driveway that led to the ranch. His house was so different from any she would have imagined herself living in before. Her place at Maxfield Vineyards was styled after the vineyard house itself, which was her parents’ taste. Or maybe just her father’s taste. Maybe what her mother wanted didn’t come into it at all. Wren didn’t know.
It bothered her, going from a house that had been decided on by her parents, straight to a man’s house.
He stopped the car and looked at her. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve never had my own place. Not really. I don’t know what I like. I don’t know...who I am. I try to think of what kind of house I would choose and it’s just a blank in my head.”
“What do you know, Wren?” he asked.
“I know that I want you,” she said, meeting his gaze.
Because that was one choice she had made in the middle of all of this, the one choice that had been down to her—kissing Creed Cooper in the first place.
They’d made a deal. A deal to not do this. But she didn’t think she could stick to the deal. Didn’t think she could be near him, with him like this, and not have him.
So maybe just once?
Maybe just for their wedding night.
Whether it made sense or not, it was what she’d chosen.
That desire for him hadn’t come from anywhere but inside herself. And there was something empowering about that.
Maybe the wedding had been his idea, but wanting him... She knew that was all her. Nothing anyone would have asked her to do. Nothing her family was even all that supportive of. Some might have argued it was a bad thing to have given in to, on some level, but it had been her own choice. And right now, sitting in a truck that wasn’t hers, in front of the house that wasn’t hers, having taken vows that weren’t her idea, the desire between them at least seemed honest.
And wasn’t honest what she really needed?
Yes, she was trying to be smart, whatever that meant in this situation. Yes, she was trying to do the right thing for her child, but if she didn’t know what the right thing was for herself... How could she be a good mother?
She thought about her own mother. Soft but distant, somebody Wren had never connected with.
Because she didn’t know her. She didn’t know her mother, and Wren had to wonder if the other woman knew herself.
“Yes,” she repeated now. “I want you. I want you, because I know that’s real.”
He threw the truck into Park and shut off the engine. Then he got out, rounded to her side and opened the door. He pulled her out and into his arms, carrying her up the front steps and through the door. Then he carried her up the stairs, set her down in his bed.
And when they kissed, she felt like she might know something.
Something deep and real inside herself.
She didn’t have a name for it. But it didn’t matter.
Because all she wanted to do was feel.
This was different from the other times they had been together. It wasn’t fast or frantic. And when it was over, she drifted off to sleep. She had the oddest sensation that in his bed, without her clothes, without any of the trappings that normally made her feel like her... She was the closest to real that she had ever been.
Nine
Wren began stirring in the late evening. They had skipped straight to the wedding night before the sun had gone down, and Creed was certain he would never get enough of her.
Then she had fallen asleep, all soft and warm and satisfied against him, and he would’ve thought that he’d find it...irritating. That he still wanted sex and the woman had fallen asleep.
But he didn’t. Instead, he just enjoyed holding her.
It was amazing how much less of a termagant she was when she was asleep.
As soon as she began making sleepy little noises, he hauled himself down to the kitchen and put together a plate of cheese and crackers, and grabbed a bottle of sparkling cider, which he had bought a couple of days earlier.
How funny for Wren not to be able to drink wine. Wine was their business. It was what they were. But, of course, it wouldn’t be part of her life for the next few months.
That meant it wouldn’t be part of his either. No wine, but she got him as a consolation prize.
He imagined it was all a