Hannah smiled. “That was a very kind thing to do, Brody.”
And more like the man she’d known, too, she thought to herself.
“He’s a bit...touchy. I was working with him, but he might need a better hand than mine, clearly. Jed will probably do better with him.”
“Jed?”
“He helps with the farm, has ever since my grandparents lived here. He’s excellent with horses, and he’s been working with Zip a bit each day since I hurt my back.”
Hannah nodded as Brody opened the gate to the pasture. He led Sally in, but told Hannah to wait.
“Zip goes over in a separate section—he has to until he’s gelded anyway.”
“Ouch. Poor Zip,” she said with a comforting pat.
“We’re hoping it will calm him down some.”
“You don’t sound entirely convinced,” she commented as they walked to the next corral.
“Well, you know...I sort of like him as he is, but I also don’t want him hurting himself or anyone else. I’m waiting to see how he responds to more training, but if we’re going to geld him, I want to do it before he gets much older.”
Hannah nodded, led Zip into the smaller pasture next door to Sally’s and then walked back out with Brody, leaving the horses, her buffer, behind.
“Um, listen,” she began, taking a breath as they walked back to the barn. “I have to apologize for last night. I was...in a weird mood, and I guess the wine really lowered my inhibitions,” she said with an embarrassed laugh. “But thank you for, well, being so considerate.”
“I owe you an apology, not the other way around. I wish you’d told me about your situation.”
She smiled at him. “Talk about pot and kettle.”
He laughed. “Well, we’ll call it even. As long as you promise not to go wrestling alligators or sharks.”
She laughed ruefully. “That’s an easy promise to make.”
“You feel like a ride? The other two horses in the stable need some exercise. Zip and Sally had a ride yesterday, but Salty and Pepper—my parents’ horses—need some exercise. I’ll put Snow, the other rescue, out with Sally. She’s older and just likes wandering around the pasture. Then we could go out on the trails for a bit.”
Hannah knew she should say no. She should say goodbye while things were settled and agreeable.
Instead, she looked up into Brody’s face, admiring the laugh lines around his green eyes and the way the sun played off reddish highlights in his brown hair. She liked the angle of his chin and his nose, and she especially liked his mouth. She liked his hair longer, and less severely cut. It suited him.
He looked better today. More rested. Had she been imagining how bad off he’d seemed to her the day before? Maybe she’d made too much of it?
“I was planning to leave after we talked,” she finally said halfheartedly.
“You can still go, later.” His eyes dropped to her mouth as he said the words, making her shiver.
“That’s true,” she agreed, knowing she was rationalizing, but so what? It wasn’t as though she had to answer to anyone about how she spent her time. No schedule to keep. New Orleans would still be there.
Brody turned back toward the barn, motioning for her to join him. Hannah paused before she did so, enjoying studying his other assets as he walked ahead of her, a smile twitching at her lips.
She met his parents’ horses, who were older and so impossibly sweet that Hannah fell in love with them immediately. Salty was a female white draft horse, and Pepper a mostly black quarter horse.
Salty was immense, and gave Hannah pause for a second, but the mare was a gentle girl and didn’t mind at all being saddled. In fact, she seemed eager to go.
“We can head down through the trails on the back of the property—it’s a nice, easy ride, and cooler under the trees,” Brody said as he pulled himself up on Pepper.
“You’re okay to ride?” Hannah asked, thinking about his back.
“I’m fine, particularly on these two. When it comes to Zip, I probably can’t ride him for a while. I can’t risk screwing up—uh—you know, making my back worse than it is.”
He sounded disappointed, and Hannah didn’t find that surprising. Of course Brody would want to get back on the horse that put him in the hospital. Riding Zip was probably akin to riding in one of his race cars—and potentially as dangerous. But he also sounded as though he had been about to say something else and then changed his mind.
What was Brody afraid of messing up? Did he have some kind of new venture in the works?
They headed toward the tree line at the edge of the corrals where a path opened into woods that were almost like a fairy-tale setting. Moss draped from trees, and tall pines weaved in between those, all blocking the heat and layering the dirt with a soft path of detritus where the needles lay. Hannah felt as if they had been transported back in time to some ancient forest.
Sun danced through the trees, illuminating a thatch of wild orchids, purple thistle, pine lilies and other plant species that she didn’t recognize, but they were beautiful all the same. A few insects buzzed by, but there were far fewer mosquitoes than she would have expected, and she mentioned that to Brody.
“We sprayed last fall, which cuts them down in spring, but also, it’s better during the day. At night, especially midsummer, it can be rough.”
The horses seemed to know their way without direction as she and Brody rode side by side without saying too much except for noticing things along the path here and there. Brody shared a few family memories with her, a tree where he used to hide so he could jump down to scare Brandi, or a secret hollow where he’d hid boyhood treasures. He seemed more relaxed, and she was, too.
Time melted away, and eventually they reached a point where the path widened out around a pond that was deep green and covered in water lilies. Frogs were singing all around, their baritone croaks making her laugh.
