The Bachelor Pact

He’d blamed the kiss on whiskey and a need for connection. The liquor buzz was long gone, but the imprint of her kiss remained like a brand. It was reckless to leap into the flames after he’d just escaped a fire—Claire should’ve rendered him numb. But Hayden...she was different.

Not only had she been there for him when he’d been adrift on his own, but she replaced his tumultuous thoughts with something a hell of a lot better.

Sex.

He wanted her. He wanted her in his arms and in his bed. He wanted her moaning beneath him, her nails scratching down his back.

It was as if he’d devolved to his most carnal desires when she was around, and for a change, he was all for it. He was tired of feeling unmoored, helpless. Sad. With her he felt strong, capable. She’d come apart in his arms during that kiss. She may have put him through his paces last night, but he respected her for it.

Hell, he knew he’d stepped in it with Hayden the moment he left that café with Claire. But he’d owed Claire that meeting. They’d dated for three years and had been recently engaged, though he now wondered if that was more of a technicality. She’d never lived with him—never wanted to. She didn’t treasure Spright Island or his community the way he did.

The way Hayden does. That kiss with Hayden was about far more than their lips meeting and an attraction they weren’t aware of blooming. For Tate, it was about discovering that he’d been sleepwalking through his life.

Tate had never been ill-equipped for a task set before him. He’d accepted the gift of Spright Island from his father without qualms and had set about building an entire town and community even when he’d never worked on his own before. He’d learned by doing. Each time adversity had come up, he’d defeated it.

When he’d found out that Reid was his brother, Tate felt like a superhero who’d stumbled across his fatal weakness. He didn’t have a single weapon in his arsenal to handle the situation set before him.

His previously drama-free life had begun to look more like a Netflix feature with him in the center as the hapless protagonist.

Until the kiss with Hayden.

That night had changed him, changed his outlook. And after a numb month of disbelief, feeling something—feeling anything other than stark shock—was as welcome as...well, as the kiss itself.

Yoga by Hayden came into sight and he crossed the street with a neat jog. A smile inched across his face, but flagged when he noticed the Closed sign on the door. He tugged the handle.

Locked.

He checked the clock on his phone. 12:04 p.m. He was late. Maybe she drew a hard line when it came to promptness.

Then he looked up and there she was, her curves barely contained in colorful leggings and a long-sleeved green shirt. She flipped the lock and opened the door, reminding him of the night he’d been standing outside this very studio in the rain.

Reminding him that she’d climbed to her toes to lay the mother of all kisses on him and had changed his life for the better.

“Sorry. Typically, I’m more punctual than this,” she said.

God, he wanted to kiss her. The timing was wrong, though. She hadn’t yet met his eyes save for a brief flicker that bounced away the second she caught him staring.

She was hard not to stare at, all that silken dark hair and the grace in her every movement...

“I thought maybe you’d changed your mind.” He hung his coat on a hook and perused a small display of yoga mats, blocks and water bottles. “I’ll have to buy a mat. I don’t have one.”

“Help yourself.” Hayden’s gaze glanced off him again, and then almost relieved, she said, “Oh, good, she’s here.”

A fortysomething blonde woman ran toward the building, her yoga mat under her arm.

“Sherry had a last-minute need for an appointment, so I piggybacked onto your session. With the holiday week being so busy, I couldn’t fit her in any other time.” Hayden blew out the news in a nonstop stream. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Of course he minded. He’d scheduled a one-on-one with Hayden, and now he had to share his time with Sherry Baker, SWC’s premiere real estate agent.

“Oh, hi, Tate.” Sherry patted him on the shoulder before hanging her coat and scarf on the hook next to his. “I didn’t know you practiced yoga.”

He slid his eyes to Hayden, who bit her lip and locked the door. She’d double booked herself on purpose. For some reason.

“You know me,” he told Sherry. “I’m always trying to support more local businesses.”

“Get this one.” Sherry handed him a black yoga mat. “It’s manly and the same brand as mine.”

“Done.” He turned to Hayden with a million questions he couldn’t ask. “Mind if I pay you after?”

Her mouth hovered open for a beat as Sherry unrolled her yoga mat. With an audience, Hayden didn’t have much of a choice other than being polite.

“Sure.”

“Great.” He took his spot on the studio floor. He’d won that round. He planned on sticking around after Sherry left. He wanted answers.

Five

For Hayden, doing yoga was like breathing. She slipped into each pose easily, pausing to instruct Sherry and Tate through the movements.

Sherry was in her midforties with two teenagers. Her son had recently moved to a college campus and her younger daughter was thirteen and embroiled in a teenage spat with her two best friends, Callie and Samantha. Hayden knew this because Sherry hadn’t stopped talking since class had started.

Sherry also mentioned her twenty unwanted pounds and a caffeine habit that bordered on addiction, and said she hoped doing one healthy thing like yoga would lead to other healthy things like cutting down on coffee and overtime at work.

Tate remained resolutely silent, though she’d caught a small smile on his mouth more than once as he’d eased from one pose into the other.

During downward dog pose Hayden moved to assist Sherry with her alignment. “Push your five fingertips into the mat rather than the palm of your hand,” she instructed. “We don’t want compressed wrists.”

Hayden turned to Tate next, willing herself to remember she was a teacher and a professional. There was never anything sexual involved in helping a student.

Until now.

One look at Tate’s ass, his legs and arms strong and straight, and a wave of attraction walloped her in the stomach. As fate would have it, she was also going to have to touch his hips to move him into more of a V form than a U.

