Wild Heat (Northern Fire)

by Lucy Monroe

  “You do not disgust me. I’m proud of you. Overcoming the need to starve yourself is as hard as breaking any other addiction, worse than a lot of them.”

  Her therapist and the doctors had all said that, too, but Nevin had always insisted the problem was her weakness.

  Part of her still agreed with him.

  “But I started it.” No one, not even Nevin, had held a gun to her head and told her to stop eating.

  Tack’s hand twitched, like he was going to reach for her, but then he didn’t. “And you stopped it. One in two who suffer from the disease can’t completely.”

  “You really did read up on it.”

  He nodded, his dark eyes demanding she believe him. He reached out to cup her face with both his hands, shrinking her awareness of everything down to the inches between them. “You are a fighter, Kitty. You won’t let this disease take your life.”

  “That’s almost exactly what I told my therapist.” Caitlin hadn’t necessarily believed her own words, but she’d desperately wanted them to be true.

  “Good girl. That’s my wildcat.”

  She knew the possessive my had been unconscious and didn’t believe for a second he meant it the way it had sounded. Still, it made her heart skip a beat and she couldn’t be sure if it was from fear or joy.

  “I don’t think I’m her anymore.”

  “So you’ve said, but I’ll let you in on a little secret.”

  “What?” she asked in a near whisper, her eyes focused on his lips.

  “I think you are and I plan to prove it to you.”

  “I’ll disappoint you.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “You don’t know me anymore, Tack.”

  “I know you better than you think I do.” He dropped his hands but did not move back. “That whole size zero culture down there in LA, it fed the disease. We aren’t going to do that here in Cailkirn.”

  She missed the warmth of his fingers immediately, wanting nothing more than to have them against her cheeks again. Caitlin was starting to see how dangerous Tack touching her could be for her peace of mind. She could learn to need it and that scared her.

  She couldn’t afford to need anything from another person, not touch, not approval, and most especially not love. Needing gave others leverage over her and she was determined never to be in that place again.

  Caitlin forced herself to ignore the craving for more of his touch and focus on their discussion.

  She wasn’t actually entirely sure why they were having it, though, why her disease mattered to Tack. “Trying to encourage me to eat too much or the wrong food can be just as bad as the subtle suggestions to eat less.”

  Nevin had been excellent at those, but he’d refused to take any responsibility for how difficult it had become for her to make herself eat at all.

  “I know. You need to tell your family that. It’s natural for them to try to feed you.”

  “Yeah, food is the language of love for the Grant sisters.”

  “If you tell your gran and aunts how physically challenging it is for you to eat rich foods, they’ll channel that love into providing for your needs.”

  “I’m sure they would.” Not only did she find it nearly impossible to talk about her disease and its effects on her, but she also didn’t want people making special efforts on her behalf.

  Partly because putting them out made her uncomfortable and partly because allowing it put her in their debt.

  “That doesn’t sound like you plan to talk to them.” And he didn’t sound like he approved of that.

  She shrugged.

  “I’m learning to really dislike when you shrug.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it implies you don’t care and I know you do, Kitty.”

  “You’re so sure. I’m not the same woman you left behind in California.”

  “No, you’re stronger. That Kitty gave up her best friend on the say-so of her boyfriend. She wanted approval too much maybe and she wouldn’t have been able to fight back from anorexia and bulimia. That Kitty chose an MRS over her degree. You’re winning against the eating disorder and you managed to finish your degree.”

  Maybe he was right and he did know her better than she thought he did, both in the past and today. “You make me sound like someone to respect.”

  “That’s because I do respect you.” He sounded so sincere.

  “How can you? After I betrayed our friendship the way I did.” He still had to be bothered by it, or he wouldn’t have mentioned it.

  “You were just twenty, still a baby. Clearly too young to choose a good husband,” he said with a wink, taking the sting from the words. “So, you were just as bad at choosing what friends to keep and the ones to let go of.”

  “I never got to choose them.”

  “You said that.”

  She nodded, pain at her own weakness filling her. “I hate looking back at how much control I gave him over me and my life. I mean, I just handed it away, convinced I loved him and that love offered that kind of loyalty.”

  “If you’re going to hate something, hate what that son of a bitch did to you. I do.”

  Laughter rolled out of her and it felt good as much as it surprised her. “His mother would not like being called a bitch.”

  “Are they peas in a pod, or did he drop and roll far from the tree?”

  “She never let me forget that I wasn’t good enough for her son. I never once called her by her first name. It was either Mrs. Barston or ma’am.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Yeah.”

  He smiled and something she hadn’t felt in a long time stirred inside of Caitlin. A warm tendril of real friendship.

  “I took way too long choosing my clothes today,” she admitted, wondering if she could tell him all of it.

  Tack’s ultra-masculine features, a perfect mix of Inuit and Scots, creased in confusion. “Why?”

  “You told me I looked too fancy yesterday. I didn’t want you to disapprove of my outfit today.”

