by Maisey Yates
“Nah. He knew wasted money when he saw it.” Caleb didn’t like to talk about any of it. His skills didn’t lie behind a desk. They never had. Reading made his head hurt. The way the letters jumped around on the page and seemed to turn themselves backward. Hank always said he didn’t apply himself, and maybe that was true.
“You have a wife? Serious girlfriend?” West asked.
“No,” Caleb said, gritting his teeth.
“Love is overrated,” West said.
“Yeah, well, I’m going to be the only one that agrees with you on that.”
In his world, love just held you down on the ground and kicked you a bunch of times until you begged for mercy. And then it didn’t give any.
And what Ellie wanted from him now was a strange, pale shadow of a thing he’d wanted back when he was young enough to believe he might be able to have it.
But not now.
“See, I thought maybe it was a wife or girlfriend that brought you out here,” West said.
“I didn’t think you were here for family,” Caleb bit out.
“So it is a woman.”
“Isn’t it always?”
West chuckled. “Yeah. I mean, in the end, I suppose it is. It’s why I’m out here. A few different women, actually. Tammy Dalton, my mom. My ex.” He paused for a beat. “You know, you could always tell me, because I don’t know who anyone is. More to the point, sometimes talking to someone who doesn’t know you is easier.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because you just listened to me for a while.”
“You’re not going to pretend it’s brotherly bonding?”
“Hell no,” he said. “I’m not big into bonding. But I am big into listening. You never know what information comes in handy later.”
“You’re not even going to pretend you’re being helpful?”
“If you knew me at all you would know why that’s not remotely believable.”
“Just got a woman in my head,” he said. “That’s all.”
“Quickest way to fix that is to get her in your bed.”
“Normally, I’d agree,” he said. “But that’s what she wants. And then it will just make it too damned easy for her to be done.”
“You want more than sex?”
He paused his horse and maneuvered it so that he was facing West.
“No. But I denied myself for a long time where she was concerned. Fourteen years. I’m not burning it out in a few days. I don’t want more than sex, but I want a hell of a lot of it. And on my terms.”
“That’s a hell of a long time to carry a torch, man.”
“You’re telling me. It starts to burn.”
“Only solution is to put it out.”
“Yep. But again...that many years of lust deserves more than a few days, don’t you think?”
“I would imagine. I’ve never wanted anything that long in my whole life.” He chuckled. “Except for money.”
“Well,” Caleb said. “It seems to me you have your money now. So I can’t say as I’m really sure why you’re here.”
“Seems to me you could have your woman if you want. You’re here, too.”
Caleb gritted his teeth. “It’s not that simple. She’s not my woman. She’s never going to be.”
“Well, I’ve never yet had a woman be mine permanently. That hasn’t stopped me from enjoying what I could get.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Because you’re making it complicated.”
“Haven’t you ever done anything that you are ashamed of?” For some reason, even as he looked up at the sky, at the stars, that moment when Ellie had told him that she was pregnant was looming large in his vision.
He remembered it clearly. Sitting on her couch where they had done their lessons for nearly a year. Where she had helped him with his reading and writing like he was a child. And he had let her.
It was the only time he had ever enjoyed a lesson in his life.
They had never touched. They had never done anything remotely untoward. But Caleb—who had imagined that he had buried his feelings—had had to confront the fact that he had fallen in love with his friend’s wife all over again when she told him that she was pregnant.
Because he’d been angry. Because it had burst into the bubble that was this secret world they had built together. And had been forced to confront the fact that it wasn’t that for her.
And thank God.
He’d congratulated her, stone-faced, he was sure, and then given an excuse to leave. After that, he had told her they couldn’t meet anymore, making excuses about his work, and about her needing extra rest. And when she had pestered him, he had told her to just leave him the hell alone.
They hadn’t spoken.
Not for the next month.
And then Clint had died.
“No,” West said.
The silence that settled between them was strange. When West finally spoke again, he spoke slowly. “That isn’t to say I’ve been a model citizen, by the way. I should be ashamed of a great many things that I’ve done, but I can’t really muster up the energy to manage it.”
“Well, I’m happy to share some around.”
“No, thanks,” West said. “I’m good. I had a lot of time to sit and reflect in prison.” He chuckled. “I’m kidding. I had a lot of time to make sure that nobody ever treated me like their bitch. There is no room for shame in a situation like that. There’s no room for shame in a life like mine. You just gotta survive. That’s why I am where I’m at today.”
“On my father’s ranch riding his horse?”
West chuckled. “Alive. In possession of a small fortune.”
“What is your game here?” Caleb said.
“You want to keep going around and around with this?”
“Yeah,” Caleb said.
“Maybe I don’t have a game. Maybe I just want to see where this goes. Maybe you should do the same. You know, there doesn’t have to be a game. You can just see how something feels. Go from there.”
