Wild Cowboy Nights

by Katee Robert

  She was so damn tired of fighting.

  She’d delegated the two projects she’d just taken on, and she was trying very hard not to look into the fact that the two ladies who worked with her were so freaking surprised that she’d taken vacation. It was the first time in years, but still.

  Five days. That was it. After the party, she’d go back to Dallas and that would be that.

  Strawberry sounded particularly delicious this morning, so she grabbed that container and sat down on the single bar stool to eat. Three days in Devil’s Falls, and she was getting twitchy. She needed a good, long workout. Hope twisted to rub her leg. Running had been her outlet once upon a time, but that stopped being an option when she was eighteen. Now she used specific exercises and yoga to keep her knee from giving her too much grief—two things she hadn’t been doing since she showed up on Daniel’s doorstep.

  She was pushing herself too hard, and she knew it—she’d had more than enough experience over the last decade to know her limits, and she was toeing the line. If she wasn’t careful, she’d have a whole lot in the way of sleepless nights in the future. The pain pills she kept as a last resort weren’t an option now that she was pregnant.

  God, she hated those pills. They were like the physical representation of her weakness, a constant reminder that she wasn’t normal and never would be. Normal people didn’t have to worry about a body part inside her skin that didn’t originate with her, or about nerves that sometimes felt like they were on fire.

  The problem was that Daniel had been working really hard not to pay too much attention to her leg, and she didn’t want to make him uncomfortable…

  Hope straightened. “What the hell is wrong with me?” She was not doing this again. She’d put other people first for far too long, and he was the one who kept telling her he wanted to do right by her. Her scars were part of her, and if he couldn’t handle that, he had no business trying to elbow his way into her life.

  She finished off her yogurt, dropped the container in the trash, and put the spoon in the sink. She’d deal with whatever work things had popped up overnight and then she’d take a relaxing bath. After that, she’d settle in with some tea and a few movies and see if a day off her feet helped. She kind of suspected it wouldn’t, but she had to try.

  Things were going great right up until she leveraged herself into the bath filled to the brim with bubbles…and heard the front door open. Hope shot a panicked glance at the unlocked bathroom door, but if the heavy footfalls heading in her direction were any indication, she didn’t have enough time to fight her way to her feet and hope that she managed to get to the lock before the person in the hallway got to the door.

  As soon as the thought crossed her mind, the door opened and Daniel poked his head in. “Hope? I’m just…” He trailed off, his gaze raking over her. “Well, fuck.”

  She wasn’t sure what she should be trying to cover, so she didn’t cover anything. Her mangled knee clearly showed over the top of the bubbles, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it without curling into a ball. He has to deal with it eventually. “Did you need something?”

  “Yeah, darling. I’m starting to think I do.” He stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. “You usually take baths in the middle of the day?”

  The question seemed innocent enough, though there was nothing innocent about the way he was looking at her. She lifted her chin. “Only when my knee is giving me grief.” It wasn’t strictly true. Normally, she listened to her body and avoided pushing it far enough that it knocked her on her ass. It was a rookie mistake, and she was paying the price now.

  His attention focused there, his eyebrows coming together. “It’s giving you grief?”

  Talking about it was strange. The only person she felt comfortable being completely frank with was her doctor. Her parents did their best to be supportive, but it was easier for them to ignore her injury and pretend it didn’t exist, which she was more than happy to play along with. Better for them to look at her like she’d never changed than for them to pity her. The guilt was even worse. She loathed guilt.

  Hope braced herself for Daniel’s reaction. “It does more often than not, but it’s been worse than normal lately.”

  “Why?”

  She hesitated, but honesty had to be the name of the game when it came to her interactions with him. To do anything else was to cheat them both. “Because I’ve been kind of sucking at self-care lately—though, to be fair, it’s totally possible that hormones have something to do with it, too.” That’s going to make things more complicated, she realized. Pregnancy meant a big weight change, and even completely able-bodied women got clumsy. She was going to be doubly so because of her bum knee.

  Hope sank into the water up to her chin, battling the overwhelming stress trying to take over. The whole reason she’d wanted this bath to begin with was to destress, and now it was looking like the opposite was going to be true. It was her own fault. She should have put the brakes on things until she considered all that was going to change. She hadn’t. Taking it out on Daniel might make her feel better in the short term, but it wouldn’t last.

  And it wasn’t fair to him.

  “You haven’t been taking care of yourself because of me,” he said. She half expected him to launch in to some self-recrimination—to, God forbid, to start blaming himself for that in addition to everything else again. Hope took a deep breath, ready to tell him—again—that this wasn’t any more his fault than her brother’s death was. That he wasn’t a modern-day Atlas who could balance the entire world on his shoulders indefinitely.

  But he surprised her and sank onto the closed toilet. “What can I do?”

  She blinked, having prepared her response to how she thought he was going to react. It took her a second to catch up to reality. “Uh, what?”

  “There’s got to be something I can do. This is partly because you’ve been dancing around my emotions, and that’s not fair to you.” He gave her a look like he was fully aware of what she’d expected. “So what can I do to help?”

