by Holley Trent
Maybe he’s busy, she thought as she waited at the airport curb for Glenda and Jamie to pick her and Travis up.
For a three-year-old, Travis was very quiet, though he seemed curious enough with the way his dark gaze fixed so intently on people when they were speaking. Just like Marta Fitz had said, he’d gone along nicely with Miles, but she could tell she wasn’t who he’d wanted. He’d been hoping his mother would come.
Now, Glenda had one extra mouth to feed—at least until Marta got her act together, which Miles hoped would be sooner than later. She could tell the lady really loved her kids. She just wasn’t well-equipped to be a parent at the moment—much like Nick’s mother, Jill.
The ranch had its usual hum of activity when they returned. Sean and a man who, from a distance, looked like Tito were constructing something in the pasture the Cougars used for gatherings. The barbecue?
Mason was watching a FedEx driver load large parcels into his truck and held Nick in the crook of one arm while he did it.
Some ranch hands milled around the barn as a driver backed out a pickup filled with hay bales.
And there was Ellery with the witches inside the gazebo where they were probably having their monthly meeting. Mrs. Perez sat inside, looking on and waving what looked like a church fan in front of her face. Ellery’s arm was slung over a shoulder belonging to a woman with a familiar white-blond braid.
“Is that Hannah?”
Glenda pulled up her parking brake. “It certainly is. Her being out of the basement on her own accord is a baby step, but we’ll take what we can get.”
“I don’t know. With Hannah, sometimes a baby step is a mile.” Miles could only hope that was the case, not only for Sean’s sake, but for Hannah’s, as well. Miles wanted to see her friend find her match in someone, and she’d never thought that would be an easy thing. He might have been right there on the Double B Ranch, a thirty-second walk from Hannah.
They all got out, and once Miles ensured Jamie wasn’t going to drop Travis on his head, she looked toward the house of the one person who seemed to be missing…right as her phone chirped.
I know you’re busy, but I worry.
Confused, she tapped the screen for the time stamp. The message was from a day ago. “Oh, damn.” Hank had tried. She put the phone in her pocket and took off at a jog for the house to apologize.
Then she stopped. Why was she always the first one to offer up an apology? She wanted to see him, and badly—to look at his face and search it for signs she’d made the wrong choice by pushing him back, although in her gut she knew it was right. She’d had to say those things, and running to him as if he were the air she breathed wasn’t going to fix anything. In fact, it might make things worse.
First things first.
She turned on her heel and made tracks toward Tito and Sean.
Tito held his arms open upon her approach. “C’mon. You know what I want.”
She laughed. “Just leave me with a little air this time, okay? I’m not as durable as you guys.”
He proceeded to squeeze 95 percent of the life out of her, purring contentedly as he did it.
Sean laughed, but it wasn’t his usual unrestrained bark. Just a quiet chuckle. The stress with Hannah was likely sapping him of his good humor. The fact he could laugh at all said a lot about his character. He wasn’t the kind of man who’d bring down the mood of a group, even when it was expected. “Don’t let Hank catch you. He might consider it a challenge.”
Tito set her down and waved dismissively. “Eh, I ain’t worried about him. What’s he gonna do? Yell at me because I’m suave enough to get me a hug?”
“So suave.” Sean cleared his throat and bent to pick up a length of metal grating.
“Wanna get me up to speed?” she asked softly, cutting her gaze toward the gazebo.
He shrugged. “I don’t know what to say. She won’t talk to me, but whatever Hank said to her made her come outside without any bloodshed.”
“What do you mean, what Hank said to her?”
“Dunno. He pushed past me and unlocked the basement. There was about half an hour of yelling, and he emerged, no worse the wear, and she followed him. He passed her off to Ellery and told me he’d be back in a couple of hours. I think he went to town. I know nothing.”
Miles ground her back molars. “He yelled at my friend?” Miles hadn’t been around for him to tie into emotional knots, so he’d found a substitute?
“It’s his prerogative, really. For as long as she’s in the glaring, which…may not be long.”
“Sean—”
He gave her a dismissive wave. “Come on, Miles. We both know better. Even the cat part of my brain thinks the best thing for everyone would be me letting her go home.”
“You can’t let her go home. You need to fix this.” The cold, hard truth was that if Miles had to pick between her friend and the glaring, she’d choose the glaring. Hannah had been part of Miles’s very small family-by-choice for ten years, but in the glaring, Miles had more people looking out for her than she knew what to do with. Sure, it felt stifling sometimes thanks to Hank’s long reach, but these people cared and she cared about them. She wanted them to care about Hannah, too. Hannah could give so much to the group if she let herself.
Sean gave her a slow nod. “I’m open to suggestions. Tell me what to say and I’ll say it to her, if she lets me get close.”
“I’ll come up with something. Give me some time.”
“All right. I trust you.”
“Segundita,” Tito said in a stage whisper, and nudged Sean’s ribs with his elbow.
“You made that up, didn’t you?”
She turned on her heel, intending to march over to the coven, but the sound of a familiar F-250 engine growled up the path and she started toward its owner’s house instead.
Triage. Important things first.
She was in Hank’s face before he could get the truck door closed.
