Cold Heart, Warm Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

Hannah couldn’t get close enough to him.

  Everything was better than she remembered. He was hotter to the touch. His shoulders were wider, harder. The way he kissed her was a lightning heat, setting her on fire, making her melt and shudder and fight to take more. To take everything.

  The ways she wanted this man almost scared her.

  She had despaired over her response to him, in all those lonely months without him. But this felt like a sacrament.

  This felt safe.

  This felt like home.

  He shifted, rolling them over so she was sprawled across him. And she couldn’t touch enough of him. His arms. His chest. His wonder of an abdomen.

  But he raised her up so she was sitting astride him, and he stared up at her for a long, shuddering beat of her heart. There was something possessive, dark and thrilling and blazing all over his beautiful face, and Hannah loved it. Exulted in it.

  He looked like he couldn’t believe this was real. Like he’d never get enough of her.

  It made a kind of chill roll through her, though she wasn’t cold.

  Especially when he moved his hands from where they rested in the crease of her hips, sliding them up beneath her top.

  “You are so beautiful,” he muttered, half a curse and half a prayer.

  Hannah was right there with him.

  His hands were big and callused. They were a working man’s hands, weathered and battered, and yet they were impossibly tender against her skin. He traced the line of her spine, and she could feel it everywhere. Where he touched her and all the places he hadn’t gotten to yet.

  She couldn’t stop shuddering.

  Ty had taught her how to do this, and Hannah wanted to do it with him. For him.

  She reached down to find the hem of her tank top, then pulled it up and over her head, tossing it aside. He muttered something, and then his hands were there. He slid them over her belly, then tracked his way north until he filled his palms with her breasts.

  Hannah arched into him, moaning at the contact. The friction. His hard, knowing hands right there where she was so sensitive.

  He played with her, looking so intent that the heat of it kindled into a fire and burned through her. She rocked herself against him, thrilling at the hard ridge of him, flush against the place she needed him most.

  She almost cried out, he felt so good. So right.

  She was close already. Closer every time his thumbs moved hypnotically over her nipples.

  “Go on,” he told her, a gruff, urgent command. Then he lifted his head, tilting her close and sucking one nipple deep into his mouth.

  Hannah exploded.

  It took her a good while to shudder back into herself, longer still to accept that this was real. That this was happening, again.

  At last.

  Ty rolled them over again, and it was suddenly a crime to her that he was still wearing his shirt. His jeans. She set herself to the task of removing them, laughing as he proved himself to be absolutely no help whatsoever.

  He would rather touch her. Feel each and every part of her with his fingers, his palms. Taste her with his mouth. All over.

  As if this were the first time.

  Her heart kicked at her as she remembered that for him, it was.

  And for once, the fact he couldn’t remember her didn’t fill her with pain. On the contrary, Hannah took it like the sweetest challenge.

  She kicked her way out of the rest of her clothes, and then they were both naked, at last. Naked and together, touching everywhere, all the glorious differences between their bodies as much a joy to her now as they always had been. His hair-roughened legs next to her smooth ones. The scrape of his jaw, the play of his muscles, where she was soft and rounded.

  Each its own delight. Each thrilling and delicious in its own right.

  She could remember their wedding night so clearly. The way Ty had laid her out like she was precious. A prize beyond comprehension. He had called her wife. And he had slowly, carefully, taught her where all that heat and longing between them had been leading all along.

  Tonight, Hannah could do the same for him. She could teach him exactly how good it was between them. Maybe her body could remind him of the things her words couldn’t reach.

  Hannah devoted herself to the task as if she’d been born for it.

  She moved over him like water, pulling out every trick she could. And not only because she wanted to make sure this was good for him, though she did. Desperately. But because she had missed him. She had missed this. He had taught her how to want and what to do with all of that need. Then he’d taken it away. And she had never really come to terms with any of it.

  She laid a trail of fire down the center of his chest, picking her way across his scars, a living map of the life he had led. The amazing feats he had performed and then paid for with his own blood.

  Each and every one of them made him who he was. Ty. Her husband.

  The man she loved even now, when she understood at last that they weren’t meant to be together. That she couldn’t have him, not really. Not the way she wanted him.

  She poured it all into each and every kiss.

  Longing, regret. Loss. Love.

  This was better than reading a book on a shared couch. This was better than careful conversation and too many stories, too many secrets. Because everything was better when Ty’s hands were on her, one tangled in her hair, one with a hard grip on her bottom.

  “My God,” he groaned at one point when she’d made her way down to his feet, then moved back up again as if she wanted to anoint every single part of him with her love, one last time. “You know every single thing I like.”

  “Of course I do,” she told him. She grinned up at him as she stopped there, where he was hardest. “You taught me.”

  Then she indulged herself by taking him deep into her mouth.

  Ty let out a groan that rumbled in her like thunder. She slid her way down him once, then again, the taste of him making her shake and melt between her legs.

  But then he was jackknifing up to sitting position and pulling her off him.

  “You’re killing me, baby,” he managed to get out, sounding so rough it was like another, better caress. “You might actually kill me.”

