“I know that.” He looked sorry, but in a fervent, desperate way. “You deserve more than me, but I’m going to give you everything I can from this point on. And I’m not talking about money.”
“Like what, then?”
He seemed on the edge of admitting something.
Just say it, she thought. Because if you can’t, I’m out of here.
He exhaled, then spoke. “I don’t blame you for doubting me.” His gaze was so intense that it almost burned through her. “But I realized that you became a part of me so fast that I lost my balance, and when I was away from you, nothing seemed right. I’d have a drink and want to see you enjoying it. I’d see a cocktail dress in a department store window, and all I wanted to do was look at you in it, smiling at me from across the room, knowing you’d be coming home with me after everything was said and done.”
He was just so . . . convincing. But hadn’t their act always been?
She lowered Poppy to the floor, and the dog circled them slowly, using her big eyes to ask why there was such tension.
“See,” she said, her voice strained. “Poppy doesn’t even know if you’re telling the truth.”
“Would she believe me if I said that you two are the only girls on earth I look forward to seeing every morning when I wake up?”
His ardent gaze didn’t cool, and he must’ve realized that she was hungering to feel his fingers on her skin, because he touched her face. She closed her eyes, making a soft sound she couldn’t hold back.
All his. Damn him. And her.
“Liz,” he said on a rasp. “I’ve never been sure what love is, but I know what it isn’t. It’s not rushing off on a jet to get away from all the confusing things you brought to my life. It’s not putting myself ahead of how you must’ve felt when I left. And it’s not wanting respect more than I want to be with you.”
With every passing word, she believed him more. He hadn’t come out with a full I love you yet, but he was getting there. He was putting himself in a vulnerable spot, stroking her face, leaning forward now to rest his forehead against hers.
This was the moment—to believe or not to believe.
And with every destiny-ridden cell of her body, she believed. She’d never truly stopped.
“I must be crazy,” she said, needing him to say it. And if she could help him get there, she would. “But I never want you to go anywhere again, either.”
He cupped the back of her head. “That’s why I love you, Liz.”
He’d . . . said it.
Ben laughed, then hugged her tight. “I love you more than I ever thought possible.”
Before she could suck in a stunned, ecstatic breath, he was kissing her, a whirl of warmth spinning around them, pushing them together as she got lost in him, knowing he wasn’t going anywhere after this.
He held her, devoured her, just like she was the answer to everything for him. Just like she was all he needed and would ever need.
Poppy was dancing around now, yipping as they ended the kiss and laughed again. Happy. So happy.
But as Ben caressed her hair away from her face, looking into her eyes with that same love—yeah, love—he’d shown her that night in bed, Liz started thinking Poppy wasn’t just doing a joy jig.
“I think,” she said, her pulse throbbing frantically, “Poppy needs to go outside.”
At the word, Poppy sprinted over to the patio door. Ben laughed again, knowing he was thwarted, then reluctantly let Liz go as he went for the exit.
“By the way,” he said, his hand at the curtains. “I hope you don’t mind, but I wasn’t the only one who was hoping you’d forgive me.”
He pulled open the curtains to reveal the patio light shining down on a circle of chairs, filled with Rough & Tumble regulars holding beers and sitting on the edges of their seats.
Gideon Lane, Kat, Hooper, Dustin, and even Jimmy Beetles waved at Liz.
Her heart went liquid, infusing her with such a sense of belonging that she let the tears finally flow.
A husband and a family in one fell swoop. Not bad for Maddie Patterson.
Not bad at all.
***
As Ben gazed at Liz, he still couldn’t believe she was his, that she’d accepted him even though he’d pushed her away.
Love worked in mysterious ways.
“They saw the limo dropping me off,” he said, nodding at the crowd through the glass and holding his hand out to her, “and they showed up to greet me. I didn’t know when you would be home, so they were hanging out there when I heard the garage door opening. . . .”
“What if I’d started throwing kitchen dishes at you? Not that Boomer has very many, but . . .”
