The Mating Game by Lana Ferguson - 25

“I’m just saying,” I tell him after eating the last bit of fireplace bacon. “There’s an argument to be made here.”

Hunter snorts. “Are you complimenting my cooking or insulting me in…other ways?”

“Maybe I’m goading you,” I suggest, waggling my eyebrows.

He shakes his head, stowing his plate away. “I’ve got to check the windows after the storm last night. Need to make sure there aren’t any cracks.”

I don’t tell him that he’s really putting a damper on about a dozen different sexy ideas I dreamed up during breakfast, but since I am the one who got the whole revamping ball rolling, I guess I don’t have any right to complain. I’ve already suffered through him redressing as it is, and if I can survive being robbed of shirtless Hunter after having intimately experienced it for twelve hours straight, I guess I can survive this as well.

“We could totally fix the railings today too.”

Hunter raises one eyebrow, the ghost of a smile at his mouth. “ ‘We’?”

“Yeah, I can put you to work.” I can see that he’s seconds away from laughing. “You can be Mr. Fixit for a day.”

“You don’t need to be on that ankle of yours,” he says sternly. “And you still smell like heat. It could hit you anytime. You need to rest.”

“It’s not even bad today,” I argue. “I’m just a little sore. And I feel mostly fine otherwise. So we might as well do what we can while we can.”

“It’s too cold,” he counters.

“Okay, Grandpa.” I tsk. “I’ll dress warm.”

“You keep calling me Grandpa,” he warns with a low sort of laugh, “and I might have to do something about it.”

Warmth pools low in my belly. Now, that’s what I’m talking about. “Oh? Like what?”

“Hmm.” He eyes me up and down in a slow, lazy way that has my toes curling again (and there aren’t even any orgasms involved this time, go figure), his brown eyes hooded and thoughtful, as if he’s imagining exactly what he might do. God, I would eat a hippo whole to read minds right now. “Guess we’ll see.”

Damn it.

He pushes up from the floor to stand, retrieving his plate, and I realize that he’s really not planning to indulge in a little secluded sexcation with me. Cowabummer.

“Fine, fine,” I sigh. “We can do responsible things today.”

He crosses the minimal space, stepping over the still-rumpled pile of blankets that made up our personal love nest last night, and if that memory isn’t enough to have me blushing, the way he bends to kiss my cheek as he takes my plate from me definitely finishes the job.

“At least for a little while,” he murmurs, a silent promise of much-less-responsible things to come later.

Now, that I can work with.

I have to make the trek back up to my room after breakfast. Hunter was completely right about the upstairs freezing over when the power went out—I can barely stand to be up there for the five minutes it takes me to grab fresh clothes and some washcloths from the cabinets so I’ll be able to take some semblance of a bath with the water Hunter is boiling over the fireplace (it’ll be more of a rubdown situation, from the way he described it, but he did allude to helping me, so I’m letting it slide).

I can dress myself now, thankfully (or not, depending on how you look at it), and even though my hair is still a disaster—the sex-mussed mess hastily thrown into a bun without many other options—I feel much better in new clothes and slightly more prepared to tackle a bit of light reno by the time I come back down the staircase to find Hunter.

He appears from the dining room with a befuddled expression, looking from me to the ceiling as if trying to figure something out. “Did you…clean?”

“Yeah, yesterday.” I cross my arms when I step off the staircase. “You’re just now noticing?”

“I was a little distracted yesterday, if you remember. You know, the snow, the shower…other things.”

He purposely leaves out the other s -word from last night, but it doesn’t keep me from remembering. He really has a way of getting the upper hand with minimal effort.

“Well, yeah,” I say, a little red-eared. “I cleaned. Figured I’d get a jump on the easy stuff since I had time, you know?”

“You didn’t have to,” Hunter tells me. “That’s not part of your job.”

I shrug, going for unbothered as I tuck an escaped tendril behind my ear. “No big deal. I just wanted to.”

Hunter surprises me with a wide arm sweeping around me to pull me in close, his hand tipping up my chin as his lips press to mine for another stomach-swooping experience. I close my eyes as I melt into it, feeling a little dazed when he pulls away.

“What was that for?”

Hunter smiles as he gives me that same sort of unbothered shrug. “Just wanted to.”

I curl my fingers into the hem of his flannel shirt (it’s blue today). “Are you sure you don’t want to…?”

“Come on,” he says with a sort of wizard-like move that has me turning on my heel at the gentle urging of his hands on my hips. “Put me to work.”

