Smoothing a strand of hair from her forehead, he kissed her gently, then rested himself face to face, needing to reassure her.
“I’m taking my stand here, with you. I’m not ever leaving unless you want me to go. You got it?”
She nodded, yet the doubtful expression still marred her furrowed brow. “I want to believe you. But are you sticking with me because you want Jessie back? If we can’t get Jessie back, will you leave?”
“No. I won’t leave you.”
Her lips quivered and she touched his cheek. “What if Salem has your child? What if she’s alive and you find out she has your child? Would you leave me for her?”
“No, but would you still want me? I’ve screwed up my life by playing around. I don’t know what I was thinking. Thought I could shirk responsibility, be the opposite of my family, run away and be free—all that crap.”
“You’re like me.” She palmed his jaw, stroking his beard fuzz. “Scared to commit. Better to be free and lonely than get hurt.”
“Yeah, exactly right.” He kissed her hand. “Except we both managed to get hurt anyway. I figure if we can’t stay away from each other, then we might as well stop hurting each other.”
“Sounds sensible, but can we really keep this up? This niceness? This togetherness? What happens if we can’t get Jessie back? Will you blame me?”
He ran his hand up and down her bare back and held her close, pressing her belly against his jeans. “I’ll blame myself for letting you go.”
“What happens if we make each other miserable? We fight and curse? We’re like oil and water. We’re not like Jenna and Larry or Connor and Nadine.”
“No, we’re not. We’re like two cats hissing and spitting, clawing and scratching, but if we fight, we’ll make it up with love.” He gulped, unable to keep a silly grin from his face. He’d just mentioned the one word he’d never wanted to associate with any woman.
Love wasn’t an emotion he yearned for, but rather one he feared. It was dangerous, suffocating, and made him feel like a trapped animal.
“Are we capable of love?” Her brow wrinkled, as she, too, had her doubts. “Or is it sex?”
He let his gaze run down her beautiful body. “If it were only sex, why are we talking about love?”
“We don’t know what it is without the sex.” She grasped his hand and held it, her fingers twined with his.
“It doesn’t have to be either or.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “Shall we learn it together? Learn how to make love?”
“I’ve been making love since the very first time.” Her eyes narrowed with a mischievous and naughty glint. “But I’ll take great sex anytime.”
With a hearty purr, she launched herself at him, claiming his mouth and kissing him like a possessed woman.
“I want this to last, this lovemaking,” he muttered, gasping and shying away from her touch. “Want to feel you against me, skin to skin, closer than any two people can get.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” She touched him, shooting tingles throughout his body.
He stifled a long moan as lust and love rushed through his veins, cascading into his heart. “Tonight’s about you, my wildcat. When I’m done with you, which will be never, you’ll know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have my heart.”
She moved her hand to his hard abdomen and up his chest while smoothing his hair with her other one. Gazing into his eyes, she said, “You’ve always had mine, but even now, I’m afraid to admit it. Will having your heart hurt?”
“If I hurt you, I hurt me. I think we’ve established that already.”
She nodded, biting her lip. “It’s like we’re stuck together. I can’t live without you, but I can’t see us not hurting each other.”
“Then we’re just going to have to make it hurt so good.” He nipped her lower lip and rolled her hair around his hand, pulling her back so that her eyes dilated with hot passion.
“Oh, yeah.” She sighed and grasped his face. “Hurt me so bad, Grady. Hurt me until I scream your name.”
Dark, unspoken passion drilled into Linx, turning her blood into rivers of fire. She whimpered when Grady drew her lips to his.
He kissed her thoroughly and with more heart than she’d ever tasted, and this time, instead of fighting him, scratching, biting, and challenging him, she let him make love to her, slowly and patiently building the embers of her need into a mighty, all-consuming climax.
She hadn’t expected him to take her over the edge so easily, not so close to the hot and cold internal combustion of the first one.
