Taste of Commitment (Whisky and Risky #2)

7. Taylor

Taylor

Light seeps in through my wood slat blinds, and even though my eyes are begging to be shut again, I take it as a good sign that I’m up during the day. I roll over, searching for the black metal analog clock that sits on the vintage-styled nightstand. 3:15. Shit.

I flop back down and mentally berate myself for sleeping through yet another day. Not that I would have gotten up early—unfortunately, early mornings and I are not on the best of terms. We’re like spiteful ex-lovers who would be okay and capable of making it work for a day or two, claiming to love each other, but then get drunk and break up again. Early mornings and I tried to make it work, really. But in the end, sometimes you just have to know when to give up.

I snuggle into the soft waffle knit blankets and warm cotton quilt that cover me, as if I magically appeared in my bed and didn’t move all night. It turns out my bed is somehow even more comfortable than I thought it would be, which is a shame for someone like me, who already has difficulty getting up and starting my day. I’ve already gotten well acquainted with my room over the last two nights, and if my room at Emerald Browning Cottage is any indication of what the rest of Stoney Meadow has to offer, then I need to get my ass up and moving. Now.

Buzz buzz .

Or just as soon as I talk to Camila.

Mila

Listen, I’m not trying to be needy, but you’re in another country and I haven’t heard from you since you landed. You gotta give me something.

Taylor

YCBNWMA

Mila

Your cake bounces N’ wriggles, Mila. (silent A)

Taylor

You can be needy with me always.

Is there such a thing as a silent A?

I don’t bother to wait for her response before hitting the FaceTime button. Her glowing, bronzed, goddess-like face fills my screen in less than half a ring. She smiles, waving a silent hand and holding up her index finger. She moves like a creature of the night, sneaking out of her bed, and I spot her bare-chested husband sleeping behind her.

“Okay, sorry. Hi!” she beams, dropping onto the couch.

“Good morning, I assume. Is it morning there?”

“A little after seven.” She waves her hand in front of her face like this isn’t important. “So, tell me everything!”

“There’s not much to say. I slept the entire first day, and?—”

“The whole day?” she interrupts .

“The. Whole. Day,” I emphasize. “I woke up last night, starving?—”

“Of course.”

“Right. Well, apparently I should have checked the town’s bedtime when deciding where to travel because everything was closed.” I pause at the memory of whispered words and the deep caramel eyes that flirted somewhere between heavy gazing and understanding.

“Taylor?”

“Sorry, what?”

“I said, so what did you do?”

“Oh, the hottie from the front desk.” I pause when Camila’s one-hundred-and-twenty-pound St. Bernard pops up next to her. “Flaco!” I call and he begins trampling over my much smaller friend.

“Okay, that’s enough. Get down. You know your dad will be mad if he sees you up here.”

“I’m sure he never notices any of those long black hairs on his couch.” But the joke doesn’t land.

“Enough about those boys, ” she says, her eyes lighting up. “Back it up to the Front Desk Hottie.”

“Well… he helped me get some food.”

“Which is like your love language,” she cuts me off, downright giddy.

“Okay, relax. I made myself eggs and toast and that was it. I went back to bed.”

Well not exactly back to bed. I did some weird dance between my bed and the door, debating heavily between going back to sleep and creeping back down the stairs. Thankfully, the logical side of my brain took over and I ended up in bed with my Kindle. However, after reading the same page over three times, I Google searched the man taking up real estate in my mind .

“So… what’s he look like?”

“He looks like the kind of guy that would eat you out and then say ‘Thank you’ after.”

“Jesus,” a deep voice growls from behind the camera before Miles drops into the frame. He kisses Camila sweetly on the top of her head. “Taylor.”

“Hey, big guy.”

“This is what you girls talk about when I’m not here?” he asks.

I shrug my shoulders but Camila at least has the decency to blush a little. “To be fair, I was asking for more of a physical description,” she says.

“Mhmm.” He kisses the side of her face once more before exiting the screen and she turns her focus back to me.

