by Maisey Yates
“I ordered breakfast. It should be here soon.”
“You can’t be in bed with me when the food comes,” she said.
“Why not?”
“It looks decadent,” she said.
“Maybe it escaped your notice, Bea, but we are being decadent,” he pointed out. “Plush hotel room. Good room service. Lots and lots of sex...”
“I don’t have a lot of experience with that,” she said.
“Me neither. At least, not in the sense of being classy. Other things...I’ve been a little indulgent with. But it still wasn’t the same.”
Bea sniffed and moved against him. He wrapped his arm around her, unsure if he should have reminded her about his past. But then, she knew who he was. That was important. There weren’t secrets between them. Which meant that he needed to talk to her about the agent thing too. Soon.
The primary reason he had asked her to let him take her for the test was so that he could ambush her with something like this. With something special. Because he wanted her to understand what she meant to him. And more than that, he wanted to make some commitments. But they needed to work some things out. All good things, in his opinion. But, some things nonetheless.
“This bed is a lot nicer than the one back in your cabin,” he pointed out.
“Well, there’s more room,” she agreed, shifting so that his thigh was between her legs, and all he could concentrate on was the feel of her body against him.
“I don’t know what you’ve done to me,” he said, brushing her hair off her face. “But I’m pretty obsessed with you. Just so you know.”
She squirmed, looking uncomfortable, her cheeks turning pink. “I don’t understand why you would be obsessed with me.”
“I think knowing you has shown me how to have some purpose. Watching you put meaning into all kinds of things, into a baby robin, it’s taught me something. About how when you care, happiness tends to follow.”
“It’s not always a happy thing to care,” she said softly.
“But the fact of the matter is, it’s a lot better than caring about nothing. It’s a lot better than caring about just yourself. I think that was my biggest problem. Dealing with the accident aftermath. I love my sister. I always have. And I have a lot of good friends. I care about them. But I don’t think I’ve ever cared about anyone as much as I cared about me. As much as I cared about proving that I meant something. To my father, mostly. A little bit to myself. To anybody that thought I wouldn’t amount to anything. I was riding bulls at people, Beatrix. And when I lost that, I didn’t know who I was. Because if I wasn’t performing my success, I didn’t feel it. If somebody couldn’t see it then it must not be real. You’ve taught me a hell of a lot about doing. Just doing. Not for anyone’s benefit, not for performance. Hell, you’re the direct opposite of me in that way. You’ve been quietly achieving for years.”
“Yeah,” she said softly. “I suppose that’s true. But then, people don’t just immediately recognize everything you are because you decide that you want them to. I wanted a little of that glory. A little of that living out loud that you’ve always done.”
“Maybe there’s a middle ground. Maybe together we can help each other find it. I mean, there’s not much point in being with somebody who’s just good at things you’re already good at, is there?”
She was silent for a long moment. “I suppose, if you’re looking at things that way, then... That is true.”
“We need to figure out where we’re going to sleep,” he said.
She scrunched her face and he just wanted to kiss her and not have a discussion. “This bed seems pretty good to me.”
“Not right now, Bea. The rest of the time. Because Lord knows I love being plastered up against you, but I can’t do the twin bed for much longer. My whole body hurts in the morning, and hell, I don’t know, maybe that’s because of the sex. It’s a workout I haven’t had for a while. But I suspect also it might have something to do with the bed that my feet hang off the edge of.”
Bea’s movements became more agitated, and there was a knock on the door.
“Room service,” the person said.
Beatrix scrambled out of bed and grabbed hold of her robe. Dane did the same, but moving much more slowly.
By the time he got to the door, Bea was back in bed, looking sheepish.
“You can bring it in here,” Dane said, signing the bill quickly and sending the staff member on his way. Then he brought the trays right into bed with them and uncovered them, revealing eggs, bacon, biscuits and a plate of chocolate-covered strawberries.
He’d worked up a fantasy of Bea and strawberries, and checkout was at eleven. Which meant it was strawberry time now.
Bea grabbed hold of the carafe on the tray and poured herself some coffee into the basic white mug. Her lips twitched. “Fancy. Kind of.”
“It seemed right.”
They lay under the covers, picking at their food. And then he took a strawberry between his thumb and forefinger and brushed it against her lips. “Open up for me.”
“That’s not a breakfast food,” she said.
“I don’t care. You make me feel like chocolate-covered strawberries and sex in the morning, Bea. I don’t care if it’s the right time or the wrong time according to anyone or anything else. I just care about us.”
She turned pink to the roots of her hair, but she obeyed him. And he watched those pretty pale lips close around the fruit, his body getting hard again.
“But the bed,” he continued, trying to keep his resolve as firm as his dick. “I know that you love the cabin, Bea, but we’ve got the whole winery house just sitting there. And you might as well move in with me.”
She went stiff. Still. “I don’t like that house,” she said.
“I understand that,” he said. “But, I’m thinking practically. The sanctuary is going to be on the property, so living on the property makes the most sense.”
“My cabin is fine.”
“Yeah,” Dane said. “For you.”
