by Jillian Neal
"And the mustangs," she reminded him.
"Those too. Go on to bed, sugar. I'll be back in just a few hours."
"I can't wait."
A pair of headlights washed over his truck as he tossed the phone in the seat. His family had paid for streetlights to be installed throughout most of the town but they hadn't run them all the way out to the ranches. Ford tapped his brakes wondering who was coming towards him. His family owned every square inch of land down this road and the next three. It had to be one of his cousins. But when the jet-black Nissan Frontier—that she'd pitched a fit for and he'd purchased—passed him by much too slowly, a hot knife of betrayal stabbed through his chest.
What the hell was she doing out there? This was his land. It was his fucking county. She had his grandmother's ring, his dignity, his pride, hell she even still had his state championship letterman jacket. Couldn't he have his hometown? She'd always hated it there anyway.
Ford had always been a man who took the high road. His daddy had drilled that into him and all of his brothers. "Never take on a fool and never corner anything meaner than you," was one of Barrett Holder's many expressions. Meritt was mean as a striped snake. She always had been if he was being honest. It was his father's advice that kept him from phoning the sheriff and explaining that there was a trespasser out on Holder Ranch.
He pulled under the ancient metal sign declaring the land to have belonged to his family since 1889 and put the truck in park. If she thought she was getting on his ranch, he’d love to see her try. He mentally dared her to turn around, but she sped up and disappeared from view.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Thunder rumbled across the ranch. His own house shuddered under Mother Nature's incoming wrath. Ford hadn't been sleeping anyway. His own demon mistakes had intruded on sexual thoughts of Callie's gorgeous body. My god she was perfect. Saliva flooded his mouth again from the memory of her flavors. He longed to sink his cock between both sets of her lips repeatedly. The thick curves of her ass and thighs meant he could nip and spank and have no worry of hurting her, only of making her beg for more.
Easing to his other side, he reminded himself that she might not like his rougher preferences. Then again, she might. Meritt hated them. He drove his fist into his pillow and shook his head. Meritt hated him, he mentally corrected.
Burying his face in the crater he'd created in his pillow, he caught the faint scent of Callie's watermelon lotion again and gave up on ever getting any sleep at all.
When lightning split the pitch-black sky, severing the endless moments of loneliness, he rushed from the bed, scrubbed his hands over his face, and tried to talk himself out of grabbing his phone. But it was useless. When it came to Callie, he couldn't seem to talk himself out of much of anything. If Holder Ranch was hearing the approaching storm, that meant it was sitting right on top of her grandparents’ home. It was nearing two in the morning, but that didn't matter.
He texted her a quick: You okay?
She responded instantly: Not really.
He answered: I'm on my way.
With that, he yanked on the dirty jeans he'd been wearing and sank a Cinch ball cap on his head. He shrugged into a worn flannel shirt, grabbed a coat for her, and sprinted to his truck. The thought that she was frightened tore through him as he flew towards the gates of the ranch.
Callie had hated storms since she was seven. Furious thunder had shaken her awake from her pallet on the floor in their old one-bedroom apartment. She'd searched through the rest of their home for her mother, but she was still out on her date with one of the many men she cycled through after leaving Abe. Callie was entirely alone. The howling winds and soul-shattering cracks of lightning had muffled her sobs of fear.
No matter how old she was now or where she was when a storm blew in, she seemed to revert back to that little girl huddled in the closet praying for the storm to go away and her mother to come home. The shame and terror tore her apart. Her father always made fun of her for sticking close to her grandmother during summer storms. Derrick had teased her for being frightened as well. She should've told Ford not to come get her. She was certain nothing frightened Ford Holder. He seemed perfectly willing to stare down most anything without so much as flinching.
But the fear kept her from insisting that she was fine. As it was, she needed to figure out how to get out of her grandparents’ house without waking them. Leaving to go with Ford in the middle of the night would only upset Nana more. She'd already told her grandmother that she was going to photograph Holder Ranch early the next morning. Thinking quickly, she scribbled a note that Ford had arrived earlier than she'd thought to pick her up and stuck it on the fridge.
