by Kim Law
He turned to her. “Want to talk about it?”
She grimaced. “Friday night?”
He nodded but said nothing. This was up to her. She’d slept with someone other than her husband, and that had to weigh heavy on her. If she didn’t want to talk about it, he’d let it drop.
When her lips parted as if to speak, he pressed his tightly shut. Her eyes flared for a second, before she shook her head and grim determination appeared on her face. “I am not going to feel guilty that we slept together,” she said.
“Good.”
“My husband is gone. It might not be the way things were supposed to be, but it’s today’s reality.” She swallowed and then licked her lips. “And I’m not going to apologize for kicking you out, either.”
“Even better.” He bit back a smile.
“And I had a really good time,” she finished with a whisper.
Relief hit him hard. “I did, too.”
After a few moments of the suddenly easier silence, he gave her a crooked smile. “In fact, I’d be willing to have a really good time again if you ever wanted to.”
She snorted. “I think once was enough. I got the chance to blow off some steam, you know?” She nodded with bolstered confidence. “So yeah. I’m good. Once was enough.”
He couldn’t say the same. “So your steam is gone, then?”
He knew he shouldn’t push, but man, he wanted to sleep with her again. And he wanted the chance to do it several times in one night. And then the next night. Because he, personally, had a lot of steam built up when it came to Harper.
She didn’t immediately respond, so without letting himself think about the consequences, he leaned over and put his mouth to hers. When no protest came, he kissed her gently, nibbling at the corner of her mouth, taking tiny sips and enjoying her taste and the slight movements her lips made under his. And when he finally pulled back, his breathing heavy, he forced his eyes open and found her staring at the ground. He dipped his head, and when he saw his own heavy desire reflected back at him, he nodded. Good enough. He sat back against the rock.
After several seconds, she said, “This really wasn’t supposed to be a date.”
“It’s not a date.”
She raised her brows.
“It’s not,” he protested. “Just two friends hanging out. And this”—he motioned with one hand between them—“what we just did? It was just two friends kissing. No big deal.”
“Sort of like friends with benefits?”
He couldn’t hold back the hopeful look, and she let out a sad chuckle.
“You tempt me, Nick Wilde.” She bumped her shoulder against his. “I’ll give you that much. No wonder you have buckle bunnies chasing you every weekend.”
He winked at her, not giving away anything on his buckle bunny situation. He liked the fact that she was clearly jealous. After giving it considerable thought over the weekend, he’d determined that the only reason Harper had kissed him in the first place was due to Betsy. Betsy had been bold in her wants, and not shy about sharing them—or letting others hear. That had fired a need in Harper to prove herself more desirable. And she’d done an admirable job.
“Buckle bunnies definitely have their place,” he teased. Then he reached over and took Harper’s hand. Her arm tensed next to his, but she didn’t immediately pull away. So he left her fingers in his, and together they stared off into the distance. They could hear murmured sounds coming from climbers on the same face as them and the occasional shifting of a branch in a tree down below. It was so quiet up here that they could pick out random noises traveling from thousands of feet away.
“You’re really good, aren’t you?” Harper asked. She glanced over at him—and she also took her hand back. “At bull riding, I mean. Like . . . really good? The commercials and everything aren’t just because you’re so pretty?”
He winced at the word “pretty.” “Yeah. I’m really good.”
“Then what’s stopping you?” She nodded to the view in front of them. “Is it really just this? You’d be traveling more, but it’s not like you’d never come home.”
It wasn’t just this, but he had yet to pinpoint the exact reason. He answered with a shrug.
“Does it have anything to do with those secrets you mentioned?”
Again, he didn’t comment. Because what she didn’t realize was that he’d shared one of those secrets with her today. Everyone in the business was aware that he’d been delaying joining the PBR for a long time. They’d assumed the timing wasn’t right, or that he feared he couldn’t run with the big dogs. As if. But what they didn’t know, what he’d never said out loud until just now, was that he hadn’t gone simply because he didn’t want to.