  What she really needed was a massage and some of the dreaded pain pills, but neither was on the menu. “It’s okay.” He’d had his hands and mouth all over her body, but there was something about him touching that part of her that made her balk. It was too much, even more personal than having sex. She couldn’t ask that of him. “I’m really okay.”

  He opened his mouth like he wanted to argue with her but finally nodded. “If you change your mind, I’m here. If you don’t, that’s okay, too.” He pushed to his feet. “Do you need anything right now?”

  It was difficult to wrap her mind around this accommodating version of Daniel. He’s trying to keep this peace going as hard as I am. She didn’t really need anything, but she’d already shut him down once and he obviously needed to feel like he was helping with something, so she said, “Maybe a glass of water?”

  “Sure.” He looked relieved. Daniel disappeared, coming back a few minutes later with a tall glass of ice water. He set it carefully on the edge of the tub but didn’t immediately straighten. Instead, his gaze rested on the bubbles partially hiding her from him. “One more thing before I go.”

  She barely had a second to process his intent before he slipped a hand into the bathtub, sliding down her stomach to stroke her between her legs. She went ramrod straight, but she wasn’t sure if it was in protest or because—oh, God—he pushed two fingers into her. “Danny—”

  “Close your eyes, darling. Let me give you this if you won’t take anything else from me.”

  She didn’t fight his order. She didn’t even try. She wanted this too much to push him away, even though distance was the only thing that would save her heart in the long run. Liar. The truth was that her heart had always been compromised when it came to Daniel Rodriguez. Hope spread her legs as much as she could in the tub, giving him access to everything.
Just plain giving him everything.

  He rewarded her by picking up his pace, stroking her just like she loved, already gathering an orgasm around her, her nerve endings sparking with pleasure. She’d never met a man who knew her body like Daniel did, and the years apart hadn’t damaged his memory any. She hissed out a breath, the sound closer to a moan than an exhale. “Danny, I’m close.”

  “I know, darling.” His lips touched hers, a soft, sweet kiss that was completely out of sorts with what his hand was doing between her legs. The innocence of that kiss pushed her into an orgasm that locked up her muscles and drew a cry from her throat. He ate the sound, his tongue sliding against hers as he gentled his touch and brought her back to earth.

  It was only when she stopped shaking that he rested his forehead against hers for a long moment and retrieved his hand from the water. His shirt was soaked, but his slow smile said it was worth it. Daniel pushed to his feet. “I’ll see you this evening.” And then he was gone, leaving her wondering what the hell just happened.

  Guess he wasn’t joking about fixing everything with sex.

  The problem was, as good as being with him felt right now, she couldn’t shake the feeling that they were only administering a Band-Aid instead of actually fixing anything.

  Chapter Twelve

  By the time the dinner rolled around on Friday, Hope was a hot mess. She’d changed for the third time and was going back for a fourth when Daniel intercepted her. “You look great.”

  “I feel like a…” She pulled at her sundress. Surely it hadn’t been this tight last time she’d worn it? She felt like she was walking around with a giant scarlet A on her chest, that anyone who looked at her would know that she was pregnant with Daniel’s child and that it hadn’t been planned. “I don’t know. Something huge and ungainly.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You’re seven weeks along, darling. You haven’t changed a bit.”

  He might not think so, but she felt different. The nausea that everyone seemed to talk about hadn’t overwhelmed her apart from a few food aversions, but her body was just off. The food she usually loved she didn’t even want in the house, and her skin felt too tight. And that wasn’t even bringing up the fact that apparently naps were the name of the game right now. It was just so wrong.

  All she wanted to do was to wrap a blanket around herself and curl up with Ollie on the couch so she could get back her to Gilmore Girls binge session while she worked on what she could swing remotely, but she had to put on real clothes and leave the house and face what felt like half of Devil’s Falls.

  No one was going to be happy about this turn of events.

  She’d very carefully not thought about what her parents would think. They were shocked she was back in Devil’s Falls, but they’d accepted her excuse of needing to hammer out some last-minute details with the town board about John’s scholarship. The only thing getting them to make the drive north to town was her presence here. It had been six weeks since she saw them last, and she’d been battling the guilt of how things fell out with Daniel and their hookup. It made her sick to think about facing them now. They’re going to be so disappointed in me.

  “It will be okay.” Daniel turned her around to face him and framed her face with his hands. “I promise.”

  “There you go again, promising things you can’t fulfill.” And she was being depressing as all get-out. Hope took a deep breath. “I’m as ready as I’m going to be.”

  He searched her face and finally nodded. “Let’s go, then.”

  The trip into town took far too little time. They’d rented the back room of the Finer Diner to give them a little bit of privacy and to make sure no one had home court advantage. We planned this out like we’re going to battle. It felt a whole lot like waging a war rather than what should have been a joyful occasion. In another life, it might have been…

  No use thinking that way. This is your life. Not that nice little land of what-if.

