by Nicole Helm
She still didn’t turn to look at him, didn’t stop fiddling with the toolbox. Acting like she was supremely busy when it was obvious she was anything but.
“How, um, how old is she?”
“Mom? Um, fifty…eight. Why?”
Mel shook her head. “I don’t know. Let’s—”
“Oh, you think maybe she knew your family? Like, your dad?” Funny, he hadn’t really considered his family knowing Mel’s, though it would make sense if hers had been around forever and so had the Paulle side of his.
“No, I, my dad is only fifty-two, they wouldn’t have—”
“Your mom?” Shit, he was an idiot. There was a reason she was all tense now, and it started and ended with a mother’s phone call. Something she’d probably never had.
“No.” Mel was staring hard at the mountains, and Dan wanted nothing more than to reverse time and never tell her who had called. “My mother wasn’t from here.”
“I bet your dad knew my—”
She turned abruptly. “It doesn’t matter. I think we should get to work on the stables. The sooner we get all this done, the sooner you can actually grow your herd…or whatever groups of llamas are called.”
“You need to eat something first.”
“I’ve done a lot of work without breakfast, Sharpe.”
“Okay, fine, I need breakfast.” Her calling him by his last name made a matching tension creep into his shoulders. But he didn’t have Mel’s control, and he’d be damned if he wanted to. “If you want to piss me off some more, keep calling me Sharpe.” His irritation, anger, whatever it was—it was a lot more familiar than the feeling of her underneath him, looking at him like he had some kind of answer. He might not understand what it stemmed from, the way she blocked him out, walked away, erected this maze he didn’t understand. He might not understand how she—or anyone—could just lock those feelings down and away. But…
Hell, he didn’t know. He didn’t know a damn thing, and since she was supposed to be the one teaching him what to do, maybe he’d just follow her lead.
Chapter 14
Mel was still staring at the hammer in her toolbox when Dan’s front door slammed. She wanted to feel angry, but how could she? She’d been…
Hot and cold. Curt for no reason. Unnecessarily bitchy. She didn’t mind being bitchy as a rule, but it was the unnecessary part that had guilt lurching in her stomach along with…
Pain. A pain she thought had been buried deep enough it wouldn’t get churned up against her will. Listening to Dan talk to his mother, her obvious worry over him, that was painful.
She didn’t want that ache, and she refused to accept that it was about her mother. It wasn’t just that. It was anyone caring about anyone. She was human for wanting someone to care about her, even if she knew the care was a big old pile of horse crap.
Something hot and painful lodged in her throat as she remembered the feel of Dan’s finger wrapping around a strand of her hair. She’d had her back to him, but she’d felt the touch, felt the words as if they were a touch. I thought I was going to make you breakfast.
Like he wanted to. Like he wanted to do something for her.
But there were other words that had dug in, and not just his mother, a staticky female voice in his ear.
I told you it was for the summer.
She didn’t like the way him saying being here was temporary had hit her hard. Like a horse kicking her right in the chest. Even though she knew he wasn’t sticking around; she’d told him he wasn’t sticking around.
He could build this llama ranch or whatever crazy scheme, but he was still going back to hockey, and if he ever came back here on some permanent basis, well, it’d be years and years from now, when he had nothing else in his life to give.
But she’d felt a little pang, and that was not good at all. Completely not his fault though, so she should probably stop being a jerk to him about it.
She forced herself onto the porch, tried to find apologetic words to say to him, except fear kept her rooted in front of the door, not walking inside.
While she could recognize the feeling of fear, identify it, she was having a harder time figuring out the reason for it. What was she afraid of? All she could work out was that she was afraid of the way he made her feel.
Which was so stupid it actually irritated her. What did it matter how he made her feel? She wasn’t under any illusion he was going to stay, so she wouldn’t be brokenhearted when he left. She didn’t want or need anything more from him than some super-great sex and the occasional not-suffocating company.
And what if he wants more from you?
She wanted to ignore that thought, the way the fear intensified, but how could she? It was right there, flipping in her stomach, urging her to run far, far away, because she didn’t need another person needing more from her.
It does not have to be forever. It’s not forever. So, there was nothing to get worked up about. No reason for the flutters of fear to mix with the flutters of him looking at her like she was the center of the world.
Please. He’d been trying to get her to have sex with him. Beginning and end of that story. That was all she was after too, all that could ever happen. So.
So. This was all crazy, stupid emotion getting in the way of reason and sense, and that was not acceptable. She would push it away, bury it down, and find a way to get back to where they’d been.
The way he’d tackled her to the ground, his big, hard body on top of hers, popped to mind. Something so foolish and…fun. And the way he looked at you, was anything but.
“Okay, brain, I have had enough.” She forced herself to turn the knob and open the door and step into Dan’s kitchen.
He was standing in front of his stove, still in his sweaty, grimy running clothes. It did not lessen the appeal of him, not when she could so clearly visualize him naked.
“I…” She cleared her throat because something clogged there. “Could I have…an egg?”
