The Game of Love: (BWWM Romance) (5 page)

S
he turned away.

“So, you’re telling me that you don’t remember any of that?”
he asked.

“I remember it, but you
weren’t being serious.”

Austin tossed back his head and laughed
, and then gently grabbed her forearms.

“
It is my lady, O, it is my love! O, that she knew she were! She speaks, yet she says nothing: what of that? Her eye discourses; I will answer it. I am too bold, ‘tis not to me she speaks: Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, having some business, do entreat her eyes
.”

Then his head fell briefly before he found her gaze again. “And please don’t ask me to recite any more than that. In fifteen years, those are still the only lines from Romeo and Juliet that I remember.”

Sommer
steadily held his gaze for a few seconds. Then she rolled her eyes and pulled away from his grasp.

“And there it is,” Austin announced. “The famous
Sommer Hayes eye roll. I was wondering when that would show up.”

She walked until she’d put a few feet of distance between them. “Shakespeare? Really? You’re going to recite the Shakespeare that we learned
in middle school to prove that you’re not a liar? How many times has that actually worked for you?”

Confused, Austin moved towards her. “What are you talking about?”

“No, Austin.” She pointed a finger towards him. “No.”

She started towards her shoes on the rocks, but Austin grabbed her arm and pulled her back towards him.
Sommer wished that just once he’d let her storm out the way she’d seen it in her head.

“You’re going to have to stop doing that,” he warned. “I won’t let you run away. Trust me.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “I know men like you.”

Visibly intrigued, Austin folded his arms across his chest and gave her his full attention.

“You say a few kind words to get all in a woman’s head, and then once things don’t go the way you expected, you toss her aside like trash.”

Austin continued to stare at her and realized that even when she was angry, he still found her irresistibly cute as can be.

“I haven’t said a thing about sex, if that’s what you’re referring to,” he replied. “And in all the years I’ve been dating, I’ve never invited a woman into my bed with the sole purpose of hurting her. I grew up with an older sister and would never want any man to do that to her, so if I don’t plan on pursuing a relationship past the physical with a woman, we both have to agree on it. Contractually.”

Sommer
silently continued to listen.

“You were pr
etty much my only crush, Sommer,” he went on. “I wasn’t lying to you when I said that I’d adored you from elementary school up until I left for college. You’re strong and selfless, especially when it comes to your family, and I admire that about you. I always have. And to be honest, I thought that I’d shaken those feelings for you years ago. But, when I saw you the other day at the Farmer’s Market, I realized that they were still there, and still as strong as though ten years hadn’t passed since we’d last seen each other.”

Sommer’s
eyes went to the water’s edge. “Sure didn’t look like it when you were with Jessica Costa.”

Even though she’d murmured it, he’d heard, and realization hit him when he heard
the hint of jealousy in her tone.

“Every man falls for
beauty at some point and time in his life,” he explained. “You’re lucky that you’ve got substance to go along with yours. It’s like having two beautiful red roses in your yard. The first few times you walk past them, they’re stunning, but after a while, they just look ordinary. That is; until you learn that one of the roses has magical healing powers in its petals. That there’s more to it than meets the eye. That extra layer is what makes it more special than all the others. That’s you.”

Austin hoped
that the words spewing forth from his lips made as much sense coming out of his mouth as they did in his heart.

Sommer’s
slight grin was confirmation that they did. “You’re slipping into poetry now?”

He
exaggeratedly threw up his hands. “I just can’t stop myself.”

She laughed and
, at that moment, her laughter was the most comforting sound in the world.

“You’re not out of the woods yet though,” he added. “Now, be honest. Were you jealous just a minute ago?”

Sommer felt her face flush. “What? No, I wasn’t—”

“
I said be honest, Sommer.”

Her eyes fell to the sand. “A little.”

It was the first time Austin noticed that his pulse was racing. “Tell me why.”

S
he inhaled a large gulp of salty air and expelled it loudly from her lungs. “I might have been lying about my hatred towards you back then. I might have hated you to hide how I truly felt.”

“Which was?”

She took another deep breath. “I liked you.”

Austin took a step forward. “Now, who’s lying?”

“Oh, I did,” she came back. “I mean, writing
Sommer Hayes-Riley
all over my diary liked you.”

“I wouldn’t let you hyphenate,”
he teased.

She laughed again and he pulled her closer to him.

“I wanted to ask you to prom,” he admitted.

“I died a little inside when you walked in with Tammie Carter,” she confessed.

They paused.

“I used to dream that we’d get married and have an amber-eyed little girl,” he continued.

“In Spanish class, when we were learning about weddings in Spain, I daydreamed about us having one.”

Austin tugged her again until her body was inches from his
, and then one of his hands went to the side of her face. As he thought about her comparing herself to Jessica, it made him wonder if she knew just how beautiful she was.

“When your Mom threw the Christmas party at the café our senior year, I tried all night to get you underneath the mistletoe. I
really didn’t know what I would have done if I’d actually gotten you under there, though. All I knew was that I just really, really wanted to kiss you.”

Sommer
boldly stepped towards him. “Really?”

“
Really,” he answered, his voice thick.

“Do you still feel that way?” She prayed that the hopefulness in her voice didn’t sound too much like desperation.

