clenching her butt as her mouth finally made its way to his.