  Daniel’s parents had beaten them there. His mom rose. She was a slightly overweight Hispanic woman with the kindest eyes Hope had ever seen, who always seemed to have a giant smile on her face. That was no different now, as she rushed around the corner to hug her. “As I live and breathe! Hope Moore!” She swept Hope up into a hug. Almost immediately, she gripped her shoulders and stepped back. “Let me look at you. Good lord, girl, but you’re even more beautiful now than you were at eighteen.” She registered the scar peeking out of the bottom of Hope’s sundress, but her expression didn’t so much as flicker. “I hear that you’re running your own business. I always knew you were ambitious. Makes me so proud.”

  While she’d been chatting, Daniel’s father had come to stand next to them. “Lori, you’re manhandling her.” He’d always seemed more biker than rancher to Hope, with his burly build and long graying hair and beard, but the fierce exterior was matched by an equally fierce love of his family. He hugged her, too, lifting her off her feet. “We missed you, Hope.”

  “I missed you, too.” Against all reason, her eyes pricked, and she sniffed. She’d forgotten how much she loved the Rodriguezes—and how much they adored her.

  Rodger set her back on her feet. “I hear you’ve decided to give our boy another shot.” He gave Daniel a significant look. “It’s a shame it took this long for him to pull his head out of his ass.”

  “For God’s sake, Dad.” Daniel crossed his arms over his chest. “You know there were extenuating circumstances.”

  Extenuating circumstances like him blaming himself for her brother’s death and wallowing in his guilt.

  Lori wiped her eyes, still beaming like it was Christmas morning. “None of that matters now that you’re back.”

  I don’t know if I’m back. She couldn’t force the words out. Every time she said them, they felt more and more like a lie. She wanted to be back. But every time she was in danger of falling completely under the spell Daniel and Devil’s Falls wove, something would happen to jar her back to stark reality. She wanted to believe. She just couldn’t help waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Hope was saved from answering by the arrival of Jules and Adam. He didn’t look particularly happy, but then, he hadn’t every time she’d seen him recently. Jules, on the other hand, was grinning, just like her aunt. “Hope!”

  They went through another round of welcomes, and then another when Quinn and his girlfriend, Aubry, showed up. Apparently she was Jules’s best friend or something. The energy of the room was great, everyone smiling and chatting.

  Which was when Hope’s parents showed up.

  They stopped just inside the doorway, their faces expressionless. Just like that, she knew exactly how things were going to go down. There would be no happiness here. No joy. Nothing but more guilt, filling up the room until she was liable to choke on it. She broke away from talking with Quinn and crossed to meet them, her heart in her throat. “Mom. Dad. I’m glad you’re here.” She wasn’t, though. She kind of wished she’d saved this news to be shared privately, so it wouldn’t tarnish the Rodriguez family’s happiness.

  “What’s going on?” Her dad put his arm around her mom’s shoulders, as if she would break apart if he didn’t hold her tightly enough. Ever since Hope graduated, her mom had become almost…brittle. As if she’d managed to put a good face on things and hold it together until she was sure her one remaining child would be okay. It was only then that she’d fallen apart and never quite seemed to put herself back together again.

  Now, in the room full of John’s old friends and the Rodriguezes, she looked like she was about to burst into tears.

  Hope cleared her throat. “I, uh, we have something to tell you.”

  “Oh, God, don’t tell me you’re pregnant.”

  The room fell silent, the harsh words seeming to take up physical space, creating an atmosphere that no one was willing to break. The seconds ticked by—five, ten, fifteen, twenty.
>
  She jumped when Daniel’s arm slipped around her waist, a comfort she hadn’t been aware she needed until it was there. His expression gave nothing away, but his dark eyes weren’t happy. “Yes, you’re going to be grandparents.”

  Hope’s mother swayed like she might faint. She pinned Hope with a look. “How did this happen? You said you weren’t seeing anyone, let alone him. You said nothing about seeing him when you were here for John.”

  She had to say something, but she couldn’t push the words past her closed throat. Daniel didn’t seem to have the same problem. His arm around her tightened, a slight tremor the only indication that he was as unsteady as she was. “It might not have been planned, but it doesn’t matter. We’re having a baby.”

  Her mom made a face like she was going to say something to cut straight to the bone, but her dad cut in. “I think now isn’t the best time to talk about things. We all need some time and space to calm down so we can talk rationally.” He nodded at Hope, pointedly not looking at Daniel. “We’ll call you, honey.” And then they were gone, sweeping out the door and leaving awkward silence in their wake.

  Well, that’s a great sign of things to come.

  …

  Daniel could feel the tension in Hope’s body, even if none of it showed on her face. They’d known there was a chance the people in their lives wouldn’t react positively to the news, but he’d expected reactions more like Adam’s—shock and anger and then acceptance. He hadn’t thought that the Moores would actually turn around and walk out the second they heard they were going to be grandparents.

  He squeezed Hope’s hip, trying to tell her that even if every other person turned their back on them, he would stand by her side no matter what. He owed that to both her and the memory of John. They shifted to take in the shocked expressions on the faces of every single person in the room. For one eternal second, no one said anything.