Rainy Day Friends Read online

  “We can’t sleep in the same bed in your family house.”

  “Actually, there hasn’t been all that much sleeping involved,” he said. “There was some nice begging, though, especially when I—”

  “Oh my God.” She put a hand over his mouth, but she was laughing now. “I absolutely did not beg.”

  He chuckled because she had so begged. Sweetly. Sexily. And now that he was thinking of it, he wanted to hear her do it again. And again . . .

  “Look,” she said. “We agreed it’s okay to do . . . what we did. But sleeping together is different. It’s more. It’s . . . intimate.”

  He felt his smile fade and he pulled her in for a hug, resting his jaw on the top of her head. “You need your space.”

  She paused, and then pulled back and stared at his chest. “Yes. I need space.”

  He lifted her chin and what he saw in her eyes made his heart constrict. “Us not getting involved emotionally is on me, Lanie,” he said. “Not you. Never you.”

  She nodded, but he knew she didn’t understand and he felt like such an asshole. “Please tell me you believe me.”

  “I—”

  They both froze at the knock on the door, though Mark didn’t need a peephole to know who it was. At night his children tended to turn into dehydrated philosophers who needed lots of hugs. And yep, right on cue came . . .

  “Daddy?” came Samantha’s little voice. “Me and Sierra are thirsty.”

  He’d been a soldier. He was a cop. Both required catlike reflexes and instincts that had saved his life more than a few times. He was quick on his feet and he slept with one eye open. And yet in that moment, he was frozen. Not because his kids had found him in a questionable situation, but because for whatever reason, Lanie honest-to-God believed she couldn’t trust love, and he’d just cemented that in her head for her.

  The girls knocked again. Lanie jabbed a finger at the closet and added yet another push that was far more like a shove so that she could go greet his adorable little heathens and protect him.

  Not happening. It was time someone protected her for a change. So he gently nudged her into the closet and put a finger to his lips. Then he opened the bedroom door and looked down at his favorite heathens plus one oversized dog, all looking hopeful.

  They were the cutest little night owls he’d ever seen, who didn’t seem to need any sleep no matter what time he decreed bedtime was. Sometimes even after he’d put them to bed, they’d come looking for an excuse to get into his bed, claiming to need water, a story, whatever they could come up with, and it was his own fault that he’d let them. But after all they’d gone through, he’d spoiled them some. They deserved it.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “I can’t possibly really be looking at my two favorite short people because they’re in bed, long asleep, dreaming about ponies and kittens and rainbows.”

  They giggled and tried to push their way in, Gracie leading the way, but he held firm. “Not tonight, sweet things. It’s way past your bedtimes—”

  “But Daddy,” Samantha said. “My sock fell off and we’re thirsty.”

  “There’s two water bottles by your beds. Where’s your aunt Mia?”

  “She fell asleep. We wanna story.”

  Sierra nodded eagerly, smiling at him so adorably that he felt his chest pinch. She was finally getting her two front teeth in and she was clutching the teddy bear he’d given her last month, looking at him in overt adoration that he still wasn’t sure he deserved. Bending, he scooped them both up and started down the hall toward their bedroom, Gracie on his heels.

  “But Daddy—”

  “Shh,” he whispered, hugging Samantha in tighter. “Don’t wake up the house, baby.”

  “But—”

  “Samantha, if you wake up Grandma, I’ll tell her it was you who ate her last cupcake.”

  Sierra giggled at this empty threat because they all knew it’d been him who had eaten the last cupcake. But Samantha stopped talking and set her head on his shoulder.

  He quickly glanced back. No sight of Lanie. Three minutes later he had the girls tucked into bed. “When you’re teenagers,” he said, “I’m going to wake you guys up in the middle of the night to tell you my socks came off.”

  They laughed and cuddled in. He kissed them each, told Gracie to “guard the babies,” and went back to his room and directly to his closet.

  It was empty.

  He let out a slow breath. Yeah, he deserved that. He padded out of the room and down the hall. It was a cold night and he was barefoot and shirtless but he had to make sure Lanie was okay. He got to the row of cottages just in time to see her step inside her dark one.

  Fair enough. Mad at himself for hurting her, he went back to the big house.

  He’d honestly believed that he could keep his heart safe. But that had been before Lanie slid in beneath his barriers. Now the only thing he was sure of was the one thing he didn’t want to admit to himself.

  She was going to have him breaking his every rule for her.

  HIS ALARM WENT off three hours later. He had an early shift, which turned out to be long and busy. It was late that night before he got away, and after checking on the girls, he went to the cottages—power had been restored—and knocked on Lanie’s door.

  She answered in the shirt she’d stolen from him.

  He met her gaze. “Thought maybe we needed to have a conversation.”

  “Not even a little bit,” she said politely.

  “Lanie—”

  “I don’t want to talk, but there is something else I do want to do.”

  “Anything,” he said.

  She pulled him inside and to her bed.

  OVER THE NEXT week, Mark worked ridiculously long hours thanks to a flu running through his staff, visited his girls as often as he could, even if it was just watching them sleep, and then ended up in Lanie’s bed.

  Where they hadn’t done much talking, although there’d been a lot of murmured “Oh, please” and “Do that again” and “Don’t stop.”

  One day things finally slowed down enough at work that Mark was able to take his lunch break at the winery. He tried to do this the same day a week that coincided with the twins’ half day at school, offsetting all the nights where he didn’t get home before their bedtime. His job wasn’t ideal that way, but it was a hell of a lot better than being overseas and not present at all.

  Still, the dichotomy between the insanity of his work life—which most days meant slugging through the worst of what humanity had to offer—and then coming home and having to empty the dishwasher and braid the girls’ hair like a normal person, when he felt anything but normal, was harder than he’d imagined.

  But it was what he’d been dealt.

  Today, on his way into lunch, his mom waylaid him before he made it out to the patio.

  “I asked Lanie to extend her contract,” she told him.

  “You did? When?”

  “Two weeks ago.”

  “You didn’t think to mention it?”

  “Why would I?” she asked, cocking her head to watch him carefully. “You’ve denied the fact that there’s something going on with you two, and I run the winery, which makes her my responsibility, not yours.”

  True enough. “And she said . . . ?”

  “That she’d think about it.” His mom looked worried. “You do realize she’s been here six weeks already and only has a few weeks left, right?”

  Mark blew out a breath and stepped out onto the patio.

  Everyone was there. Everyone was always there at two very full tables. Lanie, as usual, sat all the way at the far end. River was with her. River looked up and met his gaze, her own quickly skittering away, also as usual.

  She’d been here five weeks now, and everyone loved and adored her, and . . . she’d not said one word directly to him. When he talked to her, everything about her stilled, and she looked anywhere else, as if she was desperate for him to go away. He had no idea if it was because he was male, or