by Maisey Yates
She didn’t say anything to that. “Well, I’m not completely against what you’re saying. And as somebody who has an investment in the businesses on Main Street I prefer this to just selling to a big property management company or something.”
“You haven’t mentioned anything about eliminating your competition or making sure that another knickknack store doesn’t open up.”
“Frankly, whatever brings people to Copper Ridge is good. In a small town it doesn’t benefit us to look at each other as competition. At least, not from my point of view. We want people to know they have options, to know there’s a reason to walk down Main Street. Ample reason. That means that I want every business on that street healthy, and every building full.”
“Not very many people would feel that way. Most people prefer to cut the throat out of their competition.”
She lifted her shoulder. “People aren’t going to come to town once. They aren’t going to buy one thing. They’re going to want to eat at more than one restaurant, make sure that they have exhausted the full selection of driftwood-based paraphernalia.”
He smiled, enjoying this more animated version of her that wasn’t simply glaring daggers at him. “Your store is a lot more than driftwood paraphernalia. I mean, granted, scented candles and ceramic woodland animals aren’t exactly to my taste, but I imagine it appeals to a lot of people.”
“It gives me an excuse to buy endless seasonal decorations for the shop. And I can constantly refresh them.”
He shook his head. “To each his own.”
“Well, I was mostly raised by my brother. It isn’t like I ever had anything pretty in my house.” Her tone was light, but he could tell that the moment she said that, she regretted it. That she was irritated with herself for saying anything to him that wasn’t hostile.
“What happened to your mother?” She had referenced being without her a few times now, and he was curious. It wasn’t fair, the way that all of the shitty things in life seemed to happen in concentrated doses right above certain people. But, it seemed to be the way life worked.
“She left. She took that big fat payoff from your dad and she left.”
Her words settled hard in the room. “How long after?”
“About a year,” she responded, her tone flat. “Honestly, I guess it wasn’t very appealing to take care of a daughter who was in and out of different reconstructive surgeries.”
“She left you? She left you when you were going through all that?” Pressure built in his chest, rage, hot and completely inappropriate roaring inside of him. He had caused this, he had no right to be angry about the fallout. He had left—how could he be angry about what she’d been subjected to when he’d never made a move to protect her?
He had never had the right.
He didn’t have the right now. But that wasn’t what this was about. This was just about giving her something. But he hadn’t fully realized everything that he owed her. Just how impossible it would be to make a dent in this mess.
“She was never going to win an award for being the world’s greatest mother, Gage,” Rebecca continued. “Really, she thought of us as a burden most of the time before the accident. But after that? Yeah, after that any maternal instinct really seemed to go out the window.” She looked away from him, her eyes unfocused as she stared at the back wall. “Hell, if I could have escaped my body I would have. Too damn bad I was stuck with it. But, feeling that way, it makes it difficult to be all that angry. Who wants to deal with that? Nobody.” She looked back at him, her dark eyes glittering. “I was a burden before, but I was a damaged burden after that.”
“Bullshit.”
“What?”
“Bullshit,” he repeated, harder, louder.
“Right. Because you know. Because you would have treated someone in your life differently? Because you really would have been there for your family.”
He gritted his teeth, her words hitting their target. They broke through his skin, burning beneath the muscle, painful in their accuracy. “I wouldn’t have left a child alone in a hospital.”
“But you did,” she said. “You left me. You damaged me and then you left me. You left me in a state my own mother didn’t want to deal with.” She stood, her voice rising as she did. “You know everybody feels sorry for me. Just desperately sad for everything I might have been. I could have been beautiful, at least that’s what I’ve been told. But I’m not.”
“That’s not true,” he said, his voice rough. And as soon as he said that, he realized that she was beautiful. She really was.
Her long, dark hair was perfect for a man to wrap around his hand so he could draw her forward. Her lips were full and dusky. Captivating.
And, looking at her like she was a woman was a step too far. He had done enough. He didn’t need to be a perverted asshat on top of it.
“That’s all you have to say?” She took a step toward him, challenge lighting her dark eyes. “You wanted to share secrets. So, you show me your horrible family finances, and I show you what my scars really mean to me. Or is that a little bit too real for you? Did you want to come back and lift the downtrodden, artfully damaged princess from the muck you left her in? Has it been terribly confronting for you to come back and see that you left behind a bulletproof bitch that doesn’t need you to come in and fix her?”
“If you don’t need to be fixed, then why are you so angry?”
She launched herself at him then, one small fist pounding against his chest. “You can’t fix it. The fact you’re even here trying is insulting. Everything I’ve been through. I hate you.” She hit him again, harder this time. “Everything in my life was going fine. At least, it went in a routine. And then you came back. And you’re just here, acting like you could be some kind of benevolent savior, but you never asked if I wanted to be saved.”
She hit him again, just for good measure, he had a feeling. And he grabbed hold of her elbows, holding her steady, not doing anything to keep her from beating on him. She wrenched herself partly away, pounding against him again. “How dare you?” she asked. “How dare you change things, again? I was fine. Everything was going well. You just… You came here for you. It’s for you, because it sure as hell isn’t for me.”