To answer her question, Austin bent towards her and Sommer held her breath until she felt the soft graze of his lips against hers. His tongue played gently against her mouth, coaxing it to open, and when her lips parted for him, he dipped his tongue inside and ladled the sweet nectar from her mouth.

Finally
, he was kissing Sommer Hayes.

His other hand went to the side of her
face, and he deepened the kiss. Her sweet scent mixed intoxicatingly with the salty, ocean air. As it filled his nostrils, it only increased his thirst. He tasted and drank from the caverns of her mouth until he was sure that she had nothing left to give, but even then he couldn’t stop. Whatever he’d been previously trying to deny now surged forth from his body and all of his composure dissipated when he heard the breathy moan slip from the back of her throat. In one motion, he picked her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist.

“Austin, I—”

“Yeah, me too,” he answered, placing quick kisses against her lips, neck, and jaw.

“Where?”

“Anywhere, baby.”

“But your place, my place, we can’t—”

“I can get us a suite. Anything you want. Just tell me what you want.”

Sommer
felt as though she was going to explode. “Okay. Okay…”

Austin paused when he picked up on the uncertainty in her voice. When he looked at her, it was clearly written all over her face.

“Sommer, are you sure?”

She glanced away for a brief second before looking back at him, which told him that anything she said afterwards was going to be a lie.

“I’m sure.”

He placed her back on her feet and cradled her face in his palm. “Something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she came back. “I want to do this.”

He pressed a soft kiss against her lips and resisted the urge to succumb to the overpowering hunger that was building up inside of him again. When he searched her eyes, he found that the uncertainty had been replaced by fear
, and then he recalled what she’d said before about being used up and then tossed aside like trash.

She’d been talking about herself.

The thought of any man doing that to her filled him with anger.

“
Sommer, I want to spend as much time as possible with you while I’m back home. All of your free time. So, go out with me tomorrow.”

She closed her eyes against the feeling of his finger stroking her cheek. “I can’t. I’m going to church with Mom.”

“After that.”

“What do you want to do?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

She opened her eyes. “I take it that we’re not making love tonight?”

“Not tonight,” he reassured her, secretly vowing to get to the bottom of what had caused that fear and if possible, who.

“Another night then?”

He leaned in and pressed another kiss against her lips. “Another night.”

She
smiled, and he returned the gesture.

They stood together for a few more moments before returning for their shoes and food, and making their way back to the car. As he drove her home, Austin kept his fingers entwined with
Sommer’s and kissed her fingers intermittently, still in disbelief that all this time, he and Sommer had shared the same feelings.

He took a quick glance over at her and wondered what life would have been like if he’d known that before. Maybe
Sommer would have come with him to Tallahassee and then move with him to Texas after he was drafted. If Sommer had been in his life back then, there certainly would have never been a Jessica Costa.

All along, he’d been searching for a replacement for
Sommer, but now that he had her, he was going to make sure that nothing would ever put distance between them again.

Chapter Three

What she’d initially thought was going to be a long and difficult summer had blossomed into a time of her life that Sommer would never forget. Austin hadn’t been kidding when he said that he wanted to spend all of his free time with her, sometimes randomly showing up at the end of one of her longer shifts at the bakery. Whenever she was visibly exhausted they would sit, have coffee and a pastry, and simply talk.

To everyone around town, her change in demeanor had been the result of a friend coming back into her life.
No one knew about their intimate moments; the passionate kisses behind the heavily tinted windows of his car, the lingering gazes they shared whenever they were in the same room, or the nights they escaped to Flatwoods Park where he kissed her on the swings so hungrily that he’d managed to slip her shirt over her head before thinking better of having their first encounter on the grass. But the time was coming. With each encounter, their desire for one another only mounted higher, and Sommer no longer had the resolve with which she’d started.

The sound of her Uncle Reese reciting his vows jolted her back to the present, and she steadied the bouquet of assorted lilies she held between her hands. She couldn’t believe that her uncle had made the decision to marry again at the age of fifty. Marcie was thirteen years his junior and had spent the last eleven years working alongside
Sommer, her mother, and her uncle at the bakery.

No one knew at what point either Reese or Marcie had made a move, but all of a sudden, they were flirtatiously whispering to each other in the backroom. Then, Reese was teaching Marcie how to make a rose using a piping bag with an extra, delicate touch. It
wasn’t until Marcie had walked into work one day with an extra bump to her already round stomach that they realized that the secret was out, and finally publicly revealed that they’d been seeing each other. Their son, Josiah, was born five months later. He was Marcie’s first and Reese’s third child.

The couple was now beaming at
one another, Reese swiping at the corners of his eyes while tears rolled down Marcie’s cherub-like cheeks. As their vows continued, Sommer searched the room until she’d locked eyes with Austin, and he became the only image at the end of her line of sight. Perfectly outfitted in a crisp black suit and matching silk tie, she felt grossly mismatched in the pewter, lace turtleneck bridesmaid dress that Marcie had handpicked. Marcie, already self-conscious about her weight, had wanted to make sure that she stood out as much as possible on her special day. The bridesmaids had unanimously agreed to bite their tongues and wear the putrid greenish-gray gowns, and they’d all pitched in to make sure Marcie felt as beautiful as she needed to feel. In a strapless white dress that cinched her waist and emphasized her bust, the bride looked thoroughly pleased.