by Jamie Magee
Harley went to follow them, sure that she and Wyatt were going to take off for a bit before dinner was ready, but she doubled back and walked into the office. She had printed out a few papers she wanted to show Wyatt and had left them in there just so they wouldn’t get wet. She had folded them up and pushed them into her back pocket and was walking out again when Camille shifted the calendar on her desk toward Harley. “I’m setting up a schedule for the next shows. Are you going to be at all of these?”
Harley felt her heart pick up. Camille always knew more than she said but expected you to tell her something before she acknowledged it. One of the shows was across the days she was due home.
“Not this one,” Harley said in a ghost of a whisper.
Camille wrote something down. “Wyatt was due to train for these riders. I can shift them.”
“He still can, as far as I know. I mean, I don’t know about his schedule with the fire department.”
Camille looked up at Harley over the reading glasses she only used at her desk. “I suppose I assumed if you were going home that Wyatt would want to go, that you would want him to go.”
Harley was sure she was flushing. She was going home to fake break up with Collin, or at least break that news silently to their fathers just before the birthday celebration. In all truth, Collin was still hashing out the details. Harley had been too enchanted with her life now to follow through, but she knew that Collin had already had a few lunches with his father, even planned to introduce Quinn to him in a few weeks’ time.
Before Harley was forced to answer that hard question, that knowing stare, Wyatt came up behind her. “All set?”
Harley nodded.
“We’re going to have dinner at home. I let Dad and Grams know already,” he said to his mom.
“See you in the morning, son.” She always said that to him, but never to Harley. It was little things like that that Harley found herself reading far too deep into. It almost felt like the only one that trusted her beyond a shadow of a doubt was Wyatt, but at times he even seemed to hold her a little tighter, especially after her nightly calls with her dad or when Collin called out of their normal routine.
Harley was so deep in the guilt trip that Camille purposely wrapped her in that she didn’t notice where Wyatt was taking her. Her head was against his back, her eyes closed, her arms clenched around him, wanting to stretch every moment alone with him, not to think about home. She wanted to get past it, but she didn’t want to face it.
It was going to cause a fight somewhere; Camille had clearly already alluded to that, and she was right. So far, Wyatt hadn’t mentioned a thing about her going to that birthday party, but that didn’t mean that when he figured out that Collin was her date to it that he would be okay with it, even if the entire deal was just a ruse.
Wyatt had stopped, turned off the four-wheeler, but noticed that Harley was still holding on to him for dear life. He still found himself reading every silent gesture of hers, sometimes flashing back to their past. Right now, how she held him a little tighter, how she smiled and changed the subject when he asked her a random question about some tomorrow they had planned reminded him of when they were kids, when she would turn inward weeks before she was set to leave his side for months at a time.
“Where are you?” he said as he squeezed her arms, which were around him.
Harley opened her eyes, finding them on a distant, rolling hill, overlooking one of the furthest sections of the farm, past the point of where Wyatt had built his home.
“Right here,” she said as she glided around him. He reached for her legs, which were around his waist, and pulled her hips closer to his, then leaned up and gave her a sweet, seductive kiss.
“I’ve been waiting hours for that,” he said in a husky whisper.
She smiled as her hands ran down his face.
He glanced to his side, and she followed that gaze. In the far distance, she saw Avowed in the pasture. The yearling stalls on the far side of the barn, at least a few of them, had the stalls to where the horse could go out or in the paddock at its own will.
“How soon before I get to ride him?”
“Him? Good eyes,” Wyatt said as he watched Avowed take off in a gallop, only to stop and see how far away from the stall he was, then run again when he decided the restriction was too close.
“Your mother introduced us weeks back.”
“Did she?” he said.
When Harley looked back, she found his stare lingering on her.
“She gave him to me.”
Wyatt lifted a brow. “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me.”
She was reading him then, the near sadness in his voice. Her stare questioned him.
“I wanted to make peace with her, but all that gift did was seem to bring the pain to the surface.”
Harley knew that Camille had never really found blame with her son. She wasn’t really sure who Camille found blame with for those lost, dark years, but she knew all she wanted Wyatt to understand about that gelding was that beauty, life, talent, power come from every walk of life, not just good breeding. “She was proud when she showed me.”
“And how did you feel?”
“I think he’s extraordinary…I have to wonder how much like Danny Boy he’s going to be.”
“Different blood, at least by half.”
“That doesn’t matter,” she whispered.
His lips met hers as his arms clasped around her, then lifted her body against his. She was so lost in the touch of his lips that she didn’t realize where he was carrying her until he went to lay her down.
Under this distant shade tree, there was a blanket, a basket of food, a few ice-cold long necks.
“You’re a little early, Mr. Doran,” she said as she laughed against the near growling kisses on her neck, even fought to roll him over on his back so that her hands were playfully pinning his arms as she sat astride him. “The sun is still up.”
“No one’s coming in my back forty,” he said as his eyes grew hungry.
“Yours,” she said with a sly smile and a lifted brow.
