Page 15 of Promised Secret (Promises, Promises #3)

Chapter Twelve

CLAY

I had no idea what I was getting into when I signed up to volunteer at the hugging booth. I didn’t do hugs, not unless I was the one initiating them. But the idea of Dan being so close to all these people without me there didn’t sit well with me.

I knew I couldn’t stop him from doing this, especially when he roped Frederick into it as well, so my next best idea was to do it with him.

It was okay at first. I didn’t mind hugging the kids so much, but then came the horde of women trying to get their hands on me.

Their enthusiasm had quickly muted any joy I had from interacting with the excited kids, and their perfume was giving me a migraine, which only made me even more tense than I already was.

I tried to act natural and keep my professional smile, since I’d already committed to this and I didn’t break my promises, but I was quickly losing steam.

No matter how quick the hugs were, they felt like ants crawling on my skin, piling up until there wasn’t a single inch of me that hadn’t felt invaded.

I had to force myself not to push the next person off me.

For the kids.

I tried to remind myself, but my resolve was quickly fading. My smile felt stiff and more forced than anything else. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me I was grimacing at the crowd now.

It all came to a head when a man came to the front of the line. He was big, bigger than me. Flashes of another man reaching out for me had me clenching my fists to the side. The one in front of me was nothing like the monster I’d defeated in my dreams, but my guard went up anyway.

I just had to stand there and take it.

It’s for the kids, I told myself again.

I squeezed my eyes shut, thinking the eventual contact wouldn’t devastate me as much if I couldn’t see him.

“Can I have this one?”

The hug I dreaded never came, and instead, Dan’s voice sounded. I opened my eyes to see him donning that charming smile of his as he hugged the man who was supposed to be hugging me.

“Sorry for cutting in. I was dying for a hug,” Dan said with a wink to the man. The stranger was so enamored with Dan he was stumbling out of the tent with a loopy smile.

“There are plenty more hugs to go around,” Dan called, and smoothly took my place.

He always did that. He always managed to know when I was uncomfortable and swooped in to make everything better. He’d done it the first time we met, and he was doing it again now.

When Dan made the decision to become a doctor instead of a police officer with me, he joked about being the hero to the hero, but to me, that had always been the truth.

Without even trying, he’d always been my hero.

“You okay?” Ryker asked.

It was only then that I noticed all our friends were there, too.

I nodded in reply, not sure if my voice was steady enough to speak yet.

Karla ran from Ryan’s side to stand in front of me with her arms spread out.

“Hug?” she asked, head tilting to the side.

“Baby, I don’t think now’s a good time…”

I appreciated Ryan’s concern, but Karla’s pure eyes and innocent intentions didn’t make terror memories resurface. I scooped her up into a giant teddy-bear hug, and her bubbly laughter soothed the frayed edges of my nerves.

I was feeling a lot better when the hug ended, and Karla wiggled out of my arms to run back to her dad. She laughed the entire way. The infectious sound had me smiling along with her.

“Whew, that’s a lot of people,” Dan commented. He joined us after the line of people waiting for hugs had disappeared.

He tugged his shirt up to wipe the bead of sweat forming on his forehead. My eyes immediately locked on to the perfect V-cut of his abdominals. The brutal summer heat had to be the reason I was suddenly burning up.

Dan’s shirt dropped flat again, and he came to my side. “You okay?” he asked in a hushed whisper. Not that it mattered. Our friends were all focused on us anyway.

I nodded, but that didn’t seem to appease him.

“How about you take a break and grab us some cold lemonades to cool off from the heat?” he said. He placed a hot hand at the base where my neck and shoulders connected and squeezed.

My body instantly relaxed. If he kept his hands on me like that, I’d do whatever the hell he wanted.

“Now hold on there. We haven’t ordered our hugs yet,” Jones spoke with a smirk.

“Aw, you want some more sugar? Pay up and I’m all yours,” Dan replied, arms out toward him.

Jones held up a hand to stop him from getting closer. “Hold it! I didn’t pay for this!”

“This one’s on the house. Just for you, baby,” Dan said with a wink. Our friends laughed as Jones tried to get out of Dan’s clutches.

“Enough! I have a donation to make, and I need both of you for it,” Jones growled as he pulled out his wallet and slapped a fifty on the donation table. He looked smug as he glanced between Dan and me, clearly plotting something.

“You said to order your most expensive hug, which is twenty-five dollars for five minutes. Fifty dollars means I get two five-minute hugs, right? Forget about hugging me. I want you two to hug each other for five minutes instead,” he said with a smirk.