“Mating call,” Brody said with a grin and a wiggle of his eyebrows, making her laugh.
A small stone bench sat at one end of the pond, and they dismounted and let the horses rest while taking a seat.
“I can’t believe this is all yours. It’s like living in a national park,” Hannah said. “How did you ever manage to leave?”
“I spent a lot of time here as a kid. My parents lived on the property next door. They moved to a condo ten years ago, but this was a great place to be a kid, for sure. But once I made my first drive around a track, all I wanted to do was drive every second I could.”
Hannah nodded, pondering. Turning to face him, she tried to ignore the romantic setting, the moist heat that suffused the air. Brody looked incredible, as though he had walked out of a fairy tale himself. He was strong, virile and so very sexy. In spite of his back injury, he was clearly in fine shape. Very, very fine.
What she was feeling must have shown in her face, because his eyes darkened, his hand reaching out to slide over her shoulder, pulling her closer. The next thing she knew they were kissing, his fingers diving into her hair, her mouth meeting his hungrily as her hands slid over his chest.
“We should stop,” she managed to gasp as he buried his face in her neck, leaving a trail of hot little nips and kisses there. She let her head drop back, wanting more. Stopping was the furthest thing from her mind.
“I know. I can’t seem to get near you without wanting to touch, and taste,” he murmured against her skin. “You don’t know what it took to walk away from that bed last night.”
One hand drifted down to her chest, palming her breast before circling her peaked nipple with his fingers, and she groaned, pressing into him.
Her heart was slamming in her chest as she realized that right now she wanting nothing more than Brody as deep inside as she could get him. Right here, right now.
“Are you going to walk away from m
e this time?” Hannah challenged, pulling back slightly to look at him.
Brody’s gaze bored into hers, his chest rising and falling faster, his jaw tense as he shook his head.
“I don’t want to, but you might, after you know the truth.”
* * *
BRODY KNEW HE was about to send Hannah packing. It was for the best, he tried to convince himself. He wanted her, and he couldn’t be around her for five minutes without acting on that desire.
It wasn’t good for either of them. He should have let her say her goodbyes at the barn. That would have been the easy thing to do, but easy never was his preference.
And...the truth was that he hadn’t wanted her to leave. The whole time they’d been riding along, making small talk, he’d been trying to find some sane way to have his cake and eat it, too—to maintain his secret and have Hannah in his bed—but that wasn’t possible.
He either slept with her while lying to her about his situation, or told her the truth and watched her leave. Again.
Both options sucked, but at least if he told her the truth, he wouldn’t hate himself as much later.
“What do you mean? The truth about what?” she prompted. Her eyes widened and she looked worried. “Are you really sick? Brandi said she didn’t know why you would have retired, that you refused to talk about it with her or Reese,” she said hurriedly, putting all the wrong pieces together, so Brody shook his head, stopping her.
“No, I promise, I’m not sick, but...there is a special situation. What I tell you, Hannah, it has to stay between us. You can’t tell anyone, not even Reece or Abby. No one.”
Her pretty brow crunched, perplexed. “Okay, but why? If you aren’t sick, then what—”
“I didn’t retire. Not really,” he responded quickly. “It’s a...it’s a publicity stunt, basically. To rebuild my image, make me more appealing to the fans. The sponsor was going to drop me if I didn’t straighten up after the sex-club scandal. I sit out this season, lie low, live a quiet life and then they’ll stage a comeback for the new and improved Brody Palmer.”
Hannah was quiet, settling back on the bench, and Brody wasn’t sure what she was thinking. It was a relief, he had to admit, to tell someone the truth. Keeping it to himself had been difficult, but what would she say? Brody had always made a point of being a straight shooter, and now he was lying to everyone he knew.
After a long pause, she said, “How could they force you to do that?”
Brody took a breath. “They’re my biggest sponsor, and without them, the other sponsors would probably drop out, as well. I could try to finance the team myself, but not indefinitely. So I went along with it. It’s not as though they were wrong—my image was a little rough.”
He braced himself for Hannah’s no-doubt scathing response, but it didn’t come.
“So they basically blackmailed you into this?” she asked, the sides of her pretty lips turning downward.
“No, not like that. Well, I suppose it sounds that way, but it’s been done before. It’s actually more of a second chance, I guess. It was my choice, ultimately. I could have said no, but...I want back into racing. I’m not ready to quit yet.”
“But the only option would have been to lose all of your sponsorship or to quit? That’s not fair,” she responded, looking angry on his behalf. Brody stared at her in amazement, not having expected that response.
He didn’t know if he would ever be ready to quit racing. Was there anyone, anything, he wouldn’t sacrifice to get back in a car? Certainly, it had been easy enough to let go of his integrity.
“Well, I appreciate that, but I still had a choice. I made this one.”
“So you have to hang out here and not get into trouble?”
