by Maisey Yates
“You have enough wood to keep all of Copper Ridge toasty through the wet season. Why are you chopping more?”
Eli turned and saw Kate standing just behind him, her hands on her hips, her weight resting on one leg. “Because,” he said, bending over and picking up one of the log halves, “I’m expecting it to be a cold year.”
“Oh, okay. Hey, have you talked to Sadie lately?”
Oh, good, that was what he needed. To talk about Sadie with his sister when he was trying to forget the woman via manual labor. In that way that he just wanted to forget about her for long enough to make himself feel comfortable again.
Enough to make himself forget the look on her face. The way she’d shivered in his arms.
Why didn’t you protect me?
He bent and picked up the other log half, scowling deeply. “I talked to her this morning. Why?”
“I wanted to tell her that I made rolls.”
“What?”
“I made rolls by myself. And they’re edible. She showed me how yesterday, so I was... Hey, how are you?”
“Fine,” he said, gritting his teeth and walking over to the wood pile to stack the pieces on top.
“You don’t seem fine,” she said, frowning. “Is this about the people coming for the barbecue next week?”
Weirdly, that bothered him a hell of a lot less than it had in the beginning. In fact, in a very strange way he was looking forward to it. Looking forward to seeing Sadie’s vision come to life. To seeing her hard work become a real, tangible thing.
He shouldn’t care. He did.
Don’t carry this.
Too damn late, Sadiepants.
“Nope,” he said. “I am fine.”
“You are growly.”
“And?”
“That’s Connor’s job. What is up?”
“Just thinking about things,” he said, putting another log on the stump. “Dad.”
“Oh,” she said, looking down.
He positioned the splitter, then lifted the maul again, bringing it down hard. “It’s that time of the year.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.” She bit her lip and looked down, then back up, her dark eyes fierce. “I don’t think about him very much.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
He looked at Kate and fully realized—maybe for the first time—that she had never, ever known the good parts of their mother or father. And they had existed. Their mother hadn’t always been despondent and unable to cope. Their father hadn’t always been a man viewing life through an alcohol haze.
He’d gotten to know the people they were. So had Connor.
“He was a good man at one time, Katie,” he said.
“That’s fine,” she said. “For him. For you and Connor. But I never knew that man. I never saw him any way but falling on his ass drunk. You and Connor loved me. Then Jessie, when she married Connor. Jack was there, and Liss, our friends who always made our house feel less empty. But I can’t miss the person who made the house seem sad.”
She didn’t understand, because she didn’t realize what really made him think of their father. She didn’t know that he was trying to cope with the feelings Sadie’s words had triggered.
That they had brought to mind all he’d failed to protect.
And that was the crux of the problem. He wanted to protect the people he loved, the people of Copper Ridge. And his track record was hit or miss at best.
“Hello.” He turned and saw Sadie standing in the driveway, her hands in her back pockets, tugging the T-shirt she was wearing tight across her breasts, her expression sheepish. “Hopefully I’m not interrupting anything.”
“Not anything important,” Kate said, forcing a smile.
She looked a whole lot like him when she faked okay, and he wasn’t sure what he thought about that.
“How is everything, Kate?” Sadie asked, smiling. Sadie’s smile, regardless of her feelings, always seemed genuine. And that was even more concerning. He was starting to realize that everything about Sadie, all of her ease and lightness, wasn’t what it seemed.
Ruptured spleen. Hospitalization. Her mother wouldn’t defend her...
He couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t believe this bright, amazing woman had been subjected to horrors that topped the Garrett Ranch’s Greatest Hits by a mile. He hadn’t even guessed at her pain, and today she’d poured it out onto his chest.
And he felt it now. The weight of it. Of what he hadn’t done. Of what he always left undone.
“Good,” Kate said. “I was actually just asking about you.”
“Well, here I am! Things are really moving along for the barbecue. Though I wanted to ask you, and I know it’s really last minute, but are you interested in doing any type of rodeo demonstration?”
Kate brightened visibly. “Yes. I’d love to. I could do some barrel racing in the arena, or even some calf roping.”
“Both if you want.”
“Maybe Jack will be interested in helping out,” she said.
“That would be great.”
“I’ll go and call him,” Kate said. “See you.” She waved and then bounded off in the direction of her little cabin.
“She is quite something,” Sadie said, moving in closer to him.
“She is. Sometimes I’m afraid she really lost out having to be raised by us. We’re not exactly a soft touch.”
“No,” Sadie said, “but you’re a pretty darn satisfying touch if I say so myself.”
“Well, thanks for that.”
“Actually, that’s what I’m here to talk to you about.”
“Oh?” he asked, feeling the scowl forming from the inside out. He’d come to cut wood and escape her and here she was.
Wanting to talk about the feelings he was pretending not to have.
“I’m sorry about what I said. I wanted to make sure we were okay.”
She didn’t meet his eyes when she said any of that. And he knew she really was sorry, and that she was afraid that she’d overstepped. But he also knew she’d meant it all. And it had hit its mark.