“So explain to me what we’re doing here again.”

Hunter’s stained towel continues to swipe back and forth across the wooden counter where the computer and other things have been cleared away for the moment, and his lips press together in a line.

“It’s like…a cheat varnish. A refresher. It’s supposed to restore the old finish so you don’t have to sand and stain again.”

“Do you always keep cheat varnish on hand?”

“For emergencies,” I tell him. I can see the way his brow wrinkles in concentration from across the room, his lips turning down in a frown as I say with a chuckle, “Just focus on your counter.”

“Sure thing, boss,” he grunts. “It seems to be working, at least.”

“It’ll do in a pinch,” I say. “We’ll make sure to do it properly after this whole thing pans out.”

He makes a quiet hmph sound that I don’t miss. “You mean if .”

“Don’t be such a downer,” I chide from the staircase where I’m working on the banister. “Positive thoughts manifest positive outcomes.”

“Did you just think that up?”

“No, someone wrote it on a wheatgrass smoothie I got from a café once.”

Hunter makes a less-than-pleasant sound, and when I peek over at him he looks positively disgusted. “ Wheatgrass? ”

“Yeah, it was about as good as it sounds.” I laugh. “My friend Ada was on this health kick, and for like two seconds I let her take me along.” I stick out my tongue. “No thank you. It would take a hell of a lot more than positive thoughts to get me to drink that stuff again.”

Hunter shakes his head, muttering something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like Californians . One of these days I’m going to have to take him back there simply for the comedic value of seeing him so out of his comfort zone.

There’s a bit of quiet that settles as we both continue working our way through the main room, approaching this project with a divide-and-conquer attitude as we try to focus on the rooms that will most likely be included in Nate’s article.

“So, besides practicing your camping seduction tactics and streaking across football fields,” I say good-humoredly to break up the silence. “What else did baby Hunter like?”

“I don’t know…” Hunter seems to have to really dig hard for an answer to this question, his expression one of puzzled concentration. “I liked music, I guess. I mean, I still do, but I always liked listening to my dad’s old records. I still have them up in my room, actually.”

“No Taylor Swift, I imagine,” I say with a sigh.

He sighs, feigning actual regret. “Unfortunately, no.”

“Damn. You totally look like a Swiftie too.”

“Right. I realize how misleading that must be.”

I shake my head, holding a closed hand near my head and opening it as I pull it away to mimic an explosion. “So hit me with your favorite song.”

“I don’t have a favorite song.”

“ Everyone has a favorite song.”

“Then what’s yours?”

“ ‘Summer Girls’ by LFO,” I tell him without missing a beat.

“I don’t even know what that is.”

My hand stills, and I stomp down the stairs to give him an incredulous look. “Excuse me? Everyone knows that song.”

“ I do not know that song.”

“It’s like a nineties classic,” I exclaim.

“Okay, but I don’t know it.”

“ ‘Hip hop, marmalade, spic and span’?”

Hunter wrinkles his nose. “What?”

“Oh, come on.” I throw up my free hand in disbelief. “ ‘Call me Willie Whistle ’cause I can’t speak, baby’?”

“Okay,” he chuckles. “You’re making this up.”

“It was like the weirdest song to come out of that decade! It’s full of all these ridiculous one-liners that don’t really make sense. That song is like trying to get a straight answer out of a Dr. Seuss character who’s done shrooms. It’s fantastic.”

Hunter is full-on laughing now. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“You’d better be glad the power is out,” I grumble, stomping back up the stairs to continue with my own varnish brushing.

“I honestly never really got away from music from the seventies and eighties,” he admits. “The Bronco still has an eight-track player in it. So that’s kind of what I’m working with.”

“You’re like a lumberjack version of Captain America when he came out of the ice seventy years later.” I snort.

“Captain America? Is that a politician?” I wheel around with an open mouth only to catch his sly grin. “Just kidding.”

“You’re lucky you’re so pretty,” I threaten.

Hunter does his best impression of me batting my eyelashes. “You think I’m pretty?”

I giggle as I shake my head, having no idea where this playful Hunter came from or what he did with the stoic giant I met a few weeks ago, but I’m not hating a single second of it.

“ Fine ,” I concede. “So you like oldies. That tracks, if I’m being honest.”

“Tracks?”

I often forget I’m dealing with a man who is still using a flip phone in the year of our Lord 2025 . I shouldn’t expect him to be up to speed on social media lingo that I started using ironically and now can’t seem to stop. “It basically means it makes sense.”

