Love Me Like You Do: Winter Lake Read online

  Love Me Like You Do

  Winter Lake

  Rhian Cahill

  Rhian Cahill

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  They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.

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  Love Me Like You Do

  Winter Lake

  Copyright © 2019 Rhian Cahill

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-925375-34-3

  Edited by Fedora Chen

  Cover by Designs by Dana

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Look for these titles by Rhian Cahill

  For those, like me, who love small towns

  Chapter 1

  The car stuttered…

  “No, no, no, no.”

  …gasped and choked and bucked…

  “No, no, no, no.”

  …and kept going.

  Rubbing her hand on the dash, Covington crooned, “That’s it, baby,” and prayed her beat-up Cavalier Z24 would make the last few miles.

  “Just a little more. It’s not far now and I promise when we get there you can stop, fall apart, die. Whatever you want. Just give me a little more. Please,” she begged as she continued to stroke the cracked dash.

  When the car continued up the road, she let out a slow breath and tried to focus on the positives.

  The car was still moving and she was getting closer to her destination with each mile.

  Except it was hard to keep an upbeat attitude when nothing had turned out the way it was supposed to—the way she’d planned.

  For one thing, she was freezing. The aged heating system and flimsy roof of her convertible couldn’t compete with the cold seeping through every nook and cranny.

  There was also the fact she was thousands of miles from home looking for a man who more than likely didn’t want to see her.

  Oh! And the kicker. She was four months pregnant.

  With twins.

  Sniffling, she turned the heater knob another notch and hoped the change didn’t cause the car to quit.

  The engine didn’t die but the air blasting through the vents didn’t get any warmer either.

  “He probably hates me,” she muttered, the white cloud forming in front of her face growing bigger with every word.

  She hadn’t seen Tristan Harding since the morning she’d kicked him out of her bed.

  Four months ago.

  By the time she’d gotten over the fact she’d slept with him. Over the fact he wasn’t the man who’d put a ring on her finger. Over the fact she’d felt far more for Tris than she ever had for Gavin. Over her own stupid embarrassment and shame…

  Tris was gone.

  She didn’t dare ask anyone where he’d disappeared to though.

  Especially not Gavin.

  After catching her fiancé screwing one of her fellow dancers, Covington hadn’t said anything to the lying, cheating scumbag.

  Nope. She’d taken off his ring, left it on his dining room table—along with the key he’d given her to his apartment—and driven home.

  Where she’d promptly set about ridding her place of every little piece of Gavin and the plans he’d shattered by dumping all his stuff out her third floor window.

  That’s when Tris had showed up.

  She’d been leaning out the window with a bundle of Gavin’s clothes in her arms ready to let them drop when he climbed out of his truck.

  Tris had looked up at her, looked down at the growing pile of crap on the lawn, then brought his gaze back to hers and smiled.

  She had to admit he’d made her tummy flutter more than once in the year and a half they’d known each other, but that smile, the way his eyes creased at the corners, scruff covering his chiseled jaw and his dark hair ruffled by a light breeze…

  Damn, she’d fluttered in places lower than her belly.

  Covington couldn’t say why she had done it. Why she’d let him in, let him help her purge her life of the scumbag, or why, after a shared pizza, a couple of beers, and some great conversation, she’d let him into her bed—into her body.

  That was a lie. She knew exactly why.

  The man had moves. His lips and hands had her pulsing with arousal with the barest touch. And he’d touched her.

  Everywhere.

  Not that he’d been the only one. Oh no. She’d gotten her fair share of groping in before they’d stripped naked and engaged in the best, most mind-blowing sixty-nine she’d ever been part of.

  Her sex clenched with the X-rated memories flashing through her head, a tremor quaking her from head to toe as her core temperature rose without the help of the car’s ancient heating system.

  He’d done things—she’d done things—that put every other sexual encounter she’d ever had in the amateur’s league. She couldn’t explain why she’d allowed Tris to touch her in ways she’d never trusted any other man to do. And that included her cheating, lying scumbag ex-fiancé.

  “Goddammit!” She slapped the steering wheel with a gloved hand.

  The car jerked and shuddered, lurched and bucked.

  “Please don’t die,” she whispered as she firmly wrapped her fingers around the wheel again and hoped she didn’t hit a patch of ice. She’d heard that could be treacherous.

  Born and bred in Los Angeles, she hadn’t been prepared for the cold. Or the snow. There was no escaping it. It was everywhere.

