Read Cutter's Hope for Free Online Page B

on the small table and poured a generous amount in each, setting the bottle between them. He sat in the deck chair opposite mine and handed me a glass, picking up his own. He clicked his against mine and we sipped the cool, sweet wine.
    “What are we toasting to?” I asked after savoring the selection.
    “New beginnings,” he suggested with a wink.
    “How do you mean?”
    He let out a gusty sigh of satisfaction after taking another sip of his wine and set the glass on the little table. He leaned forward in his seat, forearms on his knees and looked at me hard.
    “You always gotta be so suspicious?” he asked.
    “You always have to avoid the question?” I countered. He chuckled darkly and reached down, gently cupping the heel of one of my feet with his hand. He gave the barest of tugs and I thought about it for a second and relented. More to prove the point that I did know how to trust… well okay, more that I still had one leg and two arms to beat his ass with if he decided to do something I didn’t like. He placed the heel of my foot on top of his thigh and picked at the laces holding my gladiator heels on.
    I watched him fascinated as he took off my shoe but fascination quickly turned to contentment when he pressed his thumb into the arch of my foot, his warm, rough fingers wrapping around the instep. He nodded carefully at my reaction and caught my eyes with his. We stared at one another across a chasm of silence for several heartbeats, each looking the other over, wordlessly sousing each other out.
    “You need to relax, Sweetheart,” his voice was low and soothing and sent a little thrill of desire down my spine. I shivered and his smile grew into a shit eating grin. I raised my eyebrows and wordlessly took another sip of my wine. It was sweet and crisp and really damned good. Cutter had taste. I looked at the bottle, some kind of Riesling.
    “Good stuff,” I complimented.
    “Thanks,” he kneaded my foot just a little more insistently and I couldn’t help it, my eyes slipped shut and a tiny sigh of contentment escaped me. I didn’t leave my eyes closed for long. Cutter was hot, he had the bad boy thing down perfect and I enjoyed looking. Not like he minded it. I watched as he took another mouthful of wine, savoring it before he swallowed.
    “Gimme the other one, Baby.”
    I scoffed a laugh, “I’m not your Baby,” but I did what he asked and gave him the other foot. The deck was smooth beneath my polished toes. He gave the other foot the same careful consideration and I had to admit, sitting here like this, with him, was nice. We’d stopped speaking and it was odd, we didn’t have to. The silence was a comfortable one of two grown ass adults taking a chill at the end of a long day. For a minute it was easy to pretend that we weren’t at odds. That he wasn’t hiding something from me and I wasn’t hiding anything from him.
    “You know, I thought you were a looker before but when you’re relaxed and not scowling all the time, you’re a real knock out,” he took a drink and winked at me over his glass. I raised an eyebrow, amused and gave him the finger. He laughed.
    We sat in companionable silence for a long time. When Cutter had finished kneading that foot he brought the other up so both of them rested on his knee and we just relaxed under the star spangled sky of the warm Florida night, sipping our wine and just being comfortable. God it would be nice if I could get more of this in my life.
    Too soon I finished the last sip of my wine and sighed out, setting the glass on the little table. Cutter lifted the bottle and gave me a considering look.
    “No thanks,” I murmured and gathered my purse. He wasn’t going to tell me anything else and as much as my pussy, and inner wanton sex goddess disagreed with me on this, I wasn’t going to fuck him, so I needed to head back to my room and get some sleep. Get a fresh start in the am.
    I dropped my feet to the deck and Cutter stood with me. He