“I love you.” She surprised herself with the words that had been percolating at the edge of her heart. It didn’t even matter if he didn’t say them back to her—not now when she felt his love so intensely.
His eyes dilated, softening into an expression of adoration and hardening at the same time with wicked lust. “Oh, baby, love is just the start. I’m staking my claim now and forever.”
Heck, a Grady in love was a clear and present danger, a minefield, but one she’d gladly step into, time and time again. Was she nuts? But oh, she couldn’t help it, not when everything she’d secretly wanted was offered to her in such a delectable and hunky package.
She floated down through the afterglow of loving with the burr of his deep voice purring her name, “Linx, Linx, my sweet girl, my heart.”
Grady closed his eyes, hugging and spooning his woman as her breathing quieted down, easing from the heights of pleasure he’d brought her to.
He was proud of himself, and yet, he braced himself for her push and shove. Would she regret the pleasure and her loss of control? Would she back off, afraid to let that glimmer into her heart stay open?
She’d uttered those words, and he wanted to believe she’d meant them. But at the same time, she’d hurt him—sometimes deliberately—sought her revenge for him hurting her.
Could she go back to that as easily as a woman putting on a bra?
He rested his head on the thin pillow and gazed at the closeness of the trailer roof. Here, on this tiny bed, he and Linx were pressed as close together as two people could get.
Gentle moonlight dappled though the curtains of his trailer, and the soft, satisfied purr of Linx’s breathing rained balm on his wounds.
It was strangely peaceful and intimate.
He moved a tendril of her dark-brown hair that had curled onto her face. She looked so innocent, lying there with her eyes closed and her mouth partially open.
She shifted in her sleep and took in a deeper breath through her nose and her eyelids fluttered as if she were dreaming.
Were they sweet dreams or nasty nightmares?
He watched as her face scrunched and she whipped her head back and forth. Her eyes snapped open and she stared straight up, and then moved her gaze to his.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I have to go.” She sat up so quickly she bumped her head on the roof above them. “I left Ginger and Cedar. We have to call your family. I stole your cell phone and I snooped on you and Vanessa. I’m a horrible, horrible human being.”
“Whoa, wait, where’s this coming from?” Her words jolted him from the intoxicated languor her body had left him in.
She groped in the pocket of her discarded jeans and handed him his phone. Covering her face with her hands, she shuddered. “I’m a bad person. I gave your baby away. How can I ever forget that? I don’t deserve your heart, Grady Hart. I have to leave. Have to leave.”
“If you need to get back to the center, I’m going with you.” He kissed the back of her neck, nuzzling her with his face. “You’re all I have and all I want.”
He reached down and traced her C-section scar, now that he knew what it was. “You gave her life. It could have been worse.”
Her shoulders heaved and she shook her head. “This isn’t going to last. You’re going to hate me again. I don’t know how to be a mother. I don’t know how to love anyone. I’m the last person
you should have in your life. I have an evil heart. I’m tainted with poison. I ruin everything I touch.”
“Not true.” He refused to let her flail out of his arms. “I’m also the black sheep. I break hearts. I screw up people’s lives. I’m the bad twin, always getting into trouble. I’m the dark heart of my family. I ruin what I touch.”
“Then we’ll never be happy together.”
“And we’ll never be happy apart. Stick with me, Linx, and trust me.”
“I want to, but we have to get Jessie back. It’s my fault if we don’t.” Her body wracked with agony and she turned away from him, curling up into a fetal position.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Linx spent a sleepless night tossing and turning on her futon. By now, Grady had already called his family, and they were all on their way back.
He probably regretted joining forces with her, or maybe it had all been a lie, his usual modus operandi of saying and promising sweet things in bed to enhance the experience, and then disappearing without a trace.
Damn, was she stupid.
She rolled off her bed, disturbing Cedar who groaned and shook herself before settling back onto her vacated pillow.
Picking up little Ginger, she took her downstairs.