“I would’ve taken the punishment, even in front of them.” He gave her a sheepish look, and she wandered over, twining her arms around him, pulling him to her. He breathed her in—the spring scent of her shampoo, a new beginning. “I can tell them to scram for a while.”
“No. They’re here to welcome you back.” She kissed him. “Just like me.”
Warmth spiraled through his chest. “The people in that bar know each other’s secrets, Liz. Gideon and Kat were in on ours from the get-go, and they’re gonna keep it until they go to their graves.”
He’d thought about busting open this entire marriage secret to his family, but why sabotage the progress he’d made with them, especially when he and Liz were in love?
There was a lot of work to do with the Hugheses. Just as much as he had to do with her.
“I like that,” she said. “Secret-keepers. Like a family would be.”
As Ben opened the patio door and the men got to their feet in congratulations, he couldn’t help but to notice that Kat wasn’t as lively as the rest, and it was because of Isaiah Smith, he was sure.
But if Ben had come around on love, she could, too, someday. He was certain of it.
The second Liz walked outside, the Rough & Tumblers greeted her, enfolding her in an embrace. Ben kept his eye on Jimmy Beetles, and when the man’s hand got too friendly with Liz’s hip, Ben shoved it away.
Beetles merely shrugged and cackled, sitting down again with his beer.
As Liz sat next to Kat, Poppy loped to the stone-cluttered yard to take a whiz. Ben followed her, and even though he was at a slight distance, he never took his eyes off of his wife. It sounded old-fashioned, but he wanted to court her, show her he was about more than money, make up for all the hurt he’d caused and let her know that she was his world.
His everything.
Gideon came to stand next to him at the fence, tipping up his Stetson. He had a cigarillo in hand and was patting down his denim jacket pockets, probably for a light.
Ben fetched the Bettie Page lighter from his own pocket. He’d brought it with him from New York, a relic of a time he’d been a different Bennett, fooling Liz—and himself—about who he really was.
He handed it to Gideon, who accepted it with a stoic nod, then lit up. As the others chattered in the background about the Hugheses’ new mansion, just as convivial as if Ben had never been anywhere but here, the night was silent, the sky velvet-dark above the mountains.
“So it looks as if it was worth manning up and hightailing yourself back here,” Gideon said softly, blowing out a plume of smoke.
“Indeed.”
“You gonna live here or on the East Coast?”
“That’ll be up to Liz. I’m hoping both since I’m still working on winning over my family. But she’ll have her dinner club out here.” They could do anything, though. They’d already confronted the worst.
Liz looked over her shoulder and smiled at him eagerly, tenderly as she pulled her long knit sleeves over her hands in the chilling air and went back to the conversation. Ben would go in to get a blanket for her as soon as he finished watching over Poppy.
Gideon squinted into the night. “Glad you took my advice.”
“As if you’re some romantic guru? Kiss my ass, quick-draw.” Ben paused, shrugged. “Maybe you did offer a nugg
et of wisdom here and there.”
“You can thank me at your next wedding. You know—the one you should have with Liz so it’s for real this time?”
Ben liked the idea. He also liked the thought of getting her on that honeymoon he’d been putting off.
“I realized that I couldn’t carry a torch for Liz the rest of my life,” Ben said. “In the end, I finally knew that when you find the right woman, she’s the right woman, no matter how you met.”
Gideon lifted the cigarillo but didn’t take a smoke. “You’re right about the torch. Sometimes they never burn out.”
Before Ben could ask what that meant and how Gideon would know about keeping a fire going for an old flame, the cowboy handed the lighter back to him.
Ben refused it. “I’ve already got a torch I can use.”
Gideon slid Ben an undecipherable smile that was, at least, a little wistful. They both ambled back to the patio as Kat hugged Liz and got up, going toward the house.
“Well, you all,” Kat said, waving as she opened the glass door, “I’ve got to get back on shift.”