  “Why the hell would you care what I think of how you dress?”

  Man, Tack was just so self-possessed, he really couldn’t imagine worrying about what someone else thought.

  “I don’t. At least I don’t want to. I made myself get dressed in what I wanted to wear.”

  “Good.” He frowned. “Do you need me to measure what I say to you?”

  “Maybe, but I don’t want you to. I really don’t. I’m not sure I could stand it if you of all people got all stiff with me.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  She felt a rare genuine smile curve her lips. “I’m not sure I can see it either. You’re not a walking-on-eggshells kind of guy.”

  “No.”

  “I was.”

  He just looked at her.

  “I spent years tiptoeing on eggshells, terrified of every crack and break I could hear under my feet.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Not all of it.”

  “Eventually.”

  “You’re pushier than you were when we were kids.”

  It was his turn to shrug.

  “Because you don’t adore me like you did back then,” she teased. Though for her, that affection wasn’t really something she laughed about.

  Not deep down inside where it mattered.

  She’d taken his adoration for granted once, but now memories of their childhood and young adult lives glowed golden in her mind, helping to wash away the pain of the past eight years in its light.

  “Yeah. You got away with way too much back then.”

  “Like you didn’t get your way at all.”

  “We were friends,” he said, like that said it all.

  “I don’t have friends now.”

  He looked at her, his face set in implacable lines. “Yes, Kitty, you do.”

  “Are you saying you still want to be my friend?”

  “Why do you think we’re out here?”

  “I didn’t really know.”
<
br />   “You need real friends, Kitty. I am your friend.”

  “I don’t like that word.”

  “Friend?” he asked, looking more confused than angry.

  “Need. It’s not safe to need people or things.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t back in LA, but you’re safe enough needing me, needing your gran and aunts. We’re good Alaskan stock. We won’t let you down.”

  “What if I let you down?”

  “I won’t let you.”

  And she almost believed him.

  “In the first year or so, I convinced myself that Nevin didn’t really intend to dictate my personal choices. Not about clothes, or any of the other things he’d expressed what I thought was mild displeasure in regard to my selections.”

  “But controlling you was exactly what he wanted.”

  “Oh yes. He got off on control, especially when that control made it possible to hurt me.” That was probably the worst thing she’d had to come to terms with: the man she’d married was an emotional and physical sadist. “He demanded full and complete dictatorship without ever once in our marriage coming out and saying so in words I could point to.”

  “Manipulative.”

  “He defined the word. Refusing to acknowledge his true nature was a huge mistake on my part.” Hiding hadn’t protected her; it had just made it possible for her torment to go on longer.

  “I’ll say.”

  She almost laughed, though it would probably have been more a gallows sound. Tack didn’t even have a passing acquaintance with tact. There was something not just refreshing, but also safe in the pure honesty that prompted knee-jerk comments like that.

  “The longer I took to learn that those seemingly throwaway comments were more in the order of commands, the worse things got.” Her throat tightened as if trying to hold the words in, but she pressed on. “The harsher Nevin’s criticisms, the more frequent his gestures carefully calculated to humiliate me.”

  “And then he got physical.”

  She turned away, looking out the window to the snow-covered mountains in the distance. “I never told anyone about that, not even the therapist.”

  “But it did happen. He hurt you physically. He broke your bones.”

  Caitlin had insisted to every emergency room doctor and nurse that she was just clumsy. She’d even refused to admit to her gran and therapist how her injuries had occurred, but she couldn’t lie to Tack. “Yes.”

  “Shit.”

  “It could have been worse. A lot worse.” She’d met women in the support group her lawyer had insisted Caitlin attend in exchange for a reduction in her fees. Some of them had permanent injuries or disfigurement. Some couldn’t talk without a stutter; others weren’t able to meet anyone’s eyes.

  “By some standards, I got off pretty easy.”

  He gritted out another expletive, bursting into movement. Suddenly Tack had her seat belt unbuckled and Caitlin pulled into his arms, right into his lap. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to be held this intimately by someone she wanted to touch her.

  Glorious heat surrounded her, his muscles solid against her, his thighs hard and strong under hers, his scent achingly familiar and subtly different at the same time. He rubbed her back, crooning something above her head. The words didn’t register, but the tone did.

  Only then did she realize tears were tracking silently down her cheeks. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried. It hadn’t been safe to cry for so long.

  It was safe now. He made her feel that way. Really, truly safe for the first time since she’d ejected this man from her life.

  She didn’t deserve the friendship he offered, but oh she didn’t have the strength to reject it, not even for his own good.

  Tack didn’t need someone like her in his life, a woman who’d stayed in an abusive relationship until it almost killed her. She’d believed every threat Nevin made. Why shouldn’t she? He’d already proven hurting her was something he enjoyed.

  But she’d also believed him when he told her it was her fault, that she was stupid, useless, that no one would want her, that even her gran would be disgusted by the walking skeleton she’d become.

  She’d bought into all of his lies.

