His arms were crossed over his chest, too, his jaw tight. “I’m sorry, honey,” he muttered. “I just…I don’t understand this. You are beautiful, Taryn. I’ve seen the tiaras and the banner from when you were crowned Miss Memphis. You being beautiful…it’s a fact.”
“Stop!”
He threw up his hands, looking as frustrated as I was because I could not understand why he could not get this right. He understood everything else I needed, except for this one really important thing.
“Billy…” My voice was shaky with trying to keep my words slow, controlled. “Being ‘beautiful’ has been the worst curse of my life. It has brought me stalkers, assault, and men like Sheldon demeaning me in public and private. I need you to see me as more than a face, more than a body, and if that’s what you like most about me, then we have a big fucking problem, because I am more than…this.”
Billy stared at me. Then he laughed, scrubbing his hands over his face.
Jerk.
He sat forward, clasping his hands around his bent knees. “Honey, I need you to remind us how we met, please.”
I stared at him, shocked he was relying on an example that served as proof to my argument but ready to drive home my point either way. “You hit on me at a rodeo, jackass.”
Billy held up a finger. “That may be true, but do you remember what I said to you?”
My brow furrowed as I searched my mind, the burning hurt in my veins lowering to a slow simmer. “Something about Gidget wanting to meet Aston. Which was clearly a lie.”
“Nope.” Billy smiled bright and easy, and there was no hint of fabrication in his eyes. “And since you don’t remember, I told you we saw y’all barrel racing. And that was why I was coming to talk to you.”
Shit, he did say that.
“And if you recall, you were wearing a hat when you raced that morning because it was bright as hell out there at noon. I couldn’t see your face, Taryn. I’d seen a woman who could fly on a horse and wasn’t afraid to cut it really damn close to those barrels. And…well, I had to meet her. Didn’t matter what you looked like. I just loved the way you rode.”
My heart caught in my throat, Billy shrugging and leaning against my headboard, lacing his hands behind his head and staring at the door like he was lost in the memory.
“Imagine my delight when you turned out to be from Memphis, too. And damn, girl, you had my head spinning with how fast you busted me on Gidget being a Hargrove horse and him being built for dressage. But I guess I should’ve expected it with the way you raced.” His eyes darted to me, then back to the door. “When you told me that night that you raced Superbike?” He shook his head, letting out a low whistle. “That was it for me. And I tell you, Taryn, I didn’t know how it was gonna work out between us, with the distance and the opposite racing schedules and everything. But I was more than ready to start trying.”
God, I did not deserve this guy.
I crept back to the bed, sitting on the edge and facing him, overflowing with love and regret and a million things I didn’t know how to sort out. But I knew I wanted the time to do it; all the time in the world wouldn’t be enough with him. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Well, you should be,” he snapped like he was mad, but he winked immediately after.
I took that as my invitation to snuggle up on his chest, melting into the way his arms fell around me and tucked me closer to him. “I love you,” I breathed, Billy holding me tighter and dropping a kiss to my hair.
“Well, of course you do.” He brushed my hair from my face, tilting my chin up so I could see his eyes. “I’m damn hot!”
I found my smile and my laugh, reaching up to pull his lips down to mine, Billy kissing me sweetly and pouring into me all the depth of his devotion. And once again, I found myself wishing so much it could be like this always.
That we would be together every night, working through our lives’ daily problems somewhere between eating dinner and getting ready for bed, whether on the road or at the ranch we dreamed of one day buying together. Laughing about anything and everything before sex, and after sex, and waking up in the morning to him snoring on his stomach, the covers totally mine and that tight ass of his completely exposed.
“Hey, Taryn?” Mike called, knocking softly on the door. “If you’re still awake, I, uh, I gotta talk to you.”
I groaned, lifting a last kiss from Billy’s lips before I pulled away, getting out of bed. “Hold that thought,” I whispered, Billy ghosting his fingertips over my arms and not even trying to hide the heat simmering in his eyes.
“I’m holding, honey.”
I moaned again and turned away, blowing out a breath as I tried to get my hormones under control before I faced my manager. With a last peek at Billy in my bed, I slipped out of my room and shut the door behind me, finding Mike sitting at the mini kitchen table, bright red and wiggling like a kid about to open his birthday presents.
A slow smile crept across my face as I inched toward him. “What?”
He shook his head, practically bursting with glee as I slid into my place at the table. “Werner. Loves you. I just got off the phone with him, and MMW is…they’re thrilled that piece of shit—I won’t even say his name—is gone. They hated him, T. Almost more than you did, turns out. And Werner? He wants to make all this up to you, in a big way, and I think he’s come up with a pretty good idea on how to do it.”
My pulse was sky-high, goose bumps all over my skin. How could it possibly get better than firing Sheldon?
Mike reached over and took my hands, pride radiating from him. “He wants to move you to Germany. And I’ll explain more about why in a second, but first, you should know he wants to set you up with your own place. Fully furnished however you want and completely paid for by MMW. He’s even going to hire a personal chef of your choosing to help stay ahead of your celiac, and he emailed me pictures of some of the condos he was looking at for you to choose from in Munich, and I…I didn’t know those kinds of places existed in real life.”