He rose and held a hand down to her. “Come on. We have more rock to climb.”
Chapter Nine
Harper turned into the Wilde driveway later that afternoon, replaying the day in her head and deciding that she was glad she’d let Nick talk her into going. Kissing aside, it had been a good day. The reality was, the kissing had made it better. Not that she’d tell Nick that. His ego was already big enough.
She slowed to a stop at the end of his driveway, then put the jeep into park, and when Nick turned to her, she didn’t know what to say. Would he try to kiss her again?
Would she stop him?
“Let’s do this again,” he said.
It wasn’t that easy. “Probably not a good idea.”
Nick studied her in the silence. “Can we if I promise not to kiss you anymore?” There was a solemnness to his eyes. “I’d miss it, though. Because I happen to like kissing you.” He gave her a wry twist of his lips, as if embarrassed by his words. “I like doing more than kissing. But everything else aside, I’ve also discovered that hanging out with you is as much fun as any of it.”
The words touched her heart.
“I . . .” she began, but paused to gather her thoughts. What was she supposed to say to that? “I had a good time today, Nick. Thank you for suggesting it. And Friday night was fun, too,” she added. “But maybe we should slow down.”
“Slow down being friends?”
She shook her head, because she feared he might change her mind by doing nothing more than training his blue gaze on hers.
“My youngest sister graduates from high school tomorrow night,” she told him. “Then I have a full day of flights Thursday and Friday, and I’ll be with Jewel on Saturday.” That weekend’s rodeo was a one-day event not far from there, but the day would still be busy. “I don’t have time,” she finished.
He gave her hand a light squeeze. “Then I’ll keep an eye out for when you do.”
The light came on in the jeep when he opened the door and stepped out. Harper watched until he’d disappeared around the back corner of the house, then put the jeep into gear and circled around, heading back down the drive. She couldn’t hang out with Nick again because she’d had too much fun with him today. And because—when she got right down to it—if they did something else together, she’d want it to end with neither of them wearing clothes. Again.
And though she’d been fine with doing it once, something told her that a second time would bother her. Because a second would turn into a third. And then a fourth.
And that might just be more than she could handle.
“Patti Jackson.”
Harper rose to her feet with her family, clapping for her baby sister who was graduating at the top of her class. The youngest Jackson was the brain of the group. All of her siblings were in attendance today, as well as their parents, and the group of them made a lot of noise as Patti walked across the stage. She accepted her diploma and turned to wave it toward her family. Then she gave a big, sweeping bow. Which made all of them hoot even louder. The raucousness had Harper laughing out loud.
As they sat back down, the grin remained on her face, and she caught both Jewel and her mother sliding glances her way. Jewel nudged Chastity, the sister exactly halfway in age between Jewel and Har
per, and then Chastity cut a look her way, too.
“What?” Harper mouthed.
All three of them shook their heads and popped innocent expressions on their faces. Harper frowned at them and went back to watching the proceedings. But once the program ended and they’d moved off the stands, she cornered her two sisters.
“What was that about?” she asked.
“What?” Jewel and Chastity chorused together. They even blinked in unison.
“Why were you three talking about me? What were you saying?”
Chastity blinked again, owl-like, and Jewel suddenly looked everywhere but at her.
“Quit talking about me,” Harper growled under her breath. They’d whispered about her too much over the last year and a half, and she was beyond tired of it. How’s Harper? Is she doing better yet? What should we do for her?
Of course, there had been nothing they’d been able to do for her, and she’d hated their sad, woe-is-Harper looks even more than their whispers. But their direct questions had been the worst. Harper had grown especially good at fielding them.
I’m fine.
Yes, I’ve moved on.
No, of course I’m not suicidal.
Thankfully, she’d only had to force the last one for a short time, but there had been a few seriously rough months. Yet their whispers today seemed different. Their looks weren’t the same.