After everyone told her they’d see her in a bit, Ben walked her through the house, opening the front door for Kat and stepping out with her. He stayed by her side as they moved toward the R&T.
“Cash sent a new e-postcard from Singapore,” she said.
“And what kind of smug greetings does he give us this time?”
“He’s teasing you about the showgirl who’s got your number. Typical Cash.”
“He knows about Liz, even from all those miles away?”
“E-mail, doofus.” Kat shrugged, keeping a faint smile to herself. “I suppose this is a good time to congratulate you in private, without Jimmy Beetles or the other leatherbacks around. You did it, Ben.”
“Saved my fake marriage, you mean.”
“No. I mean you lived up to my expectations.”
Her comment struck home. He hadn’t realized anyone but Liz could have good expectations of him. And, thanks to his wife, he’d met those hopes Kat had nursed.
Him, living up to something, not down. Who knew?
They approached the saloon, which was already rocking. Outside, a cluster of bikers stomped up to the boardwalk to enter the fun zone, and when they opened the door, a crash of live music and shouting customers came barreling out.
As the door closed, Kat stopped dead in her tracks. So did Ben when he saw a big man sitting at the table in front of the saloon door.
Isaiah Smith. And when he saw Kat, he leaned forward in his chair, shrugging and smiling as if saying, Looks like I couldn’t stay away for long.
Ben knew the story all too well.
But he also knew that Kat had sent the man off for good reason, and he took a step toward him.
“No.” Her breathing had picked up. And she was . . . smiling?
Yeah, smiling brightly, as if she’d been wishing she’d never rejected Isaiah.
“You go on,” she said, her hand to her chest. “I’m fine here.” Then she laughed. “At least for as long as it takes to tell him that maybe we can e-mail, talk, take it real, real slow.”
Ben didn’t say another word, merely backed away from her as she and Isaiah looked at each other, moths drawn to flames, torches carried and never put out.
When he got home, Liz met him at the door, falling into his arms, kissing him again. She pulled away, smiling as brightly as Kat had smiled at Isaiah.
“I’m dying to be alone with you,” she said. “So much that I sent Gideon and the boys packing.”
“Did you?”
“They walked off to Gideon’s house for a round of whisky before they go to the R&T. They said they’d toast us there.”
His friends definitely knew when to vacate.
In the past, Ben would’ve swept Liz off to their room, playing their games, enjoying the sex, then going about his business. But they were married now. Truly married, and he was damned well going to court her. Yeah, he was doing things backward, but a man had to do what a man had to do—especially for the woman he loved.
“So, Mr. Hughes,” she said, her arms around his neck as he rested his hands on her waist. “What’s next for us?”
He had a million ideas. “Holding you in my arms, looking into your eyes, making up for lost time.”
“That’s a start.” She laughed. “But I was thinking . . .”
Just as she waggled her eyebrows, Poppy skittered over to them, crashing into Ben’s legs, her tongue hanging out as she begged for attention.
They laughed until they couldn’t resist looking into each other’s eyes again, and the world flared around them—a mixed-up, crazy world that they’d somehow begun sorting out.
And as he kissed her, destiny took over, the stars aligning in Ben as he closed the door behind them.
Rough & Tumble Saloon
Rough & Tumble, NV
Greetings,
Honeymooning in the Caribbean—worth the wait. Liz never gets tired of hearing me tell her I love her under the tropical moon. Kat, I said that one day, you’d get to visit someplace like this, too. Ticket’s in your e-mail—if you have any time to visit here with Isaiah.(Yeah, I said it. You two are taking it slow, e-mailing, etc. But when you’re ready, the offer’s open.)
Note to Gideon: I hope you’re taking good care of Poppy and Bettie. Cash would kick your ass if you burn Bettie’s light out, so keep whatever flame you have in your torch going with her help.