He gave her a one-eyebrow-quirked look, like she was crazy. Yeah, you’re definitely crazy. But he was so hot and he cooked, even if it was just scrambled eggs. There was no reason on the face of the earth not to let this little thing…be a thing. Temporarily.
So she cleared her throat again, and although she was too big of a coward to look directly at him, she forced the uncomfortable words out of her mouth. “I’m sorry. For getting weird. About things.”
“Weird. About things.” He shook his head. “Yeah, that about covers it.”
“I’m not very good with people.”
“See, what’s funny about that, Mel, is you seem to do pretty damn okay with just about everyone in town.”
“I…” She didn’t know how to respond to that, mainly because it gave away something she didn’t want to be dwelling on too much. He was different. He was special. She wasn’t trying to get anything out of him, wasn’t trying to rebuild the Shaw name with him. He didn’t matter, and in some nonsensical way, that made him matter even more. “God, I’m tired.”
His mouth quirked at that as he pushed the eggs around in the pan. “You know why?”
“Not really.”
He actually chuckled that time. “You’re trying too hard.”
“It’s all I have,” she said quietly, perhaps more seriously than the situation warranted. But it hit home. Because she was trying hard, but what other choice was there?
He didn’t say anything to that, and she didn’t know what else to say, or what to do, so she stood there still next to the door, hat in her hands.
“As much as I enjoy waiting on you, honey, why don’t you make the coffee and maybe we can press reset on this day.”
“We seem to have to do that a lot.”
He shrugged and she could feel his eyes on her as she moved to the coffeemaker. “Better to start over and try again than walk away an
d stew over it.”
“Is that why you want to play again? To prove you’re not…that you didn’t?” She swallowed, because she shouldn’t care about that, or want to know. But she did.
What was the harm in knowing? In asking? What was the harm in any of this? It was like letting out the pressure valve—all that steam that had built and built and built in her life was about to explode. So instead of exploding, she’d let some steam escape. Have some fun and good sex, and then when he left, she could go back to her life and her responsibilities.
Until the pressure builds again.
Well, she made it through twenty-eight years without needing to let a little loose, which meant after this, she’d probably make it twenty-eight more. By that time, she’d find something else to release the pressure.
So, she could know and ask about Dan. She could be with him, and she could feel things, as long as she didn’t feel permanent things—and, honestly, what were the chances of that?
* * *
Dan blinked at the eggs. It was hard to keep up with her sometimes, the cold, the hot, the lukewarm. But he didn’t know what this was, her asking about hockey. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say.
Maybe because he didn’t know how to answer that question. Of course he wanted to get back into it to prove he wasn’t a cheat. Of course he wanted to prove he could handle the pressure. Once, at least once in his life, he could handle it.
But there was more, and he hadn’t wrapped his mind around that more. There was an ache, a hole that hockey left. There were parts of his life where he didn’t feel it so deeply—doing hard work, planning for the llamas, being with Mel…
It didn’t change the uncomfortable fact that being without hockey left a hole, and even if he got back next season…there would be a season he wouldn’t be able to go back. Someday.
It scared the hell out of him that the ache might never go away. That in using hockey as an escape, he’d made this temporary thing his whole damn life.
“No one wants to be known as a cheat.” He plastered the easygoing, for-the-crowd grin on his face and filled their plates with eggs. When he glanced at her, she was carefully pouring coffee into two mugs.
The moment struck him as something out of a movie or a TV show. Certainly something he’d never witnessed in real life. Two people working together to make a meal. Two people working together to make much of anything.
He’d seen teamwork, he’d seen people help each other out, but not the easy camaraderie of preparing breakfast as a unit. There was a fuzzy memory, dim and not quite fully formed, something to do with his grandparents and that table, but he couldn’t put all the pieces together and wasn’t sure why it was cropping up now.
“But is it just your reputation?” Mel was saying. “I mean, you said this place meant something to you, or you thought it could because of your grandpa, so… Is it just what people think that makes you want to play again?”
He stood at the counter, two plates in his hand, and she stood next to the table, a mug in each hand. Sunlight streamed through the window across from the table, spotlighting Mel in golden light and dust motes.
Fuck, this day was weird. Had he suffered a concussion last night and forgotten about it?
“Dan.”
Well, at least no more Sharpe for the time being. “It’s a lot to do with reputation,” he said, forcing himself to cross the tiny kitchen. “But it’s not just my reputation that could suffer.”
Her brows drew together. “Who else’s would? Your agent’s?”
“No.” He placed the plates down and studied her. “You don’t have a clue about hockey, do you?”
She shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t have a lot of leisure time to follow sports.”
Dan’s mouth quirked. “My dad was kind of a big deal. Hockey player. Like Hall of Fame, did commercials, Olympics, whole nine yards.”
“Oh.”
“And, anyway, he’s a front-office guy now, and there are things he wants to do and…well, having stuff said about me doesn’t help him any.”
“And it means you couldn’t do something in the front office?”