Dammit.

One hand on his back, the other on his hips, she instructed him to lower his heels to the floor as much as he was able. He breathed out with the effort, that breath reverberating along her arm and hand, and she became even more aware of him than before.

Who knew that was possible?

Those sorts of thoughts were exactly what Sherry’s presence was supposed to quell.

She led them from downward dog to cobra, encouraging Sherry to use her knees if she needed to. When Hayden turned to tell Tate the same thing, he lowered into the pushup-like pose with what appeared to be very little effort. A closer look at his biceps and she realized they shook subtly as he took his time, holding himself in plank pose a moment before dropping his waist and pushing up with his arms.

She stared, unabashedly, which he must’ve noticed a moment later, when he sent her a cocky smirk.

Show-off.

She returned to her mat and walked them through one more sun salutation, ending in mountain pose: standing, hands in prayer pose at the chest.

“Namaste,” Hayden said. “That concludes our lesson for the day.”

“Woo! That was intense, girlfriend!” Sherry waved her hands in front of her pink face. “I’m sure Tate would’ve preferred a less chatty partner, though.”

Sherry winked at him, and Hayden smothered a laugh. Sherry was happily married and treated Tate like she would a friend or any other familiar resident of SWC.

You know, the same way you should be treating him.

“I have to return to the office,” Sherry announced. “Can I call to schedule a follow-up after the holiday?”

“Whenever you like.” Hayden walked Sherry to the door, chatting to stall while waiting for Tate to leave. Instead, Tate was at the front desk, his rolled mat on the surface.

Crap. She forgot he needed to pay.

Sherry left and Hayden made her way to the front desk, her heart hammering.

“If you admit that you booked Sherry because you couldn’t trust yourself to be alone with me, I’ll forgive you for it,” he told her.

“Ha!” She left it at that because any response other than “Yep, that’s correct!” would have been a lie.

She didn’t trust herself alone with him. His kiss the other night had been too welcome, his presence too distracting. She had enough drama in her life without creating some of her own.

Last night after he left she’d thought more about the chaos in Tate’s life. Not one parental pair but two. And a surprise twin brother. Hayden had come to Spright Island specifically to avoid drama not become embroiled in it. That, and the fact she didn’t trust herself to be alone with him, was why she’d scheduled Sherry for the same timeslot.

Tate wasn’t unlike that second serving of ice cream she knew she shouldn’t have. It seemed that no amount of willpower could keep her from one more taste.

“Thirty-two dollars.”

He handed her his credit card.

“It’s a really good mat,” she explained needlessly as she charged his card. Anything to fill the dead air between them.

“I wasn’t arguing.”

“No, I guess you wouldn’t.” She imagined thirty-two dollars to Tate Duncan must be what thirty-two cents felt like to her.

“What’s going on, Hayden? Do you find me particularly hard to get along with?”

“I—Sorry. That was rude.” She handed his card back and flipped the screen around for him to sign it. When he was finished, she tucked her iPad into the drawer and, with no other task before her, was forced to meet his eyes.

He stood there like he had nowhere else to be.

“I didn’t schedule Sherry only because I didn’t want to be alone with you. It worked well since you’re both beginners.”

He nodded slowly.

“Plus, what did you expect after you barged in here—”

“I barged?”

“—and demanded—”

“Demanded?”

She huffed out a breath. If was going to continue calling her bluff, she really should stop lying about her true intentions. But there was a nugget of truth she could cling to.

“My schedule has been nuts this week. Everyone’s trying to get in before Thanksgiving.”

“Ah. And you fit me in.” He grinned. “Because you couldn’t tell me no.”

She made a pathetic choking sound. How arrogant was this guy, anyway? And how did he keep guessing right?

“Because I have to make a living. I don’t have billions stashed away...” She almost added “like some people” but she was already protesting too much.

“Right,” he agreed, but something in his expression told her he’d gleaned what she hadn’t said. “Well, thank you. For the mat.”

He went to grab his coat, slipping it over his arms and holding the rolled mat between his knees.

Feeling a dab of guilt, she moved toward him and vomited out a generic nicety. “Thank you for booking your session. I hope you’ll consider a membership.”

His hand resting on the door handle, he turned as she stopped advancing, putting her mere inches from his handsome face. “I was thinking about another kind of one-on-one session. Are you available for dinner?”

She hadn’t been prepared for that. Words eluded her. She knew that agreeing to go out with him was a bad idea, but when faced with his glittering blue eyes she couldn’t quite remember why.

“Just so you know—” that blue gaze dipped to her mouth “—if you were ready, I’d kiss the hell out of you right now. Just to make sure I didn’t imagine how good you tasted before.”

She gaped at him, but he didn’t advance to kiss her. Instead he turned around and stepped outside.

Before she could shut the door, he pushed it open a crack. “Think about dinner. I’ll ask again.”

She locked up behind him, watching him through the glass. He had a sure, strong gait, a disgustingly handsome mug, and looked as good in a suit as he did in sweatpants.

There were a multitude of reactions fighting for first place. She wanted to open the door and yell for him to come back. She wanted to run upstairs and shut the blinds. She wanted to jog across the street and grab him by the ears and kiss the hell out of him.

Especially that last one.

While she warred with those options, frozen in stunned bliss at the possibilities, Tate grew farther and farther away until he was a shadowy blur disappearing into a path into the woods.

“Damn him.” But she didn’t mean it. She was looking forward to next time—when she would leave him slack-jawed and without a response.

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