Ben
Keep reading for a preview of the next book in the Rough and Tumble series
HOT AND BOTHERED
Available March 2015 from InterMix
When Rochelle Burton first decided to track down Gideon Lane, she’d wondered how much he might’ve changed from the eighteen-year-old man-slut she’d known all those years ago.
But when she found him in the middle of the Rough & Tumble Saloon’s courtyard, doing what Gideon had always done best, she immediately stopped wondering.
A small fire was going in the pit, casting light on him while the brim of his gray Stetson shaded his eyes. But his hat didn’t cover his lazy smile or the cigarillo angling out of his mouth as smoke curled into the mild May night air. He slumped in his seat, one square-toed black boot resting on his leg, his arms draped over two rickety chairs on either side of him. If he noticed that Rochelle was leaning against the door frame where whisky-soaked rock ‘n’ roll spilled out of the saloon from a jukebox, he didn’t show it.
Then again, she suspected he was much too busy enjoying the private striptease that four fluffy-haired women were putting on for him. And she was damned sure that he hadn’t been hired by these girls to be their bodyguard, even if that was his profession. No, this was an entirely different sort of personal body work.
Two of the ladies were twins—bleached blondes, at that—and they straddled one leg over each side of him while the other two felt themselves up, unbuttoning their blouses, laughing and tipsy.
No, Gideon hadn’t changed a bit. He was still a player, even after seventeen years had passed them by, still the only guy who’d ever left her in tears, even though she’d put that behind her a long time ago.
Definitely.
Rochelle eased her sunglasses down her nose, looking at him until he had to feel her stare. She could tell the moment he caught sight of her, and it wasn’t because she could see his gaze under that hat brim. It was because he tensed in his seat, sliding his arms off the backs of the chairs, then taking the cigarillo out of his mouth.
Well, a grand entrance had been pretty easy. She’d see about the rest of this necessary reunion.
The four girls stopped gyrating and glanced back at her. The non-twins shrugged and kept dancing, but the two blond lookalikes kept their legs draped over Gideon, almost as if they were claiming him.
Rochelle didn’t mind. She merely told herself to smile, pushing her sunglasses up and onto her head, where they held back the dark waves of hair from her face.
Was Gideon t
hinking that she looked different? The same? Or . . . ?
Ugh—she wasn’t here to compete for Miss Nevada or his attentions, so she swiped the thoughts out of her head.
“What do you know,” she said instead, smoothly raising her voice over the music. “It looks like things never change in this town.”
He was still tense, still staring. Her belly flipped, although she wasn’t about to let him know that he affected her, even after all this time.
How was that even possible when she’d put him in her past? Scratch that—when he’d been only such a tiny, insignificant moment in her past?
One of the blond twins glanced down at Gideon. “You know her?”
He let the cigarillo drop to the ground, then mashed it into the concrete with his boot. He nudged back his cowboy hat, revealing a face that used to make Rochelle’s heart skid and bump through her chest. Light brown eyes that could burn a girl, a strong whiskered jaw, a dimple in his firm chin.
Damn, even now her body was reacting like a runaway sports car, an accident just waiting to happen. But she didn’t do accidents these days—those were things that happened to people who let challenges happen to them, not ones who brought challenges on.
His gaze rode over her, from her face, then down a body that had developed more than a few curves and swerves since they were just a couple of dumb kids, and she flushed all over.
She sure felt like a kid now, but she blanked out the weakness.
“I’ll be damned,” he finally said in that velvet twang she’d never quite forgotten. “Rochelle Burton.”
She hadn’t known what kind of greeting she’d get, but she thought she heard a never-thought-I’d-see-you-again tone to his voice.
Welcome to the club.
Both twins leaned down to whisper in his ear, and he rested his hands on the backs of their thighs, just below their hemlines. As he stood, he rubbed his palms up their skin, his fingers disappearing under their dresses. Then he softly patted their bottoms as they traded saucy smiles.
Had that little show been for her benefit? Just to send her a message that he’d forgotten her, too, and he couldn’t have given less of a crap she was here?
Down and Dirty Page 28
