by Maisey Yates
Either way, she wasn’t him.
And he and Bea were...in a very complicated way, like family. If something happened between the two of them and they went their separate ways—which they inevitably would—they would still have to see each other all the time.
Dane made a habit of hooking up with strangers so he didn’t have to deal with messy emotions associated with that kind of behavior.
Traveling, it was very easy to do just that.
Bea and all the complications associated with her were his own personal nightmare.
No. There was no way in hell they could ever be a thing. He walked into the living area of the house and saw his phone sitting on the coffee table, going through two of its very last buzzes on a phone call before it went dark again.
“Dammit,” he muttered, walking up to the table, wondering who the hell was calling him at this hour. He picked it up, and saw a number he didn’t recognize. One that wasn’t local. He sighed and when a red number appeared by the voice mail spot he swiped his thumb over it. Lifted it to his ear.
The voice on the other end that came through the phone was a man’s. It sounded familiar somehow, and he couldn’t quite figure out why.
“Hi there,” the message played. And then, it all became clear. “This is... This is your dad. I saw your accident on TV. I was wondering... If you were going to get back to riding ever. I always did enjoy watching it. You...you can give me a call back if you want.”
Dane dropped the phone like it was a snake. He didn’t care that it crashed on the coffee table, and damn near took a chunk out of the wood. He didn’t care if the message hadn’t finished playing.
His dad had called him. His dad.
He’d watched him. All this time he’d watched him. And he’d known that Dane had been injured for the past eight damn months and said nothing. No, of course he was getting in touch now when the season was ramping up.
He’d watched him. His dad had watched him.
His heart felt like it might explode. Rage, some other emotion, he didn’t know. He’d wanted—so badly—for the rodeo to be about something other than his father. But standing there now, his body vibrating, he knew that it had always been about him.
Look at me, Dad. Look at me now.
Do you love me now?
He looked around the living room and saw his crutches leaning against the wall. He shoved them over, anger pouring adrenaline through him. “Yeah,” he said, reeling back and resting too much weight on his injured leg, making him grit his teeth with pain. “Look at me now.”
There was a knock on the front door and Dane froze.
He swore to God if that man was standing on his front porch he wouldn’t be responsible for what happened next. There was a rifle in the house, and at the moment, Dane had half a mind to use it.
He walked to the door as fast as he could, gritting his teeth against the pain that was now his constant companion, and jerked it open. The anger in him fizzled away, shifted and twisted down low in his gut, giving way to a different kind of heat.
It was Bea. Looking up at him with a strange and determined look on her face. “Can I come in?”
“It’s not a good time.”
“Seriously?” she asked, frowning at him. “That’s the line you’re going to give me?”
“It’s not a line, Bea.”
“Sounds like one to me.”
“Bea...”
“I am not leaving. I am not leaving until you tell me what the hell is going on. I deserve that much.”
Damn her and her stubbornness. He might admire it when it came to patching up baby birds, but he didn’t much like it when it was applied to him. “Come in,” he said, stepping away from the door and allowing her entry.
“Dane...”
“My dad just called,” he said, the word scraping his throat raw.
Bea blinked. “He...what? Your...your dad.”
“My dad just called and he asked if I was going to be getting back on the circuit any time soon. He likes to watch me ride.”
“Your dad. Who you don’t talk to.”
“Who doesn’t talk to me. It’s not like I abandoned him when I was a kid.”
“No,” Bea said. “Of course not.”
“He called me,” Dane said, anger still writhing around inside of him. Anger at everything. At his body, at the phone call, at Beatrix for changing one of the few things that had felt steady and nice in this whole damned world.
“What am I supposed to do with that? I mean, what the hell? He’s never given any indication that he even knew I was alive and now suddenly he wants to know if I’m going to be getting back on the circuit after my injury. Like I... Like that mattered to him. Like the rodeo mattered. And he never... He never said. I haven’t seen him since I was a kid. He never made contact, not once, during all this time, and he does it now.”
Bea approached him, her expression cautious, and he fought the urge to step back. Mostly because he was just so damned angry he couldn’t stand demonstrating that she affected him on top of it.
Couldn’t stand the idea of changing his reaction to her. So, he stood there, to spite himself. To spite her. To spite everything.
Except, she didn’t look like she felt the spite at all.
“You don’t have to do anything with it,” she said. “You can ignore it. You can ignore him. There’s no reason in hell that you shouldn’t have to. You don’t owe him anything.”
“Really? That’s what you think? You don’t think that I should be caring or compassionate and try to figure out why he... Why he did what he did, and why he called now?”
“If you want to,” Beatrix said. “If you want to. But you know, genetics doesn’t mean you owe him anything. Genetics doesn’t mean anything. You don’t owe him anything any more than I owe my dad... He gave me this house. He was here. But he wasn’t interested in me. He was interested in the daughter he thought I should be. The one he wished he’d had instead of me.”