“Oh my god, Mila. He’s got this gorgeous golden tan, a thick head of dark hair, and these muscles.” I bring my hand up to my shoulder trying to imagine them again. “He’s got a close-cropped beard, not a big Viking-style kind, but the kind that could still do some damage to your inner thighs, you know?” Camila covers her face with a giggle and I rest a little easier hearing her laugh. “Anyway, he basically looks like a superhero but with a broken arm.” Her head tilts to the side and her lips purse together. “Yeah, I don’t really know either. He said it was a rugby accident, but other than that, he didn’t seem to want to talk about it much.”

“Interesting.” She bobs her head up and down. “So, what’s the plan?”

I drag myself out of bed, rip open the curtains, and my jaw drops. Unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than the rolling hills outside my window. Rich, lush, greenery everywhere. The blue sky breaks through some low dark clouds and its effect on me takes my breath away. My room sits tucked into the corner at the end of the hall. All my windows face the front, giving me an unobstructed view of a grand weeping willow tree, littered with wildflowers beneath it. Even the dirt road my cab driver couldn’t drive down is somehow wonderful. At the bottom of the road sits a perfect little cottage with a front porch so sweet that I could live on it. A rush of calm passes over me. I really feel like I’m the main character in my own movie now.

“The plan is: I need to set an alarm and stop sleeping the days away,” I say with a note of finality.

“Wonderful,” she deadpans. “But I meant about your vacation fling.”

My head snaps back towards the screen. “My what?”

“Your Front Desk Hottie, Mr. Injured No Talker, The Thankful Pussy Eater.” A laugh burst from me but, she couldn’t look more serious if she tried.

“Well, unfortunately, he works when I should be sleeping, so I doubt I’ll see much of him. Who knows, maybe if I get really bored I’ll start sleepwalking.”

“Oh, the things we do just to flirt a little.”

“I know that’s right.”

“Alright, well keep me updated. Flaco is begging at the door so I better go take him out.”

“Give that baby some wet besos for me.”

“Will do.” We both blow a kiss at the screen before I hang up, toss my phone onto the bed, and rush forward to take in the view from my window again.

After a quick shower, I decide to make the most of what is left of the day. Plus, I really don’t want to miss dinner again. When I reach the bottom of the stairs, with my hand still on the railing, I run smack dab into someone. I stumble back before I’m caught by someone’s hands, and I look up to find it’s not just any someone, but a familiar someone.

“I’m sorry,” I say, looking down to where the man has dropped a crate.

“Nope, that was on me. Are you alright?”

“I’m good. Thank you.”

“Are you Taylor Nova, by chance?”

I tilt my head and open my mouth to respond.

“Knox told me you had checked in, we just haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet.” And the familiarity makes more sense now. The same olive skin and dark hair. He’s handsome and rugged like Knox, his frame a bit more lean—still fit—but nothing compared to the sheer size of his brother.

“You must be the brother.” I reach my hand out to shake his. He looks at my hand before shaking it.

“Ryder. And I might not be a professional athlete, but I at least have better manners than him.”

I laugh, and he moves to stack some crates on top of each other.

“Here, let me help you with that.”

“No, you don’t have to do that.”

“It’s no problem.” I stack one on top of the other, which is nothing compared to the six that he picks up. Between the two of us, this looks like it will be his last trip. I follow him out the front door to a second barn, behind another willow tree with matching crates stacked up beside it.

“Have you had a chance to meet my sister, Liv, yet?”

“I haven’t, no. This is my first time out of my room since I got here. The jet leg has been a bitch.” I think he stumbles a step but I catch his small laugh. “So what do you do here, Ryder? The website said it was a family-run Inn.”

“I mostly take care of all the animals. I raise all our cattle and sheep. We have a few of our own horses on site, but we also have a stable where we hold other people’s horses also.”

“That seems like a big job for one guy.”

“I have a buddy that helps out when he can and Liv jumps in wherever she’s needed. She takes care of most of our horses.”

“It’s cool that you all have a place here.”

