Page 6 of Clayton (Bourbon & Blood #2)

Reaching under the cabinet, I find the shut-off valve but the damn thing is stuck.

Taking a kitchen towel from the drawer, I try again.

No luck. I twist the towel around the valve and then insert the handle of a wooden spoon from the jar on the counter.

Twisting the towel with the spoon, I finally get it tight enough to get the torque I need to get the valve to budge.

After what seems like forever, the valve finally gives, turning slowly in the right direction. The water slows to a trickle and finally shuts off altogether, just as Annalee walks in carrying my toolbox.

“What the hell happened here?” I knew the minute I asked the question that it was the wrong thing to do.

My tone was too sharp, my attitude a little too proprietorial.

Her shoulders tense and square, her chin juts out like she’s ready for a fight, and I can see the daggers in her eyes from across the room. I’m fucked and not in the good way.

“I didn’t do this, Clayton!” Her voice was a low, angry hiss, the same one she’d used when she’d all but handed me my suitcase and told me to get the hell out.

“I never said you did, Annalee…I think my exact words were what happened…not what did you do. Can we skip the fight already? I’ll apologize now, you can tell me what a son of a bitch I am and then we can get down to the business of figuring out how not to have to replace the wood floors and half the cabinets. ”

“ You don’t have to do anything! It’s my house. My responsibility!” she retorts.

“ You, ” I snap back at her, “don’t have a job!”

“I’m selling art! A lot of it, actually.”

“Enough to pay the mortgage?” I ask.

She clams up then. I can see the reluctance to answer in her eyes. Finally, she offers a grudging, “No.”

I walk out to the garage and grab the giant squeegee we use for the windows and open the garage door.

Might as well let gravity work in our favor and get rid of most of the water that way.

Annalee grabs a large broom and we both head back into the kitchen and start forcing the standing water toward the door and down the steps into the garage where it can drain naturally down the slight slope of the driveway.

By the time we’re done, I’m sweating even though my clothes are still soaked with icy water.

I lug the Shop-Vac up the steps and Annalee goes to work, getting up the rest of the water while I set up fans to help with air flow.

We had worked almost silently, I realize.

We’d fallen into a rhythm like we used to whenever we were doing a project together.

I’d almost forgotten how well we work together.

When the task is done, the kitchen drying, I look back at her and immediately wish I hadn’t.

Her cheeks are flushed, she’s breathing hard, and then I realize that the T-shirt she’s wearing is almost completely transparent from the water.

It’s not like I haven’t seen her tits before.

I’m damn well acquainted with them. That’s the problem.

I’m not just looking at them. I’m remembering how they feel, the taste of her skin, the sounds she makes when I apply just the right amount of pressure with my teeth. Son of a bitch.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she says.

“Can’t help it. I’m hardwired to look at boobs…even those I’ve seen before,” I reply.

“You’re such an asshole, Clay. ”

There isn’t any heat behind it. She’s just speaking matter-of-factly. But honestly, in this moment, I don’t care. All the blood in my body is rushing south, straight to my cock. I can’t think of anything but her. Wet. Naked. Grinding against me and begging for more.

I know the moment her mind goes to the same place I can’t get mine to leave. I see her pupils dilate, her lips part. The tension between us is a living, breathing thing. But I know, there’s no good way for this to end. We’re either sexually frustrated or filled with regret.

To break the tension, I say, “Emma Grace will be so upset that she missed a chance to swim in the kitchen.”

The pitiful attempt at humor did its job.

There’s a smile playing at her lips. She won’t let it out, but I know it’s there.

She gestures toward the sink. “Yes, she will. If she’d been here, she would have had on flippers and goggles before we could even turn around…

I don’t know what you just did, but I’ve never been so happy to see you in my life. ”

I can’t help but grin. “This trumps our first date, our wedding and the birth of our child? Really?”

“Well, not trumps,” she admits reluctantly.

“But this was pretty high on my disaster list…They were working on the water line down the street today. It was shut off for hours. And I guess I didn’t have the taps off, after all.