There was something ferocious behind those words, something fierce in her eyes. And he liked it.
He took a step away from her then, pushing his hands through his hair. “I’m not going out riding this season, anyway. So it doesn’t matter. And that’s the only time my old man sees me, so, what the hell am I supposed to do with that? He watched me, Bea. All this time. My dad had a connection with me, and I didn’t have one with him. And I have no idea what the hell to do with this.”
He was at a loss. He had been at a damned loss for eight months and he hated it. He wasn’t a man who did passive. He wasn’t a man who knew how to let the world defeat him, and there just wasn’t any damn thing he could do about the situation he found himself in now. Not about the shit with his dad, not about the shit with his body. He just didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do.
He turned and hot, sharp pain shot through his thigh. He swore, picking a knickknack up from the coffee table—a leftover from his sister—and throwing it against the wall to spite...anything. Anything he could.
“Dane,” she snapped. “Sit down before you injure your damned leg.”
That stopped him for a moment, because Bea in a fury was an unusual thing. But she was definitely in one with him.
“Don’t order me around.”
“Then don’t act like an asshole,” she shot back.
There was an anger radiating off Bea that surprised him. He was pushing her, and he knew it, but he had never seen her angry. Not like this. She had definitely been short with him before, but this was different. Completely different.
She practically shimmered with her rage right now, and he had a feeling it was about a hell of a lot more than their present conversation, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know exactly what it was about. Not at all.
She was also beautiful like this. With her cheeks red, her hair wild an
d as ferocious as she was. Her eyes glittered with passion, and even though it was a whole different kind of passion than he was used to having a woman direct at him, it was still a fascination.
And it made him think of that kiss. That kiss that was still there simmering on his lips. He might be on fire with anger right now, but Bea was incandescent with it.
Which made him wonder just how passionate she was in other ways. Other places.
The exact last thing he should wonder.
He needed distance, and his head wasn’t functioning well enough for her to get it. So he said the first thing he could think of. For his own benefit if not for her.
“You don’t have to hover over me all the time,” he bit out. “You’re not my damn sister, Bea.”
* * *
BEA WAS ABOUT to lose her mind. She had already experienced some kind of whiplash, coming here hoping to seduce him and finding him like this.
And now he was accusing her of being his sister.
Dane had no idea. No idea at all. She remembered what it had been like to walk into the hospital and see him after that injury. Looking like he was dead.
And he didn’t know that she had to lie to get in there. That she had to claim to be his sister. And she had to care for him like a sister. That’s what she’d been doing. All this time. And she was tired of it. She didn’t love him like someone loved a brother. She loved him like a woman loved a man. Wanted him that way.
And she was sick of it. Sick of keeping constant vigil by him like a concerned family member when that was not what she was.
He was hurting. Hurting emotionally, but it was a lot of the same as it had been that day in the hospital, and she was sick of being able to offer only this kind of comfort. She wanted to touch him. That was what he needed. She wanted to soothe him in a completely different way than she was allowed to. And she was tired of it.
So, so very tired of it. Of everything. Of him being so beautiful and so out of reach. Of wanting all these things she couldn’t have. Of feeling like everything—absolutely everything—she wanted was something she somehow couldn’t or shouldn’t have.
A shame to push down deep and go unacknowledged. She couldn’t do it. Not anymore. Not with him. And what the hell did it matter, anyway? He wasn’t going to be what she wanted him to be, what she wished deep down he could be, so who cared what he thought?
Right now staring down into the gorgeous futility that was Dane Parker, she found she didn’t care at all.
She’d come here to get him to listen. To get him to understand that she wasn’t some fragile flower. Wasn’t a glass that was going to shatter on the floor.
Telling him wasn’t enough.
She’d have to show him.
“Sit down,” she said again, heat like a prickling rash over her skin.
“Or what?”
There was only one answer. Only one thing to do.
And that was to follow through with what she came here for in the first place.
It took her a moment to realize she was actually acting on it, not just thinking about it. It was the moment her fingertips connected with his cheek that she became fully aware of it. When that heat and lightning flowed through her fingertips like a powerful shock wave. When she felt that hot, smooth skin made prickly in places by the evening growth of beard.
That was when she fully realized what she was doing. And that was when she knew there was no turning back. She leaned in, her eyes meeting his, and there was a fierceness there in his expression, but he didn’t tell her to stop.
Probably because he didn’t believe she would do it. Because he’d put a stop to it last time, so she wouldn’t be brave enough to do it again. But he was wrong.
And she was brave.
She closed the distance between them and pressed her mouth to his.
And ignited a fire between them both.
