Grayson stopped, knew he didn’t have to say anything more, that he’d already given away enough. He’d never talked to anyone about this before, not even his parents or Leslie’s.

But, suddenly, being the only one who knew what had really happened seemed like too big a burden to keep bearing all alone.

“Somewhere along the way, she started drinking. But I never knew about what she’d been doing until she crashed into a tree and they told me she was way over the legal blood-alcohol limit. That was when I went home and saw all the signs I’d missed, every last one of the hints she’d been leaving me, just hoping I’d see her. Hoping that I’d be there for her the way I’d once promised when we were young and the world was going to be ours and I refused to have it any other way.”

For a long while, Lori didn’t say a word. She simply put her arms around him and held on tight.

Until, finally, she lifted her head from his chest and said, “Last night, when you took me to that barn dance and pushed me out onto the dance floor, you gave me back my heart, Grayson.” Her mouth was barely a breath from his as she whispered, “And I can’t see how a man who could do something that good could possibly be bad.”

The birds were still chirping, the leaves were still rustling. The chickens still needed their eggs collected, the pigs their stalls mucked. The crops needed weeding and the CSA boxes needed to be assembled. But as Lori kissed him, and he kissed her back before making love to her yet one more time, Grayson knew that everything had changed.

Because he finally knew what it felt like to hold sunshine in his hands...and when Lori left, it was going to feel like winter all year round, even on the hottest days of summer.

Chapter Twenty

The next few days passed in a blur of back-breaking hard work as Lori helped Grayson lay in the boards and beams for the new roof of his cottage while keeping up with all of the usual farm chores. And, of course, there was the wonderful sex they had every night when the animals were finally taken care of and the only thing the two of them needed to focus on until sunrise was each other.

The sex was so good, in fact, that Lori sometimes wondered if she was dreaming. But each morning when Grayson dragged her out of bed at sunrise so that she could make them both breakfast, she knew she wasn’t. A dream would never be so heartless, or make her muscles ache quite so much with his incredibly long lists of work to be done on the farm.

She was taking a ten-second break, dreaming of a tropical beach and a fruity drink, when Grayson rode up on his horse and said, “I need your help with something on the back forty.” He pulled her up onto his horse without so much as a “please.”

“You know,” she said as he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist and rode off with her, “I’m sure I could learn to ride if you could spare a few precious minutes to show me how.”

“Of course you could,” he agreed. “You’d be a natural on horseback. But I want you here with me.”

With his surprisingly lovely words echoing all through her heart, she snuggled deeper against him. “I’d rather be here with you, too.” She honestly couldn’t think of anywhere she’d rather be than out in this beautiful green pasture with Grayson. “So, what are you going to do to work me to the bone now?”

“Are you sure you want to know?”

He sounded way too happy with himself and she groaned while stewing in all the possibilities of the torturous work he had planned for her, like digging a ditch or hauling heavy rocks. But when the grass started to turn to sand and he didn’t stop the horse, her suspicions suddenly shifted in another direction.

“Do you own the beach out here, too?”

“Technically, no,” he answered as he finally tied up his horse to a nearby tree and helped her down, his big hands warm on her waist as he stole a kiss. “But since the only way to get to this part of the shore by land is through my property, we’re not going to have to worry about anyone seeing you here naked.”

“Naked?” Her body heated up even as her eyes narrowed. “Are you saying you brought me to the beach to seduce me?”

He pulled a large foil wrapper and a Thermos out of one saddlebag. “I brought lunch, too. For later.”

She loved seeing him like this. Smiling. Playful. Happy. It was how he deserved to be.

Lori wanted so badly to heal Grayson. He obviously blamed himself for what had happened with his wife. And she hated that he did. She wanted to clear away his pain and fill up the empty spaces with love.

But life, she knew, wasn’t always that easy. And sometimes having some fun despite the pain was all you could do.

She looked down at the picnic he’d packed, and teased, “Well, if you’ve got lunch, then I suppose you could have me as an appetizer first.”

The next thing she knew, he was throwing her up over his shoulder, pulling a thick blanket out of the other saddlebag, and carrying her down to the beach. She could easily have gotten back down on her feet, but what was the point of pretending she didn’t love this?

Just as she was going to let herself pretend, at least for the next few days, that this was a life she could stay and live forever.

They’d barely spread the blanket out on the sand before they were both reaching for each other.

“I don’t know how you do it,” he murmured as they stripped off each other’s clothes and he sat on the blanket and pulled her over him. “All I know is that I can’t stop wanting you.”

“I’ll show you how,” she said as she wrapped her arms around his neck and straddled his naked body. She loved the feel of the hard and fast beat of his heart against her own bare chest, proof that she affected him as much as he affected her.

She found his mouth with hers and kissed him softly, the salt spray from the ocean already on his lips. She knew she’d never forget this—making love to Grayson on his beach, his arms tight and warm around her. She could feel how much he wanted her, but he didn’t rush her, didn’t roll them over on the blanket and thrust into her, even though both of them would surely enjoy that, too.