When they turned the water back on, all the air pressure in the pipes—it’s just a disaster. ”

I can’t remember the last time we talked when it wasn’t about Emma Grace’s schedule or this paper or that paper needing to be signed and delivered to the attorneys.

Somewhere along the way, in the process of being parents and homeowners and running businesses, we forgot how to be a couple.

That doesn’t just get laid at my door either.

Long before Japan, long before I found out the truth of what Samuel was, and what I’d have to do to free us all from him, we’d been drifting apart.

We’re both guilty. All I know is that right now, I feel closer to her than I have in more than a year, and it’s not enough. Not even close.

ANNALE E

I can feel his gaze on me, the weight of it is substantial, almost like he’s touching me.

I know I’m a mess. My hair is tied up in a ponytail and the truth is that I can’t even remember if I brushed it today.

I’m wearing one of his T-shirts and praying to God he doesn’t notice and comment.

Either way, it’s soaking wet and completely see through, so if he’s looking at what the shirt says and not my boobs, then divorce was definitely the right move.

His eyes begin to wander, moving from my face to my chest then down, and slowly, very slowly back up.

I know that look. I’ve seen it on his face more times than I can count.

I respond to it accordingly, like I’ve been conditioned to it.

My nipples grow hard, aching beneath the damp fabric and I can feel myself getting wet for him.

I hate that he still has the power to do that to me without even touching me.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I tell him. “And you can just stop. That isn’t going to happen. Never again.”

He doesn’t smile at me. But his eyes crinkle at the corner the way they always do before he unleashes that devastatingly sexy grin that just makes my panties fall off.

It doesn’t help that we christened every room in this house and that while standing in this kitchen all I can think about is the time he fucked me against the refrigerator hard enough that we actually broke the damned ice maker.

Afterward, he just smiled and said it was worth it.

“Just remembering the good times,” he replies. “There were a lot of them.”

“There were a lot of bad too,” I point out.

I hate being a bitch to him. It just sneaks out.

The simple truth of it is that I never intended to divorce Clayton.

I was stupid enough to think that when I gave him that ultimatum, that he had to tell me what the hell he was hiding or we were done, I really believed I was important enough to him that he’d do what I asked.

Even with Brit’s idiotic plan of me going out on a date, which was a disaster of epic proportion, he hadn’t reacted the way I’d expected.

For the last year, things had been wrong with us.

Since Clayton and his brother and sister bought into the distillery and took over the running of it from Samuel, things had just been off with us.

After his trip to Japan, he wouldn’t even look at me or touch me.

I thought at first it was an affair, but I know him.

I know that’s not who he is. Or at least I thought I knew him.

When I asked for a divorce and his only response was “okay” that was a little unexpected.

Now he’s standing in this kitchen looking at me like he could sop me up with a biscuit. I want to be pissed. I want so badly to just tear into him and let him have it, but all I can think about is getting naked and rolling around with him on a flooded kitchen floor.

If my wet clothes are a problem, his aren’t helping. His white dress shirt is plastered to his chest. Why the hell do men just look sexier with their cuffs rolled back?

“You think we can focus on the kitchen for the moment?” Something that’s fixable.

“It’s not that much of a disaster,” he says, finally dragging his eyes off me and the T-shirt that’s practically pornographic at the moment.

“Once it dries, we’ll figure out how much damage is done to the floor.

We need to open all the cabinet doors though, get some air flowing and maybe empty out the bottom ones. ”

And there he is. The man I married. The decision maker. The I-can-fix-this man. Every problem we ever had, every issue that ever came up, he always had a plan. And until a year ago, he always shared it with me.

“You don’t have to do that. You don’t live here anymore. It’s not your responsibility.” The minute the words are out, I know I’ve made an awful mistake. Any hint of teasing is gone from his face. He’s pissed, and not just a little.

“Why don’t you just take the fucking knives from the drawer and stab me?” he asks. “It’d be kinder.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” I offer. “Really.”

“And I didn’t offer because it was my responsibility. I’m here. It’s no trouble,” he says and starts opening up cabinet drawers and pulling out all the cast iron cookware that I’d collected needlessly.