Their mother joined them, slipping away from their dad to stand between Chastity and Jewel. She slid an arm around both of Harper’s sisters, and suddenly the three of them were no longer ignoring her, instead standing as a united wall. In front of her. The sight made her nervous.
“You’re different today,” her mother informed her—direct and to the point as usual.
“How so?” Harper looked down at herself as if seeking out the changes.
“Your smile,” Chastity added.
That brought Harper’s head up. Her smile? She forced one. “What’s wrong with my smile?”
“Nothing is wrong with it,” Jewel explained. “It’s just that it’s . . . real.”
“My smile has always been real.”
The three of them exchanged glances.
“It has.”
Chastity was the one to shake her head. As a park ranger in Yellowstone, Chastity usually only made it home for Jackson Sunday dinners once a month. A tradition started, Harper suspected, purely for her benefit. “You’ve had to remind yourself to smile for a long time,” Chastity explained. “Today”—she lifted her hands, palms up—“you’re simply smiling.”
Harper frowned at all of them. Maybe she hadn’t been pretending to be okay as well as she’d thought. “None of you know what you’re talking about,” she mumbled.
“What’s different?” her mom questioned. Their mother never beat around the bush.
And Nick was what was different. Not that Harper would say that, or even mean it completely. She had changed in the last few days, and yes, Nick had played a role in that. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t been smiling for months.
“Did you meet somebody?” The question was asked hesitantly, and Chastity had the grace to look embarrassed at voicing it.
“Do you honestly believe I can’t be happy without a man in my life?”
“No!” they all three denied quickly.
Jewel tilted her head as if an idea had just occurred to her, and her eyebrows inched slowly up. Her expression seemed too innocent. “Did something”—she shrugged her shoulders casually—“happen at the rodeo last weekend?”
Their mother’s eyes rounded, and Harper’s narrowed. Innocent, her ass.
“Nothing happened anywhere,” Harper informed them as her gaze locked onto Jewel’s. Harper had worried that her sister might have overheard her and Nick through the motel room wall Friday night, but when nothing had been said about it the next day, she’d decided her worries were for nothing.
However, she now suspected otherwise.
“You’re all wrong,” she stressed, looking purposefully away from Jewel. “I’m not different. Nothing is different.”
And she most definitely didn’t need a man in order to be happy.
“I’m fine,” she continued when everyone remained silent. They were all simply watching her. “I’ve been fine for a long time, and nothing is different now.”
“Only,” Chastity murmured under her breath, “something is different.”
“Mom.” Harper looked to her mother as if expecting her mom to chastise Chastity.
“Is it Nick?”
At a man’s name coming from Jewel’s mouth, both Chastity and their mother looked at Jewel. “Who’s Nick?” they asked in unison.
Jewel’s face gave nothing away. “Nick Wilde. You remember him. Used to hang out with me at the house a lot. He had a big crush on Harper when he was a kid. She flew him home a couple of weekends ago.”
Chastity and their mom swiveled back to Harper.
“He needed a ride,” Harper gritted out. She pointed a finger at Jewel. “And it was her idea.”
“But he was also in Great Falls.”
“Because he’s a bull rider. And we were at a rodeo.” Embarrassment filled her, but she passed it off as anger. Jewel knew. There was no doubt. And she’d saved that nugget of information for just the right time. “I don’t need this crap.” She turned away from them. “You three carry on without me. I’m going to go stand with Dad.”
She stormed off, refusing to look back at her mother and siblings, but she couldn’t help wondering what Jewel thought of her actions. Or if she would tell everyone else.
Harper also questioned the subject that had started the conversation to begin with. Did she really seem different? Nick was fun, sure. And a good guy. He was easy to talk to and be around, and they’d had a good time the day before.
And, holy smokes, could he kiss.
But being around him hadn’t really changed the way she smiled, had it?