“Hey, you didn’t—”
“I thought you were going to do better.” She didn’t really care to hear what he had to say. Apparently, his word meant nothing, and she was going to call him on it.
He furrowed his brow and strode to the back of the truck. He let the tailgate down and loosened the cords holding his cargo in place. “Can you carry this for me, please?” He placed a stack of paint roller trays and assorted other painting supplies in her arms before she could refuse.
He grabbed a ten-gallon bucket of white paint.
“What is this?”
“Cleaned up a little. I need to prime everything before I go back to work.” He slammed the tailgate shut and canted his head toward the house. “You’re mad at me for some reason. Tell me why while we walk.”
“You waited until I was gone to scare the snot out of my friend.”
He stopped walking and turned to her. “What?”
“I was going to deal with Hannah. She’s my friend. I know Sean’s your brother, but it’s like I told you. You have to get out of my way sometimes and trust that I have a decent brain in my head.”
“I didn’t scare the snot out of her. We just had a very loud conversation, and I suspect that’s par for the course with her.”
“I…” Her jaw flapped wordlessly a few beats. Maybe loud was Hannah’s usual style, but still… Miles straightened her spine and cleared her throat. “A very loud discussion about what?”
A couple of ranch hands puttered past on Glenda’s four-wheeler and parked it beside the sag in the fence. Right in earshot.
Hank tipped his head toward the house again. “Please?”
She sighed. The goddess was noticeably absent in Miles’s head for once. The one time she would have liked to have had a little guidance, Lola was nowhere around.
“Fine.” She led him to the side door, which he pulled open for her. She stomped up the stairs and set the painting supplies on the washing machine. He nudged her a little farther into the house.
“Come on. If you’re going t
o argue with me, let’s at least do it in a room with chairs. I wanna show you something first, though.”
“What?”
He took her hand in both of his. “Come on. And watch your step over the sheet of plastic. I had to cover the floor.”
He led her through the kitchen and into the front room, and her jaw dropped so quickly the hinges popped. Everything was gone—the mess, the few pieces of furniture, the tools, the construction supplies. Blank slate, and with all the clutter taken away, she could appreciate the beauty of the room. The stripped wood trim, the built-in shelving along the long wall, the stone fireplace that had been swept out and screened. It was a livable space, potentially a warm one.
“Better?” he asked softly.
“Much, much better. Doesn’t look so…”
“Dilapidated?”
She nodded on a cringe. “Sorry.”
He gave her hands a little squeeze. “I told you to trust me, Miles. But that’s not what I wanted to show you.” He led her to the fireplace and plucked a book from the mantel. “I think you’ll find this enlightening.”
She lifted the front cover and studied the frontispiece and title page. “It’s her legend?”
“Everything about Cougar lore, really. I imagine most families around here had a copy of that book at some point. We should probably make it assigned reading since we’ve all but forgotten why we are what we are.”
“Have you read it?”
“Cover to cover last night after cleaning up in here. Out in the truck while keeping Sean company.” He leaned against the mantel and folded his arms over his chest. “I think in all this time we’ve been so critical of the goddess, we could have saved ourselves a little angst if we’d actually read the fucking instruction book. Isn’t that how it always works? We try to put shit together without knowing how to, and want to give up because certainly, something must be wrong. But then, we take one last try doing things in the order we’re supposed to. Voilà. Magic happens.”
She closed the book and set it gently on the mantel. “Is that why you and Hannah argued? Because you found some Cougar magic?” Certainly, he didn’t think she’d forgotten why she was angry so quickly.
“No. I went to ask her for the favor of having a conversation with Sean. Things…escalated.”
“But you let her out.”
“Took a lot of words before that happened.”
“What sorts of words?”
He cleared his throat and fixed his gaze on the ceiling. “Honest ones. That’s all I can say without breaching her trust, which is obviously very hard to come by. As her second, I’d like for her to trust me.”
“Hannah told you a secret?” That didn’t sound like Hannah.
“Accidentally, and I think she was ashamed by it. Not that it came out, but the nature of it.”
“Oh.” Miles would be lying if she said she wasn’t curious what that secret might be, but Hannah was a proud woman. For her to have been so affected by whatever it was, it had to have been something that scarred her deeply. Miles wouldn’t go picking at whatever it was. She’d have to wait for Hannah to come to her. She’d have to remind Hannah that it was okay for her to come, because she probably didn’t feel that way at the moment. Hannah probably thought the teams were stacked two to one with her being the holdout on the honorable side.
“I imagine she’ll talk to Sean when she has something to say. Hopefully soon, but…”
She nodded. Hank didn’t need to say it. She’d already talked to Sean and knew. “I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions.”
“Don’t apologize.” He put his hands on her shoulders and rubbed, kneading down to the tight knot at the top of her neck. So good. “I’m the one who should be saying sorry. Will you let me?”
“Sorry for what?”
“Making things hard. Taking my own fucking frustrations out on you. For feeling sorry for myself when I had no damn right to. I made the choice to stay here because I thought it was the right thing. The guiltless choice.”
“And now?”