“We’re fine,” he told her, because it was the thing he had to say to get sex. And whatever he felt, he knew he still wanted that.
“Good. I don’t normally spill my guts like that. Normally I listen to other people do it. That’s kind of why I do it. Did it.”
“Therapy?”
“Yes. Because I got to give it to other people and sort of turn over their own issues and never think of mine. I mean...it hurts. That memory hurts. I think it always will. And I’m projecting. I know that. I...wished someone would have seen, Eli, and in my head, because you were so tangled up in that night, something in me made that person you. My patients do the same thing and I know better. But you know...it’s a ‘doctors are terrible patients’ kind of a thing.”
He could hear what she was saying, and he even believed her to an extent. But it didn’t change the way that heavy mass of emotion felt in his chest. Didn’t make breathing easier or his throat less tight.
“Let’s forget that it happened,” she said. “You know. You’re basically the only person who knows. And...I think we should just...go to bed.”
“It’s six o’clock.”
“So?” she asked.
They were standing outside his house. And he’d never had her in his house before. But he’d had her in his patrol car. And that was, in some ways, more intimate.
“I guess I can’t think of a reason.” Mainly because the blood had all rushed down south of his belt. A chronic, Sadie-related issue.
“Oh, good,” she said, looking relieved. “I don’t want things to change.”
Neither did he, but he was afraid that they had.
“We’re on the same page, then.”
“Your house or the car?”
“House,” he said.
“Probably for the best. In hindsight, it was a pretty poor use of the people’s property. Doing it in a county-owned vehicle.”
&nbs
p; “Excuse me,” he said, the tension in his chest easing slightly, though not the tension in his cock, “you started it.”
“True. But then,” she said, putting her hand on his chest, a smile curving her lips, “I am a criminal. A very bad girl. And you are so good.”
He wrapped his hand around her wrist and drew her fingertips up to his lips, sucking one into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the tip. Then he closed his teeth lightly over her skin and released her. “Am I?” he asked.
He didn’t feel good. He felt like a failure. Like a man who’d let another man beat this woman near to death. Like a man who couldn’t protect the weaker people around him, even though he tried with everything in him.
There were tons of people who never let their fathers drive off in a drunken stupor and die. And those people probably didn’t try half as hard as he did.
Sometimes he wondered if he was destined to fail everyone around him, no matter how hard he tried to be acceptable. To be good enough.
So if he was going to be bad, maybe he should just embrace it.
“I think you’re underestimating me,” he said. “Still. And I’ve had you in handcuffs.”
“I don’t know, Eli.”
“Sadie,” he said, gripping her chin, kissing her firmly on the lips. “Get your ass in my bed.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SADIE WASN’T SURE what was happening, or why it felt so different. It wasn’t about sex. She knew that much. Well, it was about sex, but it was about something more, too. Something deeper. Something she really didn’t want to guess at.
Eli had only let her in his house that night she’d used his shower when she’d burst the pipes. Never since.
They had sex at her house. And then he returned to his space. His neat and ordered space.
She walked through the front door, her heart hammering hard. Everything was like she remembered, identical, really, to the only other time she’d ever been here.
Neat, clean. Verging on shiny.
For a man who worked with farm animals and criminals, he sure kept his space spotless.
Maybe that was why.
“You know where my bedroom is,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Get upstairs.” There was a hard, determined light in his dark eyes. Like a switch had been flipped. There was so much electricity arching between them. So much heat. And so much intense meaning.
Things had changed. She’d changed them by telling him her story. By telling him he should have protected her.
She wasn’t sure yet if she’d made things better or ruined them, but she was sure she’d changed them. She’d felt it then, standing isolated in the woods with him, and she felt it now.
“Okay,” she said, because whatever was happening she wasn’t going to tell him no.
She turned and headed up the stairs, her footsteps loud on the wooden floor, her heart hammering louder in her ears, sounding over her feet.
“I like to watch you walk,” he said. “Though I like it better when you aren’t wearing anything.”
She heard him behind her, following her, his voice rough. “Well, I’m hardly going to walk through your kitchen naked,” she said.
“I walked through the woods naked for you,” he said. “And that’s not my usual thing.”
“No,” she said, tossing a look over her shoulder, her stomach knotting tighter as she saw the hungry look on his face. “I don’t suppose.”
“But I don’t do any of the usual things with you,” he said.
She pushed open his bedroom door and tugged her shirt over her head, ditching her bra just as quickly before crossing one arm over her breasts and turning, giving him her best saucy smile. “Oh, really?”
“No,” he said, his voice lowering. “I don’t.”
“Well,” she said, spreading her fingers, giving him a slight peek at her nipple, knowing that she was driving him crazy, “maybe we can see what else I might tempt you to do.”
He advanced on her, his expression dark. He extended his hands and cupped her face, tilting her head backward, his fingers forked through her hair. “Don’t make this a joke, Sadie.”
