Yours To Keep

by Shannon Stacey

  He snorted. “You drive like a girl and sleep in a girly bed. I bet you ride like a girl, too.”

  “You know, saying that’s going to make it so much more embarrassing when I leave you in the dust.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  She started to step closer to him—to maybe press up against him and ask what kind of wager he’d like to bet on that—but she remembered the others just in time.

  With this group, they were just friends. Nothing more. And definitely not friends with benefits, since Sean didn’t want them to know she wasn’t sleeping on the couch anymore.

  Instead she turned her back on him and yanked on her riding gloves. It was ridiculous, trying to keep all these stories straight, and she was tired of it. She just wanted to relax and be herself, but she couldn’t really complain since she was the one who’d gotten them into the mess to begin with.

  When it was time to hit the trail, she took her frustration out on the throttle. Throwing her weight backward, she hit the gas hard and wheelied out of the parking area. When the front wheels dropped, she laughed and settled back on her seat. Let Sean chew on that dust for a while.

  They were all experienced riders and keeping a fast pace, so she stopped dwelling on her current situation and gave all her attention to the trail ahead. Kevin was leading, with Evan and then Terry behind him, and Sean was pulling up the rear behind Emma, so there was a lot of dust. Dust meant poorer visibility, which meant paying attention and not stewing about the fact Sean was so adamant nobody in his family guess they were sleeping together.

  But she couldn’t help it. Why was it a such a big deal to him? There was the betting pool with his brothers, but that wasn’t it. It wasn’t like the guys had all put a hundred grand on when they’d sleep together. It was simply that he didn’t want them to know.

  He’d said he was worried about his aunt getting ideas, but so what? Didn’t mothers—and mother figures—always get ideas when a guy in his thirties started dating a new woman? Sometimes it worked out and sometimes it didn’t, but you didn’t hide a new girlfriend in your closet unless the maternal figure in question was a psycho. Mary Kowalski definitely wasn’t a psycho.

  To Emma it could only mean one thing. Sean was only in it—it being in her bed with her—for the sex. If nobody knew they were sleeping together, there wouldn’t be any questions from his family after he walked away from her. No disappointment on his aunt’s part. He wouldn’t have to deal with Lisa’s torn loyalties. Nobody would know.

  She could live with that. It was what she’d agreed to—just sex without getting any ideas it might be more. And she was okay with it, too…mostly. A couple of weeks of the best sex of her life was better than no sex at all. She just wished it didn’t feel so much like a dirty secret.

  They ate up some miles before Kevin pulled off on the side of a grassy area bordering a pond and they all pulled in behind him. Sometimes, in the early dawn hours or around sunset, there were moose around the pond but in the middle of the day it was abandoned.

  She killed her engine and took off her helmet and goggles, trying to wipe the worst of the trail dust from her face with the back of her arm. It was a lost cause, helmet hair and a dirty face being one of the side effects of four-wheeling, but she made the effort.

  Sean walked up beside her, looking as grubby as she knew she looked but, being a guy, he didn’t have the helmet hair. “I guess the next time somebody tells me I ride like a girl, maybe I should thank them for the compliment.”

  She grinned and leaned forward to set her helmet on the front rack. “At least you’re keeping up.”

  “It’s obvious you’re not a rookie. How come you don’t have your own?”

  “I did. Blew the engine summer before last. I’ve been so busy with work I don’t get out enough to justify buying a new one. If I go out with Mike and Lisa, they usually borrow somebody’s for me. I’d planned to buy one for work, but then word of mouth got around and I spend most of my time in neighborhoods that frown on ATVs.”

  Terry was walking toward them with a couple of water bottles, no doubt on a mission to mother-hen them into staying hydrated. Sean took one and then walked away to talk to the guys.

  “Thanks,” Emma said, cracking the top and taking a long drink. “Dusty today.”

  “It’ll be better once we get more into the woods. Still, it must be nice for you to get away for a few hours. You know, not having to pretend you and Sean are a couple and all that.”