On the surface, it sounded like he was trying to help me. He probably also noticed I was struggling earlier and wanted to find a way for me to get some rest while still helping the cause.

However, the evil gleam in his eyes told me he was definitely plotting something, though I had no clue what it was.

“Is that even allowed?” I asked with a frown.

“Sure, why not!” Carol said from her seat behind the table. She quickly accepted the fifty-dollar bill with a beaming smile. “The customer is king.”

“If that’s the case, add five more minutes to that counter,” Ryker said, pulling out his own wallet.

“What are you guys scheming?” Dan asked when Ryan and Sam started pulling out their wallets, too.

“Us, scheming? Nah, we’re just contributing to the playground, isn’t that right, boys?” Jones looked at the others, who all nodded. He turned back to us. “Now get to it, and I’ll start the clock. I better not see an inch of space between you two until your twenty minutes are up!”

He grabbed one of the stopwatches we had lying around to time the five-minute hugs. I watched Jones set the clock accordingly and wait until Dan came into my arms to start it.

“He’s plotting something, I just know it,” Dan rested his chin on my shoulder and muttered. His hot breath tickled the hair at the nape of my neck.

Our friends hooted and hollered, calling out for us to hug each other tighter.

“Looking hot!” Sam called with a snicker. “Literally and figuratively!”

“What’s going on over here?” a peppy voice asked.

I turned my head to see Atlas coming under the tent to where our friends were. Ryan filled him in. A stony-faced Hector followed at Atlas’ side.

Hector owned the diner in town, and Atlas was the waiter he’d reluctantly hired. I was surprised to see them here together, since Hector rarely left the diner. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d closed it for even a morning.

“Making two large, sexy men hug? Sounds like my idea of a good time. Count me in!” Atlas piped up as he placed money on the table.

Hector followed suit, and I swore I saw a faint blush tinting his cheeks under his facial hair. He let out an awkward cough and commented, “For the kids’ playground.”

As if opening the floodgates, the people who had only been watching curiously earlier stopped by the table with their own contribution to the clock.

Carol accepted the money, looking almost giddy at the donations that were rolling in.

Jones beamed.

“Hear that? You’re now at an hour!” he hooted and adjusted the timer.

“Fuckers. They want us to melt into a pile of sweat,” Dan muttered, but his hold on me got even tighter. “Don’t worry, they’ll get bored eventually and leave. We only have to hang on until then.”

“Oh no, you don’t! Even if we’re gone, Carol will be here to make sure you do the time. Isn’t that right?” Jones said with his nose pointed toward the sky.

Carol nodded enthusiastically. “We can’t cheat them out of their hard-earned donations,” she said, eyes peering at Dan and me.

A shiver ran through me from her gaze. I could practically see dollar signs in her eyes as she looked at us like she was seeing the next big moneymaker.

My instincts were proven correct when, at the next second, she started broadcasting this as an event, explaining to the passing audience that they could extend the time of our hug by making a big donation.

I didn’t think anyone would care to donate to such a ridiculous reason. I mean, who wanted to see two men hugging?

Apparently, I either knew nothing about what people wanted, or this was some weird small-town quirk, because suddenly Dan and I were on the clock for two hours.

Our friends, those evil bastards, were cackling off to the side of us. Jones gleefully added time to our stopwatch. Frederick was busy hugging the donors who weren’t laughing at our expense, but I still caught him shooting a smirk our way.

“Don’t worry. I’ll leave an empty water bottle here in case you need to piss,” Jones said so very unhelpfully.

“I hate you,” Dan hissed. His arms tightened around me, and the movement caused his head to nuzzle against the crook of my neck.

I stifled the moan that wanted to escape me at how his hands wandered around my back.

I was suddenly very aware of how intimately Dan was pressed against me. My skin ended where his started.

This close, I could smell the scent of the medicinal herbs that seemed to have seeped into his skin from all his years of studying TCM. That mixed with the sweat and heady scent that lay underneath had me feeling almost lightheaded.

The heat was the only explanation for why my heartbeat kicked up. Or the blood that was quickly rushing downwards.

My body stiffened. I looked out toward the crowd that was still watching us to remind myself that we were surrounded by our entire fucking town, and I could not get a boner right now.

“You okay?” Dan’s question tickled my ear.

Another shiver passed through me as his hand slid down my spine.

He must have magical hands or something, because why else did they feel so good? There was no other explanation to it.

Images of how good those hands made me feel the other night popped into my head, and all efforts toward preventing myself from getting an erection in front of my townsfolk flew out the window.

“Clay, are you…”

He didn’t even have to finish the question for me to know he most definitely felt the hard object pressed against him.

Where was a hole when I needed to jump into one?