  “That would not work for me at all,” she said, breathless as he shifted her around on the bed. Getting her beneath him again.

  “Hannah,” he said, framing her face with his hands. She could feel the intensity of his gaze, bearing her down in the same marvelous way his chest was. “Hannah, I…”

  But he didn’t finish that sentence with words. He twisted his hips and surged deep inside of her.

  Hard. Hot.

  Home.

  Then he moved.

  And Hannah moved too, matching him and meeting him, building that beautiful, bright and shining bit of fire that was only theirs. It burned her. It exalted her. The way it always had.

  Hannah felt whole again. She felt like herself again. Every glorious slide of his body deep into hers washed away another week of isolation, of shame.

  She felt clean, new.

  Ty dropped his head to her neck. He pressed open-mouth kisses along the line of her collarbone. And his hands were big and bossy, as he moved her where he wanted her to go, then showed her why he was right. Why she wanted it too.

  Hannah locked her legs around him and surrendered herself to the beauty of it.

  Sheer joy, passion, and need.

  It was still better than anything else she’d ever known.

  This was why she’d kept their secret. This was why she’d lied to her mother, lied to the Rodeo Forever Association, lied and lied and lied some more.

  This had always been worth whatever it took to get here.

  When a new wave started to break over her, sending her spinning off into an even wilder sensation than before, something else broke inside of her.

  “I love you,” she cried out. “I love you, I love you—”

  Because she stil
l did. Because she always would.

  Ty followed after her, groaning out his release against her neck, so hard it might leave a mark.

  She liked the idea of that.

  It wasn’t until she could breathe again that she realized he hadn’t said he loved her back.

  17

  Of course he hadn’t said he loved her.

  Hannah was furious with herself for imagining he would. Or should.

  He’d had a couple of weeks with her. A couple of weeks, a few days, and a story she’d told him. What had she expected?

  But all the rationalizing in the world couldn’t make her heart hurt any less.

  Ty was sprawled out next to her in the bed, and Hannah knew that she could roll herself into his side. That he would hold her automatically. As if his body really did remember her in ways his mind could not. It would feel as comforting and right as it always had.

  As he always did.

  But there were tears pricking at the back of her eyes. And that kicked-in-the-gut feeling that only got worse, and heavier, by the second.

  She rolled out of the bed and padded over to the bathroom. She went in and closed the door behind her, taking great care not to look at herself in the mirror over the sink. After a moment, a breath or two, she reached in and turned on the spray in the shower. Then she climbed in, letting the hot water beat down on her.

  Hannah stood there for a long time, trying to lose herself in the heat and wet. Trying to let the water wash away any evidence of tears.

  Or she hoped it did, anyway.

  Her heart kept right on hurting, like a bruise behind her ribs. When her skin was pickled, she shut off the water. And took her time drying herself off, squeezing out her hair and throwing it into an easy braid on one side.

  Another pair of pajama bottoms hung on the back of the bathroom door, so she climbed into them and pulled on the extra tank top she’d stashed there after her last laundry day.

  Then, when she could put it off no longer, she opened the bathroom door.

  Ty sat on the side of the bed, his elbows on his thighs. He’d pulled on his jeans, but nothing else, and Hannah was struck the way she always was by the beautiful lines of his hard body.

  All those lean muscles. All that whipcord strength. Even if she weren’t in love with him, she would have admired him. He was a work of art.

  But she wanted a husband, not a piece of artwork.

  “It’s been a while,” Ty said in a low voice, “but I’m pretty sure it’s not a good thing if a woman throws herself out of bed and runs for the bathroom as soon as she possibly can.”

  Everything inside of Hannah wanted to roll with this. She wanted to smile. Make it all right. Let this keep going.

  She wanted to tell him about Jack so desperately that she could feel the words cluttering up the back of her throat. She wanted him to hold her while she did it, while she showed him all the pictures she had, right there on her phone. She wanted all of this to be okay.

  But it wasn’t.

  “That’s the problem,” she said instead, her voice quiet. Too thick with what she wasn’t saying. “All I am to you is a woman. I could be any woman.”

  His dark gaze hit hers. And held. “You’re the woman with my name on a marriage certificate.”

  “It’s nothing more than a piece of paper,” Hannah heard herself say. She laughed, because she would have sworn a sentence like that would never come out of her mouth. But here she was again, doing things she’d been sure she never would. “Not to me. To me, it represents everything that happened before and after we got married. But to you? Any woman could have shown up here. Any woman could have told you a story. In the end, it’s a piece of paper to you, that’s all.”

  Ty looked stunned. He blinked and looked straight ahead for a moment, like he needed to orient himself. Hannah knew the feeling.

  “What are you trying to say?” he asked.

  That was an excellent question. But her heart hurt, and this was wrong. And not only because she was here under false pretenses, with a secret so big she shouldn’t have been able to get out a word without tripping over it. That was bad enough.

  This was all that and more.

  “I love you,” she said, and that hurt too. Especially when he got a different sort of look on his face. More … hunted. “And I know that you can’t feel that, because you don’t remember. I understand completely why you can’t tell me you love me back. You’ve only known me for a couple of weeks.”