  Nevin hadn’t been the one to put her in the hospital, a hairsbreadth from her kidneys shutting down either. Ultimately, that had been on Caitlin and the disease she’d let rule her life.

  She didn’t realize she’d spoken her troubled thoughts aloud until Tack went stiff against her.

  He tilted her head up so she had to meet his dark, compelling gaze. “Listen to me, Kitty.”

  “I am.”

  “You didn’t give into your disease any more than a woman with a broken leg gave into her bone’s fragility. You pushed out of the abyss, fighting every step of the way just like that same woman would go to physical therapy to reclaim full mobility.”

  “But I knew I was losing too much weight. I couldn’t make myself eat.”

  “And yet you did.”

  She stared up at him, the twin strands of guilt and shame braided so tightly together inside her beginning to loosen. “I did.”

  “Just like you ate breakfast this morning and dinner last night.”

  “Yes.” Someone who hadn’t suffered an eating disorder shouldn’t be able to understand what a feat that was, that every day she ate her caloric goal was a triumph.

  Yet Tack did.

  “See? Not weak. Not useless.”

  She was determined not to be either of those things. “You’re kind of amazing, you know that?”

  He grinned and winked. “You go right ahead and tell my family. See if they believe you.”

  “Oh, they already know. They just don’t say anything so you don’t get a swollen head.”

  “That’s not the only swollen head you’re giving me,” he muttered, sounding disgruntled. He shifted under her and she felt a hard bulge against her thigh.

  She gasped. He wanted her?

  Tack’s eyes closed and he dropped his head back, breathing in deep. “Forget I said that.”

  “What if I don’t want to?” Why would she?

  The very idea she could turn him on was unbelievable, except for the undeniable evidence of Tack’s erection.

  Nevin had spent the last two years of their marriage telling her how disgusting he found her emaciated body, not that it had stopped him from demanding conjugal rights. But he’d made sure she understood how unfulfilling he found sex with her.

  Tack moved her from his lap and back onto her side of the bench seat with careful but firm hands. “Friends, Kitty.”

  What did that mean? He wanted to be friends, but nothing else?

  “What if I want more?” Had she really asked that?

  Kitty had been dead certain she never wanted sex again. She was still trying to reconnect in a meaningful way with her body. She wanted to feel like the woman she saw in the mirror. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted it now, but she wasn’t positive she didn’t either.

  She didn’t want love or a relationship. No emotional entanglements that could destroy what was left of her heart, but what if she could have sex? Something to bring a little pleasure into the new life she was building for herself?

  “That’s all I’m offering.” He started the engine with a vicious twist of the key.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Cringing back into the seat and away from the barely leashed power in the huge man sharing the cab with her, Caitlin nodded reflexively. “Whatever you say.”

  “Do your seat belt.” Tack put the truck in gear.

  Shaking, her hands fumbled as she tried to do the buckle, but it didn’t want to cooperate. She tried harder, her efforts growing more frantic.

  He cursed and shoved the lever, putting the four-by-four back into park.

  Turning to face her, Tack gently brushed her hands away from the buckle. “Let me do it.”

  She acquiesced without a word, focusing on the dashboard so she wouldn’t lo
ok at him.

  He took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, several seconds of silence following. “I’m not going to hurt you, wildcat. Not ever.”

  “I believe you.” She wanted to believe him.

  “No, you don’t, but you’re trying.” He kissed her temple, his hand tangling in the kinky red strands of her hair to turn her head so they were once again eye to eye. “That impresses the hell out of me, to tell you the truth.”

  “It does?” she whispered. “Why?”

  Wouldn’t it be more impressive if she already believed him?

  “Because, after what you’ve been through, that takes courage. Something you’ve never had in short supply.”

  She shook her head, knowing better.

  He pressed their foreheads together, his breath washing over her face, the scent of cinnamon and coffee oddly appealing. “Ah, wildcat, what am I going to do with you?”

  “Not have sex,” she blurted out.

  Tack lifted his head, his expression just strange. “Kitty, even if you weren’t already off-limits, you’re afraid of me.”

  “I am not.”

  “You just cringed away from me.”

  “Reflex. You didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Reflex, my ass. I’ll bet you didn’t show fear to Nevin.”

  “Not if I could help it.” She’d learned fast to hide as much emotion from her ex-husband as possible.

  Then he couldn’t use it against her.

  “Sweetheart, even if sex between us wasn’t permanently off the table, you’re too fragile right now. You have to see that having sex right now would not be a good idea for you.”

  “Yes, of course,” she said, despite the pricks of pain to her heart from his gentle but blunt rejection.

  He said he admired her, but Tack thought she was broken. Too broken for physical intimacy. So damaged he never wanted to have sex with her.

  He frowned. “I’m not sure I trust such easy agreement from you.”

  “Do you want the truth?”

  “Always.”

  Right. That sounded nice, but she doubted very much Tack really wanted all of her truth.

  Pushing that reality away, she said, “Until five minutes ago, I was convinced I never wanted sex again.”