“Okay,” Eliot said, hugging Ian back. Then he whispered in Ian’s ear, “Star Wars Lego, okay?”
Ian laughed. This kid. His kid. “Can do. We’ll always be buddies, Eliot. You know that, right?”
Eliot looked as serious as a six-year-old possibly could. “Yup. And maybe when I grow up, I’ll be a cowboy, too!”
Then it was time for the Berger family to head back to the seats Ian had gotten for them, up close to the arena where Eliot could see all the action. Ian shook hands with Rayanne and Chris, and they made vague plans to meet again if Ian was back in Vegas next year.
Ian watched his son walk away with his parents. Once, Eliot turned around and waved his bull, Manny, at Ian, but then the crowds closed in around him and he was gone.
For Ian, it was like watching a part of his heart walk away.
Lacy was beside him, her arm around his waist. “You okay?”
“I just—I need—” But all those emotions were jumbled together and suddenly he couldn’t talk. He couldn’t breathe.
“Come on,” Lacy said, pulling him away from the noise and the crowds and the concerned faces of his family and friends.
He stumbled blindly after her. He didn’t know where she was taking him but he didn’t care. All he knew was that he needed her. He needed her to tell him it was better this way. He needed to tell her he was sorry.
He found himself back underneath the stands in the arena, in a poorly lit hallway that echoed with the sounds of hundreds of people finding their seats. Lacy turned and looked at him, then threw her arms around his neck.
Ian started to sob. He buried his face in her hair and wept for everything he’d given away when he’d signed the papers—his son’s first smile, his first word, his first steps. Christmas mornings and birthday parties and bedtimes stories, the thousands of small moments of being a father that weren’t his because he’d signed the papers and done the right thing.
Lacy held him tight and he clung to her. “I’m here,” she whispered again and again as he cried.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried. Maybe when his leg had broken during that last game? But even then, it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t this flood of emotion and confusion and pain that threatened to swamp him entirely. It was selfish, this crying—because Eliot was obviously a happy, well-adjusted kid. Ian wasn’t crying for the boy. He was crying for himself.
And then, almost as quickly as the storm had hit, it passed and he felt better. He stood a little straighter, but he didn’t let go of Lacy. “Sorry,” he mumbled when he saw she’d been crying with him. “Don’t know what came over me there.”
She snorted. “Don’t make excuses, Ian.” She used the sleeve of her shirt to wipe the tears away from his face. “He’s a great kid.”
“He is, isn’t he?” But even saying that out loud made his eyes water again.
Heavy metal music began to blare. It was time for the show to start.
“I don’t know if I can do this right now.”
Lacy cupped his face in her hands and hauled him down to her level. “You can and you will. You listen to me, Ian Tall Chief. You’re going to get your head in the game and you’re going to do an amazing job protecting riders from bulls because that’s what you do. You’re going to show your son that his buddy is cool. You’re going to show the promoters you’ve got what it takes to be right back here next year.”
He took a deep breath. “And you? You’re the only thing missing from that pep talk.”
She gave him a watery grin and the next thing he knew, she was kissing him—hard and long. It was everything he’d missed for the past two weeks. He wanted to bury his hands in her hair and bury himself in her body and know it would all work out.
He didn’t get the chance. “Now get out there and show ’em what you’ve got!” she said when she pulled away. She spun him around and swatted him on the butt before she pushed him toward the arena entrance.
“You would’ve made a hell of a motivational coach, Lacy.”
“Less talk. More rock!”
The announcer was introducing the riders, which meant Ian had run out of time. He hustled to where Black Jack was waiting in time for their intros. As Ian tipped his hat to the crowd, he saw where Eliot and his family were sitting. Eliot waved Manny at him. Even at this distance, Ian could see the huge grin on the boy’s face.
“You got your head in the game, Chief?”
“Yeah.” He glanced back to where Lacy had taken up a spot on the top of the chutes. She smiled at him, a quick thing. “Yeah, I think I do.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
WHAT DID SHE WANT?
As Lacy helped with Rattler’s bull rope, she asked herself that question over and over.
Rattler had a hell of a good ride, dumping his rider at the 7.2-second mark. Instead of following her bull back to his pen as she normally did, she stayed up on the chutes, kept her eyes on Ian and tried to answer the question.
She wasn’t doing a great job at it—too many distractions. Ian had his game on. He executed a couple of nice saves and backed Jack up when he needed to. He didn’t wrestle any bulls, though. Probably for the best.
She’d spotted Eliot and his family and kept an eye on them while Ian worked. Eliot seemed totally bowled over by the bull riders. Every time a rider went flying, he’d get this huge look on his face and turn to his mom like he was saying, Did you see that?
Maybe it was different for Eliot and Ian. After all, Ian had always sent presents and Rayanne had always sent pictures. Eliot had always known of Ian, his buddy.
If Lacy’s parents had told her she had a birth mother when she was six, what could she have done with that information? She thought about how, even though Eliot knew who Ian was, he’d still asked about his birth mother—several times.