“I wanted to give you the shop and then leave.”
“You could take my pride with you. Forgive me, but it’s in short supply, and I’m not handing bits and pieces of it out at random.”
“Then maybe stop running your mouth at me.” He felt something in his chest, something more than anger. Something that felt raw and wounded. Just plain bad. And he didn’t like it. Didn’t like that growing sense of tenderness that was just plain painful, not to mention misplaced. He tightened his hold on her, looking down into her molten brown eyes. “The way I see it, you either take the handout or you stop fighting me every step of the way. The simple fact is, our lives have collided again. And there’s no sense pretending they didn’t in the past. That we don’t have a connection. Whether you like it or not, we do. Whether you think it’s fair that I was affected by this or not, I was. But you can’t have it both ways. You can have me be absent and eternally punish me. You can’t want nothing from me, but need something that I own. It doesn’t work that way.”
Something in her expression changed, the light in her eyes sharpening, turning feral. “You want to make things right? You want to get back something that was taken from me?”
“I already told you that I’m here to fix things. As best as I can.”
There was only a breath between those words and what happened next, and he didn’t have time to react. She leaned forward, using the hold he had on her to her advantage, pressing her lips against his.
And they ignited.
*
REBECCA HAD NO idea what she was doing. In about every way that phrase could be applied, she had no idea what she was doing. She had been kissed before, but it hadn’t felt like this. Maybe it had to do with all of the anger that was coursing through her veins. She
could honestly say she’d never kissed a man whom she also wanted to kill.
But, then, added to that fact, she had no idea how she had gone from yelling at him to tasting him. Yet she was. And, the realization that it was completely insane didn’t find her scrambling back to safety.
The first touch of his lips was like a taste of water after years in the desert. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she was. And, no matter that it was a terrible idea, the only thing was the thirst. It was all that mattered. Satisfying it, quenching it. A few moments ago, she hadn’t known that it existed. Now, it was the only thing inside her. Bigger—at least in this moment—than her anger. Bigger than her scars. Bigger than who he was.
His grip on her arms was punishing, bruising as he held her steady, letting her continue her wanton attack of his mouth with hers. He was just standing there, as impassive as ever, as if he was merely allowing this kiss, and not participating in it.
That made her even angrier. It shouldn’t. It should be the jolt of sanity that she needed, but she wasn’t feeling particularly sane.
She wrenched her arms free, wrapping them around his neck and leaning forward, her breasts pressing against the hard wall of his chest as she tilted her head, all the better to breach his defenses.
He was like iron. Cold, impenetrable. But she was hot enough to melt him, she was sure of that. She was made entirely of rage, and need, a red, molten thing inside of her that couldn’t be contained anymore. It was too big for her, and too destructive.
So, he was going to have to have some of it. He was going to have to carry some of it inside of him, so he could be burned just as she was. Why should she be the only one?
She parted her lips, tracing the seam of his mouth with her tongue. And that did it. On a growl, he wrapped his arms around her, the shock of being surrounded by him, overtaken by him, momentarily immobilizing her.
It was all he needed to assume control. And assume it he did. He slid one hand up her back, pressing his palm between her shoulder blades, the hold possessive and intense. A shockwave rolled over her as she tried to reconcile the years spent with so little touch, broken by this force of contact that rivaled anything she had ever felt before in her life.
His stubble was rough, his cheek scraping against hers as he took the lead, changing the angle yet again, forcing her lips apart even further, his tongue sliding against hers in a sensual echo of the verbal sparring they had just been engaged in.
He was so hot, so big and hard, the extreme of absolutely everything. The epitome of masculinity, making her feel tiny and delicate and a whole host of things that she would normally hate to feel. Somehow, he made it all seem okay. He made it seem right.
Somehow, he made her savor that feeling. Being small, being held. Being helpless to do anything but submit to the power of his touch, the absolute and complete dominance of his kiss.
He pulled back from her for a moment, then returned, cupping her face, holding her head steady as he tasted her deeper, taking the kiss to a place that was so hard, so hot, she thought it might destroy her completely.
Her knees went weak, and she started shaking, a hollow sensation beginning to expand deep and low in her stomach. She ached. All the way down. And she needed… She just needed.
She arched against him, and he stood firm, as unyielding as granite. But she liked that. Very few people stood firm against her. For fear of breaking her, or for fear that she might break them. But he did. He stayed hard, and he gave her something to launch herself at, and she had no idea how much she needed that until now. Had had no idea just how much she needed to go up against the side of a mountain.
Gage West was most definitely her Everest. And right now, she wanted to climb him all the way to the summit.
He growled, his teeth scraping against her bottom lip before he went back again, and again, tasting her deeper and deeper with each pass of his mouth over hers. And she was lost in it. Completely consumed. And why not? She had been lost in the fog that he’d caused for so many years. Why shouldn’t she get lost in this one?