“Yes,” Beatrix agreed. “It’s fine for me. I’m not sure what you think might be the issue with that.”
“Because I would like to be with you,” Dane said. “I would like to sleep with you at night. I would like to wake up with you in the morning. And in general, would like to share a living space with you.”
She blinked, first slowly, then more rapidly. “I don’t... I don’t see why that’s necessary.”
“It’s not necessary,” Dane said. “But it’s something that I want.”
“Why?” Beatrix asked, frowning. “Do you want it because you’re trying to take control of some...new life that you think you can have because you just...walked in and decided to?”
“No,” he said. “I want it because I like being with you. This is about you and me. It’s not about anything else.”
“Bullshit,” Beatrix said, sitting upright, her robe falling partway open and exposing the curve of her breast. Distracting him for a minute.
“My eyes are up here,” she said. “And I never thought I would have to say that to you.”
“Things change,” he said. “Things have changed,” he reiterated. “I don’t think you understand that. I’ve changed. What I want has changed. The way I feel about you has changed. And now the way that we are carrying on, the way that our living arrangements are don’t work for me.”
“Well, maybe nothing’s changed for me.”
“I don’t think that’s true, baby, I really don’t.”
“Dane, I think that you just are desperate to find something to do. And I appreciate your throwing yourself into this whole sanctuary thing...”
“I have something else to do,” he said.
“What?”
“Well, I was going to wait to bring this up because it’s kind of a new thought, and what I really wanted t
o talk to you about was us moving in together, not this. But since you asked. A couple of weeks ago Gabe Dalton brought up the idea of me getting into agenting. Like your brother used to do. And... I would be good at it. I have all the contacts, I actually know my business when it comes to the rodeo. When it comes to endorsement deals. I’m good with that. I think that you could keep me occupied, and... I don’t need the recognition. But it would be nice to have something that feels like an accomplishment. It would be nice to have goals.”
“So you’re talking about traveling.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Only a little bit. It doesn’t have to be a ton. It’s not like I’m going to be on the road all year or anything like that. And I don’t have to take on more work than I can handle.”
“Yeah, I actually understand how the job works, seeing as my brother did it. And, he made my sister-in-law’s life miserable while he was doing it.”
“It’s not going to be like that.”
“You know, it doesn’t matter if it does. But I think that it’s proof that you want this other life. And I’m not the right person to give it to you.”
He frowned. “What the hell? We want the same life, Beatrix, I know we do. And I’m not proposing anything crazy. I just think that we’re at the point where we should make some choices about our relationship. You know, in the interest of me not suffocating you in a single mattress.”
“This isn’t me,” she said, scrambling out of bed and flinging her hands wide. “This fancy hotel room, and the winery house. And... And... I’m not a person that you want. I’m just not.”
“Beatrix,” he said, following suit. “I don’t understand what’s got you so upset.”
“That’s the other thing. You don’t understand. You don’t understand anything. Because just... You can’t. You can’t possibly understand. But you know, we could move in together, and we could move in to that awful house that I don’t even like. And we could pretend that for a while everything was going to go great. But eventually, Dane... Eventually, you would follow the money. You’re just going to go hard into agenting, and you’re never going to be home. And you’re going to forget about me.”
He stared down at her, at the obvious distress on her delicate, beautiful face. “I’m not going to forget about you,” he said slowly. “But I think we can both agree that it would be better for me if I had something that was mine. I want to help you with the sanctuary, Beatrix, I do. But, it’s going to make us both crazy if that’s all I’m doing.”
“That’s not the point. That wouldn’t work either. You couldn’t stay home and just do the sanctuary because I would just be an obligation to you. And you would resent me. You would keep me, but you wouldn’t even want me.”
“Why are you acting like those are the only options?”
“Because they are,” she exploded. “Because that’s all we’re ever going to get. Because that’s how things like this go.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about right now, and you need to start explaining it to me, because there’s no way I can win as long as we don’t understand each other.”
“At first maybe you wouldn’t, and you might not mean to. But things will change. Look how much they’ve changed just recently. They’ll change again.”
“Beatrix,” he said. “Tell me.”
“That’s what he did,” she said. “That’s what my father did. Jamison Leighton offered him money to never talk to me and he took it. My own father took money and walked away from me when he was offered that. A cabin in the woods was fine, until he could have more. I don’t know why... I don’t know why you wouldn’t feel the same.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
BEA WAS SHAKING, and she felt silly and hysterical and completely on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But Dane didn’t understand. And he was right, she hadn’t told him, so maybe it wasn’t fair. But he needed to understand.
She couldn’t uproot her life in the cabin that meant so much to her. All that hard-won independence that she’d been forced to find at such a young age, when she had realized that she was going to have to make her own way, make things matter to herself, make herself matter, or she never would.
That was what her cabin represented. Her independence. Her own life. Happiness on her terms, rather than her parents’.