  When she’d stopped in Saratoga Springs for gas and munchies, and gloves for her freezing fingers, the old guy behind the counter had chatted away about the lack of ‘inches’ on the ground for this time of year and the unseasonably warm temperatures.

  But if her frozen body and what she’d seen on the drive through the mountains were any indication, there was already way too much of the white stuff covering the ground as far as she was concerned, and Covington wanted to turn right back around and head for places warmer—head home.

  Her bottom lip quivered.

  “I don’t have a home.”

  She sniffed back the sting of tears, blinking furiously to ward off another crying jag.

  “Damn stupid hormones.”

  She’d given up her lease. Sold everything she could, donated what she couldn’t, and piled the few possessions she’d decided to keep into her twenty-two-year-old car and headed for New York.

  The state.

  Another world away.

  Up a godforsaken mountain covered in snow!

  When that little blue plus sign had appeared in the teeny tiny window on t
he plastic stick, Covington hadn’t been able to breathe. It had taken her a very long, very angst ridden day to come to terms with the fact she was pregnant.

  After the initial shock wore off, she’d been okay with the idea. More than okay. She’d been thrilled to know she was carrying Tristan’s baby.

  But then morning sickness set in and dancing had become difficult. She lost her balance as well as her lunch and a couple of one-day jobs along with them, and as she headed into the third month, and her weight dipped to an all-time low, she panicked more than a little.

  Surely it couldn’t be normal to lose weight while growing another human being?

  Her doctor had assured her she was fine—the baby was fine—but scheduled an ultrasound ‘just to be on the safe side’ and put her mind at ease.

  There was no ‘safe side’ for what that scan revealed and no easing of the mind.

  Hard to ease the mind when it had been blow apart by two miniature hearts beating fast and furious as two perfect little bodies formed and grew.

  “Oh god.” Her fingers clenched on the wheel as her stomach clenched around two bags of chips, three cans of soda, and one and half bags of gummy bears.

  The rush of fear and excitement and panic shot through her as quickly and sharply as it had two weeks ago when she’d first seen with her own eyes the teeny lives she and Tris had made.

  She’d stumbled out of her doctor’s office, vaguely remembered thanking him and paying the bill, and somehow found her way home while her world spun and tilted all over again.

  She couldn’t do it alone.

  One baby would have been manageable and she’d had every intention of hunting Tris down to let him know he was going to be a father, but two babies…

  Covington might pride herself on her independence and know she could, if push came to shove, do anything she set her mind to. But raising two babies while working in an industry that required she stay in peak physical form when in all likelihood she’d be forced to rest later in her pregnancy not to mention most singers didn’t want a pregnant woman in their music video, then there would be night feeds once the babies arrived…

  Well, there really was no way she could do it alone.

  She sighed.

  She’d been deluding herself.

  She didn’t want to do it alone.

  Hadn’t from the moment she’d discovered she was pregnant. And when the situation had sunk in and the reality of having Tris’s babies had taken root in her mind as firmly as they had in her belly, well, she could no longer deny her true feelings.

  Finding him had become a priority.

  Ironic that it was Gavin who’d revealed Tristan’s whereabouts.

  Her ex-fiancé had turned up on her doorstep accusing her of sabotaging his friendship with Tris and blaming her for Tristan’s decision to relocate to that ‘godforsaken mountain’ miles away.

  It had taken a while to get the details out of a clearly drunk Gavin, and even longer to fend off his sloppy advances, but once he’d clued in to the not so obvious swell of her belly—she’d had to spell it out for him—he’d escaped her apartment building as though his ass was on fire.

  A little more investigation and Covington had all the information she needed on Tristan’s new home and made the decision to pack up and move there too.

  She had to admit she was excited to be going to Tristan’s hometown. He’d told her so much about the mountains and the lake where he’d grown up that she felt as though she’d been there already. And it sounded like the perfect place to raise children.

  Surely there was a dance studio she could get work at or maybe start her own. Now that she was pregnant, the idea of teaching little kids to dance appealed. It never had before but now…well the thought alone gave her a thrill. She could work around the demands of pregnancy and when the babies came and needed her attention.

  The plan made sense, even if it was a little vague and didn’t take into account Tristan’s reaction to seeing her.

  “Lord, what if he won’t even talk to me?”

  The car drifted as she rounded a bend on the slippery mountain road and her fingers flexed, her hands tightening on the wheel as she eased off the gas.

  Driving in snow country definitely required full concentration. The last thing she needed was to end up in a wreck. At this point, the Cavalier was her only means of shelter and crashing it would put her in an even worse position.