I shove down the twinge of discomfort that sprouts from my own words and take in a deep breath. I stutter on the inhale when I look around and finally survey my surroundings. The back of the inn is much like the front, with more rolling hills and wildflowers, but out here it’s like they’re alive. It’s like they’re singing to me. I feel something deep in my chest.

“This doesn’t seem real,” I whisper to myself.

“It’s pretty incredible, isn’t it?” Ryder walks beside me, looking out to the fog that’s rolling in the distance between the valley, where the two hillsides come together. The fog isn’t depressing the way San Francisco’s fog is. It’s beautiful, ethereal, and otherworldly out here. “It would be a lot prettier without that monstrosity.”

I look back and see an old, large, green pickup truck, with an equally large Knox storming out of it. The crease between his brows becomes more prominent the closer he gets to us.

“What are you doing putting our guests to work?” He snaps at his brother while passing him.

“She wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

He stops his run in front of me, reaching his uninjured arm out for the crates, but I’m quick to pull back. “Seriously, what’s wrong with you brutes? I’ve got this.”

“She’s not the one with a broken arm, mate.”

A menacing smile appears on Knox’s face, and he turns back toward his brother. His good arm grabs Ryder’s neck before pulling him close and whispering something in his ear. Ryder shrugs him off and clears the distance to the barn, where he drops the crates. I follow a few steps behind, setting the crates down and my eyes flicker back and forth between them. “Taylor, thank you for your help. I’m glad I bumped into you. Literally.”

“Anytime, Cowboy.” I salute him as he walks by, patting Knox on the shoulder. Ryder does nothing to hide his smile, but whatever he finds so funny, Knox clearly does not. His eyes narrow following in his brother’s wake.

“Hey.” I wave my hand in his face, bringing his attention back to me.

He shakes his head, and his eyebrows relax. He lifts the black hat from his head before turning it around and I bite the corner of my lip at the sight of this man in a backward hat.

“So, what’d you do today?” he drawls.

“Well, I—” My eyes flit up to the right and his knowing smile makes it impossible not to smile back.

“You just got up, didn’t you?”

I throw my hands up in defeat. “To be fair, I was up late last night.”

“Yeah?” he asks, taking a step closer to me. “Had a hard a hard time sleeping, did ya?”

“You know what they say, don’t eat too close to bedtime.”

His eyes twinkle with something like mischief and the corners of his lips pull up. He takes one final step, closing any distance between us, cocking his head to the side. I subtly suck in a breath of his intimate scent. It’s soft but intoxicating, suede and cedar mixed with something that is just so specifically him .

“That’s a shame. I love to eat at bedtime.”

My mouth parts but I recover quickly, pulling my bottom lip between my teeth. Good thing a little flirting never killed anyone because this man could be the death of me.

I place the palm of my hand on his chest and my fingers spark when I graze his collar. The collar of his thick T-shirt is ripped off but it somehow looks intentional. The palm of my hand rubs across his hard peck and our eyes never break contact. If I’m making him nervous at all, he’s doing a damn good job of not letting on. When I get to the torn collar, I lightly pluck out the gold link chain from under his shirt. It’s warm where my finger hooks it. His tongue slips out, wetting his lower lip, and I briefly wonder what it would feel like to have that tongue on me. On my neck, in my mouth, in my?—

“What are you thinking, Nova?” His gravelly voice pulls me from my thoughts.

“I was?—”

An exhaust pipe puffs nearby and I turn to see another truck—this one much older—roll up and stop ten feet. in front of us. I tuck the necklace back into his shirt before giving him a little pat and stepping back. He moves to step towards me again but stops when an aged voice calls out. “KB, you’re a difficult man to get a hold of.”

Knox scratches the back of his head, looking between me and the man approaching us.

“I’ll see you later,” I say with a little wink before turning and starting up the hill.

“Wait! Where are you going?” he calls after me.

I smile to myself before turning to look over my shoulder. “Don’t worry Browning. I know where to find you if I need a late-night snack.”

His mouth parts, and I laugh the rest of the way back up the hill.