  Emma forced herself to nod when, in reality, it was just as hard pretending they weren’t together as pretending they were. “Yeah, it’s a little stressful at times.”

  “I bet the family having a little fun with it doesn’t help.”

  “I’m so grateful everybody went along with it, I don’t mind a few laughs at our expense.”

  Terry laughed. “It’s too good not to, really. But Sean’s always been a solid, level-headed guy, so we figure it must all be for a good cause.”

  “My grandmother’s going to go back to Florida without any worries about me, so it’s definitely for a good cause.” Assuming it didn’t blow up in their faces before her plane left, of course.

  Kevin gave the signal and it was time to put the water away and put the gear back on. Sean winked as he walked past her to his machine, but she just smiled and put her helmet on.

  After a half mile or so of dirt road they hit the woods, but Kevin didn’t slow down. They crashed and banged along the rough trail, dodging the bigger rocks and low-hanging branches. And when Sean started playing—tapping the back of her machine with the front of his—Emma laughed and gave it a little more gas.

  The corner came up fast, but she didn’t panic. No brakes. Just goosed it a little to bring the rear end around so it would slide through the corner and she could throttle out.

  Then she saw the chipmunk.

  All it took was a second’s hesitation and the inside wheels lifted and the ass end came up off the ground. Oh, shit, this is gonna hurt.

  Sean saw Emma’s machine start to roll and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  He skidded to a stop, his ATV sliding sideways, and watched as she managed to push herself off, diving for the dirt. She hit the ground, bouncing and skidding until—thank God—she was clear of the four-wheeler as it rolled twice before coming to rest against a tree.

  He was off his machine and at her side before the dust even settled. Emma rolled to her back as he dropped to his knees.

  “Ow,” was all she said.

  “Jesus, Emma. Are you hurt?”

  “That would be why I said ow.”

  He resisted the urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake the smart-ass out of her, but just barely. “Answer the damn question. Are you hurt bad?”

  “I don’t think anything’s broken. Just gimme a minute.”

  She didn’t look too bad. She’d gotten lucky and plowed through a mostly rock-free patch of trail. Her arm was scuffed up a bit and she was winded and filthy, but as long as nothing was broken, she’d made out pretty good.

  “Has it been a minute yet?” He wanted her on her feet so he could look her over.

  “No.” She took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. He watched her closely, but she didn’t wince and her breath didn’t hitch in her chest at all. “How bad did I muck up Lisa’s machine?”

  “Don’t care. Are you ready to get up yet?”

  “I think so.”

  He moved to kneel behind her head and slid his hands under her back to help her sit up. “Just sit for a couple minutes. Make sure you’re not dizzy.”

  Riding as hard as they were didn’t lend itself to looking over one’s shoulder, so the group in front had kept going. Sean knew it wouldn’t be long before they reached an intersection. Kevin would stop to make sure he had everybody before choosing a direction and, when he and Emma didn’t show, they’d come back.

  “I think I’m okay,” Emma told him.

  He slid his hands under he
r arms, gently hoisting her to her feet. “Take it nice and easy.”

  “I’m okay, Sean. Really.” She pulled off her goggles and then undid her chin strap and lifted her helmet off.

  “I shouldn’t have been pushing you.” She gave him a look. It was the kind of look he saw his cousins’ wives give them and it made him bristle. “Don’t give me that look.”

  “What, the you’re being an ass look? Don’t be an ass and I won’t give you the look.”

  “How am I being an ass? Because I’m sorry I was pushing you and almost got you killed?”

  “No, you’re an ass because you think you were pushing a girl to go too fast.”

  He crossed his arms and scowled at her. “So?”

  She scowled right back at him. “So, you had nothing to do with it. Believe it or not, I’ve rolled an ATV before. Today, I was riding the way I always ride when we’re dumb enough to let Kevin lead and I got ambushed by a chipmunk. It could have been any one of us.”

  He couldn’t help it. He stepped close and threaded his fingers through hers. “I wish it hadn’t been you.”