That was when she noticed the motion detector beside the front door from the security system. It was probably the only home in Holder County with one, but Callie's mother had spent most of her teen years coming up with creative ways to sneak out. The security system had been installed to keep her safely at home. Callie wasn't going to be able to open any of the doors to get out without setting off the alarm. She was going to have to go out her window.
I am not my mother became her internal mantra. Several minutes later, the lights of Ford's massive truck illuminated her escape route, but they flipped off. She assumed he was taking precaution not to alert anyone to his arrival. Callie eased the window up, prayed that her grandmother would never find out about this, lowered her camera bag to the ground by the strap, and squeezed the top half of her body out the small opening. That was when her ass got stuck. Her heart pounded out a prayer that Ford would not see her half hanging out of her grandparents’ home in a storm. She wiggled back and forth. The window frame scraped an angry mark on her thigh, but at least she was going to get out. It was then that she realized she hadn't fully thought this through. The porch rails were too far away for her to reach. She had nothing to brace herself on, and she was going to fall face first onto the porch.
Before she could either attempt to wiggle back in or wake up the entire house as she crashed to the concrete flooring, Ford caught her. In her effort to get out, she hadn't seen him coming for her. A quick yelp escaped her mouth before she sealed her lips shut. "I've got you, baby. Here." He eased her out of the window and set her on her feet. She clung to his wet form. The juxtaposition of heat from his open shirt and the cold winds left her lightheaded.
"Sorry, I didn't really think that through." She wondered for a moment if that was another unnecessary apology and decided it wasn't. He'd had to get out of his truck in a freaking flood to rescue her.
Another rumble of thunder almost robbed his response from the air but she just made it out, "Before you leave for New York, I'm going to convince you that asking me for help when you need me isn't something you have to apologize for." He tucked her close. "Let's get."
He raced her out to the still-running truck, flung her door open, and lifted her inside. When he slung himself in the driver's seat, her breath tangled in her lungs as his form so thoroughly dominated the cab of the truck. He paused before slamming his own door to stare her down.
The soaking wet white Lakers T-shirt clung to her curves. Her nipples were drawn tight from the cold. Every bump was on vast display. A shiver worked through her, not from the chill but from his low grunt of approval. But he shook his head. "Take that off. You're going to freeze in it." He produced a Sherpa-lined Carhartt jacket, and kept his keen eyes trained on her as she followed his orders.
She peeled the T-shirt off and dropped it to the floorboard.
"Damn baby," came out in another low grunt as he helped her into the coat. Once again she was absorbed in his masculine scent and his protection and in his obvious desire. And once again she asked herself how she was ever supposed to leave him.
"Thank you for coming to get me. You didn't have to."
"I wasn't sleeping anyway. You said you didn't like storms and..." he shrugged as he backed away from her grandparents’ home.
"I know it's a stupid thing to be afra
id of. It's not like you can avoid storms. It's just when I was a little girl..."
He shook his head. "It's not stupid. No one who's ever survived an Oklahoma storm would think that. Mother Nature's wrath deserves respect. People get off on thinking they're powerful, but she'll prove them wrong every damn time. It'll give me peace knowing you're safe with me, either in my bed or in my storm cellar. Maybe we can both get some rest."
"Are you going to be in the bed with me this time?" She was tired of weighing her words and regretting her questions, so she asked.
"You just peeled a soaking wet T-shirt off in my truck. You've got the most gorgeous set of tits I've ever seen, not to mention everything else we did earlier. Christ, baby, you come like the best freaking wet dream I've ever had. If you really think I'm capable of letting you sleep alone in my house, you overestimate my abilities. The one night almost killed me, and I didn't know you then like I know you now."
All traces of her earlier fear dissolved in his declaration. "I think you're capable of most anything, but I'm hoping you won't try to let me sleep alone."