“I’m not,” she said, her heart tightening, like he’d grabbed hold of that instead of her face and squeezed tight.
“You’re trying to make light of it so you don’t feel it. I can’t do that. As you pointed out, I’m a pretty humorless bastard.” He traced the edge of her lower lip with his thumb. “So no more talking. Don’t try to make it funny. I have to feel it. So you damn well have to feel it, too.”
Her heart lurched into her throat, made a response impossible. But it didn’t matter because then he was kissing her, his lips hard and firm on hers, stubble scraping her chin, her cheeks, as things intensified between them.
Their little love scene in the car had been intense, driven by her need to wash something out of the past. To make it different. But this was different still. He was different.
And he was right. She wanted to do exactly what he had accused her of. She wanted to do a striptease and laugh and make it fun. She wanted it to be the kind of sex she knew, the kind she could control.
But Eli was in charge now. And for some reason, she felt more helpless now than when her wrists had been in handcuffs.
Because that had been her idea, her plan. But this was about his demons, not hers.
He pushed her back onto the bed, stripping her jeans, underwear and shoes from her body before he shoved his jeans down his hips, leaving him naked, bare for her.
“I’ll be right back.” He turned and walked into the bathroom and returned a moment later, rolling the condom onto his length as he moved back to the bed.
He positioned himself between her thighs, kissing her deep. There was no foreplay, no preamble at all, but she didn’t care. She was ready. She’d been ready since the last time he was inside her.
There was just something about him.
He pushed inside of her, deep, thick, filling her completely. A sharp gasp escaped her lips as he pushed his hips forward, going impossibly deeper. She wrapped her legs around his thighs, opening herself to him, allowing him better access.
She smoothed her hands over his hair, down his shoulders and back, her eyes never leaving his, the impact hitting her deep, sparking off the protective shields she’d built up around her chest, making her burn. Making her feel like she was on the verge of an attack that might bring the walls down forever.
He ground himself against her, pleasure rushing through her, her orgasm taking her by surprise, taking her over completely. Rushing through her and eclipsing all of the emotions that had been knotting up in her chest, leaving her feeling clean, new.
Relieved.
Above her, Eli lowered his head, his body shaking as he shuddered out his own release. He let out a hard breath and moved away from her, rolling onto his back. She just stayed where she was, staring at the ceiling, at the slats of wood, knotted and imperfect, but somehow orderly. Like the man himself.
The only sound was his harsh breathing. Probably hers, too, but for some reason she was much more aware of him than of herself. Possibly because she didn’t want to be aware of herself, all things considered.
The things considered being the fact that it felt like there was a potential avalanche of feelings about to crash down inside of her. A veritable rock slide of emotions.
No, thank you, sir.
She closed her eyes and tried to capture the post-orgasmic warmth that she was counting on coming to the rescue. She felt decidedly less glowy than normal.
She was far too aware of everything. The burn on her cheeks from his whiskers, the blood still throbbing hot through her body, her heart beating unevenly. How cold her breasts felt now that he’d moved away from her.
The shifting of the mattress as he got up and the sound of his feet slapping on the wood floor as he headed back into the bathroom. She shivered, then looked around the room, pushing herself into a sitting position.
He didn’t have pictures on the walls. The wood-paneled walls were broken up by large windows that overlooked the dense trees that backed the house. The sun was sinking outside, golden rays filtering through the green, casting everything in a hazy filtered light.
She suddenly felt completely exhausted, her eyelids ready to sink like the sun. She crawled up to the head of the bed and slipped beneath the covers, lying on her side, watching the tree branches outside wave in the breeze. She heard Eli walking back through the room, felt the mattress sink just across from her.
The covers slipped down and she felt his warmth beneath the covers. Wordlessly, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. She relaxed, head resting against the solid wall of his chest.
She would just close her eyes for a second.
Then she would go.
* * *
WHEN SADIE OPENED HER EYES, gray light was bathing the bedroom, and Eli’s arms were still wrapped tightly around her.
She scrubbed her eyes, rolling onto her back, his hands drifting over her breasts as she did. Then she craned her neck to look over him, and at the bedside clock.
It was five-thirty, and she sure as hell knew she hadn’t gone back in time, which meant she’d slept here all night.
She sat up, pulling the covers up to her chest. Eli made a deep noise, then rolled over.
Her heart was hammering, her hands a little sweaty. She’d never done that before. Never slept beside another person like that. There was something so impossibly intimate about it. Something sort of terrifying.
She waited for her muscles to spring into action, for her legs to get her out of bed and her feet to run her out the door.
But it didn’t happen.
She breathed in deep, and the panic started to subside, her breath normalizing. She didn’t want to leave. That was the most startling revelation that came from her subsiding panic. Other startling revelations included that she actually felt happy that he’d let her stay the night. That he’d invited her into his home and his bedroom.
He’d shared something with her last night. Like she’d shared with him after they’d made love in the car. But he’d done it wordlessly, and she had no idea what exactly she was supposed to extrapolate from it, but she still felt it.