“More or less,” he responded with a nod. “Though I wasn’t doing a very good job. Being home has been...tough. I spent some time getting the farm renovated, getting the horses, but I was bored out of my skull. I ended up going back out, drinking a little too much. Then there was the accident. I thought I’d lose my mind in the hospital. Then somehow it got out that I was retiring and looking to build a life, wanting to settle down. It caused a whole bunch of other problems.”
“That’s absurd, them trying to control your life like that! And your family—they don’t even know?”
“They can’t know. I shouldn’t even have told you, but...with how things are with us, I couldn’t let us go any further without your knowing the truth. I also didn’t know if you might have thought, since I was retired, you know...that things could have changed,” he said with some degree of embarrassment. “I couldn’t sleep with you and let you think that, well—”
Realization dawned. “That marriage was a possibility. You couldn’t have me thinking that.”
“Yeah, but I realize that’s not why you came here now. I’m sorry about that. I completely understand if you’re upset,” he said, waiting for the moment when she would get up, walk out and tell him to go eat dirt. “But I don’t care about the others, or what they think. I do care about you, Hannah.”
“Thank you, but I wish you had told someone. Reece would have understood, surely.”
“Maybe. But it’s not only about me, Hannah. A lot of people’s livelihoods all depend on this. My team, the people who make what I do possible. I owe it to them to keep my mouth shut. If even one word of this leaked, it could leave a lot of people hanging out to dry.”
“Wow. You really are in a tough spot.”
Brody blinked, wondering why she still wasn’t marching off, telling him off or giving him the cold shoulder.
“So you see, we can’t be together, because... Well, things are complicated right now.”
“I guess the sex-club story was the one that broke the camel’s back with your sponsor?” she asked, her voice lower. The sidelong glance she sent him was hot with curiosity, as if she wanted to know what he was doing at a club like that.
“Yeah, they knew the truth, but it didn’t matter.”
“The truth?”
“Someone I know, a married friend, was there, and he got in a bind. I went to help out and the press showed up, so I covered for him and took the flack instead. I thought it would roll off, given my history, but not this time. That club has a reputation for being particularly kinky, and it was too much for the sponsor to swallow.”
“So...you weren’t there because you’re into anything, um, different?”
“Disappointed?” he asked, lobbing a challenge back in her direction, watching her blush slightly, which intrigued him.
“When I saw the news report, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was something about you I didn’t know. Maybe things you liked that you thought I hadn’t been adventurous enough to try.”
He shook his head resolutely. “Nothing like that. I never held back with you when we were together. Believe me.”
She smiled slightly at that, and the kick of desire it delivered made his heart stutter. Was there something Hannah was thinking about that she’d like to try? Some secrets she was keeping?
Brody trained his mind away from the thought.
“So I’m the only one who knows?”
He nodded.
“I would never tell a soul, Brody,” she said, reaching over to put her hand over his. “But...”
Here it comes.
“Maybe I could help. Maybe we could help each other. I have an idea.”
That wasn’t what he expected at all, and he stared at her blankly.
“Help each other? How?”
“I can see now why you’ve been acting like you have. You need to clean up your public image, right? And you’ve been fielding all of these...pies,” she added with a mischievous grin. “So what if I stayed a while? What if you said we were back together? That would make your sponsor happy and stop other women from coming a
round, right?”
Brody was completely confused now.
“Why would you do that?”
“Well, because...I want you,” she said, the admission warming her cheeks as she slid him another cock-hardening look. “I know that you’re absolutely not interested in commitment, and I’m not looking for it, either,” she said resolutely.
“Hannah—”
“No, really. That was the reason I came here. I needed your help. I was focused for so long on settling down and living this perfectly structured life, and where did it get me? Quitting my job was only the first step. I look at my blog, and I see that nothing I’m doing there is exciting because I’m not doing anything exciting. It’s time I did. I thought if I could blog about your retirement—”
“Hannah, you can’t write about this on your blog, I—”
“I know that. I promise, I won’t tell anyone. But maybe you could show me how to live a more adventurous life? Teach me how to take more risks. I could blog about that instead.”
“Hannah, sweetheart, believe me, you are plenty exciting, and I’m probably not the best—”
He didn’t get further than that, since Hannah levered herself up and over him faster than he could get the words out, planting a hand on either side of his face and lowering her mouth to his.
Her kiss was different—she took control, coaxing him, pressing into him and showing him that she meant what she said. The effects sizzled in his every nerve ending. Her tongue stroked his, muddling his thoughts as he splayed his hands on her hips, letting her have her way. He couldn’t remember what he was saying before.
When she pulled away, she nipped his bottom lip, looking down into his eyes, her hair falling in her face, her eyes sparkling.
“Believe me, you are the best,” she said with a chuckle, drawing one from him, too.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know, but what do you say, Brody? I can be your stabilizing influence,” she said with a naughty smile. “And you can help me learn how to live more dangerously. I don’t want to be the same old Hannah. All bets are off. I want to be more daring, take more chances—starting with you.”
Rock Solid Page 5