  “Because I’m a girl?”

  No, because being helpless to get to her when he thought she was about to be crushed by six hundred and fifty pounds of rolling four-wheeler made him feel…something. Something not good. “Because I don’t want to be the one who has to tell Cat we broke you.”

  That made her laugh. “I’m going to feel like I got hit by a Mack truck later, but I’m not broken.”

  “I’ll run you a hot bubblebath when we get home. That’ll help with the aches and pains.”

  When she smiled and her face relaxed, Sean moved in for a kiss. Not because he was thinking about Emma all naked and soapy with her nipples peeking through the bubbles, but because he was so damn relieved she wasn’t hurt.

  His lips had barely met hers when she jerked away. First he thought he’d hurt her, and then he thought she was mad. But he realized she’d already heard the sound he was just now registering—an ATV racing toward them.

  “Wouldn’t want to make you lose your bet,” she muttered with a faint thread of bitterness that made him feel guilty, even though he wasn’t sure why.

  He had no reason to feel guilty. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Besides, she knew he didn’t take that stupid betting pool seriously and that he didn’t want his aunt disappointed when he and Emma parted ways. But he didn’t get a chance to explain it.

  Kevin came into view, riding fast. He braked when he saw them and his machine had barely stopped when he jumped off. “What happened? Emma, are you okay?”

  She nodded. “Chipmunk. I hesitated and blew the corner.”

  “You hurt?”

  She showed him her scuffed arm. “I’ll live. Hoping I can say the same for Lisa’s four-wheeler.”

  Evan and Terry pulled up and Sean stepped off to the side while they fussed over her and Kevin fired up Lisa’s machine and maneuvered it back onto the trail.

  “Doesn’t look too bad,” he said. “Cracked some plastic and scuffed the end of the grip. Pretty sure her front rack was already bent a little. Small tear in the seat. We’ll slap some duct tape on it and call it good.”

  Emma groaned. “Duct tape. That’s classy.”

  Terry laughed. “They have four boys. Half the stuff they own’s held together by duct tape.”

  Sean picked Emma’s helmet up off the ground and turned it over in his hands, brushing it off and looking for damage. The way she’d looked hitting the ground still had him feeling a little wobbly inside, he realized as he ran his thumb over a gouge that may or may not have been from this incident.

  She could have been seriously injured and he was having trouble processing just how much that scared him. He didn’t want to see anybody get hurt, but the thought of how close they might have come to waiting for a helicopter to come airlift Emma out of the woods had his gut churning.

  The feeling didn’t lessen when Terry got her first-aid kit out of her cargo box and started cleaning the scrapes on Emma’s arm. She was leaning against the front of Terry’s machine, smiling at something Kevin and Evan were talking about, but his stomach seemed to clench up even more instead of relaxing.

  She was one hell of a woman. Emma was smart and fun and tough and she worked hard, and she turned his world upside down between the sheets. And maybe that was the problem. His world was starting to feel a little upside down when they were fully clothed, too.

  “You okay?” Kevin asked him, and Sean swore under his breath. He hadn’t even noticed him coming.

  “Yeah. Just checking out her helmet.”

  “You look a little peaked.”

  Pretty natural look for a guy whose world wasn’t right-side up anymore. “Wasn’t a fun thing to watch.”

  “I’ve been teaching Beth to ride when Ma can watch Lily and I swear I have a heart attack every time she so much as hits a bump.”

  “But she’s your wife.” Sean looked at Emma, who was looking back at him. “That’s different.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes.” He said it firmly, wondering which of them he was trying to convince. “Emma’s a nice girl and I don’t want to see her get hurt, but it’s not the same thing at all.”

  When she raised an eyebrow at him from across the distance, he wondered if she was a better lip reader than he’d thought. And when she mouthed nice girl, with a questioning look, he knew he was busted. She wouldn’t like being called that at all.