“Mine,” he said as he broke from her hold and clenched his hands on her hips. “Came with the house…the rest will come in time.”
“Let’s not rush that,” Harley said in a quiet voice, knowing when it was all his that his parents would have shifted into the role of his grandparents, or even be gone. Harley wanted him to hold on to his family, hold on to time, youth.
He started to unfasten the belt on her shorts.
“Wyatt Doran.”
“I’ve loved you under the stars, never the sun,” he said, pulling her belt away. She looked like an angel above him, the way the sun was shining through her long hair, making it look more blonde than red at the moment.
“Every day, you do,” she whispered as she closed her eyes and felt the sensation of his velvet hands moving under her shirt, only to fall and glide up again. Right when his hand fell past her waist and slid across the folded paper she had stuffed there, her eyes flew open and she reached back for them, completely slaughtering the mood, but the smile on her face told Wyatt that she didn’t even notice.
“This is for you,” she said, handing him the paper.
As he opened it, she spoke. “If I ordered anything wrong, I can still change it. Well, I have to have it changed by in the morning. I keep forgetting to talk to you about it; I just told them the latest version of what you had, about the hitch and everything.”
Wyatt’s smile fell as he read the papers. He sat up, causing her to slip between his legs. “You bought me a truck?”
His tone was the last thing Harley expected; it was near cold, almost threatened. She felt her skin flush, the way it always did when her mother would come at her with that same unforgiving tone and words that would twist whatever intent Harley had in the first place, making Harley’s actions seem downright criminal.
Wyatt felt her tense in his lap, looked up from the paper. His stare didn’t seem to h
elp her edgy response.
“No, I’m giving you mine.”
“Same difference. You give me yours, and your daddy gives you another one.”
Where the hell did that come from? “I don’t get why you’re mad about this.”
He heard the building anger in her voice. There was still a tremble there, but she was fighting back. He might have taken the time to realize how strong she had become, but right now he was too furious, felt like he had been punched in the stomach.
“You don’t get why I’m upset? Harley, I don’t want your money. I don’t want or need anything that I haven’t earned.”
“That’s stupid.”
His glare was murderous. “It’s stupid for me to earn what’s mine?”
“It’s stupid for you to think that gift came from anyone but me.”
“And why would you give me a truck?”
“Why do I need one? Maybe I just should have said, ‘Here is our new truck.’ What else do we need to add to it?”
Wyatt leaned back on his arms and stared out into the distance. His jaw line was sharp, that stare near lethal. “The first threat that was used to divide us before was money and power. I don’t give a damn about either. Just you. This place.” His eyes moved back to hers. “There is nothing I own that does not have more value than the almighty dollar, it’s all priceless in my mindset.”
“I can say the same.”
“You? You can say the same?” he said, lifting his brow, daring her to press on.
Neither one of them had ever wanted for much beyond each other, but it was different all the same. The Tatums purchased what they wanted, if was broken they bought a new one. Not the case with the Doran’s.
In Wyatt’s family it meant more to have something that had been carried down, something that was ripe with loyalty. Whether it was saddle his father had won medals in, tools that his grandfather had mended the fences with before, or the tact trunk that had traveled across the globe with his mother as she staked her claim in the jumper world. Even the home he was raised in carried generations of priceless gems that meant more to the Dorans than any dollar that had been offered, simply because their legacy was attached to every piece.
That truck. His truck. It was his first. And in that truck his father taught him to drive. He’d held Harley, crossed lines that made his heart thunder; it had carried him across state lines. It was the truck that Lucas Armstrong, Memphis’s dad, had helped him build a customize motor for, and he was long gone from this world now. Each time Wyatt cranked his truck a flash of some past would surface. It was like that with everything he owned.
If something didn’t have meaning, it was not worth owning in his mindset.
Harley skin was flushed, not with fear, but with anger. “That truck that I totaled, it was a graduation present. That rig, a Christmas present. I could go on, occasion by occasion. I didn’t wake up and ask my dad to buy me anything. What I was given, I put in my name. All mine.”
“And you think that’s an average, everyday graduation present?”
“You’re giving me shit about this when your mother signed over a horse to me that is worth just as much as that truck, if not more. A horse that she is boarding right alongside Danny Boy for free.”
His stare searched her face as he gritted his teeth. His mother had given her something that had meaning, emotion - that would have a legacy. Bottom line it was lesson to the pair of them. This truck was a machine, an object, one that could be made a thousand times over. There was a difference. In his mind there was.
“That’s debatable. He hasn’t made a name for himself yet.”
“He will. And that is not the point.”
“And what is the point? I’m in the good graces with the Tatums so I should accept their gifts humbly.”
She squeezed her legs around his waste like a vice, heard him grunt. That was all the pain she could bare to bring him, she wanted to slug him, for him to get over whatever macho bull shit this was. This had nothing to with the Tatums it had to do with her. This was her possession and she wanted to share it with him.