“My father’s name is Michael Fulsome. And he used to work at Grassroots Winery. He kept the grounds and lived in a little cabin in the woods, by the river. He had a farm dog named Mabel. And she used to follow him around everywhere. He had a wide smile and a big red beard. And animals loved him. And I thought he was the nicest man that I had ever met. And I remember being a kid and thinking that if he would’ve been my father my life would’ve been a lot happier.”
“Beatrix,” he said, his voice and face going horribly soft, like she was a wounded animal, and she should know, because she had used that voice on more wounded animals and people than the average person ever would.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t look at me like I’m damaged. I went through all of this by myself. I don’t need you to feel bad for me now. But you do need to understand. I found out when I was sixteen that he was my father. I was... I was happy, Dane. Because suddenly I made sense. Who I was made sense. I was part of him, not Jamison Leighton, who didn’t have a kind word for anyone. Who didn’t have a smile for anything, much less children or animals. Michael was my father, and suddenly my world clicked into place. My mother told me. She told me to hurt me.” Bea blinked back the tears that were building, making her nose feel prickly and her throat tight.
“Why would she do that?” Dane asked.
“Because she wanted me to be a certain thing, Dane. She wanted me to be her ally, her friend, I don’t know. To get nails and hair done with her. To be a kind of wild force against my father—against Jamison, I mean—but I wasn’t in the right way. And so she saw me as a weapon that she could use in a different way. Of course, she wanted Jamison to know that I wasn’t his. And of course she wanted me to know it too.”
“What happened after that?”
“I spent a summer at the winery with Michael. With him knowing. And me knowing. And I would go out and visit him every day at the vineyard. Asking questions. About his life. About why he loved animals. But never about my mother. Never about how he got involved with her. Never about why my father let him continue to work at the winery if he even suspected.”
Bea shifted, trying to ease the pain that was building inside of her with every word. She knew the story already. She’d dealt with it. It didn’t need to hurt this much.
It was what had taught her the lesson she’d carried forward ever since. That no matter what promises were made, they were only as certain as the present moment.
The future might bring better, bigger, more than Bea could ever hope to be.
“I didn’t care about his relationship with my mother,” she continued. “I just wanted to know who I was. I wanted to make sense of that. And I wanted to have a father who loved me. Because God knew Jamison didn’t. But it was the happiest I’d ever been. Because suddenly all of that resentment made sense. Always feeling like I didn’t fit made sense. Even my red hair made sense.”
Dane reached out and put his hand on her cheek and she pulled away. “My father didn’t like it. Jamison didn’t like it. He was afraid, I think, of what I might do, of what might happen if more than just us knew that Michael was my father. As far as he was concerned the fact that I was a late-in-life surprise for them that came years after their other children, the fact that I looked different... Any rumors about that were unsubstantiated. My father wanted it kept that way. One day when I went down to visit Michael he was packing up. He was leaving. He said that he had to. That Jamison had sent him away. He left Mabel. He left Mabel to be with me. I went running into the house, and I screamed at Jamison, and I told him that I wouldn’t let him send Michael away. I s
aid that I loved him. And that he was my father. My real father. The only one that I cared about at all. That I didn’t love Jamison. Not one bit.”
Beatrix took a deep breath. “And do know what he said to me? He was cool and calm, like he always was. Like he wasn’t hurt by any of the things that I’d said to him, or by the idea that I might not love him. He said he hadn’t sent Michael away. But he said he’d given him an offer. And he offered him a substantial sum of money to agree to sign a gag order and never tell anyone that I was his daughter. And to always stay away from me. So what was the point? What was the point in being angry, or causing a scene the way that Sabrina had. In carrying on and ruining everything for everyone else?”
It was so hard to tell the story. So shameful and embarrassing. “That’s when I moved in to the cabin. Michael was gone and it was empty, so why not? Sabrina and Damien didn’t know. I was only sixteen. It was my quiet rebellion. And no one knew so my—Jamison—didn’t care. I took Mabel and moved in to the little house and I made it mine. I made it safe.”
She scrubbed at her stinging eyes, angry that emotion was right there at the surface, no matter how hard she tried. “My father chose money over me, Dane. As if a simple life in a cabin with a daughter wouldn’t be enough. Well, I made it enough for me. I live in a tiny cabin with animals, and it’s enough for me. It’s my choice. I have money, I could do whatever I want. I choose this life. I don’t know why it couldn’t be enough for him. Maybe it was me. Maybe I wasn’t enough.”
Dane put his hand on her face, his thumb warm on her cheek, moving in slow circles. “Bea... Jamison must care about you. He gave you the trust fund. Just like he did the rest of his children.”
“Not to Sabrina, because she embarrassed him,” Bea said, her voice wobbling. “No, he gave money to me and he made it very clear why. When he called me into his office to tell me that it was passing into my control a couple of years ago I asked him that same question. I said why. Why are you giving money to me, when I’m not one of your children and we both know it. He said it was obligation. Because for all to see I was his daughter. Because I had never humiliated him or shamed him. And doing anything less would be a failure to those obligations. He fully claimed me as his. And that was what mattered. Then he gave me money. Not a hug. He didn’t say that it was love that made me his father. He said it was obligation and appearances.”