“Well, I have to say I didn’t expect to be getting relationship advice from my ex-convict half brother in the middle of the night.”
“And I didn’t expect to give it. Because believe me, no one should take relationship advice from me. Advice on how to get laid, on the other hand, I’m pretty good for that.”
Maybe that was something Caleb just needed to get used to.
His life was far from ideal. Hell, so was Ellie’s.
Maybe ideal wasn’t the thing to aim for. Maybe what felt good for now would be good enough.
But there was one thing he was certain of, beyond the fact that he wanted her. Beyond the fact that however he had pushed it down, he wanted Ellie.
He would never replace Clint. He could never.
The very idea was laughable.
But that was all about emotion. Not the physical. The physical...
He could make her want. He could make her scream. He could make it good.
But as complicated as it was...
He couldn’t replace his friend, not when it came to being a husband. Sure as hell not when it came to being a father.
But he didn’t want her thinking of Clint when they finally made love.
And that was the road. He had to be sure.
Had to be sure that she didn’t just want this, but that she wanted him.
Maybe West was right. Maybe he wanted to do it the hard way.
But Caleb Dalton had always done things the hard way. Naturally, in many cases.
So he didn’t see why this shouldn’t be the same thing.
CHAPTER TEN
CALEB WOULD HAVE been perfectly happy to avoid Ellie for the rest of the day. Not because he felt uncomfortable. No, he didn’t. In fact, after he had left the ranch l
ast night, he had gone home and relived those moments by the fire, over and over again. The way that it had felt to touch her between her legs, the way that it had felt to kiss her, finally.
No, he didn’t want to avoid her out of a sense of discomfort. He wanted to avoid her so that he could preserve that fantasy.
Dark and close and warm. More than warm. Incendiary. The best sexual encounter he’d ever had, and he hadn’t even come.
He hadn’t let himself come last night when he was by himself, either. Because that wasn’t what he wanted.
He wanted to prolong it, in a sadistic kind of way.
Wanted to take this out, examine it and turn it over at his leisure.
Because he had repressed it for so long. It had been necessary. It had been the right thing to do.
But now he was resolute. Because now, taking care of Ellie involved this. And he was going to go ahead and use it for his own gain.
He was going to go ahead and draw a bold line underneath this thing that they shared.
He was going to burn it out of his system.
But first, he wanted to exist here. Poised on a knife’s edge, where wanting her wasn’t a sin.
Okay, maybe wanting her still was a sin, but a ghost couldn’t get into a fistfight with him.
And a ghost couldn’t please his wife, either. So there it was.
But there was no avoiding Ellie. And the reason was a little blonde moppet that he couldn’t deny any more than he could quit breathing.
“Caleb!” Amelia flung herself off his parents’ front porch and into his arms. He picked her up, and she wrapped her legs around him, clinging tightly to him. And then she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. She smacked her hand against his jaw. “Prickly,” she complained.
Something in his chest tugged. “Well, you caught me at the end of the day, squirt. I need to shave.”
She looked at him and wrinkled her nose. “Am I going to need to shave someday?”
He laughed. And he was surprised how genuinely light he felt in that moment. “Not likely. Your mom doesn’t have a beard, does she?”
“No,” she said, frowning. “My mom says that you have Christmas trees.”
“I do,” he said. “At least, they’re about to be mine. It’s going to be a whole farm of them.”
“I didn’t know you had Christmas trees on a farm,” she said.
“Well, you can. It’s where most of the Christmas trees from the lots come from.”
“I want to see them.”
He hesitated because he knew that if he took Amelia to see the trees, in all likelihood he would have to take Ellie with him. And really, spending time with Ellie and Amelia in the same space right now was strange and loaded.
“All right,” he said. “But only if your mom’s okay with that.”
“She will be,” Amelia said, full of confidence.
He set her down, and she scampered into the house.
“What am I going to be okay with?”
He turned around and saw Ellie. The sight of her just about set him back on his heels. She looked the same as she always did.
But that was the problem.
“Amelia wants to go out and see the Christmas trees,” he said. “I didn’t figure you would mind. I don’t mind taking her by myself, if you need to go home.”
She lifted her shoulder. “No. I don’t mind going up.”
She started to take a step toward him, and his gut tightened. Then the door opened again, and Amelia reappeared with her backpack from preschool, and another stack of old printer paper that his mother had given her to scribble on.
“Can we ride in Caleb’s truck?”
“Yes,” Ellie said.
“I’m sitting in the middle.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Ellie’s lips, and she narrowed her eyes slightly. The impish expression making his gut feel hollow, and effortlessly conveying that she had been hoping for the middle seat.
She was flirting with him.
Now, that, he hadn’t expected.
So maybe this whole making-her-wait thing was really going to work in his favor.