“Oh, I’d never be any good at that shit. Can you imagine me in a suit saying all the right things to smooth people’s ridiculous egos?”
She blinked and didn’t respond, which almost seemed like she could picture it. Weird. It was just another thing in a long line of things he knew Dad would always be better at doing.
So, no, he couldn’t imagine doing that.
“Anyway, we should eat.” He gestured to the table, because this was all awkward and not at all what he wanted to talk about. Llamas. Sex. Her. That about completed the list of things he wanted to discuss. “Cold eggs and coffee are less than appetizing.”
She gave a little nod and slid the coffee mugs onto the table, but before he could sit, she leaned in and pressed her mouth to his.
He was surprised enough by the move he couldn’t do much more than put his hands on her shoulders. Mel didn’t do a lot of initiating, but this wasn’t exactly sexual. It was more sweet, like an offer of comfort or sympathy.
Why the hell should she feel sorry for him? Offer him sympathy? This was all…picnic stuff compared to her life. She should go back to telling him people with money had their problems smoothed away.
But when she stepped back, she only looked at some point behind him, sheepishness wrinkling her nose.
“What was that for?” he demanded, feeling off and wanting to feel something familiar. Irritation would do.
Her eyes were wide, but serious when they met his. Always so damn serious. “I don’t know.”
It was like that moment in the grass—the overwhelmed feeling again, part sweetness, part the sharp need to bolt. But something pulled them tighter, pulled them close, and though part of him wanted nothing more than to bolt, that instinct was no match for the sweetness, for the pull.
“Cold…eggs,” she said, her voice hoarse, the green and brown of her eyes mesmerizing. She cleared her throat. “And work to do.”
Work. Right. That had been the main thing that had lifted his spirits this week, so maybe that’s what he needed to return focus to. Forget hockey and Mel and all the things that made his nerve endings go haywire.
“I’m going to start emailing breeders. Get a firm date for when we need everything done.”
She lifted a bite of eggs to her mouth, but then stopped and set it down. “Maybe you should pause on the breeders. Focus on getting this place ready.”
“Why? I have to know when some are going to be available so I can be ready for them by that time. I suppose I could just pick up some more misfits like Mystery, but I’m not sure how I’d go about doing that.”
“Speaking as your consultant, I don’t think it’s a good idea to bring more animals in until you’re more certain of your future. If you’re going back to play in the fall, there isn’t much sense in—”
“I’m not going to back out or screw up. I may not be good at a lot of things, but the things I can do, I don’t stop until…” Until you fuck up two of the biggest games of a hockey player’s life and are forced to stop. Forced to try out. Forced to…
“Dan.”
A warm, calloused hand slid over the top of his, which he hadn’t realized he’d been clenching into a fist.
“Listen, this isn’t about your ability to do something,” she said. “This is about the fact that it doesn’t make sense to grow a herd if you’re going to try to get back into hockey. I mean, how long is a season?”
He took a deep breath at the tightness in his chest. The pressure. The little voice in his head telling him this was a dumb plan that wouldn’t erase the real problem. “Start reporting in August, but the season can last until April.” If they got to the playoffs, it would be longer.
“It doesn’t make any sense to add animals if you
won’t be here.”
He hated that gentle note in her voice, as if she were trying to break bad news to a small child. As if he was a small child, too stupid and foolish to understand what he was trying to do. Like Mom, like everyone, thinking this was some dumb thing he was doing to while his time away. “I’ll hire a caretaker.”
“But…why?”
“Because I’m building something. Like I told you before. I’m building something here because I need something important, and this is going to be it. If my career isn’t over, it doesn’t matter. I’m building a place to come back to. And if I can’t get back into hockey”—he paused to make sure his voice didn’t shake, the pain and fear didn’t show—“then I’ve built something for the now.”
Mel didn’t say anything to that. She went back to eating, and so did he. He couldn’t control getting back into the show. That was Scott’s domain.
But this ranch, this plan, that was Dan’s, and he wouldn’t let anyone put any doubts in his head.
Even his own.
Chapter 15
Things had gotten tense, and despite her early morning arrival, there had been none of the promised sex. Which Mel was not disappointed over. Because she was a camel when it came to sex. She didn’t need it. She could last for years on yesterday. Years.
So what was the whole itchy, achy, wanty feeling going on in her general…nether regions?
Maybe she had the mountain crazies.
They had worked, repairing parts of the stables, running to town to get Dan a hose and have lunch. A lunch where Dan had insisted on sitting at the counter and spending all his time chatting with Georgia and making goofy faces at the Lane girl, who’d been in a booth with her grandpa. Cheerful and chatty…with everyone but her.
Not a meaningful look or conversation for her all day. Flirting, yes, but that light, blank kind that she was pretty sure he’d throw at anyone with the right kind of anatomy.
And certainly none of the “breaks” she had been kind of hoping for.
Now it was her usual quitting time, and she didn’t at all know what came next. They’d washed up, were standing next to the llama pen, and…what was she supposed to do?