  “I don’t know how I feel, Hannah. About anything.” He stood up from the bed, but he didn’t move closer to her. “It’s like there’s a thick glass wall between me and everything I remember. I don’t feel anything. I haven’t felt anything, if you want to know the truth, until you came along. I don’t know what to call that. And it’s not what you want from me, maybe. But it’s not nothing.”

  “I believe you. I told you I trusted you, and I meant it. But don’t you see why I can’t do that? Why that’s not enough?”

  “I don’t see.” His jaw was hard now. “Because from over here, this sounds a lot like a breakup conversation. ‘It’s not you, Ty—it’s me.’ Is that what’s happening?”

  “It is me,” she managed to get out. “I’m not … I can’t be the kind of woman who sleeps with a man just because he’s there. That’s not who I am. I’ve slept with one man in my entire life, Ty. Only one. And I waited for him to marry me.”

  “I’m the same man,” Ty gritted out. “And we’re still married.”

  “You’re not the same man.” That hitch was in her voice again. And those tears were threatening the back of her eyes when she’d cried them all out in the shower, surely. “The man I married was in love with me. The ring he gave me was a symbol of that. And there are thousands of women out there who wouldn’t bat an eye about those details, but I’m not one of them. I can’t sleep with a man who doesn’t love me. I can’t.”

  “How are you so sure I don’t love you?” Ty demanded, sounding far less in control than he had been a moment before. “I don’t know that.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Hannah was hugging herself, holding herself together. Or trying. “This situation is such a mess. It’s more complicated than you know. And I thought sex would make it better, make us closer, bring you back to me somehow—”

  “Didn’t it?” He moved, then, crossing the few feet between them and gripping her arms. “I don’t know what experience you had here, but I’m pretty sure I found religion.”

  “I don’t want to be your religion,” she whispered. “I want to be your wife. But I’m not sure that’s ever going to happen.”

  “Why not?” he demanded, close and low. “I spent two days away from you, and I hated it. I miss you when I know you’re in the next room. I haven’t thought about the rodeo, not really, since you showed up here. It’s in two weeks and I don’t care, and it was the only thing that kept me going for months. Until you showed up.”

  “I don’t know which part of that is less healthy. But I’m pretty clear that it’s not a marriage. Not really. And you would think so too if you knew—”

  “I like you,” he gritted, cutting her off. “I don’t understand how it can be easy to live on top of each other like this, but it is. We make fantastic roommates, Hannah. And apparently, we’re magic in bed. What else do you want? What else is there?”

  “I told you.” She wanted to push him away, but if she touched all that bare skin right there in front of her, the last thing she would do is push him anywhere. “All of that is playing games. The last time around, we had a lot of sex, but we never spent real time together. Now we’ve had some real time, but no sex.”

  “If you want to throw sex in the mix, I’m game.”

  Hannah shook her head. “I thought I could love you enough that it wouldn’t matter that you couldn’t remember me. But it does. This makes me feel like I’m cheating on my husband. That I’m betraying him by getting naked with this man who doesn’t know me. And who definit
ely doesn’t love me like he did.”

  Something darker crashed over Ty, then. Hannah watched it roll in like a thunderstorm.

  “He loved you so much that you left him. And didn’t come back, even though he was in the hospital. What kind of love was that?”

  “I can’t make it make sense, Ty, I can only tell you how I feel.”

  “Let me tell you how I feel. Like I have whiplash.”

  “I’m sorry about that too.”

  He let go of her and took a step back, raking his hair back with one hand.

  “I don’t need you to be sorry. But I can’t smack myself on the side of the head and get my memory back. Believe me, I’ve tried.” The look he shot her then felt like a punch. Hard and straight to the gut. “I don’t understand why you came here, if not to give us another chance. And a chance takes more than a couple of weeks. Doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t have a whole lot more time, Ty. I really don’t.”

  “What are you talking about?” He shook his head. “For somebody who didn’t want to have sex until she was married and in love, you sure seem to have jumped right past the ‘til death do us’ part of the deal.”

  She had to tell him. She’d put it off too long, and now everything was even worse than before. Hannah knew why she’d made every decision along the way, and each one had made sense to her at the time. But she still didn’t understand how she’d ended up here.

  Rip it off like a Band-Aid, baby girl, she ordered herself, as if she were her own mother, standing right behind her with a militant look on her face. Just get it done.

  “Ty.” As if saying his name would lighten this blow. “I know you have a lot of feelings about your family.”

  “That’s what I keep trying to tell you. You have a lot of feelings about my family. They have a lot of feelings about everything. I don’t have any feelings.” He moved a hand over his chest, that storm still holding him in its grip. “I’m not trying to indulge my inner cowboy here. I keep trying to tell you. I don’t feel a thing. It’s all … turned off.”

  This was exactly what she didn’t want. Ty with no feelings, and her with his baby. How could this possibly end in any way that didn’t hurt Jack? Hannah only wanted to protect her son. She would do anything to protect him. She had—she’d done this.