Since I Fell For You(48)

“If you wind the stem around the beam and then tuck it into the joint,” she said in a slightly breathless voice, “I’m hoping it will stay.”

Not trusting himself to speak again when it was taking every ounce of his control not to lower his hands to her curves—and his mouth to hers—he did as she directed. Quickly, so that he could get out of there as fast as humanly possible.

But just as he finished tucking the end of the stem between the beams and thought he was home free, she held up a handful of flowers. “Can you do these too?”

Who would have thought that one totally innocuous question in the moonlight was what would finally make him lose hold of everything? His role as her bodyguard. The fact that her brothers were friends—friends who trusted him with their sister. Even that he wasn’t anywhere near good enough for her and didn’t have what it took to give her what she deserved.

One kiss.

He needed one kiss.

He needed to know her taste.

He needed to hear the sounds she made when she was falling into pleasure.

He needed her.

“Roman.”

His name was the barest whisper on her lips. One that had him drawing even closer in the darkness, aware of nothing but the two of them and the kiss that they were finally about to—

“Suzanne? Roman?”

Christie’s voice had them jumping away from each other like two guilty teenagers who had been caught making out…even though they hadn’t gotten to the making out part.

Roman slammed his head and shoulders on the gazebo’s lowest beams, but he deserved a hell of a lot more pain than that for what he had almost done.

What was he thinking, making a move on Suzanne out here? A handful of seconds more and he would have been all over her. As it was, anyone could have seen them pressed close like that. Not only her brothers and father, but also her cousins and friends from Summer Lake.

“We’re almost done with the flowers,” Suzanne called to her friend. “Do you need help with something else?”

“Yes, if you don’t mind.” Though she was obviously trying to downplay it, Christie sounded more than a little stressed out. “And it’s kind of urgent.”

“We’ll be right there.”

Instead of leaving the gazebo right away, however, Suzanne turned to look back at Roman. And when she did, he could see on her face all the desire—and the conflicted emotions—that he felt himself. He wished he knew what to say to change things so that she was just his client and he was just her bodyguard. He wished he knew how to stop wanting her.

But he was coming up empty on both counts.

“We should go help,” he finally said.

“We should,” she agreed.

And still, neither of them moved, staying right where they were in the middle of the gazebo, staring at each other. Until the slam of a car door abruptly broke the spell that the lake, the night, the upcoming wedding had woven around them.

But Roman knew that it was more than just being here, away from the city, away from real life, that had changed things. It was their connection, one that was already so much deeper than he’d ever known with another woman.

Silently picking up the empty flower buckets and the lanterns, they headed back into the Inn’s kitchen to find Christie on her hands and knees on the floor. She looked up at them, nearly in tears. “I accidentally knocked the bite-sized cupcakes the baker delivered for tomorrow off the counter. All of the cupcakes.”

Looking closer, Roman realized there must be three hundred tiny little cupcakes smashed onto the wood planked floor.

“We can make enough cupcakes tonight to replace all of these,” Suzanne said. “Right, Roman?”

Suzanne needed a break. She needed to relax. She had spent more than enough time this week going a thousand miles an hour. But her friends, her family, meant everything to her. She’d rather bake three hundred cupcakes in a hot kitchen until midnight than be out in the main room sipping cocktails with movie stars. And she obviously didn’t care that she was in a fancy dress and heels either, as she was already winding her long hair up into a knot on the top of her head.

He reached for Christie’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “Let me finish cleaning the floor while you two find recipes and gather ingredients.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Christie threw her arms around both of them so that the three of them were in a group hug. He tried not to notice how soft, how warm, how perfect, Suzanne’s curves felt against him, but it was a losing battle.

From the moment he’d set eyes on her, he’d been floored by her beauty. The first day he’d gone with her to work, he’d been stunned by her brilliance. And on the drive to the lake, he’d realized that she still ached from losing her mother, the way he still did. Those were some of the reasons he’d been so drawn to kiss her in the gazebo. But those reasons only scratched the surface.