Suddenly, he pulled back, pushing her away as he did, releasing his hold on her completely. He stood there, his chest rising and falling sharply, his eyes hard, his dark brows locked together. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Don’t you mean what the hell were we doing?” She would be damned if she accepted his anger for this.
“What the hell do you want?” he continued, as though she hadn’t spoken.
“I thought—” she cleared her throat “—well, I thought that maybe you could at least treat me like a woman. Since nobody else does. And it’s your fault.”
“Is that what you want? You want to trade for sex?”
His words were like a slap. They were also her fault. Because she was the one who had led the conversation, hell, the entire interaction, down this road.
“Don’t,” she said.
“You said I owe you. I owe you sex?”
Anger made her mean. “Sure. Why not? Or is that a step too far for you? You’ll give me a building, but you’re not going to pity fuck the girl you scarred for life?”
“No,” he said.
She shouldn’t be sad he was turning her down, because she wouldn’t take him up on it anyway. She didn’t want his pity. And she didn’t want to sleep with him. She hated him. She had never been with a man before, and he was hardly going to be the first one. That would be… It didn’t make any sense. Still, she didn’t want him to turn her down. But it was another blow to her already fragile self-esteem.
“I guess your sense of justice really only extends so far.”
“You don’t even want to take a building for me. I’m not going to pay you in sex. Mostly because that isn’t really what you want.”
“Oh, so now you’re an expert on what I want?” She moved past him, dodging him neatly when he attempted to reach out and grab her. “Don’t.”
“Is this the part where you tell me you’re not going to speak to me anymore? And you’re going to refuse to have anything to do with me?”
“No,” she said, the word vibrating inside of her, the denial filled with rage and conviction. “I care about Main Street, and from where I’m sitting you have way too much power. I want to make sure that whatever happens is something that helps shape the town that I love. So, I’m going to take this opportunity. But it doesn’t mean I don’t hate you.” That last part was a little bit childish, and she wished that she had been able to play it a little bit cooler. Wished that she weren’t quite so transparent.
Wished that she weren’t made entirely of wounded female ego, busted up pride and frustrated lust.
Because no matter that it was a terrible idea, no matter that she was infuriated at him, she was still trembling with desire for him. She had never felt like this before. She had never felt so desperate, so needy, after a kiss. Or, ever, really.
She was so angry at him. Angry, because he was the one to bring all of these feelings up, and it really did only seem fair that he be the one to satisfy them. Angry because she should never have been attracted to him in the first place. Angry more at herself than at him, which made her even angrier.
She continued on out of his house, stopping as soon as she got outside the front door, leaning up against it, trying to stop her hands from shaking. She should go home. She should go home with her tail between her legs and hide. Forget this ever happened. Forget that she had ever wanted any of these things, most especially with him.
But that’s what you always do. You hide when it gets hard.
He was right. That was the part that was so damned irritating. He was right about her. About the way she pushed people away, about the tools she used to do it.
But she didn’t have to. She was going to go home, but only for a few minutes. Then she was going to get dressed in something other than this. And she was going to finish what they had started upstairs. Not with him. Never with him. But she was going to stop allowing Gage West to have so much control of
her life.
CHAPTER NINE
IT HAD ONLY taken a moment’s hesitation for Rebecca to leave the house wearing a short dress and a pair of knee-high leather boots. Her hair was loose and more than a little bit disheveled from spending the day partly caught up in a twist.
She didn’t often bother with makeup, but she had done her best to enhance her eyes and her lips, not bothering with the rest since, unless she was really going to use foundation like spackle, she always felt like it tended to exacerbate the appearance of her scars rather than obscure them.
It had taken another moment’s hesitation once she had gotten to Ace’s for her to get out of the car. And then, another moment’s hesitation still to go from the parking lot to inside.
Finally, she pulled the door open and walked inside, immediately enveloped by the warmth and the noise of the atmosphere. She glanced behind the counter, relieved to see that Ace wasn’t in residence. This would all be much easier without him being misguidedly paternal, or whatever his deal was.
She was also thankful to see that her friends weren’t here. Because they would likely stage an intervention, which, she maybe needed. But, she had managed to cling to her arousal and her rage the entire time she had gotten ready to go out. She’d had a whole hour to simmer down, and she hadn’t done it yet, so she doubted she was going to until she completed her mission.
It was necessary. Actually, she was just angry it had taken Gage’s appearance in town to push her to this point. It was easy for her to fling accusations at him, to say that her life was ticking along just fine and he had come and disrupted it. But, she had to admit—at least to herself—that even when he wasn’t here, he had control over what she did. Because she allowed the scars to control what she did.
She was over it. And she wasn’t going to wait for someone special, or some other crap. She wasn’t in the market for a relationship. She never had been. Which was a huge part of why she’d never slept with a guy. Because, even though she knew that it wasn’t like it had to mean anything or be special, it had always kind of seemed like it should. But, she had also never really wanted anything special. Depending on another human being was her worst nightmare. Needing someone—when there was no guarantee at all that they would stay—just wasn’t something she’d ever wanted. That put relationships low on her list of priorities.
