Page 8 of Sterling Touch
“What are you looking at?” Trinity squawks, laughter in her voice as she glances over her shoulder. “Ugh.”
The feisty blonde turns back in my direction and rolls her eyes. “Brothers.”
I chuckle, but the sound is a mixture of choked strain leaving my throat. Brothers can be overbearing and annoying, and sometimes, it sucks to be loved so much by them.Insert sarcasm. Because most of their concern comes from a good place, even in the years they never picked up their smelly laundry and spent a little too much time in a locked bathroom using all the hot water.
Boys.
Only, our brothers are now all men, especially hers, and dammit, I cannot stop myself from looking over at Cort again. Instantly, I’m reminded of catching him watching me once upon a time in this bar on a night not so different from tonight. I’d been surrounded by friends, content with my life, full of plans for my future. His eyes were appraising, assessing, even appreciative of my then-thin, twenty-two-year-old body.
Now, I’m a mom, and while I keep myself in shape, knowing the importance of movement and strength training, my frame is not as sleek as it once was. I’m more curves and dips, thighs and ass.
And I no longer have the desire for a quick hookup.
“We should probably get going,” Halle says, interrupting my thoughts, pulling my attention back to the table and the redhead my brother loves.
Halle and Knox have one of those romantic tales where high school sweethearts reunite, and I’d be jealous if I ever had a high school sweetheart. Instead, I have a pithy history of hookups and teenage mishaps, chasing something I have yet to experience.
Love. And decent orgasms with a man.
Nodding in agreement with Halle that we need to get amove-on, I also need a moment to reset, and announce, “I need to use the bathroom quick.” That first glass of wine is running right through my system.
I double tap my hands lightly on the table and slip from my chair, heading around the bar for the restrooms in the back corner. At the same time I’m passing one side of the bar, I look up to see Cortland leave his barstool.
For some ridiculous reason, my heart begins to beat faster as he walks toward the corner of the bar. The same corner I’m headed toward. My belly flutters and I press my hand to it to quell the flapping.
We intersect at the same time.
“Valentine,” Cort says, his voice low and rugged, and rinsing over me like fine sand slipping between my toes. He dips his head, nodding once as he nears me.
“Cortland,” I reply, my tone just as formal as his, using his full name in response to him so firmly using mine.
But something even stranger than my accelerating heart beats behind my ribs, and the thickness in my throat occurs as our bodies pass a little closer than necessary considering the space around us.
Cort’s pinky finger brushes against mine as we cross paths. Electricity ripples up my arm, and a trigger of shock forces my smallest finger to twitch, crackle, and then dull.
And I desperately want to hold onto those initial sparks. That little reminder that Cortland Haven once had his full hands on me. His palms holding my hips. His lips against the side of my neck.
I shiver again, like I’ve felt a singular ray of the sun’s warmth after a long, cold winter. I’d spin to face Cort, to see if he felt a similar response, felt the unnerving sensation, but I remember all too well how Cort ran away from me. How he never looked back.
He’d never feel a giddy, tingling connection with me.
He never felt about me how I once felt about him.
Which makes it all the stranger that he’s been glaring at me today.Twice.
As I near the hallway leading to the restrooms, I fight the desire to glance in Cort’s direction one more time, knowing I’m damned if I look and damned if I don’t.
Because I don’t want to see he isn’t looking back at me.
I also don’t know what to think if he is.
5
[Vale]
“Hudson Sylver. Hurry up.” I holler up the staircase of our family home. The one I share with Stone and my son. For a few years, Knox lived with us when he returned from the Navy. Sebastian even spent a brief stint here before he moved into the apartment above his bakery and then into Enya’s house.
Our old farmhouse has more space than three people need, with five bedrooms on the upper level, many of which were once shared by my brothers. I’m still in my childhood room, although it’s been updated extensively from the yellow of my youth and walls covered in posters of teenage heartthrob hotties. The entire house has been renovated over time to include a green tin roof, replacing the worn black shingles, and a fresh coat of bright white paint on the clapboards. A new porch was installed replacing the rotten original one. I’ve beentold the place looks like the house inThe Waltons; however, the classic television program was before my time.