He shook his head, stars in his eyes.
“But the best part,” Mike continued, his voice starting to shake, “and the reason he’s doing all this is so that the very second you’re settled in Germany, you and he can launch a new international image campaign under your direction. Interviews, magazines, radio, television, photo shoots…you’ll call the shots every step of the way. You did it, Taryn!”
Oh no…
Feeling—awareness—bled from me, chased by the cold panic gripping my heart and rooting me in place.
I let go of his hands, sitting back in my seat.
Numb.
“I can’t move to Germany.”
Mike’s face fell. “What?”
“I…” I glanced at my bedroom door, then at Mike, lowering my voice to a frantic whisper as lightning-fast images of all I’d lose sped through my mind. The ranch we’d never own together, the barn our horses would never share. The anniversaries and the birthdays and the Christmases and the breakfasts and the… “I can’t move to Germany!”
“Taryn!” Mike’s eyes were wild as he gestured toward my room, but he kept his voice low. “You cannot throw this away for him. This is the opportunity of a lifetime! You turn this down, I guarantee you won’t get another offer like this in the future. What are you doing?”
I stared at my manager.
I pushed up from the table, taking a step toward my room.
Then I pivoted back, totally at a loss. “Maybe…maybe we can still do the campaign, but from the States. I know it’s going to make it a million times harder for everyone, but I cannot just up and move to another freaking country, Mike. My family is in Memphis. I have a horse in Memphis. I have… My whole life is there. I can’t.”
Mike leaned back, crossing his arms and not giving me an existential inch. “You went away to college. To Texas. Four years.”
“That was different!”
“You can do this too, Taryn,” he gritted out. “You absolutely can, but it means letting some things go and recognizing that other things are more important. Your racing career has to be more important.” He leaned closer, his eyes pleading with me. “Don’t you want to go to your alma mater and talk to the kids? Give them hope? Well, this is your chance to rewrite your history until no one would ever remember the past. It’s a chance for a clean start, one you can be proud of.”
I shook my head, holding out my hand and unable to find the words for any of this. Other than no. Absolutely not. As much as I wanted a clean slate, I couldn’t do this. Mike was wrong: this wasn’t college, this was forever, and I couldn’t leave home, couldn’t leave the future Billy and I had been building. This wasn’t our dream; this was absurd.
“You don’t have to decide tonight,” Mike grumbled. “But you will have to decide eventually. And I caution you, Taryn: don’t throw away your whole life for a few moments of fun. It doesn’t last, and your future is worth so much more than that.”
I couldn’t breathe under the weight of his words, the truth in them I knew better than I wanted to admit. But I didn’t have a choice.
I had to breathe; I had to go back into my room. And I swore to myself ten times over it was absolutely the right decision not to tell Billy about the offer.
I wasn’t lying if I wasn’t going to take it, and it only would’ve caused problems. He’d probably want me to take it or at least argue I should, and it wasn’t his call. It was mine. And I wasn’t moving to Germany, no matter what Mike or anyone else said. Werner would come around, and we’d figure out how to do the image campaign another way.
I knew what I was doing.
I thought.
Chapter 13
Billy King—Present Day
It’s colder than anything as I jog my way up Taryn’s porch on Christmas Eve, dressed to the nines in my new pair of boots, pressed jeans, the buckle I won the first time I met her, and a tie choking me over a freshly starched shirt. Was gonna wear a sports coat instead of my normal one, but it’s too damn cold for that.
My fingers are already going numb around the bouquet of flowers in my hand, my nuts shriveling into peanuts every second it takes someone to answer the door after my shave-and-a-haircut knock. Lights are on, and I can hear them shuffling around and bickering in there, but I don’t know what’s taking so long.
God, it’s fucking freezing.
Then I get fucking wrecked.
“Wow” is all I can breathlessly mumble when Taryn opens the door, my lungs collapsed from the red cocktail dress dripping down her body.
The neckline is high and straight across her collarbones, the bottom hem of her skirt halfway up her slender thighs. But it’s not her legs that have me going absolutely gaga. It’s the peek of her bare arms afforded by the red hoodless cape lightly flirting down her sides and drifting down her back to meet her skirt.
I look up at her, entranced by her soft, sexy makeup and blond hair all shiny and clean and just the littlest bit curly. I swallow, trying to find my voice. “You look…gross.”
Taryn lights up brighter than the decorated tree in the living room behind her, one of those black high heels lifting to pet the back of her other calf. God, her legs look good. “You clean up pretty well yourself, cowboy.” She eyes me up and down, but then her eyes stay down and she points. “Did you…did you get new boots?”
“Yeah,” I rumble, trying not to let the hubris I’m feeling show on my face as Taryn’s head pops up. “Was time, don’t ya think?”
She doesn’t look like she agrees. “Well…”
I scoff, reaching up to scrub at my forehead, because I can’t believe her sometimes. “You’ve been telling me to get new boots for a year,” I remind her.
She bites her red bottom lip. “Yeah, but…I like bitching about your boots. That’s…our thing. And you just threw them away?”