Lacy never would’ve been able to put a name or a face with this concept of “birth mother.” There would have been no presents, no buddies. She would have spent the next decade wondering who she was, who her mother was.
Yeah, it had sucked to find that box and discover she was adopted. It had sucked a lot. But she was a grown-up.
How much more would it have hurt if she’d been a little kid?
For the first time, Lacy understood her parents’ choice. They hadn’t been hiding it from her—as her mom had said in the letter, they hadn’t wanted to confuse her.
They had done everything they could to love her.
Because she was their daughter.
Lacy exhaled as a sense of peace settled around her. When she got back home, she might try organizing Dad’s office again. She wasn’t afraid of that box or the papers it contained anymore.
The rodeo ended with the Preacher taking first. As the crowd filtered out, Lacy searched for Eliot’s family again. When she found them, Eliot’s dad had picked up the boy and was carrying him. Eliot had his head on his dad’s shoulder, but he was still looking at the arena—at Ian.
And Ian was looking back. Eliot lifted the hand that held Manny the bull and Ian waved. Then the Bergers were gone, swept away in the crowd.
Ian made his way over to where Lacy was perched. He looked as if he’d been run over by a truck but was trying to pretend he hadn’t been. “Lacy...”
“You need to get out of here?”
“Yeah.”
She sent Murph a text to make sure he was taking care of Rattler, and then took Ian’s hand. Without meaning to, she headed back to her room. But that, she realized, was what she wanted—part of it, anyway. She wanted to finish the conversation they’d started earlier, to show Ian the pictures she’d snapped of him and Eliot—to be there for him as he’d been there for her.
They didn’t speak on the walk back to her hotel or in the elevator. She could tell he was trying to come to grips with the whole
afternoon. Hell, it might take weeks before he’d processed it all. She was still working through her own adoption issues and she’d had months.
“Is this where you’re staying?” he asked, his voice low behind her as she opened the door.
Her heart pounded. What was she thinking, bringing him back here after everything that had happened? He probably needed his space to think about his son right now, not to hash through whether they were going to figure out their relationship. “Yeah. I—we—we don’t have to be here. We can go somewhere else.”
He took a deep breath and put his hands on her waist. Then she was being propelled into the room. “I don’t care where we are. I just need someplace quiet—someplace with you.”
He dropped his duffel to the ground, but he didn’t let go of her waist. And she didn’t pull away.
I need you.
That’s what he’d texted her earlier. That’s what his actions had said when he’d introduced her to his son’s family.
He pulled her hat off, and then his arms were around her and he pulled her into a hug and she let him because that was what she wanted, too. Someplace quiet, someplace with him.
He buried his face in her hair and she laid her arms on top of his and held him to her. They stood like that for a while. She wanted to tell him how much she’d missed him, how she wanted him to come back—how she hadn’t felt quite like herself without him beside her.
But she didn’t. She didn’t want to make this moment all about her, and she didn’t want to gloss over the reasons she’d asked him to leave in the first place.
So she said nothing and focused on the way his body felt against hers, warm and muscled and safe.
“Babe,” he whispered after several moments. “I just...thank you.”
“I wanted to be here for you.” She spun in his arms and stared up at him. “I wanted you to know that the reason I asked you to leave—it’s not that you had a son.”
The shame on his face was a hard thing to see. “It’s that I didn’t tell you.”
“It’s not even that. I mean, it is—but it’s why you didn’t tell me, don’t you see? You thought I couldn’t handle it. After all we went through—after all we shared—you thought you still had to protect me from the truth.”
She swallowed, hard. Ever since she’d watched him drive away, she’d thought long and hard about what had happened—all of it. From the very first moment she’d seen him, wrestling Rattler to the ground, he’d been trying to keep her safe. “I’m not a bull rider. It’s not your job to protect me because I’m not your damsel in distress.”
“I—I don’t know how else to be.” He sounded as if she’d punched him—hard. “I made this job my life—it’s who I am. I keep people safe.”
“It’s not who you are,” she insisted. “I don’t want you to give it up, being a bullfighter. But there’s so much more to you than being a fighter—or a football player.”
He sat heavily on the bed, his head in his hands. “What do you want? Do you want to be done?”
Once upon a time, he’d told her to be honest with herself and with him. This was her heart on the line. Anything less than total honesty would be a betrayal to them both. “If you and I are ever going to work, I want to be loved—as I am. I may be a mess sometimes, but that doesn’t mean I need you to rescue me. I need you to love me. I don’t want your job. I want you. That’s all.”
He looked at her, his eyes watering. “Babe, I’m so sorry. It’s just that, when we started, you needed protection. And I...” He swallowed. “And I needed to protect you. I needed to prove to myself that I was a good person, a good man. That I wasn’t the same stupid kid who gave up his son and abandoned his girlfriends. I thought... I thought I could redeem myself by helping you out.”
“Was that all I was to you? A path to redemption?”