“And now I think it would have been tough, but Dad, Mason, and Sean would have gotten along well enough without me, eventually. I mean, they couldn’t have done any worse. So while I don’t have guilt now, I have a lot of regrets. What-ifs fill my dreams every night, and make me wake up angry at the world. At myself. I don’t want any more of those. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She furrowed her brow. “I think so.”
“Do you? Because I’m saying I don’t want you to be one of those regrets. I don’t want to wake up one day and think what if. And I don’t want you to look back and think the same thing about me.”
“The only things I ever regret are not doing enough, and that’s rare, because I always try my hardest, but people have to let me try.”
“I want to let you try. You have a very important role here, and I’m sorry that everyone else figured that out before me. I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to see you.”
So he understood. Thank God.
He tipped up her chin and met her upturned gaze. There seemed to be a question in his eyes and on his lips, so she nodded.
His kiss was tender, at first—it was a kiss with so much hesitation, she might have thought he was a little afraid of her. Afraid she’d refuse him. She wouldn’t, but that had never been their problem. A woman could be kept and still not wanted.
He tracked his hands up her arms and shoulders and pressed them to her cheeks, holding her face exactly where he wanted it as his tongue delved further and her neck caught a crick.
She winced.
He flinched. “No?”
Laughing, she rubbed her neck. “I’m short.”
“Oh.” He slung an arm around her waist, pressing her to him, and carried her to the stairs. He set her on the one that was two from the bottom and found her lips with his own again.
Better. Discomfort alleviated, she allowed herself to touch. Touch always seemed to make a difference with Cougars—at least, the ones who’d allow it for themselves. They seemed happier. Hell, Tito may have been the most skin-starved man she’d ever met, but he seemed happier than most. He was easy to read and communicate with. Maybe there was some connection there. Maybe touch brought trust. Or perhaps it helped link that instinctual animal brain with the man one to help find a balance between needs and wants, and to understand that sometimes lines blurred.
Hank moaned at her hands’ quick tug of his waistband and kneading of his back. Pressing her own body tight to his as he balanced her precariously on that step, she found every kink and knot and massaged, letting her fingers learn his body the same way her tongue was learning his mouth.
His hands tracked down her back and cupped her rear, pulling her ever more against him, showing her his need and desire of her. When his fingers skimmed inside her pants, she pulled free of his kiss and whispered, “Upstairs.”
He grabbed her, and up they went, him carrying her as if she weighed nothing. A man on a mission, but that was fine, because she certainly had one of her own.
He set her on the end of the bed, and while he pulled off his boots, she started on her shirt buttons. “No.” He grabbed her wrists, kissed her hands, and set them atop her lap. “Let me.”
“Okay.”
So, she waited. Watched as he stripped, peeling off every layer of clothing, and this time not to shapeshift. He was disrobing for her inspection, and she was going to appreciate every naked inch of him. She’d never had time to just look, or else she hadn’t had the courage to.
He stepped into the gap between her open legs, giving her no choice but to see him. Touch him. Tacit permission.
She drew invisible lines and squiggles up the hard ridges of his belly and danced her fingertips over his nipples, ignoring the dull poke of his cock against her leg. Not ignoring the raspy, deep clicking in his chest that she wouldn’t have recognized as purring if she hadn’t heard him doing it that morning she’d woken up with bruised shins, or if she h
adn’t heard Tito doing it.
Slowly, he unfastened her buttons, kissing the skin he revealed between each before going on to the next, and finally pushed her shirt down her shoulders.
“Convenient,” he murmured, giving her aroused nipples tiny compressions that sent little sparks down her spine and to her sex.
Digging her fingers into the meat of his back, she tipped back her head and let out a long sigh. God. “Um. I usually manage to find a bra for work. Just so you know.”
“Planning on leaving me already?”
Patting his hair, she considered her words carefully. She could speak plainly without setting off his animal instincts—the ones that said chase. “A girl’s gotta work. I can’t just draw on my inheritance.”
His fingers stilled over her breasts for a moment, then he moved his hands down her belly and unfastened her pants. “Yeah. I know. Before yesterday, I didn’t think separation anxiety was a real thing.”
“You’ll be okay.” She held herself up on her hands so he could wriggle down her pants.
He kissed the insides of her thighs as he pulled, and rolled his gaze up to her. “Are you sure?”
She shrugged. “Reasonably.”
He groaned and yanked her pants past her ankles. “I swear, I’ll never know what to do with you.”
“Just talk to me. That’s the best first step.”
“Not used to that.”
“I sort of figured that out. You’ve got to help me. I can’t get into your head unless you talk.”
He leaned her back and nudged her panties off. “That’s funny. My brothers like playing poker with me because they can read every single one of my tells.”
“That’s the opposite of what Ellery told me. Next thing you’re going to tell me is that you’re actually smiling right now.”
“Am I not?” He furrowed his forehead and pursed his lips.
Her laugh came out a loud, high-pitched peal that had her slapping her hands over her mouth, and he grinned for real. It softened his face, deepened the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.
If she hadn’t been sitting, she might have swooned. He was handsome even when he looked so severe and inaccessible, but when he smiled…well, he was too beautiful to look at straight-on.