  “You keep telling yourself that and I’ll leave you two to make googly-eyes at each other while I go check the air in my tires. Think I’ve got one going soft on me.” Kevin slapped his shoulder. “And I don’t think that’s all that’s going soft around here.”

  His cousin walked away before Sean could tell him he wasn’t going soft. The fact he didn’t want to see the woman he was and wasn’t pretending to have sex with wrapped around a tree didn’t mean he was going soft. It just meant…

  It just meant he might be starting to get a little soft and he needed to get the hell out of there the second Cat’s departing flight started its taxi down the runway.

  The fruit punch was horrible, the fake disco light looked more like a police light bar and the folding metal chairs were hell on old hips, but Cat was having one of the best nights of her life in the high school gymnasium.

  Frank Sinatra crooned from the speakers, her head rested on Russell’s chest and his arms wrapped around her as they swayed to the music. Neither of them were particularly snazzy dancers, but they didn’t care. It was nice just to dance again.

  As the song came to an end, Cat leaned back so she could smile and thank him and suggest they sit for a few minutes, but she could tell he was thinking about kissing her. His gaze flicked to her mouth several times and the butterflies in her stomach panicked.

  She hadn’t kissed any man but John in…for goodness’ sake, it had been forty-six years. That didn’t seem right to her, but she’d been nineteen when she fell in love with John Shaw and married him six months later. She hadn’t been kissed by another man in almost half a century.

  And she could see the hesitation in Russell’s eyes, too. He was thinking of his wife and Cat thought maybe he hadn’t kissed anybody but Flo in a long, long time.

  “Do you want some more punch?” she asked, hoping to take the pressure off the moment.

  He laughed. “I don’t ever want more of that punch. I could use a little fresh air, though.”

  He didn’t take her hand as they went through the propped-open gymnasium doors into the cool summer night, but Cat tried not to be bothered by it. While it had been fourteen years since she’d lost her husband, for Russell it had only been six. Maybe when push came to shove, he just wasn’t ready to face a new relationship.

  They walked across the grass to the small copse of trees in the high school’s courtyard, where granite benches sat honoring the graduates who’d lost their lives serving in the military over the decades. Surprisingly, the benches were un
occupied and Russell finally took her hand as he pulled her down to sit beside him on one.

  “I enjoy your company so much, Cat,” he said quietly, and she heard the but coming from a mile away. “I just…I’m not sure what we’re doing here.”

  “Enjoying each other’s company?”

  “That we are.” He turned his head to smile at her and his gaze fixed on her mouth again. “I’m afraid if I kiss you, I might cry.”

  She squeezed his hand, though not as hard as his words squeezed her heart. “I might cry, too, but I’d rather cry because I feel something and not just because I’m lonely and feeling sorry for myself.”

  “Maybe I should do it, then, and stop trying to count how many years it’s been since I kissed a woman besides my wife.”

  Cat tilted her face up and closed her eyes as Russell cupped the back of her head in his hand and kissed her.

  She tried not to compare his mouth to John’s—Russell’s lips were softer and yet more aggressive—but eventually everything and everybody except the man touching her fell away. And, as his tongue brushed hers, the dormant feelings of desire and anticipation fluttered to life.

  When he reluctantly broke away—or so it seemed to Cat—there were no tears. Maybe deep down there might have been a few bittersweet pangs of sorrow, but the avalanche of renewed and wonderful feelings had buried them way down deep.

  He looked her straight in the eye, his face softening as he smiled. “It’s been about half a minute since I kissed anybody but you, Catherine Shaw.”

  And for the second time in her life, Cat thought maybe she’d found a man worth keeping.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Sean watched Emma fumbling with her keys in the darkness. Having left earlier in the day, nobody had thought to turn the outside light on. “I can’t believe Gram’s out this late.”

  “We’ve got the house all to ourselves. Maybe after I run that hot bubblebath for you, I’ll help you wash your back.”

  “As filthy as I am, I’m going to have to make do with the shower or I’ll leave two inches of mud in the bottom of the tub.”