He almost let go of every ounce of control right then, with her against him, with the blood pounding so hard between his legs that his brain nearly turned to smoke.
But that name she’d called him—Fortune, not Sawyer, not who he really was—was the last straw.
“Don’t call me that, Laurel,” he said. “Do you know what it sounds like?”
She pushed her hair back, widening her eyes, as if she didn’t know. But he saw fright in her gaze.
And he couldn’t live with that or the fear of commitment any longer.
He framed her face with his hands again, holding her like the most precious element on earth.
“Don’t you see that I love you?”
Chapter Eleven
The word batted at her again and again—in the head, in the heart.
Love.
As in “I love you.”
She almost forced a clueless smile to her lips, mostly out of a need to brush off his comment, but more out of an urge to pretend that he was just joking around and that any second he would start kidding about them being the sole survivors of the Plague again.
But judging by his face—the blue eyes filled with affection, the rawness of his entire expression—he wasn’t playing.
As she gaped at him, he started talking.
“You didn’t expect to hear that.” His laugh was short and quiet as he stroked his thumbs over her cheeks. “I didn’t expect to say it.”
An anesthetic feeling swallowed her as she wrapped her fingers around his wrists, slowly bringing his hands away from her face. “You weren’t supposed to say it.”
It sounded so dumb, as if she was accusing him of cheating at the rules of a game when this wasn’t a game. Had it ever been?
He didn’t react for a second as her last words floated in the air, an invisible wedge between them.
An odd thought came to Laurel: one of them could save the moment right now by making a real jest of all this, by shrugging and pretending that this had never happened and continuing on with where they’d been going on this bed.
By changing the subject, which she did so well.
Backing away from him, she got off the mattress and lightly said, “You almost got me there, Fortune.”
Using his last name was a last-ditch effort, and it had its intended effect.
“You actually can’t say my name,” he said. “Does it make you feel too close to me or something?”
“Don’t make an issue out of it.” She picked up his jeans from the floor, tossed them over his lap and went about fetching hers and methodically putting them on. “I think it’s time to call it a night.”
Cool, calm. Surviving.
Always surviving. Because just look what was happening—the fallout. The ugliness she’d always known would come, even with a good time.
“Look at me, Laurel.” Sawyer hadn’t moved from the bed.
She did look at him, and even as she made sure her expression was unaffected, panic was eating her alive.
Don’t you see that I love you?
Why had he said it, dammit?
It seemed as if pure emotion was gnawing at him, too, his blue eyes piercing her.
“I’m not sorry I admitted it.” His voice was strong, as if he thought he could turn her heart around. “I’ve been feeling this way for a while.”
“But my reaction isn’t what you hoped it’d be?” She buttoned up her jeans, bent down, snagged her shirt off the floor. “What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. For you to realize that you felt something for me, too?”
She pulled her shirt over her head. “I thought we were clear from the beginning—no strings.”
“And I thought that would be easy enough...until it wasn’t.”
Why wasn’t he backing off? Shouldn’t he be out of here by now, sorry he’d ever taken up with her?
If he was like most men, he’d already be gone. So what would she have to say to get him out of here before she did something stupid like look at him for a second too long—a second in which she might inspect the cracking sensation in her soul too closely and realize that there was a reason she was starting to hurt deep in her core?
Her heart was beating so hard that it’d affected her vision, muddling it, making time speed along so that she could barely keep up.
He seemed so hopeful, sitting there on her bed. Even as she was doing her best to let him know this could never, ever work out, he hadn’t quit on her.
Surely he had to know that cutting this off now was the best thing they could do.
“I can’t believe you don’t know any better than this,” she said softly. “I don’t do love.”
“That’s bull.”
He stood, and she turned away. Please put on your jeans, she thought. Please have enough sense to know that this is over.
But he was so hardheaded that he kept on talking.
“I don’t know what flipped the switch and made me admit how I feel for you,” he said. “It could’ve been watching you with Jack today. Tough, independent Laurel Redmond with a baby, a brightness in her eyes that tells everyone who can see it that she’s got a soft heart after all. I saw you having your own child one day.”
She was going to die if he said anything about it being their child because right now she could see it, too, even if she was trying like hell to banish the thought.
Still, she could feel a baby in her arms, smell his or her skin as she held the child close.
And that child would have Sawyer’s blue eyes...
She shook her head, as if to dislodge the image. “Don’t get all emotional on me. It’s not fair.”
“To do what? To get you to admit that there’s a possibility that you do ‘do love’?”
She rounded on him. “I don’t have any feelings. Don’t you understand that?”
Silence bit down on the room.
Then he began to get into his jeans. Good. She’d gotten through to him. Finally.
So then why didn’t it feel better? Why did it seem as if she’d been gutted, emptied out until there was nothing left but...
Regret?
Apologies?
Or something else that she refused to confront?
She crossed her arms over her chest, waiting for him to be done, but after he pulled on his jeans, he didn’t go for his shirt.