"Trust me, I've got no intention of making any real effort." He cleared his throat as if that might dislodge the electricity constantly coursing between them "I'm, uh, scared of snakes. I can't avoid them either, but that don't mean I want to make friends with 'em. Everybody's scared of something. There's nothing stupid about them. Fears are part of life. They have to be dealt with like everything else."
"Thank you for not making fun of me." Callie tried to tuck herself further inside his jacket as she wondered how he'd respond to that.
Despite the rain pummeling the truck as he slowly made his way down the long gravel drive, he turned to stare her down. She could see the confusion and anger in their own storm in his eyes. "I would never make fun of you for anything ever," he vowed. "And if anyone ever makes fun of you, not just for being afraid of something but for anything at all, you let me know. I'll put a stop to it."
The one man who'd made fun of her all her life, the one who made her feel so stupid for most everything she'd ever done, lodged in the periphery of her mind. To acknowledge her father there meant she had to admit to herself that he frightened her more than any storm, and she didn't want to tell Ford that. Not yet anyway. So, she sat quietly and pretended the flashes of lightning dancing around the truck were just the flash on Mother Nature's camera, and that she was getting some killer shots of Ford's chiseled jawline as he fought their way through the storm.
Chapter Twenty-Six
By the time Ford was pulling under his carport, Callie was curled up inside his jacket sound asleep. He watched the lightning shimmer across her alabaster complexion. The thunder didn't seem to concern her at all now. As much as he would've loved to have laid her out in his bed and pounded into her hard and fast until she forgot everything but him, he swore it was twice as satisfying to know that she felt that safe with him. He got off on being a hero. He always had. It was all he'd ever wanted in this world.
He climbed quietly out of the truck and eased his door shut. She never stirred. As he made his way to her side and cradled her in his arms, he had to admit to himself that his brother was right. He'd set out to save Meritt from herself. He'd been tricked into marrying her, sure, but that hadn't really mattered to him. His hero complex had fucked him over time and time again with his ex. How the hell was he supposed to keep from making the same mistakes with the beautiful girl in his arms? It would be like trying to figure how to pull flesh from bone. He was too old to try to be anything but what he was. And all he wanted right then was to be Callie's hero for the second half of his life.
He kept her safely in his arms while he opened his door and hung up his soaking-wet ball cap. But she tensed when he was lowering her into his bed. Raw need hammered through his veins. He tried to soothe her but was certain he was doing a shit job. His own hunger for her was too strong.
Half-asleep she slipped out of his jacket and dropped it to the floor. Then she unsnapped those sinfully short cutoffs and managed to wiggle them down her legs. She kicked them off and then turned over to reveal her gorgeous ass caught up in nothing but a lacy thong.
Jesus Christ. He couldn't recall ever doing anything he'd qualify as categorically wrong in his life. He'd always tried to exceed the code of cattle rancher, but he sure as fuck was being punished. Or maybe this was temptation incarnate. A few days in the desert with Satan didn't seem so bad compared to the pinup-worthy woman who'd somehow taken control of his shitty existence despite the fact that his cock was a weeping, whiny asshole about not getting what he wanted. How was Ford supposed to resist this? He wasn't a fucking saint.
Besides, they couldn't find twelve men in a thousand-mile radius who'd convict him for what he wanted to do to her. Not if they knew the heavenly temptation laid out in his bed with her ass on ripe display and her swollen pussy lips tucked there between her warm thighs.
He'd been harder than a steel fencepost off and on for hours now. Most of him didn't mind. It was almost as reassuring as it was painful. But damn he wanted to wake her up and order her to tend the case of blue balls she'd brought on. The only problem with that plan was that he could fuck her all night long and into the next morning and knew he still wouldn't be satisfied. He'd still hurt for her. He knew.
