by Maisey Yates
She liked it because it reminded her of the outdoors. And even when she was inside, it was the thing she preferred to be thinking of.
Gabe was so big, so devastatingly attractive, and looking at him head-on made her heart feel crumpled up again. Made her feel like she was on the verge of tears. If he touched her...
Well, she didn’t know what she would do.
Cry. Throw herself at him. One. Both.
One thing was sure; she was certain to make an idiot out of herself.
So she took a step back, putting the love seat between Gabe and her.
“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he said.
Jamie poked herself in the arm. “Yes. It seems like I’m okay.”
“Jamie...”
“I’m fine. You’re the one who was worried. I’m not worried.”
“Okay.” He took his cowboy hat off his head and pushed his hands through his hair. She tried not to think about what it had been like when she’d pushed her fingers through his hair.
It was a weird thing, standing across from a man she’d seen naked. A man she’d touched all over.
How did people do this?
They did all the time. Managed to be in the same room as people they’d been naked with. Hell, everyone in her family did it on a regular basis.
People in the Gold Valley Saloon no doubt stood in the room when strangers they’d been naked with were in residence. There were few enough people that the going out and drinking crowd probably had a lot of crossover when it came to bed partners.
Everyone did it. That meant she needed to be able to get a grip on herself, too.
“Anything else?” she asked.
“Yes,” Gabe said. “Can I sit down?”
“Sure,” she said, gesturing toward the threadbare red chair with the heavy, craftsman-style frame.
He settled down on it, his hat in his hands. “I got to thinking about what you said. About what the ranch meant to you, about how your dad made you feel cared for by how he cared for it. By making sure that you loved it, too.”
“Okay,” she said, crossing her arms and taking a step back.
He might be able to sit down and relax right now, but she couldn’t.
Gabe hesitated, his blue eyes distant, his jaw tight. It took him a moment, but then he finally spoke.
“I don’t like what I’m doing. Well, that’s not really fair. I’m done with it. The rodeo... I’m done. I’ve taken home the big prize more than once. I have enough. At this point I’m just getting on the wrong side of the age bracket. Competing against a bunch of eighteen-year-old kids who don’t have to go sit on ice for the rest of the night after they finish their ride.”
“You don’t really do that,” she said. “According to Wyatt, it’s nothing but drinking and debauchery after the night ends.”
“That’s how it starts,” Gabe said. “Then you get old. And your big, sexy evening consists of a night alone on a lumpy motel room mattress with a tube of Bengay.”
“You’re exaggerating,” she said.
“Maybe. But the truth is definitely somewhere in between Bengay and debauchery.”
“Well,” Jamie said. “I guess that is disappointing for you.”
“It’s never what I wanted to do,” Gabe said. “But I fell into it. And... There was something about what you said that made me realize I wanted something that would last.”
“Your father’s reputation has sure lasted.”
“It has. But the glory doesn’t last. And no matter how many trophies you hang up in your house, no matter how many parades you grand marshal at, no matter how many women you take to bed, younger and younger as you get progressively older, you can’t go back to where you were. I’d rather make some new glory than hang on to something that’s fading.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Well, that’s the thing. I’m not sure what I have in mind. I have a decent-size ranch, but the equestrian facility my father has built on his property is extensive. And I know that we could do more with it. Right now we’re focusing on rehabilitating horses. But I really believe that horses can change people,” he said. “I’ve seen it. I’ve...hell, I’ve felt it. Even with how it is riding saddle bronc, I feel it. I’ve seen people say the horse and the cowboy are fighting each other, but that’s never been how it was for me. I was always trying to find the rhythm. Trying to get permission to stay on the horse’s back, because it’s his show. There’s no sense fighting. If you can learn that, if you can learn to connect with an animal that powerful, learn to care for something other than yourself, you can’t help but change.”
And there was something in the fire in his eyes that sparked something deep inside her. And it was more than attraction, more than the heat that had flared between them when they had kissed. More than that combustion that had occurred when their bodies had come together.
Because that was what she believed, too. In her soul, she believed that her connection to the land, her connection to animals, was a deep, altering thing that went far beyond logic. It was something almost spiritual.
The Dodge family wasn’t a churchgoing one. Not to say that Quinn Dodge didn’t instill a sense of faith and gratitude in his children, he did, but it wasn’t based in anything taught in a building.
Jamie’s concept of God had come from riding through the mountains, had come sitting on the back of a horse.
Her peace. Her healing.
Her wonder and awe at creation.
“I know that there are a lot of facilities that rely on ranch work and equine therapy to help people in bad situations. I just want to do more research on it. And I want you to help me. Because you have the best instincts when it comes to horses. Of anyone.”
This was strange. Because of course when she had first seen Gabe sitting in front of her house, she had expected he’d come here for more sex. And she hadn’t been sure how she would handle that. But the fact that he wasn’t here for sex was maybe even a little bit stranger.