Abruptly, he stood and closed the distance between them. He brushed a curl out of her face and cupped her cheek in his palm. She sucked in air but she didn’t let herself hold him. Not yet. Not until she’d heard him out. “No. You were never just my redemption, Lacy. From the very first moment I saw you, there was this spark about you—between us. I thought that if I could ignore that spark, ignore the way you made me feel, it’d prove that I was different. That I was a better man than I’d been.”
“You held yourself back from me,” she said, but there was no missing the breathy whisper her voice had become. “You held the truth back from me.”
His gaze searched her eyes, and then he touched his forehead to hers. “Because this is the truth, babe. I love you. I’ve never loved anyone in my life before, but you? I love you.”
She exhaled. He’d never said the words before. She’d never thought she needed to hear them—but now?
Then he went and ruined it. “And I don’t deserve you. I never did. I’m still the same selfish, stupid guy. I haven’t changed. I thought if I could keep you from knowing the truth about me, I’d get a little more time with you.”
He dropped his hands away from her and took a step back. The loss of his touch was a physically painful thing.
“So now you know the truth about me. I’m not good for you. You can do better than me.”
She gaped at him, but he was serious. And that made her mad. “You’re doing it again.”
“What?”
“You’re deciding what’s best for me. Dammit, Ian, knock it off!”
“I’m not—it’s—I’m not a good person,” he sputtered in frustration. “Can’t you see that?”
That statement was so completely ridiculous that she burst out laughing. Ian’s head popped up and he stared at her in shock. “No, I can’t see that. Let me tell you what I do see. I see a man who sends Christmas and birthday presents to a child he didn’t ask for and didn’t know. I see a man who defended his cousin’s right to ride bulls and my right to own them. I see a man with friends he’ll go out of his way to help and friends who know they can count on him when they need a hand. I see a man who literally saved my life when others would have gladly stood by and let me get trampled.” She went to him and wrapped her arms around his neck. He tilted his head to the side and closed his eyes, as if he could physically deny what she was saying. “And I see a man who is so stuck on some crappy choices he made years ago that he can’t see what I see.”
“I’m not good enough for you,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“You weren’t, six years ago,” she corrected, pulling him down to her lips. “But I think you are now.”
“Lacy...” But she cut him off with a kiss. She kissed him as if she might never get another chance.
When the kiss ended, Ian’s chest was heaving. “I tried so hard,” he whispered against her skin. “I tried to be the man who deserves you.”
“I don’t need you to deserve me. I just need you.” She got the feeling she wasn’t going to convince him, not with words.
However, words weren’t the only way to get through to him. She pushed him back and said, “Strip.”
His eyebrows about cleared his forehead. “Lacy?”
She yanked his hat off and threw it on the bed, then started on his shirt’s buttons. “I owe you one. You’re going to cash it in. Shower.”
“You don’t have to do this,” he said—but he didn’t grab her hands and he didn’t shove her away.
“I want to, you idiot. That’s what you can’t see—that I want you as you are.” She paused, her hands frozen at the top of his jeans. “Unless you don’t want me?”
This time, there was nothing soft or gentle about the way he wrapped his arms around her or the way he crushed his lips down on hers. “I want you so much, babe,” he said, threading his hands through her hair and tilting her head back so he could kiss her neck. “God, I want you.”
“Good. Shower. Now.”
His ere
ction was huge as she soaped him up and rinsed him off. He moaned in protest when she knelt before him, grasped his shaft and stroked.
“You’ve always taken care of me, Ian. It’s my turn,” she replied, stroking him again. “You got a problem with that?”
“No,” he groaned as she ran her tongue around his tip. His fingers tangled with her hair. “Lacy...”
She licked over his length a few more times before asking, “Here or the bed?”
“Bed, babe. Please.”
She got the towels and dried him, then led him to the bed. There, she rolled on the condom, and then mounted him. When she surrounded him, she shuddered. “I missed this,” she whispered as she rode him.
“I missed you so much,” he growled, wrapping his arms around her and holding her against him while he thrust into her. “I don’t ever want to miss you again.”
Then he kissed her and sucked on her breasts until her body bore down on his and he unleashed his climax on hers. Spent, they collapsed together, panting hard.
“Now what?” he said in an awestruck voice.
Wasn’t that the ten-thousand-dollar question? When she’d come up to his room earlier, she hadn’t intended to wind up back in bed with him. But watching him with Eliot...
She leaned up on his chest and gave him a look. “I wasn’t going to kick you out in the hallway naked, you know.”
Ian snorted. “I appreciate that, but you know what I mean.” He took a deep breath. “What about us?”
She lay back down on his chest and traced the tattoo. “This is Eliot’s, isn’t it? After you left, I looked it up. The heart is your love, and each side of the triangle is everyone in the adoption—him, you and his parents.”
“It is.” He covered her hand with his and held it against his tattoo. “I got it about six months after I signed the papers. Rayanne sent her first update with a picture of this fat little baby smiling and...that was when I knew I’d never be one of those fathers who walked on without looking back.”
Harlequin Superromance May 2016 Box Set Page 51
