Hotshot and Hospitality by Nora Everly
Chapter 21
Garrett
I tugged her into the downstairs powder room and locked the door behind us. The locked door, the privacy, her in that ridiculously adorable dress—I forgot what it was I brought her in here for and kissed her. I’d been thinking of her sweet mouth, sexy hourglass curves, and everything wet and delicious that I didn’t get a taste of since this morning. I’d been hard off and on for hours, work was impossible, and I still had to go back after lunch and finish the day. I couldn’t concentrate for shit and I needed her. I wanted nothing more than to take her home, work her up to naked and wild, then slide into her sweet little body until she was screaming my name.
She moved to put her arms around me, but I grabbed her wrists and held them behind her back as I arched her over the pedestal sink and deepened the kiss, slipping my tongue in her mouth with a growl. If she got her hands on me, I’d lose it right here. She moaned and opened her mouth beneath mine, meeting my tongue with hers. Yeah, I held her wrists, but that didn’t stop her from rubbing her body against mine and touching me every which way she could without the use of her hands.
Loosening my grip on her wrists, I slowed the kiss. I pulled back to glide my lips across hers, nipping at her full lower lip, then soothing it with my tongue. “Gosh, you’re a good kisser, Garrett,” she murmured against my mouth.
“You drive me crazy, Molly. I want you so bad.” My chest heaved with the effort it took to pull myself away from her. But I did it, stepping back to lean against the wall across the room.
She adjusted her dress and rubbed a fingertip over her lips. “I want you too. Why can’t we just leave? We could go to your cabin and bang the rest of the day away. It’s so deserted up there, I won’t have to worry about how loud I get without my hearing aid in.”
A startled laugh burst out of me. “Good god, Molly, don’t tempt me. We can’t leave because we’re here for Sabrina and Wyatt and we’re not jerks, right?”
She laughed. “Right. What are you doing here anyway? This is a baby shower—I think it’s against the law for guys to attend.”
“Mom called me right after I saw you this morning. She invited me and my brothers. She said it would be a family thing. Dad will be here too, but all the kids are in school.”
“Oh, okay. So, you’re saying I get to eat eggplant parm and look at your sexy self the entire time? Sounds like foreplay to me.”
“You’re coming to my place tonight,” I declared. She was better at sexy banter than I was. All I could seem to manage were caveman demands.
“Count on it, hotshot.” Her grin shifted to the side as she winked at me.
My jaw dropped for a second before I pulled it together enough to respond. “Alright, then, let’s get this shit out of the way. Birth control? Condoms? What are we doing?”
She grinned at me, and it was then that I knew I would never be able to match her. She was the best kind of trouble. “Yes and no and we can start with missionary, then I could get on top? Or my personal favorite, the lotus flower. I’m very bendy.” Her eyes sparkled with amusement as she waited for my reaction.
“I—holy shit, Molly. Just . . . good lord, are you trying to kill me right now?” I huffed out a laugh. Why had I waited so long to pursue her?
Her laughter was full of naughty promise as she reached for my belt buckle to pull me close to her hot little body, tipping her head way back with her chin against my chest to look up at my face. “I knew what you meant, Garrett. Disease-free, on the pill, we can do what we want, when we want with no worries. Even right here . . .”
I gulped because we would not be doing it right here in my mother’s powder room no matter how hard she had made my dick get. “Uh, I’m also disease-free, Lacy was the last and that was well over a year ago.”
“Chris number four was my last and same. Also, I was teasing about right here. I can’t do it with your mother in the house. That’s grody.” She released my belt and took a step back.
A laugh escaped along with a relieved puff of air. “Thank god. I would never be able to say no to you. And honestly, I’m so hard right now and you’re so fucking hot in that dress. Combine that with the fact that we’re alone in here, it makes me almost forget she’s here. Almost.”
“Before we go back out, why did you bring me in here if you weren’t gonna bend me over the sink and give me the goods?”
“I was going to ask about the ring and make sure you were okay. Lacy called. She also told me about what Jackie said to you.”
She held her hand up between us. “This ring? Like a dumbass, I forgot to remove it after Sadie got it off Lacy’s finger. Jackie called your mom. Basically, your mother thinks we’ve been secretly seeing each other for months, I’m pregnant, and hello—Great-Aunt Jade’s ring on my finger which, ironically, is now stuck. Could this be any worse?”