The taste of his lips was an explosion. She was rocked. His mouth was hot and firm and if it wasn’t like her fantasies she didn’t really know or care. Fantasy didn’t matter, not when the reality was here. Not when it was everything. She cupped his face with both hands and angled herself slightly so that she could part her lips, his lower one between hers as she pressed herself more firmly against him. He wobbled off balance, wrapping his arm around her waist as if to steady them both, falling against the wall as she kept on.
She was dizzy. She was pretty sure she was going to fall apart. Right there in his arms.
She wanted to absorb this moment. Take in everything. That scent that was so familiar to her, so very him. His skin, which wasn’t familiar to her by touch, but she wanted it to be. The taste of him.
Everything.
This wasn’t like that sweet kiss back at the cabin.
She would never have called that kiss sweet. Not until this one.
This was something else.
He was kissing her back, like a man possessed. Like he was trying to consume her.
She wished he would.
She whimpered and shifted, pressing her breasts hard against that firm, muscled wall of his chest. His hold tightened on her, just a bit. Just enough. She was on fire with wanting him. And she could happily live in the moment for as long as she could, except there was a restlessness growing and expanding low in her stomach and she didn’t know what she would do if she couldn’t have more, couldn’t have everything.
Touching his face was no longer enough. The thought of touching his whole body was such an intense, potent thought that the very idea made her groan, made her roll her hips forward.
And she felt it.
Dane Parker was hard for her. For her.
And that was about the moment she found herself being pushed backward. She wobbled on her feet, breathing hard and heavy, her whole body trembling.
She felt like she had a fever, but she wasn’t sick. She felt hollow, and unsatisfied, and a sense of yawning desperation that she didn’t know quite what to do with.
“Beatrix,” he said, his voice low. “You need to stop.”
“Why?”
“I already told you,” he ground out.
“You didn’t tell me anything. You never have.”
“I told you earlier...”
“Yes, you did. You told me. You told me all about what you thought I wanted and what I didn’t want. And what I could handle and what I couldn’t. Well, you don’t know me like you think you do, Dane Parker, and that’s never been clearer to me than it is right now.”
“Beatrix...”
“You did want to kiss me,” she insisted, because dammit she wasn’t going to let him pretend it was nothing. Pretend he’d had no feelings about it at all. “You liked kissing me.”
“I’m a man,” he said, his voice hard, tight. “It isn’t a matter of me wanting to kiss you or liking it or not. You put an offer out.”
“I don’t know what that means,” she said, her heart pounding so hard she felt dizzy. Felt sick.
“I haven’t had sex in eight months,” he said, the biting, bald words piercing her skin. “It wouldn’t matter who you were. You go offering yourself up like that, my body is going to respond. But you and I both know that’s not going to work between the two of us, Beatrix.”
“Why not?” she asked, taking a step forward.
“Because you’d get hurt.”
“Oh really? Why do you think that is?”
“You’re a nice girl.” His tone was so maddeningly even, so horrendously superior.
“What makes me a nice girl?” she pressed, shoving at his chest. “First of all, Dane Parker, I am not a girl. I’m a woman. If you hadn’t noticed.”
“Oh, I fucking noticed, Beatrix. About the time that you were standing in front of me naked the other day.”
It was her turn to take a step back. “I wasn’t naked.”
; “I could see through your dress.” The way he was looking at her made her feel like he could see through her clothes now. Maybe even more than that. Like he could see straight into her.
She lifted herself up a couple of inches and tried to hold herself steady, tried not to look upset. “Well, then you were clearly able to observe the fact that I’m a woman. The fact that it makes you angry seems to be a you problem.”
“No, it would quickly become a you problem,” he said, his eyes full of fury now. “Because you think you want to help me scratch an itch, but you don’t actually understand what you’re getting yourself into.”
“Shut up,” she said, trembling with anger now. “You’re the only person who has never talked down to me. You’re the only person who’s ever really treated me like I knew what I was talking about. You’ve never acted like the way that I took care of animals was silly. And you supported me when I decided I wanted to do the animal sanctuary. I don’t understand why now... Why now you would go and act like everyone else. Why now you would go ahead and treat me like a kid who doesn’t know what she wants.”
“Because in this case I think you are a kid who doesn’t know what you want. I’m sorry if that hurts your feelings. But I have shit that I’m dealing with right now, and I don’t need your drama along with it.”
“I didn’t give you drama, I gave you a kiss.”
“With you, honey, it’s the same damn thing.”
“Great,” she responded. “But I don’t think it’s about protecting me. Because I’m not weak. And I’m not a child. And you get so angry at all of us for caring about you, Dane. But you don’t know what it was like to walk into that hospital room and see you lying there looking like you were dead. Do you know what it did to Lindy? Do you have any idea what it did to me? I’m sorry that I was worried about you. I’m sorry that I... That all of my caring has gotten in the way of you having everything the way that you wanted. And I’m very sorry that suddenly I didn’t behave exactly in the way that makes you comfortable. That you couldn’t just use me for comfort anymore.”