A POUNDING WOKE her up.
At first Autumn Bishop thought it was a dream. She’d gone to bed with one hell of a headache. Unsurprisingly: she’d spent a weekend away with her parents and sister, dealing with family drama, and had then driven six hours back to Cape Town.
The familiar throbbing had come shortly after she’d arrived at home. Right on time. Her head always ached when she was far enough away from her family to brood about how different she was from her sister. And how those differences made her feel like a failure.
When she heard the pounding, she thought it was that. Perhaps the pounding headache had manifested into a drumming. But then she heard a shrill ringing, and she woke up fully. Throwing the covers off, she ran to the front door, her stomach dropping when she opened it to Hunter Lee.
Her stomach kept free-falling as her eyes swept over him. His brown hair was wild, a sign that he’d let the wind style it. The strong features of his face were tight, as if someone had attached them to a string at his nose and pulled, forcing everything to be drawn to the centre of his face. Even the muscles of his shoulders—his chest, his entire body—were tense.
Something about it sent a wave of emotion, of awareness through her. When that wave collapsed, a second one of nausea replaced it.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Everything.’
His voice, usually steady and strong, was hoarse, the word cracking. A part of her wanted to turn on her heel and climb back into bed; another, more forceful part spurred her forward. Before she knew it, her arms were circling around his significantly larger body.
She wasn’t sure why she was hugging him. They’d avoided this kind of contact since they’d made the transition from lovers to friends a year before. Besides, he wasn’t the kind for contact, unless in affection, and in private. But her instinct had been to comfort him. And, though she would never admit it aloud, to comfort herself at seeing him this way.
She drew back and took a deliberate step away from him.
‘What happened?’
He stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets. Her eyes automatically followed the movement, and she shoved away a kick of appreciation. It didn’t matter that his legs—those powerful, strong legs—deserved appreciation. Now was not the time.
‘Can I come inside?’
His voice was steadier.
‘Of course,’ she said, opening the door wider.
Two things happened then. One, she held her breath, not wanting to get a whiff of his cologne. The smell never failed to twist her insides, even after their break-up, and she’d become accustomed to not breathing it in when she was around him. Two was that a light breeze followed Hunter through the front door. It wasn’t particularly cool—cool and summer in the Western Cape of South Africa rarely went together—but Autumn shuddered, her skin shooting out in gooseflesh. And suddenly she realised how she looked.
She was wearing a silk nightdress, a gift from her mother, since it was the first thing she’d found in her cupboard before falling into bed. She groaned softly. It wasn’t demure, though she might have been able to ignore that if her breasts had played along. They currently were not, having reacted to the breeze, and, along with the silk material, she knew she’d give Hunter an eyeful if she turned around like that.
Not that it was something he hadn’t seen before. It was just... Autumn liked boundaries. Preferred them, where he was concerned. Where they were concerned. So she closed the door and crossed an arm over her chest. She wondered how terrible it was that she was thinking about her breasts when he was clearly upset.
‘This is an emergency, I’m assuming,’ she said when she turned around, crossing her free arm over her chest as well.
‘Yes.’ It was all he said for what felt like for ever. Then his eyes sparked. ‘Not so much that you can’t put on something that makes you feel more comfortable.’
Her cheeks heated. Instead of giving him the sarcastic reply she truly wanted to, she nodded, and went to her room. She grabbed the first thing she found to cover up—ironically, the silk kimono that, for reasons only her mother and heaven knew, matched the nightdress—and slipped her feet into a pair of sandals.
When she returned, she found him on the patio.
‘Still can’t get used to this view,’ Hunter said quietly as she stopped next to him.
She followed his gaze onto the city of Cape Town. When she’d moved out of her family home—the Bishop mansion, as some people liked to call it—she hadn’t tried to find somewhere outside the city she’d grown up in to live. She’d merely been drawn to the Bouw Estate.
It had green fields that exploded with wildflowers; rolling hills beyond the fields; a river that surrounded the estate. The old manor and barn on the property had been renovated into what were now her home and her bakery, respectively. Every time she stood outside on the patio, at the top of the mountain that led out of Cape Town, staring down onto the city, Autumn thought that the Bouw Estate might not have been intentional, but it had been necessary.
‘You didn’t come here at...’ She paused, frowning when she realised she hadn’t seen the time. ‘What time is it?’
‘A little after eleven.’
So she’d had all of an hour’s worth of sleep.
‘You didn’t come here at eleven at night to talk about this view.’
His eyes slid over to her, the brown of them a well of emotion, before his head dipped in a curt nod. ‘You’re right.’
‘When am I not?’ she muttered. She gestured to the outdoor table she’d lovingly selected when she’d furnished her house. ‘Shall we?’
He nodded, pulled a chair out and stepped back. With a sigh, she sat down, thanking him when he pushed it back in. She waited as he sat down opposite her. A long silence followed. She used it to study him. To watch the emotions play over his face.
When his eyes met hers, she caught her breath, and wished she had something to drink to distract herself from how vulnerable all of this made her feel.
‘I don’t know how to say this,’ he admitted