“You’re so adorable.” Linx kissed the sweet little fluff ball who licked her with a tiny tongue, wiggling all over.
The online bidding to adopt Ginger had gone over two thousand bucks, and the center needed the money. It was going to be excruciatingly hard to let her go when the time came.
Linx flashed back to the weeks and months after she let Jessie go. The adoption counselor hadn’t encouraged her to see Jessie or speak to the adoptive parents, but since Jessie was the pastor’s daughter and everyone in the congregation got to see her, Linx had gone to church and tortured herself every Sunday until she’d had an emotional breakdown, crying nonstop for an entire week.
It had been too much, too soon, so she and Salem had joined a ground crew far up in Alaska. Fighting fires and living in the hell of grief and regret beat burning in her biggest mistake every Sunday.
By the time fire season was over, Linx came back to the property she inherited and threw herself into rescuing dogs and reuniting them with their owners.
She stayed away from Jessie and from church until two years ago when the pastor and his wife visited her and invited her back into Jessie’s life.
They were so kind and accommodating, letting her babysit and be her big sister. She’d kept her part of the bargain—promising never to talk about her relationship to Jessie.
She’d respected their wishes and their plans to tell Jessie when she turned eighteen and had agreed that it was best for the little girl to grow up loved and pampered by her adoptive parents.
And now, Grady made plans to upset the entire applecart. If he won, would she be a part of Jessie’s life? Or was he using her to get early access? To make friends with Jessie before he dropped the sledgehammer?
If he lost, she’d lose her friendship with the Pattersons and risk Jessie’s future hatred of her for hurting her family.
A pinching headache constricted like an iron band around Linx’s temple and she groaned, squatting to the floor as she encouraged Ginger to relieve herself on the newspaper.
Talk about a no-win situation.
By the time Linx opened the center, she was fortified by coffee and breakfast, but feeling no better.
Tami sashayed through the door with her eyebrows raised. “Where were you last night?”
“I delivered another dog to Grady.” Linx figured it would all come out anyway.
“Oh … do tell. Was it a happy ending dog delivery?”
By now, nothing about Grady could make her blush. She’d been around the block so many times with him that she’d worn permanent grooves in the pavement.
“It was nice,” she muttered, unable to suppress a warm smile from tickling her cheeks.
“Good. That’s progress.” Tami beamed at her as if she were a particularly bright student. “So, no ugly words were exchanged. He’s cool with you snooping through his things, bringing his family up to his private place? Don’t think I didn’t know about you holding onto his phone.”
Linx’s face heated, and the tension returned to her neck and throat. “He wants to get Jessie back.”
“Wow! I didn’t know he wanted to take responsibility.” Tami set her bag down and turned on her computer. “What’s he going to do? Be a single dad?”
Linx took a seat at her desk. “I think he wants to raise her with me.”
“You sound scared.”
“Yeah, I am.” She wiped her hair back from her forehead. “I don’t know if I’m a good enough mom.”
“You won’t know if you don’t try.” Tami’s eyes were large and sympathetic. “Besides, I’ve a feeling you’ll be the very best mom a girl could want.”
Linx forced a smile. “You have to say that because you’re my bestie.”
“Guilty.” Tami blinked. “The question is, do you want to be her mother? Better think fast because Jessie’s coming to spend the day with the puppy.”
“Don’t say anything to her.” Linx took a deep breath, but couldn’t dislodge the tightness clamping around her chest. “I want her, but it would be a betrayal to the Pattersons. I signed long ago.”
“Yeah, but Grady never signed.”
Tami’s words hung in the air until midmorning, when Jessie and her mother showed up at the center. The little girl wore denim overalls and a pair of cowgirl boots and a straw hat with a red bandana, and she greeted Linx with a tight hug.
“Can I take Ginger for a walk?” she asked, bouncing up and down with a wide smile on her face.
“She’s a little young for a walk,” Linx said. “But she’s getting stronger every day. Would you like to brush her?”