“Not really.” I sighed and pulled her into my chest for a hug. “I’ll talk to her after the baby shower and clear everything up.”
“I hate the thought of upsetting her . . .”
Then forget about this un-dating bullshit and let me tell her the real truth . . .
“She’ll be okay. Don’t worry.” I bent to drop a kiss to her forehead. Maybe I should just keep procrastinating, not talk to my mother, and make her fall in love with me instead, thereby rendering the talk with my mother moot. “We’d better get out there. But I’m gonna need a minute to get control of myself. You’ll have to go first. I’m still hard and it will never go away with you in here.”
Her eyes drifted down my body as her hand reached for the doorknob. “See you out there, Garrett,” she whispered, then walked out the door. Mine. She acted like she wanted to be, but the secrets cast a pall over our time together no matter how hard I tried to ignore them.
* * *
We were halfway through eggplant parmesan when a shocked scream pierced the quiet. “Fuck! Wyatt! Oh my god. This hurts!” Sabrina shoved her pink-bunting-covered chair back and clutched her stomach. Every head in the dining room whipped to her, for several reasons. Sabrina was the quietest, sweetest, most gentle and shy person any of us had ever met and she had just cursed loudly and doubled over in her chair. And as the person sitting next to her, I could see she was definitely in labor. Her stomach jerked around through her shirt and holy crap that had to hurt.
Wyatt, seated on her other side, didn’t miss a beat. “I got you, darlin’.” He kissed the top of her head, then lifted her face to his. “I promise, I won’t leave your side, not once.”
While nodding her head, she took a huge breath and grabbed his cheeks. “I know you’ll stay with me. I know that. But—I didn’t know it would hurt this bad, Wyatt.” She let go of his face to grip the arms of her chair. She let out a loud moan before turning away from him to yell at the room, “Why didn’t anyone tell me it would hurt this fucking baa-aa-ad?” She started to pant. I slid my chair back and stood up to push the table away from her so I could help Wyatt get her out to his truck. There was no way she could walk on her own; she could barely even sit. “I don’t want to do this anymore. Let’s go home, Wyatt. Can we just go home, please? I want to go home.”
“You’re going to be just fine, I promise you. We’re going to the hospital right now. Garrett?” Wyatt looked at me.
“Yup, whatever you need, man,” I answered. I mean, I was right there to see her stomach go crazy, slow down, then start moving again like my new niece was having a dance party in there. I was ready to do whatever I could to help.
“I’ll get your truck pulled around for you,” Barrett offered.
Sadie started digging through her purse. “No, take my minivan. It’s lower to the ground, parked right there on the curb, and Wyatt can sit in the back with her. Becky Lee and Willa will fit too.”
“Good thinking. Thank you, Sadie,” my mother said. “I’ll call when she’s ready for visitors.” My mother and Willa had been going with Sabrina to every doctor’s appointment that Wyatt couldn’t make because of his work schedule, and would be in the delivery room along with Wyatt and Sabrina.
“Sabrina,” Sadie said as she tossed Barrett her keys. “If you change your mind and decide to take all the drugs they’ll give you, don’t feel guilty. I took everything, I pushed two out in one go, and I barely felt a thing. Also, if you don’t want to take the drugs, don’t feel bad about that either. You do you, no matter what anyone else has to say. Just get that baby out.”
Sabrina nodded. “Okay, I got this. I can do this. I’m ready.” Wyatt and I each took an arm to help her stand, slipping our arms around her waist and back once she was up.
Willa and my mother dashed out ahead of us with Barrett to the van.
Barrett pulled me aside after we got Sabrina settled with Wyatt in the back and Mom and Willa in the middle. “You drive them. Sabrina is seriously reminding me of when Lizzie was born—in the car on the side of the road. She’s racing to the finish line and the hospital is a good half hour away. You got first aid certification in the Marines, yeah?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Wyatt is certified too. She’ll be in better hands with y’all two than me. I’ll be along later.”
“Shit, man. I need—does Sadie have a first aid kit or anything in here?”
“Yeah, she has two wild little boys. It’s extensive and under the passenger seat. And here.” He thrust a gift bag into my hands. “I grabbed this on the way out. It’s full of baby blankets. Just don’t use the one on top—I knitted that myself. Took me a month.”
“Got it. Later.” I slapped his shoulder, took the keys, then we were off.