“The point is, I’m not going to spend the rest of my life wondering if I should or should not give you something, if you will take some chauvinist defense to it. What is mine, whatever it is, it’s yours, and if you don’t like that, we have an issue.”
He felt his heart thunder. That one rapid line, the one that promised some kind of forever, those were rare. Even though this was wrapped in anger, he felt it slam into him.
They stared endlessly at each other, a silent dare.
“I love my truck...”
She threw her hands in the air. “Easton and Memphis are helping you do something to it every other week.”
“Yeah, the basics may be something off the wall, but I earned that truck….” His hands reached around her waist, putting her all the way on his lap once more. “Harley, a lot of good things happened to me in that truck.”
That damn southern charm was her weakness every time. The way her said her name, slow and deep, still made her chest hum with anticipation.
The anger in her expression started to fade.
“Do you have any idea how many people have offered to buy it from me? How many even went above any blue book because of everything me and the boys did to it?” She shook her head slightly. “A lot. That’s all I meant, Harley. I meant that what I own means something to me.”
“You meant more than that,” she said quietly.
He’d hurt her feelings, and he could kill himself for doing that. Then again, he knew, from watching his parents, you had to say what you felt, you could not live your life with someone and not expect there to bumps in the road, different views. He was always a little guarded when it came to pushing Harley’s buttons. Her mother had pushed enough for a lifetime, taught Harley to see every disagreement as a threat, instead of the stage for reasoning, compromise.
“Listen…I’m not going to lie to you, your mother burned me with every word she said to you, every word Ava overheard her yelling at you that last night before she took you away…I was raised to give and not take. If things like this come up, it might be hard for me, but I’ll get over it.” When she looked down, he lifted her chin with his fingertips. “I swear I will...I’m not a materialistic person, I can’t change that. I don’t want to.”
“I’m my father’s daughter…not hers. He raised me the same, to give and not take…you and me, we have to do both…I don’t have a dime to my name, Wyatt. My horses and that rig… that’s me. And I want to share that with you and anything else that’s mine…we can give it all away together if you want, but that’s how I’m going to see it. Money is nothing to me, not because of my family, but because I know money can’t buy the only thing that makes anything worth having in this world…it can’t buy the reason I wake up every day with a smile on my face.” She raised her chin slightly. “You can drive it or not. That truck is coming here because it’s mine, and this is where I’m staying. You want to fight about that Doran, fine, give it to me. But I will win that fight. I swear that to you…you’re mine, Wyatt; I’m not living my life without you. I already know it’s impossible.”
He let his eyes rapidly move across hers. Harley had always known what she wanted, he knew that, but she never really knew how to demand it. This right here, that fire in her eyes, it was stirring him, making his heart thunder. He knew without a doubt she was every bit as powerful as her father had told him she was when he was just a fifteen-year-old boy. And she was his.
His pride tried to hide behind the anger, but he knew she meant every word she’d said. If anything, that gift was merging their lives.
He leaned in and let his lips glide across hers, clasped the flesh of her bottom lip with his, then pulled away. “Silver.”
She furrowed her brow.
“Change the color to silver on our truck. It’ll match the trailers we pull to shows.”
A beaming smile left her lips as she dove forward, leaning h
im back on the blanket. “We get to make up now, right?” she whispered against his jaw as her lips moved to his neck before she leaned up and gazed down at him.
His hands drifted under her shirt. She clasped the end of it and pulled it over her head, laughing when she felt his fingertips trace the sunrays across her near bare chest. Only a thin trace of lace was shielding her.
“My only goal every day…is just to let you ‘be,’” he said as his hand unclasped her bra without the slightest fumble. “And each day that I do, you grow stronger, even more vibrant. I want to give you the world, Harley.”
“You have...”
Harley leaned forward and met his lips as he rose. The kiss was soft and sweet but grew in strength as that random, stupid fight drifted away and the deep-rooted, claiming passion they had together took flight.
With the setting sun as the backdrop, kiss by kiss, touch by touch, the clothes that bound them left, the intense passion exploded.
The stars had risen just as Harley won the final battle of control, sat astride him, then brought them together as one. Their eyes, that deep stare full of emotion, only broke for a moment, only when an erotic rush of energy forced them to.
Chapter Eighteen
Harley was in the shower when she heard her phone ring. She hadn’t managed to talk to Wyatt all day, so she ran to her phone thinking it was him, drenched enough to leave a pool of water with every step, only to figure out it was her mother calling.
That sick, plummeting feeling hit Harley like a Mack truck. She refused to answer, walked away from the phone, even got back in the shower and finished the task she had abandoned. She was cleaning up her mess from the water, gathering a load of laundry when it rang again.
Seeing that it was Collin didn’t really ease her nerves. She had tried to call her father earlier, but Donald had told her that he was having an off day and decided to retire earlier. He seemed to be having a lot of those lately. Right when Harley would grasp the idea of the inevitable, she would call and find him on the golf course with Conrad, laughing as if it were ten years before, when he seemed too powerful to ever die.