Her instinct told her that he was about to say something else—and it might just be this one thing that broke her down—so she launched a preemptive strike.
“All you’re feeling is lust,” she said. “Not love. It’ll go away soon enough.”
A slow burn seemed to consume him, and she hugged herself tighter, digging her nails into her arms, as if punishing herself.
“Speak for yourself,” he said with such slow, strong conviction that she pressed her lips together.
Don’t cry, she thought. Survivors never cry.
“What’re you so afraid of, Laurel?”
His words were quieter now, and it took everything she had to hold herself together.
“I’m not afraid,” she managed to say.
“You sure as hell are. I think you’re afraid of being shattered again. You’re afraid that I’m going to treat your heart like garbage and throw it away after I’ve used it. But I don’t think you heard what I said—I love you, and I would never treat you as anything but a queen.”
He was killing her bit by bit, one piece of her crumbling away, another following.
She had to collect herself before it was too late.
So she said the only thing she could think of that would make him stop.
“Steve told me he’d treat me like a queen, too, Fortune. And look where that went.”
She didn’t have to look at him to know he’d reached the boiling point...or that he would have a look on his face that would lance her straight through if she saw it.
Because she did feel for him. And it was going to finish her off if she didn’t get out of here fast.
She rushed out the door, grabbing her keys from an ashtray near the exit, escaping, even though it was her own apartment.
As she jumped in her pickup and took off, tears flooded her eyes, and she swiped them away, pulling off the road and into a crowded parking lot because she couldn’t drive anymore.
She’d left him before he could leave her, and she should’ve felt stronger for it. But she only felt weak, as if she’d given up something valuable and irreplaceable.
Something—no, someone—she really did love, even if it could never last.
* * *
Every day that passed from that point on felt like an empty box to Sawyer—a container that had once held a gift that’d been tossed aside without much care.
He felt more lost than ever, even more aimless than he had been when he’d first decided to strike out in a different direction in Red Rock.
And he knew exactly why he couldn’t find himself anymore: it was because of Laurel, a woman who made him feel found for the very first time in his life.
She’d torn out his heart and spit it out last week, and he hadn’t been the same since, walking around in a haze as New Fortunes Ranch was transformed into wedding hell for his brothers and their brides.
At the moment, he was standing at the front of his Jag, leaning against his car and watching as the wedding planner ordered her crew around the large gazebo area. Tents would provide an extension of shade for the reception, and more latticework was being planted around the space; it would be covered by bougainvillea while temporary fountains splashed over fancy sculptures.
To the side of the gazebo, Shane, Asher and Wyatt were deep in conversation while looking at an iPad. Maybe they had downloaded plans on it. Sawyer didn’t know.
It wasn’t his wedding.
He’d been thinking about joining them today, helping out, but he just didn’t have the stomach for it, and he got back into the car before they saw him.
Left behind again, Sawyer thought, starting the engine.
As he drove away, he peered into the rearview mirror. None of his brothers had even noticed he’d been there, but why would they when there was so much going on?
Sawyer wished he could talk to them about Laurel, but he didn’t want to squash their happiness. He’d always been the guy who kept his issues to himself, anyway.
But this time, why did it feel as if it was too much to hide?
He drove and drove, not knowing where he was going until he got on the road to the airport.
Before he really knew what he was doing, he pulled over. He didn’t want to go into the terminal; his hurt reminded him that he didn’t want to see Laurel, even if he actually did. Besides, she’d been avoiding his phone calls—even the one telling her that he wanted her to come to his brothers’ wedding—and he didn’t want to force the issue and bother her at work.
No, he supposed it was the planes coming in and out that had drawn him, offering a measure of comfort.
He waited in his car, not feeling anything much, just listening to the muffled drone of the aircraft, watching them fly over and remembering the day Laurel had taken him flying.
It was almost as if it’d never happened.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, but several cars passed him. Then one pulled over and parked in front of his own. It was a Tahoe, and Sawyer recognized the tall, dark-haired man in sunglasses who got out.
Tanner Redmond.
Since Sawyer had the top down on his convertible, he was exposed and he couldn’t exactly burn rubber out of here. Crap.
“Just so you know,” Tanner said as he approached the driver’s side of the Jag, taking off his sunglasses, “Laurel’s not in today.”
Sawyer wasn’t even going to ask if she was on a charter flight or at home.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not planning on going into your offices to see her.”
“Great. Because I heard the two of you called it quits.”
Tanner had that big-brother tone going on, but there was something in his eyes, too. It looked like sadness.
Sawyer said, “You know, I wasn’t the one who broke things off. Did she tell you that?”
“No.” A car passed, shooting over the road toward the airport entrance. “But I figured as much.”
It was even more of a shock when Tanner gestured for Sawyer to get out of the car and join him outside.
They wandered away from the road, toward the unkempt vegetation. Tanner idly bent to pick a blade of the long grass, and it was clear that he didn’t want to be here having this talk as much as Sawyer.