Amelia took his hand and led him to the truck. He opened the door and lifted her inside, buckling her into her seat, the one that he kept inside his truck all the time.
Suddenly, the moment felt...unbearably domestic. Even more so when the passenger-side door opened and Ellie got inside while he was still buckling her daughter.
He swallowed hard, and then got into the pickup, closing the door and starting the engine.
“How did you sleep last night?” Ellie asked as he pulled out of his parents’ driveway.
He shot her a look over the top of Amelia’s blond hair. “Just great,” he returned.
“Not me,” she said. She licked her lips. “I was a little bit restless.”
“Well, that’s a shame,” he said. “I would have thought you would drop off to sleep like a rock.”
She had come. She had come pretty hard, as a matter of fact.
A memory that made him get hard just thinking about it.
“Yeah, you would have thought,” she said. “But... I just kept thinking there was unfinished business.”
“Ellie,” he said, his voice warning.
“I think that owls are the best bird.”
Both he and Ellie just about got whiplash looking at Amelia at the center of them. “What?” Ellie asked.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “Owls are the best bird.” She spoke with the cool authority that only a four-year-old could ever possess.
“I don’t know,” Caleb said. “I think that eagles are pretty cool.”
“They’re mean,” Amelia insisted.
Amelia continued to extol the virtues of specific birds and malign others on the trip up to the ranch, and Caleb was exceedingly grateful for the random conversation of the avian variety that they found themselves in. Because it was a hell of a lot better than trying to dance around double entendre with Ellie while he didn’t have any control of his body and her daughter was sitting there as an audience.
They turned up the winding driveway that led to his new place, and a sense of calm flooded Caleb. This place, this ranch, represented the new beginning that he so desperately needed.
And what he was doing with Ellie represented the last of the old business in his life that needed to be taken care of.
It all made sense. Yeah, for the first time in a long time everything made quite a bit of sense.
He didn’t bother to drive by the house, instead going straight to the Christmas trees.
He stopped and got out, helping Amelia get down, too. She took his hand, and he led her over to the first row of green, bristling pines.
“You have a whole field of Christmas!” She darted into the first row, then the second.
“Don’t go too far,” Ellie warned.
“I won’t!”
Amelia started running in circles around one of the trees.
“It would be nice to have that much energy again,” Ellie said. “At least half of it. Which would help me keep up with her.”
“I have a feeling that it’s always going to seem a little like you can’t keep up with her.”
“Probably,” Ellie said, shaking her head. Her expression grave for a moment. “Thank you. For bringing her up here. For helping me keep up. You know, if it wasn’t for you...”
“Let’s not do this,” he said. “You don’t need to thank me every time I do the bare minimum. You’re my friend. Clint was my friend. My best friend. I want to make sure that his wife and daughter are taken care of.”
“Am I still his wife to you?”
“Does that matter?”
“In light of last night it matters a little bit.”
He tried to figure out h
ow to choose his words very carefully. “Look, I knew Clint longer than you did. I knew him most of my life. And I’ll tell you, I never knew a better man. You couldn’t have married a better man.”
“He was great,” she said softly.
“And I met you when you were already with him.”
That seemed loaded, and she couldn’t really say why.
“I know.”
“Yes,” he said finally, the words grinding against his breastbone before they rose up in his throat and scraped across his teeth. “You’ll always be Clint’s wife.”
Ellie closed her eyes, the breeze kicking up slightly, her pale blond hair twisting in the wind. “I’m not, though,” she said. “And nobody knows it better than me.” She looked at him, and he felt like he’d been struck with the green and gold there. “Do you know how I know I’m not his wife, Caleb? Because he can’t hold me. He can’t kiss me. I can’t talk to him, not ever again. I’ll never walk down the street and hold his hand. We’ll never talk about stupid things like what the craziest potato chip flavor we can come up with is, and whether or not platypuses are a scam.”
“That was...actually a debate that you had?”
“Yes,” she said. “Because he was ridiculous. And he was fun. And he brought something into my life that I’d never had before. He left some things behind. He left a brightness in me that I didn’t have before. And he left Amelia,” she said, both of them turning and looking at the little girl darting around the trees. “But I’m not Clint’s wife. I’m his widow. And that’s just...not something I would have chosen to be. But I am. So please... Don’t look at me that way. Because it isn’t fair. For you to hold yourself back because that’s what you think when I don’t get any of the benefits of having him here.”
Caleb didn’t quite know what to say to that. He felt like there was a rock lodged in his chest. He looked toward her, and he reached out, wrapping his hand around her wrist. “I’m not holding myself back because of that.”
“Then why does it matter to you to keep reminding yourself who I was married to?”
“Because it’s why I’m here. It’s why taking care of you matters. Because it’s what he would’ve wanted.”
“Does part of you want to take care of me? Even a little bit?”