She reached her dad’s side and dropped her head to his shoulder when he shot her a wink and slid an arm around her waist. Her dad wouldn’t grill her over her happiness. Not because he didn’t worry about her, though. She’d seen it in his eyes as often as she’d witnessed it in everyone else’s. In fact, her dad probably worried about her the most. But he provided support in ways other than badgering her with questions. Like simply being there when she needed him.
The way Thomas once had.
Chapter Ten
Why aren’t you out there, Uncle Nick?”
Nick looked down at the dark-haired beauty in his lap and wrinkled his nose at the five-year-old. “Because bull riding is better than calf roping.”
Haley wrinkled her nose in return and stared at him, her green eyes seeming to be assessing him, sorting through whether he was serious or not. When he winked at her, her confusion cleared and her giggles rang free. She snuggled in tighter against his chest. “You’re silly, Uncle Nick.”
They were at a charity rodeo in Missoula, only an hour from home, and Dani, Ben, and Haley had come down for the event.
“My friend Leslie’s uncle ropes the cows, and she says he’s the best ever.”
“Yeah?” Nick drawled. “Well, has he ever ridden a bull?”
“Reel your macho back in, big guy,” his sister muttered at his side.
Nick looked at her. “I’m just saying, there’s a difference.”
“And each sport is perfectly acceptable.”
Nick shot his sister a bored look, then once again winked at Haley. “I’m sure Leslie’s uncle is great at roping, sweetheart. But just wait until you see me ride tonight. You’ll love bull riding then.”
The corners of her mouth turned up. “I already love it. Because that’s what you do. And you’re my favorite uncle.”
Dang. He was head over heels for this kid.
The action in the arena switched as the next group of ropers began making their way to the chutes, and Nick stood, Haley on his hip. “How about we find ourselves some hot dogs?”
“I love hot dogs!” Haley shouted.
Ben and Dani chuckled, rising to follow them out of the stands. Nick had been thrilled to get a text from his sister that the three of them would be there tonight. Though she’d stopped by the house earlier in the week, they hadn’t had time to stay long, and Nick hadn’t seen them since.
“Hey, Wilde,” another rider greeted him as they approached the concession area. He tipped his hat at Haley. “Looks like your taste in women has improved.”
Haley wrapped an arm around Nick’s neck.
“I’d say my taste is about perfect these days,” Nick confirmed. Which also included a certain blue-haired woman he hadn’t seen in days. “Haley Denton”—he looked at his niece and nodded toward James—“I’d like you to meet the worst bull rider you’re going to see tonight.”
“Hey.” James straightened. “That’s not right.” He faced Haley, his tone serious. “I’d suggest you root for me tonight, darlin’. I’m actually better than this one. And I’m better looking.”
“My uncle’s the best,” Haley informed the other man without pause.
Nick grinned with triumph. He’d known James since the other man had joined the circuit six years ago. He was a good guy, and he not only rode bulls, but he would complete a master’s program the following spring at Montana State. He’d been working at his father’s apparel company since graduating high school—his intention to take over someday—and while both working and going to school, he’d managed to pull in enough money from riding to pay for his education.
And as if lightning struck him where he stood, it occurred to Nick that he, too, could do something at the same time as riding. Something other than volunteering and taking random jobs in his downtime. He could work toward an actual career. He’d gotten a semester of college under his belt back in the day. Maybe he should consider going back.
James got a drink and left, and Nick stood silently, remaining deep in thought as Ben and Dani stepped to the window in front of him. When he’d turned eighteen, he’d headed off to college as his sister and dad had presumed he would. As all of his brothers had done. Only, he’d had more to prove than getting an education, so he’d ditched that plan after one semester and gone to bull-riding school. It had felt more like the real him. He’d once pushed all the limits as a kid. Breaking bones, getting into fights. Always up for the biggest, baddest things. He’d been intent on showing the world how tough he was.