“Really? Who comes up with this stuff?”

“Must be all the young folk,” I deadpan.

“Are you being smart right now?”

“I would never,” I say seriously. “So, oldies? Is that part of your solitary lumberjack aesthetic?”

“It’s Dad’s fault,” he says with a quieter laugh now, watching his hands wipe on the refinisher with a faraway look as if remembering. “Pretty sure he was blasting Creedence Clearwater Revival to me in the womb.”

“He sounds like a cool guy,” I comment. “So what would baby Hunter be doing in this situation?”

“A snowstorm? As a kid? If the power was on, I was definitely in my room playing a video game or something.” He chuckles softly. “My dad would whip out his famous homemade hot chocolate.”

“What made it famous?”

“That he managed to convince us it wasn’t out of a packet, I’d wager.”

I bark out a laugh. “He sounds like he was a lot of fun.”

“He was.” I notice then that Hunter’s hand has stopped moving, and there’s a wistful sort of smile at his mouth. “They both were, really. It was…hard. Losing them.”

“You were so young,” I offer. “I can’t imagine.”

He still isn’t moving, staring at the half-done counter as his tiny smile slowly morphs into a frown. “I told you about our tradition, right?”

“You mentioned it,” I say.

“Every year my dad would take us out the day after Thanksgiving to pick a tree.”

“The day after Thanksgiving?”

Hunter shrugs, one corner of his mouth tilting. “I know. My mother was obsessed with Christmas. She wanted to put that thing up the second the turkey leftovers were stowed away.” He absently makes a slow swipe over the counter with his towel as he remembers. “We did that every year. Every single year. I always went with them…until I went to college.”

I notice there’s something pained about his features now, something about this story that’s obviously causing the hurt reflected there. “Hunter?”

“My mom begged me to come home for Thanksgiving,” he tells me. “But Chloe’s parents had invited me to go on vacation with them, and I…”

I drop my rag and take slow steps down the stairs. “Hunter…”

“I should have been there,” he half whispers. “If I’d come home…” He shakes his head. “It was snowing so hard that day. Maybe if I’d been here I could have talked them into holding off, or maybe I could have driven them, maybe they wouldn’t have…”

I think I surprise him by how close I am, and his words die on his tongue as he watches me approach. I think a lot of things about Hunter and this place are starting to make more sense than they did when I first came here, painting a picture of a man still carrying regret and letting it rule his entire life. His solitude and his surliness feel like they have built up from years of blaming himself for something that absolutely wasn’t his fault—which is obvious even to me.

I’m right in front of him now, definitely getting the refinishing liquid on the wool of my sweater and more on my hands as I scoop up both of his hands, rag and all. “Hey.”

He looks at me now, his eyes a little glassy. “Sorry, I don’t even know why—”

“Stop it,” I cut in. “Don’t apologize.”

“I never talk about this,” he admits.

“Then maybe it’s a good thing that you are,” I answer. “It seems like you’ve let yourself be swept up in this guilt. Like it’s still got a hold on you. I get why you were so against the reno now.”

He nods slightly. “It felt like an insult. Changing things. This was their entire life , you know?”

“I didn’t know them,” I say, “but I’d feel confident in betting that you were their life, Hunter. They sound like good, loving people. I’d go so far as to guess that they’d be more concerned with you being happy than the state of this building.”

His mouth turns up, but only a little. “Maybe.”

I lean over the counter, making a bigger mess of my sweater but not caring in the slightest as I pull him in by the collar of his flannel shirt to cover his mouth with mine. I linger for a second longer than I should, probably, but I’m getting a little addicted to the soft-to-scruff ratio that comes with Hunter’s kisses. More truthfully, I’m sort of getting addicted to Hunter Barrett and all the layers of him that keep getting peeled away.

“What was that for?” he asks when we finally pull apart.

I smile against his mouth. “Just wanted to.”

“You make it very hard to get work done,” he murmurs.

“Just trying to motivate you to hurry up and finish,” I say with a smug expression as I push away from the counter. I look at the mess on my sweater then, frowning as I pull the material away from my body. “I’ll have to change again.” I give him a sly grin, doing my best to draw him out of his mood and back into the cheerful Hunter who batted his eyelashes at me only a few minutes ago. “Probably need another one of those wipe-down fireplace baths after we’re done.”

And as I saunter back up the stairs to finish my work, his answering groan makes me think that maybe he isn’t the only one who knows how to get the upper hand.