His soft grip on my shoulders defies every raging emotion. It is so tender and tells me this is killing him too.
“No.” He bites down on his jaw with a grunt. “Georgiana,” he whispers. “How badly do you think all of this is going to hurt once we’re done? Once you go back to Miami and I go back to Boston? Once you decide you’ve had enough?” He tugs my hands down and away from his body. “I can’t,” he whispers, and now the longing in his eyes tears at me, but then he pushes past me. “I need to cool off,” he says and with a suppressed huff, he stalks out of the barn.
23
GEORGIANA
I watch Raiden rush out to go for one of his swims and for a second, I battle the urge to go after him.
One thing I don’t want to be is that needy woman who runs a million hugs short, looking for attention from someone who doesn’t want to hand it out. I’m done with that type of desperation. But his last words bite back at me with sharp teeth and a strong jaw: how much do you think this is going to hurt once you decide you’ve had enough?
It might be that I’m not the only one running a million hugs short. Everything about the last half hour was conflicting, and I’m not sure why. Deep down, I know Raiden pulled Hunter, Cash, and everybody from his arsenal as a final, desperate measure to avoid the discussion we should really be having. He isn’t the type to go out and hurt someone deliberately. And I’m not sure how Hunter, Cash, and everybody can stop the feelings that have been developing between us.
For all I know, Raiden is only protecting himself from more heartache.
I’m still slouching in my chair, somewhat drained by my intense orgasm, with the horrible words between us repeating in my head, when a vehicle pulls up outside the barn. I’m not a fan of being alone here, especially when I don’t recognize the big truck.
Seconds later, a voice booms through the barn, deep and scratchy, that of a man who likes his whiskey and cigars. “Whoa! It’s so tiny!”
I stand and take in the tall, balding man with a grey moustache of epic proportions. Yep, I could outrun him by a mile.
“Raiden?” he calls out, not having noticed me yet.
My chair scrapes on the floor as I inch forward. “Raiden stepped out for a minute,” I say. Or twenty, however long it’s going to take him to jerk off. “Can I help you?”
“You’re Georgiana Wess,” he says, a wide smile spreading under that umbrella moustache. “Cash McGraw.”
He reaches out a hand to me and we shake, and under his slow inspection I swear he can read what I’d been up to with my business partner a mere thirty minutes ago. That was a close call, and for that Raiden was right to stop us when he did.
“Only Raiden calls me Georgiana,” I say. “Feel free to call me George.”
“If Raiden tells me it’s Georgiana, Georgiana it is.”
I shrug, but I’m warming to him already. “He won’t be long.”
“I’ve seen enough of Raiden, nothing new there. You, on the other hand, are the star of the show, I hear.”
A blush spreads over my cheeks, which I know are already flushed. “God, no, I’m only helping out here. Summer internship, you know.” An internship that can’t finish up fast enough now, to be honest. The more I open up, the tighter Raiden keeps the lid on himself, and I can’t live like that.
Cash gives a rumbling chuckle as he studies my face with a stare that I find disarming. So this is where Raiden learned to rip into your soul with his blue gaze—he picked it up from Cash McGraw.
“Raiden tells me you’ve been his hell and salvation all in the same breath.”
“His hell and salvation? I’d say that goes both ways.” This afternoon was the perfect combination of exactly that.
My retort cracks Cash up and after a good laugh, he points his chin in the direction of the tiny house. “Take me on a tour.”
For ten minutes, we tour the tiny house. It’s small. The tour is short. His comments are encouraging, but I watch him looking for snags on every inch of work we’ve done.
“It’s looking good. Raiden’s handiwork has always been beyond compare,” he says and shoots me a friendly wink. “I’m sure you keep him on his toes too.”
“That’s what I’m here for.” I’m not here to lose my heart to someone who doesn’t want it or who has buried his own already. Where is Raiden?
Cash moves on to my drawings and as he nods and rubs his chin, he asks questions and dissects my answers. At least I’m in top form and he seems impressed. This feels like an interview, one I didn’t sign up for. All I want is to go home and lick my latest wounds.
“Yep, that mistake would have been me. Such fun growing old,” Cash mutters under his breath as he plucks a pair of reading glasses from his shirt’s front pocket and leans closer to the drawing I tacked on the wall. “I recall telling him this is thirteen feet eight, but it’s thirteen feet six, right?” He glances at me. “Raiden doesn’t make mistakes when it comes to numbers. He makes mistakes often enough when reading when he hasn’t got enough time, and which he hates in any case, with impulsive decisions, keeping quiet when he should speak up, he makes all those mistakes, but numbers…nope, this would’ve been me when we went over the framework that first time. He would’ve memorized it on the spot, and I never picked up on my mistake to correct him.”
Cash is the origin of our two-inch issue? Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. Raiden wasn’t cocky when he told me there was only going to be one measurement error; he was being right. He was also right about the total expenses that day I did the accounts. Now I hate it that he was right. What if he is right about us? “It doesn’t matter. We fixed it.”