And maybe a little bit wounding.
Then he stood up. “I should go.”
She wanted to ask him to stay. But she couldn’t. For reasons of pride, and also that her brother was somewhere on the same property, and she couldn’t risk him coming by while Gabe was here. Staying. No. That would be horrible.
“Okay,” she said, the word sounding flat and lame.
He looked down at his hat, then up at her. He moved over to where she was, the couch still between them, and pressed his knee down on the cushions, leaning forward and gripping her chin, tugging her to him, pressing a quick kiss to her mouth.
It was like a lightning strike.
When they parted, it left sparks behind.
Scorched earth and crackles that sizzled over her skin.
“I’ll see you Monday,” he said.
“Yeah,” she echoed. “Monday.”
And when he left and closed the door, he left a thousand questions behind.
Why had he joined the rodeo in the first place, really? If he felt this way about ranching, why wasn’t that what he’d done? Gabe Dalton wasn’t a pushover, and she knew it, but this whole conversation, which he’d come in and made all about her, had a layer to it that she couldn’t quite reach.
But more shocking than all of those questions was how much she wanted the answers to them.
None of this was simple. None of it was what she thought.
She knew that her brothers—particularly Wyatt—had slept around, and they’d never acted like sex had left pieces of themselves embedded in the other person. She hated the idea that she might just be...inherently different when it came to sex because she was a girl.
She thought about Grant. Grant, who had never recovered from the loss of his wife. Not until he met McKenna.
If anyone hadn’t treated sex that
way, it was Grant.
So maybe... Maybe there were just some people who ended up feeling like this.
Or maybe everybody did, and some of them just put smiles over the top of it a lot easier.
More questions. More questions that she wasn’t going to have the answers to.
She hated it.
She stripped her clothes off angrily and headed back toward the bathroom, toward the shower. She was dirty, and she needed to wash...everything off her.
She hadn’t showered this morning. She’d been too cranky and messed up when she’d woken, and she’d had to get down to the mess hall. Which meant that Gabe was still on her skin.
Maybe this was the solution. Maybe she could wash him off.
But no matter how long she stood underneath the hot spray of water, she still felt him. She still felt changed.
And she was left with the depressing realization that probably only time would make it fade. And maybe, if she gave it enough time, her curiosity would fade, too.
But damn, working with him in the meantime was going to be tough.
Jamie looked at herself in the mirror and wiped away the steam that had collected there.
She looked younger to herself right now.
She frowned, squaring her shoulders.
Yeah, it might be tough. But Jamie was tough. And she could take anything that the world threw at her. A higher power that wrenched your mother away from you only two days after you drew your first breath obviously didn’t care much for your tenderness.
So Jamie wasn’t going to waste any time worrying about it, either.
She was just going to go on.
“Wipe the blood off, put a Band-Aid on it and get the hell over it,” she said to her scrubbed-clean reflection.
It was what she’d always done. And it was what she was going to keep on doing.
There wasn’t another choice.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GABE HAD TO laugh that when he’d asked his sister to have dinner with him, she had insisted on making it at Bellissima, so that it could be fancy, she’d said.
Especially since he was buying.
When he walked in, McKenna was already seated at the table, a scarred redbrick wall with vines climbing the side behind her, the menu spread out in front of her.
She stood when she saw him, and went in for a cautious hug.
“How have you been?” he asked, grabbing hold of her hand and looking down at her engagement ring. “I still can’t get over this.”
“I know. You didn’t even get a chance to be an overprotective older brother.”
“The Dodges are good people,” he said, clearing his throat and taking a seat across from her.
“They are,” McKenna agreed.
They made small talk until the waiter came to take their order, and when the bread came out, McKenna attacked it fiercely.
“So,” she said. “To what do I owe the pleasure of a personal fancy dinner?”
“Does there have to be a reason for me to want to sit and have dinner with my sister?”
“I don’t suppose,” McKenna said. “But usually, you’re content to invite me over to the ranch so that I can see everyone.”
He should have known he couldn’t get anything past McKenna. It amazed him how much she was a Dalton, through and through, even having not been raised with them.
“I did want to talk to you,” he said.
“Is it about Jamie?”
His stomach tightened. “No.”
“I know something is going on between the two of you,” she said. “I was at the bar that night. You’re about as subtle as a couple of yowling house cats. It was completely obvious when she came back to the table that something happened.”
Thank God she only knew about the bar, and nothing else.
“It’s complicated. And Jamie isn’t what I want to talk about. Though there are some things about Jamie that have me thinking...”
“If you hurt her,” McKenna said, picking up a butter knife, “I will kill you. She is my future sister-in-law. And you’re my brother. But she’s younger, and my husband will side with her. Which means I have to side with her, too.”
