His lips parted, and he covered his chest as if my admission of the truth surprised him, or maybe it was at being caught gossiping right in front of me.
Either way, I wasn’t going to hide my attraction to Goldie.
Because he was right, I was into her.
Big time. I wondered if she was into me. Or women at all, for that matter.
As I used my body to clean out her bakery with her and others from the community, I let my mind wander.
To things like what it would be like to have her as a partner.
To things like what it would be like to have her in my home, in my bed.
To things like wondering if the blush that graced her cheeks covered her chest when she orgasmed like I imagined it would.
By the timethe last mop bucket was emptied, and the fans were humming in the corners, I could barely lift my arms. My body ached, but it was the good kind of ache—the kind that said we saved something worth keeping.
Something worth fighting for.
Cedar Bluff showed up for me big time. People I barely knew had brought towels and coffee, hammers and trash bags, goodhumor and tender care. Jasper kept everyone moving like a drill sergeant, wearing pink sequins on his rain boots and tossing out jokes and insults like confetti.
And Rhea—she had stayed the whole day.
I hadn’t expected to see her at all after she left with the fire department in the middle of the night. Then, like an illusion in a dream, she was there, standing in the doorway with all of her steady strength and tempting stares. At first, she had been quiet, methodical, sleeves rolled up and her hair in a messy bun on top of her head as she ripped drywall out with the carpenters from Travis Hayes’s construction company that he sent over to help. But then it morphed into something else. Every time I looked over at her, it was as if she sensed my stare and would look at me.
When she smiled at me over the ruined counter at which I served our community at, something fluttered low in my stomach that I pretended not to notice.
But Ididnotice it.
I obsessed over it internally.
I was so incredibly attracted to Rhea; she was exactly the type of woman I’d go for if I were dating. Strong, confident, with an effortless ability to lead, paired with a tender gentleness that only women could master.
Believe me, I’d dated my fair share of people over the years. And there were things about all sexes that I craved to find together in one partner. I just hadn’t found someone who could do it all.
With Rhea, she came close.
Closer than I’d ever found in anyone else.
But then there was Tanner.
He arrived that afternoon with a new lock for the door that the fire department broke to get inside in the middle of the night and a couple boxes of pizza to fuel everyone still working.
Besides one pointed glare in Rhea’s direction, he didn’t say anything about her presence at my side, working on the last of the demolition of my hopes and dreams. He just started working beside us as if he belonged there.
The two of them in the same room had felt like opposites pulling me in differing directions—steel and fire—and somehow, I was caught in the middle, drawn to both so intensely, without understanding why.
I’d been attracted to Tanner for a long time, almost as long as I had been in Cedar Bluff. He made it hard not to be with his charisma and tender, caring attention. But that tenderness only went so far, given that he was a man, and that was why I found myself looking from him to Rhea, wondering which one of them would be the ideal partner if I chose one.
Not that they were asking; God, that would have been a dream, but not my reality. I was too busy to date anyway.
Though by the end of the day, I was tired from my lack of sleep and intense physical labor, and wired tight from working side by side with them until everyone else had left, leaving it just the three of us.
Reality didn’t matter, because I was deep in my fantasy-filled mind by the time I forced us all to stop for the night.
“I can’t do another moment of physical labor,” I huffed, pulling my gloves off and tossing them on the metal table in the center of the room. “And I can’t ask either of you for more either, you’ve both far exceeded anything I could have hoped for today. I appreciate you both so much.”
Rhea took her gloves off, wiping her wrist across her forehead with a sigh. “You deserve a break. You’ve been at this all day.”