After the Climb (River Rain #1) - Kristen Ashley Page 0,49
started to drop his head.
Her laughing eyes grew wider then got serious right quick.
She was coming up on her toes…
“Well, hell.”
They both froze.
“Harvey! I told you!”
Genny leaned to the side to look beyond him.
Duncan didn’t have to look.
But he did anyway, holding her close and twisting his head to look over his shoulder.
Harvey and Beth were standing beyond the railing at the back corner of the porch.
“You didn’t answer your doorbell,” Harvey accused Duncan’s way.
“Yeah, because he’s necking with his girl on his back porch, you big dork!” Beth snapped, smacking her husband’s arm and it looked like she did it hard.
“Woman! How was I supposed to know? Yesterday, she’d barely look at him.”
“Omigod!” Beth turned and homed in on Genny. “He lives with four women and he still has no clue.”
“I know about the three-day shampoo regimen,” Harvey clipped.
“Well bravo for you,” she shot back.
“You two wanna stop yellin’ at each other long enough for me to make you both a cup of coffee, and Beth, I don’t know, maybe before that, introduce you to Genny?” Duncan asked.
“We absolutely, one hundred percent, and I could not stress this more, do not want a cup of coffee,” Beth decreed. “No offense, Genny.”
“I could use some joe,” Harvey said.
Before Beth’s head could explode, Duncan threw out a compromise.
“How ’bout I fill a couple travel mugs for you.”
“We’re leaving,” Beth decreed. And to Genny, “Genny, so nice to not quite but still meet you. I wish I could tell you we weren’t these lunatics, but we totally are. Do with that what you will. If you take Bowie from us, we’ll understand. God granted us more time with him than we deserved anyway.”
“Speak for yourself, wife,” Harvey bit out. And to Genny, “I am not a lunatic. You saw yourself yesterday, doll. I’m your average, everyday best friend to a man who shitty life circumstances tore from the arms of the love of his life and he needed my special guidance to get them back. Therefore, I’m taking total responsibility for this.”
Harvey finished, jabbing his finger toward Duncan and Genny.
It didn’t last long upraised.
Beth grabbed his wrist, yanked it down and started tugging it.
“You’ll come over for dinner. Soon, a couple of days, I’ll make something in the air fryer,” Beth called as she moved, hauling Harvey with her.
“You and that air fryer,” Harvey groused.
“You didn’t complain about that air fryer when I was pulling homemade jalape?o poppers out of it. You were too busy shoving them in your gob.”
They heard this even though Beth and Harvey had disappeared from sight.
“You were wrong.”
At these words, Duncan looked down at Genny.
“She’s scary,” she decreed.
He burst out laughing.
She gave him a squeeze while he was doing it.
And even though he looked down at her and saw her smiling up at him happily, he stopped doing it.
Bent his head.
And took her mouth.
Genny gave him instant access.
So he took it.
She tasted warm and smooth and decadent.
Different and all the same.
But as ever, intoxicating.
And addicting.
He angled his head for more. She pulled her arms from around him to wind them around his neck and pushed up on her toes to give it.
She pressed deep.
He pulled her deeper.
But when his cock started stirring, he ended it, kissing her jaw, the downy skin in front of her ear, then resting his cheek against the side of her head and just holding her close.
“Okay, so, um…it seems we have no problems getting the hang of that again,” she mumbled.
He smiled at his stables. “Nope.”
“Are you going to introduce me to your horses?’
“Yup.”
“And your chickens?”
“Yeah.”
“Your dogs are about to break through the glass.”
“We’ll bring them with.”
“Just so you know, I checked, and you were correct. My building has not had a sanitation emergency.”
“I figured.”
“Bowie?”
“Right here.”
“Sam phoned Mary. She wants to sit down and talk.”
Fuck.
Chapter Ten
The Fire
Imogen
I stood, watching Duncan crouched before his gigantic fireplace in his great room, building a fire.
And I did it admitting I was a mess.
Because we’d scaled the mountain that was the heartache of our end.
But I’d come to realize what lay ahead was not a downward climb into a sunshine covered, lush, verdant valley of the promise of halcyon days.
It was another range of mountains we had to traverse.
Perhaps not as high.
But they were there.
Earlier, on the porch, after my announcement about Samantha, Duncan had freed his dogs while declaring, “I get it’s gonna be on your mind, but how ’bout we make the rest of today a Corey’s-bullshit free zone? We got plenty of time