“She’s been moping around,” Tanner said, “looking just as put-out as you do.”
If that was supposed to improve Sawyer’s mood, it didn’t. “I swear, I intended for her to be in a much better mood the last time we saw each other.” He swallowed. “I told her I love her.”
Tanner gave Sawyer the once-over. It was a pass-fail kind of look, and when Tanner glanced away, Sawyer had a feeling he’d passed.
“I wasn’t sure about you at first,” Tanner said.
“I didn’t exactly come with the seal of approval on me. But Laurel’s enough to make a man want to change for her. Or to make him realize his best qualities.”
“You had an effect on her, too. That was plain obvious. She told me she was seeing you just for fun, but then I’d catch her at work, staring off into space with a dreamy smile, and I knew.”
A whoosh of warmth came to life in Sawyer. “What did you know?”
“That she was crazy about you. And that’s saying a lot with Laurel. She’s been in self-imposed exile for a while, and she never puts herself out there when it comes to men.” Tanner paused, then said, “You know about Steve Lucas, right?”
“As much as Laurel would tell me.”
“I suspect that wasn’t much.”
“She said that he wormed his way into her heart, won her trust and then robbed her—and I’m not only talking about her bank account.”
“That’s just the surface of what happened.” Tanner tossed away the grass. “You should’ve seen her afterward—she was a mess. The only thing that kept her sane was being in the Air Force reserves one weekend a month and a couple weeks during the summer. Even better, she traveled all over, as if she was trying to lose herself in foreign places. I loaned her the money, telling her she could pay me back anytime, and it says a lot that Laurel—the proudest of the proud—took it without arguing.” Tanner shook his head. “I think the idea was to blend into each destination, forgetting about what’d happened in her own life.”
Ouch. All this time, Sawyer had thought the travel had merely been wanderlust, but it’d been an attempt to heal.
Tanner said, “After my wedding, she settled here. Jordana was pregnant, and I think it was Jack that persuaded Laurel to stay. After he was born, she doted on him and was over at the house all the time. And it was good to see her giving her heart to someone again. She knew that Jack wasn’t going to crush it.”
“I saw how she acts with him. It’s apparent how she feels.”
Tanner grinned. “She keeps telling us that she’ll be a single mom one day when she’s ready.”
“She told me that on the night I met her.”
Both of them laughed. It was so Laurel.
But the laughter pained Sawyer, too, and it died inside of him.
Tanner noticed, and he narrowed his gaze, really reading Sawyer.
“Laurel acts like she doesn’t care about much,” he said. “But she does. She puts everything into caring, so when someone disappoints her, a part of her withers away. Our father set the standard for that, I’m afraid.”
Sawyer met Tanner’s gaze head-on. “I know about that, too, and all I ever wanted was to show her that she can count on me. What I feel for her is real.”
“It’d better be real. Because I can’t sit by and watch my sister go through another set of lost years because some guy was playing around with her.”
“She just needs to
give me a chance, Tanner. That’s all I’m asking for.”
“You’d better be one hundred percent sure about your intentions. If you dare hurt her...”
“I won’t.”
Tanner stared at him, then clipped out a nod. But he had a hint of a smile as he put his sunglasses back on.
“In that case, I’m going to tell you something—what Laurel needs is your patience. She’s flipped out now, but if what I suspect about how she feels for you is true, then she’ll come around. She’s not a woman to be forced into anything. And she’s no dummy. She’ll come to her senses and know that you’re not Steve Lucas or our father.”
And if she didn’t?
Sawyer didn’t want to think about that.
He extended his hand, and Tanner shook it. But just as they were about to disconnect, Sawyer didn’t let go, gripping Tanner even harder.
“I’ve never felt this way about anyone,” he said. “Feelings like this...they come only once in a lifetime, and I want to spend the rest of mine with Laurel.”
“You can tell her that yourself,” Tanner said, slapping Sawyer on the back. “When the time is right.”
As he left, taking off in his Tahoe toward the airport, Sawyer thanked his lucky stars that he’d been at the right place at the right time with Tanner.
And he was always going to be there for Laurel, too...if she would let him.
* * *
It was the day of the Fortune brothers’ wedding, and Laurel couldn’t hang around her apartment thinking about it anymore.
Since last week, she’d been trying not to let the sight of the kitchen remind her of Sawyer, of him standing at the sink. She was trying not to think of her bed as the place where he’d gotten to her, body and soul.
Today she didn’t even have her job at the flight school to bring her out of her apartment, keep her busy, make her so tired that she could collapse on the sofa at the end of the day and sleep there, avoiding that bed.
So she decided to put on some running gear and drive to a park where there were jogging trails. Maybe she could exercise Sawyer out of her.
Or exorcise.
But as she ran, pushing herself until her lungs hurt, he still stuck with her.
A CHANGE OF FORTUNE Page 15
