“You’re ours.” Cole’s voice was low and surprisingly possessive. I shot him a warning look when Hannah took a small step back.
“I don’t belong to you,” she said, her tone sharp and her eyes angry.
I wanted to see that flirty smile on her lips again. Instead, her cheeks were pale and if looks could kill, Cole would be dead by now. This was not how I wanted this to go. Fuck, we were blowing it.
“What Cole’s trying to say is that we’re interested in you. As more than friends. We think you might be the one,” I said quickly. Then I had to explain how in Bridgewater, men knew instinctively when they’d met their match. How it was fated.
Her brows were drawn together in disbelief but she didn’t try to laugh it off. “And that’s what you think? That I’m destined to be…what, your wife?”
“We think so, yes,” Cole said. His reply lacked the possessive tone from just a moment before, but he was deadly serious and let that show in his eyes.
“But we’d like to take you out so you can see for yourself,” I added.
“That you’d make good husbands? Both of you,” she said, as if this fact bore repeating. “At the same time.”
I caught Cole’s smirk, but she didn’t seem to notice, thank god. She was busy looking at Sally and Violet’s booth to see if they were overhearing. I had no doubt they were.
“That’s right,” Cole added.
We were supposed to be asking this woman out as gentlemen and I sure as hell didn’t want to scare her off with talk of threesomes. Not yet, at least. She was skittish enough as it was. We needed to ease her into the idea, not club her over the head and carry her off to our bed. At least not yet.
But how did you tell a woman you wanted to claim her with another man? How did you tell her we weren’t playing games, that were dead serious about it? About her? How did we do that with a woman who seemed to have a very obvious dislike of possessive men? I tried the laid back approach.
But Cole, apparently, had other ideas. He leaned forward and caught her hand. “At the same time and in every way imaginable. You belong between us, Hannah. We’ll make you see that.”
I knew what would happen, and I was right. She pulled her hand away and stepped back with such haste I thought she might trip. Shit. I shot Cole a warning look. Apparently, he hadn’t noticed her reaction when I’d touched her hand. Whatever this woman was hiding about her past, she was scared and we’d only made it worse. It was obvious she’d had boyfriends who were a little too possessive and that didn’t sit well with me. Someone with that in her background could easily misconstrue our interest as being a little overpowering. Obsessive even.
I kept my voice low and calm and didn’t try to move toward her. “Hannah, we’re sorry. We’re not trying to push you into anything, I swear, but we’ve been interested in you since we first laid eyes on you. We’ve been by every day since hoping to just see you smile our way.”
My honesty seemed to help, for her stance relaxed a bit.
“Sally and Violet, hell, even Jessie, can vouch for us.” I couldn’t see the ladies behind me, but I had to assume they were either nodding their heads or offering thumbs up signs. Cole was looking over my shoulder and grinning.
“We just…like you and want to get to know you better.”
That was a total lie. We didn’t just like her. We wanted her. Knew she was going to be ours.
Her eyes flicked to the ladies, but she still looked wary. At least she wasn’t running away. She stood next to our table at a safe distance and toyed with her pad and pen. Her gaze shifted from me to Cole and back again.
“If I were thirty years younger, honey,” Sally called. “I’d give you a run for the money when it comes to these two. You have to admit, you’ve got two hot men ready to make you theirs. They’re not creeps, they’re Bridgewater men. That’s the way they’re made around here. Big, dominant and too sexy for their own good. If they said they wanted me between them, do you think I’d be sitting here? Hell, no. Go for it, and by it, I mean them.”
I had to remember to send Sally a bunch of flowers later for her help.
To my surprise I caught something more in Hannah’s eyes—something hiding behind the fear and the wariness.
Attraction. Yes! It had been there all along like we’d thought. There was chemistry between us. Shared chemistry. But we’d scared her off with our fuck-all fumbling.
“We’re pretty bad at asking a woman out, aren’t we?” I asked, watching as she nibbled at her bottom lip. “Give two idiots a shot.”
“He’s the idiot,” Cole countered. “I told you I want you, want you between us. I can’t fuck that up.”
I looked over at Cole, who took a sip of his coffee with an unbearably smug expression. Maybe he wasn’t such an idiot after all. If it was fantasies of being with the two of us that got her to give us a chance, I was all for it.
But she hadn’t said yes yet and I was afraid to push too hard. She might be tempted, but one nudge the wrong way and she would bolt.
Fate, in the form of nosy neighbors, intervened.
Violet added to Sally’s words. “Girl, if you let these boys slip through your fingers, you’ll regret it. And if you’re worried about all that caveman talk, they mean it in a good way. Trust me. Heck, trust practically every married woman in town.”