“How do you know she wouldn’t hurt me?”
McKenna laughed. “Whatever. Okay, what do you actually want to talk about, since you’re clearly not going to give me details about the situation with Jamie. Which I will weasel out of someone.”
The glint in her brown eyes left him in no doubt of McKenna’s ability to weasel. But he wasn’t going to give her what she wanted.
He was about to talk personal with her. But his personal. Not Jamie’s.
What had happened between him and Jamie wasn’t something he could just go around talking about for a variety of reasons.
“The way that Jamie is with the horses... It reminded me of how things used to be for me. Before. I don’t like to complain about this stuff to you, but you know growing up with Tammy and Hank Dalton was like living in a box full of rattlesnakes and live firecrackers. God help you if it all went off at once.”
“I can imagine,” McKenna said. “I’ve heard about how they used to fight.”
“It was something else. They were like different people than they are now. I would escape. Go out to the barn, go for a ride. It was like I could finally hear myself think again. My horses were companions and they were therapy.” He grimaced. “It sounds dumb but...”
“It doesn’t. I feel that way about them now.”
He sighed. “I used to want to do something with the rodeo. Use my money to make a difference or something. And then I lost that somewhere along the way. Just...being in it. I need that to change. Because I think that the ranch could be...therapy the way it was for me. Maybe for kids like me. And kids like...you, I guess. And I wanted to talk to you because... What could you have used? My dad left you to fend for yourself.”
“Our dad didn’t know I existed,” McKenna pointed out, sliding her knife through the garlic butter that had come with the bread and slathering a thick layer on.
Gabe bit back the words that hovered on his tongue. McKenna was right. He hadn’t known that she’d existed. He believed his dad on that score. But there were other kids. Kids that Hank Dalton had known about. No one else but Gabe knew it. Well, Gabe and his mother. And he didn’t even know if Hank knew that they knew.
“He didn’t,” Gabe confirmed.
“I’m not angry at him,” McKenna said. “You guys are the only family I have. I waited twenty-seven years to find you. To find him. And your mom has been... I’m not going to waste time being mad about things I can’t change. There’s no earthly reason.”
“I admire that about you,” Gabe said. “But... I want to take the ranch and make it something big.”
“Are you atoning for Dad’s sins?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think kids who have been in foster care like I was could benefit from knowing there’s a home base. When you’re done with the system, oftentimes you slip away. There are things in place to help, but there’s not a whole lot of accountability, and it’s easy to kind of walk off into the distance. There needs to be more training. A sense of belonging. I can’t tell you what working at Get Out of Dodge did for me. Right away. Just the sense of...accomplishment that he gave me. Ranch work might have saved me.”
“Well, you look like you’re pretty intact.”
She smiled and shrugged. “Yeah. I think I might have gotten this way a little bit sooner if I would have had something that I’d worked for and accomplished. I think the really hard thing about that kind of life is...the sense of futility. You can’t control anything or change anything. Nothing is yours.”
“That must be tough,” he said, his throat tightening, overwhelmed by the differences that had marked his upbringing versus McKenna’s. It made hi
m wonder... It made him wonder if it was different for the other kids that were out there. If they were struggling, too.
Well, it wasn’t like any of them were kids. They would be his age to a couple of years younger. At least, based on what his mother had told him.
Right before she’d...
Right before she’d asked him to go into the rodeo.
“It was,” McKenna said. “Here I am. All survived. And I’m here with you.”
“Yes, you are,” he said.
As if on cue, the waiter brought their dinner.
McKenna looked down at her very expensive steak, then back up at him with a big smile on her face. “Now, can we talk about something other than my depressing childhood?”
“Sure,” he said. “We can talk about mine.”
“Hard pass.”
“I’m still not telling you anything about Jamie.”
“It was worth a shot. Okay...” She looked up as if searching for something in the cracks of the pine plank ceiling. “Have you ever broken your arm?”
“I have.”
“And that is a story I haven’t heard.”
And so he spent the next few hours exchanging stories with his sister, that they would have known if they’d had a chance to grow up together.
And Gabe did his best not to think about what if.
* * *
GABE HAD RIDDEN his horse until he was saddle sore on Sunday. And that was a hell of a feat for him. But he had nothing else to do, and he had a feeling that if he didn’t exhaust himself, he would wind up at Jamie’s cabin sometime that night, begging her to give him another chance to kiss those lips.
She’d been reticent, and very, very cool with him when he’d first shown up at her place Saturday.
And he wasn’t going to push. Not after the crying thing.
He’d never really been involved with a woman beyond a night or two before. And he’d certainly never had to figure out how to work with one that he’d had sex with.
Had sex with, held while she cried. Yeah, he wasn’t familiar with the protocol for all this.
And Jamie wasn’t exactly giving him a road map.