Clenching his jaw, his hand slipped down his chest and pressed instinctively against the agony as if that would bring him relief. He jerked himself once, twice. Unless he got to unload all over that ass he needed to sacrifice some kind of offering to, his cock wanted nothing else to do with his hand.
Ford shed the rest of his clothes and climbed into bed around her form. When she gave him a contented sigh and cuddled up beside him, nuzzling her head on his chest, he knew he was set for heartbreak all over again. The months he'd spent hidden away in his house to avoid facing the endless pain Meritt had brought on had been just as pointless as they felt.
He was going to have to live with the emotional pain that was so potent it was physical all over again. A man couldn't be something he wasn't. He wrapped his arms around Callie and prayed to a God he'd refused to speak to for years that somehow he'd be able to do something to get to play her hero for the next several decades. That was all he really wanted.
He brushed a kiss on her forehead and let himself enjoy the whisper of her even breaths over his chest hair. How fucked-up was it that they were both naked in a bed that they hadn't made love in yet? He'd worry about that in the morning. For now, he was going to cradle his sweet baby for as long as she'd let him. He'd already been through hell once. Maybe it wouldn't hurt so badly the second time.
Another crack of thunder split the sky wide open. Ford's house shook from the force. Callie jerked awake and tried to determine what to do. The storm cellar or maybe under the bed would work. What did cows do in a storm? What if they were hurt? Panic unraveled her until two solid brick arms cradled her gently and drew her back to the firm planes of chest where she'd been resting. "I've got you, baby. I'd never let anything hurt you. Take a deep breath for me." Unable to resist his commands, she filled her lungs with the heady masculine scent of him. "Good girl," he soothed, but it had the opposite effect he was going for. Her body enlivened with his praise. She wasn't soothed. She wanted to do things that would make him call her that again. "There’s nothing to worry over."
Tucking herself tighter into the sanctuary of his chest, she tried to reason through his promise. "How do you know that? What does me taking a deep breath have to do with the storm?"
He eased slightly to his side so she could hide entirely in his strength. A quick graveled cough said he'd been sleeping well before she'd startled. "Twisters have a scent to 'em. I can smell 'em long before they tear across this ranch. This is just a storm. I promise I've got my girl."
"I like it when you say that," she mumbled into his chest.
"Good. 'Cause I'm gonna keep saying it."
When the deep breaths rolling through his broad chest started to rhythmically sw
ay her back to sleep, Callie understood that it wasn't ever the storm she feared. It was that no one ever had her back, no one was ever there looking out for her. Her parents had failed epically in that part of parenting. Other than her summers in Holder County, she had existed in a hollow loneliness, searching for something she instinctively knew she wanted but had no power to demand.
Wasn't her fear of being alone what had driven her directly into Derrick's bizarre Enquirer-level surreal life? Wasn't that terror why she'd stuck around so much longer than she ever should've? And wasn't it why she stuck with things way past any point of logical reason?
Defeat swiped through her belly leaving an entirely different fear in its path. Was it that fear that had driven her into Ford Holder's arms? Was that why she was so hesitant to send new photographs to Nina Morales? My god, what was she doing there? Was this going to be just like Derrick, where she stuck around because the fear of the unknown was far greater in her mind than the fear of taking a chance on herself? She swallowed down raw regret.
"What's wrong, sugar?" rumbled from the most gorgeous cowboy she'd ever seen, the one she'd been throwing herself at because she couldn't handle being alone for even one day. Because she was weak and what if she ended up hurting him, too? Bile backstroked through her stomach. She should get up and leave now so she didn't make his life even worse. He'd been through enough.
"Nothing," she whispered out her lie.
His eyes opened and he shifted so that he could hold her chin in his hand. "It ain't nothing. Please don't lie to me."
"I just...don't know how I got here."
Concern shimmered in those blue-grey eyes. "I came to get you at your grandparents’, honey. You okay?"
"No, I mean I know how I got here," she gestured to him and then to his bed. "I just don't...want to hurt you. And what happens if we fall in...attachment?" There. That kind of worked.