Page 46 of Suddenly Single
He smiled and took her elbow, steering her to the left.“No.”
He escorted her to the back of the inn, and into his quarters, through the kitchen, and into a room with soaring ceilings. It was tastefully furnished with overstuffed chairs, a thick, shaggy rug, and built-in cases stuffed full with books.This is exactly how she would have pictured his living space.
He carried on, to an adjoining office.The windows in here were as tall as the ceiling, completely unadorned, and framing a spectacular view of the woods and the lake.His desk was very neat—nothing but his laptop, a stack of papers in a tray, and a single pen.Were it not for a pair of men’s shoes kicked to one side, she would think he never used this room.
Jenny had an image of him on a cold winter night, all alone, surfing the internet and giving in to flash sales on fishing poles.
Edan went to a small table and opened a crystal decanter.“Whisky?” Jenny shook her head.He poured himself a finger of whisky, and then turned around to face her.“Might I ask what made you think to purchase the inn?”
Jenny looked around the paneled walls, the thick beamed ceiling overhead.How many years had this house stood here? How many ghosts had slipped in and out of its walls? She couldn’t wait to find out. She couldn’t wait to learn everything there was about it. “I don’t know. I feel drawn to it. I feel like this is where I belong.”
He sipped the whisky.“Have you any notion of what it entails, running an inn?”
“You mean besides what I googled last night? No.”
He glanced down at his glass, as if considering his words.When he looked up he said, “It’s no’ something you do on the fly, Jenny—”
“Stop,” Jenny said, holding up her hand.She would hear the speech she knew was coming from everyone else, but she did not want to hear it from Edan.Anyone but him. “Look, Edan, I know how I come across. I know I seem like I flit around like a hummingbird. But I’ve needed something for a very long time, and I think I’ve found it.I’ve spent the last nineteen years arranging my life around someone who didn’t need me in the end. When my dad told me to go get my own life, it made me realize that I have forgotten how to think about what Ineed.I’m doing that now.So I can’t explain why now, or why here. I can only tell you that Ifeelit, and I feel it strongly.I need this and I have confidence in me even if no one else does.”
Several moments of silence ticked by.Edan was looking at her intently, and Jenny resisted the urge to fidget.She knew what he thought.He thought she was silly.Impetuous. Maybe he even thought she was dumb.
“I understand,” he said softly.He put his glass aside. “I completely understand forgetting to think about what you need.”
He said nothing more than that, and they stood for a moment, looking at each other.She wondered if he was waiting for her to say good night.Whatever he was thinking, Jenny’s spirit was once again unwilling to let the silence just be.“I’m going to sell the nutballs at the inn.”
His eyes wandered over her, and her hair, which she’d left loose to dry after her bath, down her dress and sweater, to her legs, to her feet and her sandals.His gaze was hot. Intent. And it lit a furnace in her.
“I brought them to the dining room and they were a big hit,” she said, her voice sounding a little weird to her. “Everyone was talking about them.These nutballs are amazing,” she said, mimicking the voice of a crowd.
Edan reached for her hand and pulled her closer.
“If they go that crazy over nutballs, imagine what they’d do with my red velvet cake.”
He cupped her face with his hands. “Imagine,” he muttered, and kissed her.
If there was one thing that could make Jenny shut up, it was a great kiss and the prospect of great sex.She sank into Edan.Something had shifted between them, as if they’d come to an unspoken mutual agreement—they were into each other. At least sexually—she wasn’t going to overthink it.Jenny was firmly planted in the headspace of letting fate come to her.She was going to go with the flow, and the flow was hot and sexy.
She could feel the heat of his body through his shirt, could feel her own blood rising to the surface.He touched her hair, pulling his fingers through it, and then slid his hand around her nape.
Jenny began to lose sense of time and where she was, exactly. She was completely submerged in the electric sensations of his hands and his mouth on her body.He touched her everywhere—her breasts, between her legs, her arms, her hips.His lips were both soft and demanding and tormented her, making her blood rush hot in her veins.
He moved down her body, his mouth on her abdomen as he flipped off one sandal, and then the other.He slowly rose back up, his hands trailing behind his mouth.They were moving, Jenny realized, and her sweater had come off.There were too many articles of clothing between them, too many fabrics, and she was grabbing at his shirt, pulling it from his trousers, her fingers running up the buttons.When she at last had his shirt undone and off his body he paused and regarded her with his deep, sea-green eyes.
“My God, Edan. You’re gorgeous,” she said.
He ran his hand roughly over her head. “What a bonny lass you are,” he said.
Jenny melted.She was an aroused lass, too.
They kept moving, lips and hands on each other, until Jenny realized they were in a bedroom.He had a platform bed and his things were scattered about.A pair of shoes, some jeans draped over a chair.A tray on the dresser where a few bills were visible.Two dog beds, which had been inhabited by two dogs until he shooed them out and shut the door.
He turned around to her and took her in.He pushed her disheveled hair behind her ear, stroked her chin.“I am surprised by you,” he said softly.“You were the last thing I expected to arrive at the inn, aye? And yet, here you are.”
She reached for his belt.“You surprised me, too.I was expecting a gramps-and-grandma kind of operation.Not a man in a kilt.”
He kissed her. “I want you, Jenny,” he whispered into her ear.“I want you in a way I didna think possible.”
The throaty way he uttered those words spiraled through her and erupted into tiny little explosions of light inside her.“I want you, too—”