“Yes! I love her!” Jessie shouted. “My birthday’s coming up, and I want a puppy, pretty please?”
Mrs. Patterson cleared her throat and cupped a hand around one side of her mouth. “Have you seen how high the price is for Ginger?”
“The highest bidder may not get the puppy,” Linx said. “We have to qualify the owner, check references, and make a call.”
“I hate for her to be disappointed,” Jean said, bending down to her daughter. “Mommy will be back later. You listen to everything Miss Linx and Miss Tami say. This puppy already has a special boy or girl.”
“Awww …” Jessie’s face drooped. “But she’s so cute.”
“Yes, she is. But you’re here to learn how to take care of a puppy. You already have Betsy. You wouldn’t want to take this puppy away from her special boy or girl, would you?”
“No, they’ll be so sad.” Jessie shook her head resolutely. “I don’t want anyone to take Betsy away from me.”
Linx swallowed and bit her lip as turmoil churned in her belly. How would Jessie feel if she and Grady took her away from the only parents she knew?
“Bye, now, and be good.” Mrs. Patterson gave Jessie a hug and rose.
“I will!” Jessie jumped up and down. “Bye, Mom!”
Linx had Jessie feed Ginger from the bottle, then brush her fur, and change her papers.
Jessie played ball with the puppy, rolling it around and letting Ginger chase it with her tottering little steps, and she handfed Ginger soft puppy food.
“You’re real good with dogs,” Linx praised Jessie when she cuddled the puppy and put her down for a nap. “Let’s go out back and visit the other guests.”
“I love dogs, and I want to be just like you when I grow up.” Jessie hooked her thumbs around her overall straps and sauntered through the kitchen to the back door.
Linx showed her the kennels and the storeroom where they filled the food and water bowls. Together, they swept and hosed off the runs, and fed the dogs. Linx taught Jessie how to approach strange dogs and not to assume a dog was friendly. She understood the importance of giving a dog a friendly and safe distance and not patt
ing it on the head or raising a hand.
Jessie was a quick learner, and soon, she understood doggy body language and posture, whether a dog was fearful or curious, and how to speak to them.
Linx’s chest filled with pride as she walked around the compound with her little shadow, her “mini-me” following her around, chitchatting nonstop.
She didn’t want to lose any of this, but at the same time, her greedy heart yearned for more. She wanted to be the one who tucked this sweet child in at night, wanted to be the one she ran to for comfort, wanted to read her stories, to take her hiking, horseback riding, and be the one in the delivery room with her when she birthed her first baby.
“Come, let me show you the system of gates we open to get the dogs to their exercise yard,” Linx said, taking Jessie’s little hand. “I move them in between the zones by shutting this gate first, then opening this one, and shutting the one behind it.”
True, it was like the way they moved prisoners, but it helped her gather the dogs in an orderly fashion.
“Can I go into the yard and play with them?” Jessie asked.
Linx shook her head. “Not right now. Some of them are new, so I have to watch how they behave. But later on, we can take the old bulldog, Bob, out for a walk. He’s slow but very lovable.”
“Yay! I always take Betsy out for a walk. Do you think Bob wants Betsy for a friend?”
“Maybe.” Linx bent down and gave Jessie a hug, unable to help kissing her. “You’re my best little helper. Want to help me open the gates?”
Jessie headed for the first gate as Linx unlatched it. She motioned to Jessie to push a button to open the wheeled gate nearest the barn. Cedar followed close behind, but her ears perked and she pranced toward the front gate, barking and panting excitedly.
Car doors slammed, and a horde of footsteps and voices advanced up the gravel path with Grady leading the way.
It was the entire Hart family.
“Are you saying that’s your dog?” Grady’s father pointed to Cedar who whined and turned circles, eager to get to Grady.
Summer Love Puppy: The Hart Family (Have A Hart Book 6) Page 20