  “I am such an idiot.” She wanted to thunk her head on the steering wheel.

  She’d given up her home and most of her belongings and driven thousands of miles with no place to land. Not exactly the best decision she’d ever made. She should have called. Except telling Tris he was going to be a father over the phone felt wrong and she’d already denied him the first few months.

  Not that that was her fault; it wasn’t like he’d even told her he was leaving.

  Okay, sure, she’d kicked him out of bed then out the door, and she couldn’t remember exactly what she’d said to him but Covington had no doubt it wasn’t good because the man hadn’t just left her apartment, he’d left town!

  Hell, he’d gone to the other side of the country to get away from her.

  With another deep sigh, she accepted the fact the next few hours would be some of the most difficult of her life.

  She had to tell the man who’d fathered her children he was going to be a dad. Convince him she hadn’t kept him in the dark on purpose, and hope he let her stay with him until she worked out some other arrangement.

  Up ahead a sign at the side of the road made her lips twitch with a smile, made her a teeny tiny bit optimistic. As it flashed past, her smile bloomed.

  Just the name Winter Lake made her heart swell, made her think of Tris and his obvious love for his hometown. He’d always spoken of the mountain town with such fondness whenever he shared a childhood memory.

  No, she would not doubt her decision anymore; the warmth filling her proved she’d made the right choice.

  Everything would be okay.

  She couldn’t—wouldn’t—entertain any other option.

  Chapter 2

  Tris flopped onto his bunk at the station house, his body limp with fatigue, every muscle screaming with pain after his session in the gym where the head trainer had done exactly as Tristan had asked and delivered a punishing workout. But it didn’t help; nothing Chuck put him through helped. His mind remained alert and spinning around the one subject he’d tried every day for the last few months to erase.

  Covington Valenti.

  No matter how hard he worked or worked out or drank, he couldn’t remove the images of Cov naked and writhing beneath him from his head.

  One night and she’d marked him for life.

  He’d known he was hooked on the woman the second his former friend had introduced them, but with Gavin’s ring on her finger there was no way Tris could make a move.

  For over a year he’d watched the man he’d once called friend demolish any respect and loyalty Tris had for him.

  Keeping his mouth shut about Gavin’s cheating had been torture. Tris had struggled with the dilemma every day until he’d finally had enough and gone to Cov’s place with the intention of telling her everything.

  Except she’d already known.

  God, he wished he could have spared her that heartbreaking discovery.

  Although he had to admit he hadn’t seen one tear. Anger, frustration, embarrassment, they were all there, but not for one second did she appear heartbroken by Gavin’s behavior.

  It was why he’d made a move.

  And fucked everything up.

  He’d never forget the look of pure bliss on her face when she’d come apart in his arms. Never forget the sheer joy of joining his body with hers and pushing her over the crest once more, this time going right along with her.

  Nor would he forget the slumberous grey eyes, smoky with satisfaction, that blinked awake the next morning.

  Or the rush of dismay and horror that sto
le away her contentment as she’d registered who was in bed with her.

  His plan had been to let her wake slowly before loving her all over again.

  Except Cov had other ideas, and all of them were filled with shock and shame and embarrassment.

  He’d tried to argue. Tried to get her to see reason except by the time she’d pushed and shoved and maneuvered him to her front door, his clothes a bundle in his arms, she’d been in tears and Tris had known there was no way to get through to her in that moment.

  Yanking on his pants, he figured he’d give her some time to settle then they’d talk, except her parting words had sliced through him as though she’d thrust a dagger into his chest.

  “Tell that lying, cheating, worthless scumbag I fucked you for revenge. Tell him how I swallowed. That’ll give him a kick in the nuts knowing you got what he never did.”

  Her laughter had followed him into the hall as he’d flung open the door and left.

  “Jesus.” Clenching his abs, he curled off the bed into a series of sit-ups in an attempt to banish the latest round of memories.

  The bunk wasn’t the best surface to work on. It gave beneath him, squeaked in protest as he ramped up the speed and drove himself deeper into the pain and sweat of pushing his body beyond its limit.

  “Harding!” A hand slapped down on his shoulder, stopping him from rolling up again. “Shit, man, give yourself a break before you break.”

  Tris blinked sweat from his eyes and the grim face of Devlin Wallis came into focus.

  His friend and workmate shook his head. “I don’t know what the hell is up your ass but you need to get a handle on it. Yank it out. You’ll kill yourself at this rate.”