I’m a hell of a lot warmer than I was a second ago. My voice, too. “Nah, honey. I still got ’em.”
That perks her right back up. “Oh. Okay, then.”
Guess these are getting returned. Weren’t that comfortable anyway.
She reaches for the flowers, and I yank them back at the last minute. “Uh-uh, these aren’t for you.” She’s not even done downshifting into offended when I lift my arm over her head, sliding past her into the house twanging with spicy cinnamon broomsticks.
“Hey, Billy,” her father says from the kitchen, smiling as he leans against the counter and fusses with his bolo tie. “Merry Christmas.”
I touch my hat in his direction. “Sir.” He always did like me.
Time to offer myself up to the Beast.
Like the rest of us, she’s all dressed up in her Sunday best, but she’s glaring at me from her usual glaring spot—a statue of perpetual disappointment behind the sofa, her mouth pursed like she wishes her burgundy lips could whisper words that would burst me into flames on the spot, creamy Berber carpet be damned.
I slip off my hat and drop to my bad knee in front of her, holding up the flowers.
“Oh, good Lord.” She looks around like she doesn’t know what to make of me. But that’s just weird, because she’s had me pegged since the first time I walked through her front door and she called me a liar straight to my face.
“Mrs. Ledell,” I start, staring at her pointy-toed shoes and trying to ignore the sound of Taryn’s father snickering in the kitchen, along with the peripheral image of Taryn gawking at me from the front door. “I’m real sorry about what I did. I didn’t just hurt Taryn with my actions, I hurt your whole family. And I’m really trying to make it right, so a big part of that means you hearing my apology from me. And I’m sorry.”
No one says a word. Taryn’s father even stops snickering. At least there’s no chance of this ending up on ESPN later, unlike the rest of my most embarrassing moments.
After a beat, she snatches the flowers from my hand with the ferocity of a cobra strike, and I peek up. She’s huffing and rolling her eyes, but she’s got the bouquet cradled in her arm like the beauty queen Taryn says she was. “Get up.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I scramble to my feet and wince a bit because I do it too fast, a quick sting of pain echoing from my ankle. Taryn shifts from the door until I hold out a low hand to stop her, mouthing, “I’m okay.”
Taryn’s mama takes another breath, her back straightening and chin lifting like her daughter’s always does before she lays down the law. But only once I’ve already snuck my way into her forgiving me. “We are going to have a long talk about priorities come the new year, young man.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. “Happy to.”
She grits out something else I can’t understand and storms off around my side.
When I start breathing again, I put on my hat and push feeling through my limbs, walking back to Taryn. “Got your bible?”
She scrunches up her pretty face at me. “What? Why do I need my bible?”
I arch an eyebrow right back at her. “It’s Christmas Eve. We’re going to church.”
Her scrunch goes from a solid six to a shrewd eleven. “Church? I thought we were going on a date.”
“It’s Christmas Eve,” I repeat, then look to her parents. “Y’all are going, right?”
“Yeah,” her father says, her mama looking slightly less wrathful now that she knows my nefarious plan to escort her daughter to a worship service. “It’s Christmas Eve.”
I look to Taryn, shrugging with the vindication of her father’s agreement. She stomps off the way of her bedroom.
“Mama!” she yells a minute later. “You know where it is? I can’t find it!”
“What?” Her mama whooshes past me on her way down the hallway.
I chuckle and check the time on my watch, then clasp my
hands in front of me, waiting by the door.
“What do you mean you can’t find it? How do you not know where your bible is?”
“Because I don’t read it.”
“Taryn Molly May!”
“Well?”
Since they’re busy tearing apart Taryn’s room, sounds like, her father takes the opportunity to sneak over my way, grinning and reaching his hand out. “How you been, Billy?”
“Good, sir.” I shake his hand firmly, returning his smile with my own. “I’m hanging in there.”
He lets out a quiet chuckle, clapping me on the shoulder. “Yeah, you are.”
A breath blows from my lips as I glance toward Taryn’s room and back at him.
He nods, getting it. “You just remember what I told you.”
“I’m keeping it in mind, yes, sir.”
“All right, then. You’re a good man. Don’t let ’em make you forget it.” He gives me another smile, another pat. “And congratulations on Valencia, by the way.” He heads back into the kitchen, pulling open the fridge.
“This is so stupid,” Taryn says from her bedroom. “It’s a church. They have bibles there.”
I snap to attention as her high heels click fiercely down the hallway, and I pull open the front door so she never slows a bit as she storms around me and straight out onto the porch.
“I’ll have her home early,” I tell her mama, coming up the hallway behind her.
“You better.”
With a last touch to my hat, I duck out and shut the door behind me, Taryn already getting in the passenger side of my truck. The overhead light shines on her like a halo, showing her fidgeting around all irritated and rubbing at her bare arms before she looks into the back seat, grabs the blue-jean patchwork quilt, pulls it into the front seat, then settles it over her lap.
The corner of my mouth turns up, and I head to my side, getting in and shutting the door. I’d left my truck running with the heater on, but her teeth are still chattering as she reaches to crank up the heat another notch.
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