He’d given her so much pleasure while also giving her back her confidence in herself as a beautiful, desirable woman—and now she wanted to give him back just as much. Lori knew she couldn’t fully heal Grayson, that she couldn’t change his past. But she could give him a few moments of sweet perfection in her arms.

Moments just like this.

She licked out against his tongue and he groaned his pleasure into her mouth as his tongue licked back. He made her smile, her rough and gruff farmer, even as she rocked her pelvis into his, his erection thick and throbbing against her slick skin.

But there was so much more of him she wanted to taste, to run her tongue, her lips, over. She rained kisses across his jaw, his five o’clock shadow scratching her lips in the most delicious way, then down beneath his jaw into the hollow of his neck where she had licked the rain from his skin just a week before.

The storm hadn’t only been brewing outside, it had hit both of them just as hard, just as suddenly. He said she made him forget, but he made her forget, too. Because one kiss, one caress at a time, Grayson had taken the place of every other man she’d ever been with—all of them nothing more than a prelude to the real thing.

To love.

She’d planned to run her hands over his broad shoulders, to kiss every inch of him, but the intensity of their passion for each other ran too deep for her to do anything but grab the condom he’d dropped onto the blanket, tear it open, and lift her hips up so that she could slide it onto his absolutely gorgeous erection.

Grayson’s entire body stiffened while her fingertips grazed his hard flesh, and she understood how hard he was working to keep himself in control for another few seconds—because she was doing the same thing herself.

“You’d better go faster than that,” he growled.

Lori was both grinning and panting as she decided to mess with him just the teeniest bit. “I’m going as fast as I can,” she said, even as she let her hands linger across him, her hips bump just a little against his, the tips of her breasts slide over his rock-hard pecs as she fiddled with the condom.

“Like hell you are,” he said, and then he was taking the job away from her, his hands moving to her hips a moment later to hold her tightly as she finally took him inside, sliding down over his thick length one perfect inch at a time.

Her eyes fluttered closed, her breath rushing from her body as pleasure overtook her. When she finally figured out how to breathe again and opened her eyes, she found Grayson staring at her with such desire—and such wonder—that her chest clenched so tight that she could actually feel her love for him throbbing between them.

The only way she could keep from saying the words aloud to him was to cover his mouth with hers and focus every last cell, every last muscle in her body, on pleasure, on filling herself with his hard heat again and again and feeling him grow even bigger, even harder inside of her with every stroke.

“Grayson...” She couldn’t see anything but him, couldn’t think anything but his name, couldn’t feel anything other than the deepest pleasure she’d ever known in her life. And as the ocean waves crashed behind them into the jagged rocks along the coast, Grayson was her anchor as he held her so tightly on his lap that she could no longer move. She could only hold on as he thrust up into her again and again until she was crashing hard into a climax so beautiful she was nearly sobbing at the pleasure he gave her.

And as he called out her name, then exploded inside of her as she held him just as tightly as he’d been holding her, she didn’t have to wonder if her body had just told him of the love she hadn’t let herself speak aloud.

All that was left to wonder was whether he’d heard it, too.

* * *

The next afternoon, the sun was already starting to set by the time Grayson found her in the pigpen. “You’re just getting their stalls mucked out now?”

Lori remained amazed both by the way he managed to infuse each word with so much irritation, and by how cute she found it. Not rushing as she finished the final stall, she carefully washed off her rake and hung it up before saying, “I would have finished earlier, but someone made me late for work this morning by not letting me get out of bed.”

As she walked over to him at the gate, he made a face. “You really need a shower.”

“Well, you really are cranky,” she retorted even though she completely agreed with him about how nice a shower would be right about now. “Think a shower can wash that away, too?”

“You think this is cranky?” he growled as he took hold of her and dragged her around the side of the barn. “I’ll show you cranky.”

Before she knew it, he had her standing fully clothed under the outdoor shower. He stripped the wet clothes, hat and boots from her so fast that all she could do was stand there in shock and let him. Only to be doubly shocked when she realized his jeans and boots were already off, too, and he’d put a condom on.

A moment later, he picked her up and drove into her, both of them utterly ravenous for each other despite the fact that it had barely been eight hours since they’d last made love. She didn’t need foreplay, didn’t need anything but his strong arms around her and his fierce desire to drive her straight to the edge, and then all the way over as his lips landed on hers and he drove his tongue into her mouth just as he thrust his hips forward.

Later, when he soaped her up, then made her feel good all over again with his hands and mouth, Lori made a mental note to remember to call Grayson names more often than she already did.

* * *

A few days later, Grayson had just stepped in the back door when he heard Lori’s voice coming from the kitchen.

“Hey Soph, time for my daily check-in so that you don’t think an axe murderer has gotten to me.”