The “Hott office” is, in fact, a Wilder trailer parked on Hanna’s granddad—Mr. Hott’s—land. It’s cold, bare, and full of tasks I loathe. Unfortunately, because of the miserable snow-less ski season, it’s where I’ve spent a lot of the last few weeks, making fruitless phone call after phone call.
That’s probably what Clark wants from me, I’m thinking, as I pull up a few hundred feet from the trailer and park.
“Kane!”
Clark comes pounding up to the car. He’s run out to meet me. What the hell? He’s one of the steadiest, most unflappable people I know—the guy you want with you in an emergency. I’ve seen him set broken limbs, tourniquet wounds, give CPR, and treat snake bites. Even when his wife Emma died two-and-a-half years ago, he was calm—preternaturally so—pale, drawn, frozen, grieving, but iron-nerved.
I open the door to step out, but Clark holds up a hand. “Kane, you’re—wait. Hang on. No. Just stay there. You probably should be sitting down. Fuck. I don’t even know where to start.”
“Clark,” I say, alarmed. “Jesus. It’s not Jessa, is it?” Jessa is Clark’s girlfriend.
“No, she’s fine.” That seems to snap him back to himself, and he takes a deep breath. “Okay. So. I did a thing.” He casts me a pleading glance—which is also unusual for Clark. Clark doesn’t plead. He just does. “And you’re going to be mad. Like—really mad.”
I shake my head. “I doubt that.” I can’t think of a time I got really mad at any of my brothers. Mildly irritated, of course. Genuinely angry? No.
I mean, aside from the time Easton replaced my Gatorade with Jell-o during a basketball game. And I probably wouldn’t have been so angry if he’d let it solidify completely…
But Clark’s not Easton. And his agitation is definitely unnerving.
I unfold myself from the car and step out, shutting the door behind me. “Come on, Clark, what is it?”
He’s pacing now, which does nothing to calm the unsettled feeling in my gut. “I’m just going to give you the background. You’ll have to see for yourself—it’s not my place…”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, and my heart is pounding now. “Spit it out, dude—you’re scaring me.”
He rakes a hand through his hair, standing it on end. “Okay, so, well, you know how bad it is with the trailer reno. I mean, we’ve called, what, like, everyone in the country, practically. Or that’s what it feels like. So I…” He shakes his head, pulling his phone out of his pocket and handing it to me through the car window.
When I see the screen, I almost drop it.
I look up at him, my mouth hanging open.
“Yup,” he says.
It’s her.
I’m looking at an Instagram account, @AirstreamReimagined. This particular photo is of a woman standing outside a 90s-era Airstream Classic motorhome. She’s petite, as slim and ethereal as a fairy, and topped with a mane of fiery red hair. Just looking at her makes my chest and my cock ache. I recognize the ache as longing.
“What the fuck, Clark?” I’m pissed because I’ve been trying to let what happened in Vegas stay right fucking where it happened, in the Bellagio lobby bar and bathroom. “I told you not to look for her.”
He hangs his head and backs off a step, holding up his hands. “I know, Kane, I know, and I’m—I’m so fucking sorry. I just didn’t know what else to do. If this renovation doesn’t get done in time, we’re going to lose all that income. I won’t meet my numbers. Wilder won’t meet its numbers. And that means we’re going to have to cut back some of our spring plans for a year from now.”
Right, right, right. Clark has to renovate six Airstream trailers in time for the fall camping season. He thought he was on schedule but a month ago, his chosen designer took a more lucrative job doing movie trailers for some epic television production in Saskatchewan. Since then, Clark and I have been searching for someone else to take the job—with no luck.
Now it’s urgent—which I assume is why Clark ignored my request and tracked down the woman in the Instagram post.
“How’d you find her?”
“She was mentioned in a thread on one of the Airstream forums. Apparently, she’s killer at what she does. And as soon as I saw her name, I knew. Marigold. Marigold Barrymore.”
Marigold.
It fits. The bright chaotic flare of her hair. The wild energy that burned through me that night. I wouldn’t have expected her to turn out to be a Lily or a Rose.
Marigold.
We met while I was in Vegas for Gabe’s bachelor party. We didn’t exchange names, because we were both under the spell of Vegas magic and thought it would be fun to try out the sex-with-a-stranger fantasy, which neither of us had ever done. It seemed like a great idea at the time…
Only I couldn’t forget her afterwards.
And that would have been that, a single night followed by a lifetime of frustrated longing. Except that afterwards, Clark and I realized that the night before Marigold rocked my world, Clark had also met her. Their conversation, thankfully, was purely professional—about the fact that Clark was renovating some Airstreams, which happened to be Marigold’s specialty.
Marigold’s business card had long since disappeared into the belly of Gabe’s dog, and all Clark could remember was that her name was a flower. Edible, he thought.
I made him swear not to try to find her, because I had promised: What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
And now he’s tracked her down.
I take a deep breath. Right. Clark’s right. This isn’t about me and how I did something totally out of character, or how much I liked it. In the scheme of things, that’s not even a big deal. So I fucked a woman I’d never met, while pretending to be a type of person I wasn’t, in a way that—after the fact—seemed insanely risky. So what?
It doesn’t mean I have to let my mistake torpedo the family business.
I square my shoulders. “Okay. So… what… you’re going to get in touch with her?”
Clark winces.
“You got in touch with her,” I guess.
He lets out a slightly wounded sound. “Uh. Worse?”
“How much worse exactly?”
“Well, she’s… here.”
“Oh, fuck, Clark, are you serious? When were you going to tell me?”
He hangs his head again.
“You weren’t going to tell me.” I suck air into my lungs. “Okay. Okay. Look, this doesn’t have to be a big deal, right? I’ll just, you know, avoid her.”
“Um. Well. That might not be such a good idea.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying—”
I have literally never seen my brother look that worried.
“Clark? I really need you to tell me what the fuck is going through your head right now.”
But instead of answering, Clark says, “Come with me.”
“Dude, no. Come on. I don’t want to see her if I don’t have to.”
“You have to.”
He puts his hands on my shoulders and steers me. It’s then that I notice there’s another Airstream parked near the trailers. An early 90s Classic. The motorhome model, not a trailer.
A woman stands in its side door. She’s facing away from me, and even so, I recognize her right away. That petite, slender body, the mane of untamable red hair. She’s wearing a gauzy tunic top and a flowing, flowery skirt, and even in the baggy clothes, she still looks delicate. I remember worrying that I’d hurt her, that she was fragile enough to break.
That was part of what drove me wild. Because she wasn’t fragile. Not at all. She was hungry and strong. Flexible, firecracker eager, and insatiable.
And I’m flashing back to the rest of it. To her wide, soft mouth, her lithe little body, ultra-alive under my hands. She liked being held down, bossed around. She told me so, and I could feel it for myself, too.
Great. I’m going to greet her with a hard-on. Perfect first impression.
Second. Second impression.
Come to think of it, it’s almost a habit at this point.
She turns around, and every thought goes out of my head. And the breath flies out of my lungs. I stand there, empty and stunned.
She’s pregnant.