The minute she spit out the words that she hadn’t even consciously formed, she regretted them. Each one. She’d wanted to hurt him because she’d loved him so much, probably still did and always would. But he was making her crazy. Kane hadn’t wanted to be a dad at twenty-two when he was consistently ranking in the top five of bull riders on the acknowledged most intense and competitive tour in the world. Still she didn’t need to rub his face in it.
It was something that her mother—fueled by drink—would have yelled.
Cruel. Sky stared at her hands in her lap. She’d never deliberately tried to hurt someone before. Her mouth felt metallic. Bile mixed with chai burned her throat. She couldn’t look at him. She wanted to say something. Form the right words this time. Kinder words.
He had been her brother’s best friend. Her lover. The father of her child. She’d known him since she was eleven and he fourteen. Kane had never been anything but kind and tender to her. Respectful. When her brother had been critically injured by a bull, Kane had sat with her in the emergency room all night at the hospital waiting while her parents had flown back from Paris. He’d held her when she’d heard the grim news, and she’d soaked his shirt with her tears.
It wasn’t his fault that he hadn’t fallen in love with her. Kane never would have slept with her if she hadn’t made it so easy. She’d practically stalked him, invented an art series she was working on. She’d pretended to be a sophisticated siren with an artistic vision when instead she’d been a naïve, lust-addled, seriously crushing nineteen-year-old with nothing more on her mind than being Kane Wilder’s girlfriend.
Sorry.
She thought the word. It was an anvil on her heart. Kane’s hurt rolled off him in waves, and she felt like she was drowning. Sorry wasn’t going to cut it.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she whispered.
She waited. Nothing. Just the engine. And Montana singing and talking to herself. And Kane staring blankly at a straight line of asphalt stretching to the horizon. God, was he even aware he was still driving? Sky gulped in air, panicked for all three of them. Her rioting emotions and finally unearthed resentment were going to kill all of them.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Kane made a strangled sound and veered off the highway to the shoulder, and then out into the desert for a dozen or so yards. He killed the engine. And sat there. His shoulders trembled. She could hear him breathe like it was hard.
“Kane,” she said after she counted to ten. Then twenty. Thirty. She reached out to touch him. He shook her off. Palmed the keys, opened and slammed the door and stalked off into the desert.
“Where’s Daddy going?” Montana asked softly, after a few beats of silence where she and Sky watched Kane create more distance between them. Sky wanted to reassure Montana, but she didn’t know what to say. Story of her life.
“Ah…I think for a little walk.” She managed to push the words out of her throat.
How was her child coping with this so beautifully whereas she was a mess? Montana’s daddy had always been a man in pictures smiling or in a video in some crazy contortion on a bull. She’d never let Montana watch the competitions live because anything could happen and a lot of it was bad, but she’d let her watch the winning rides on YouTube. And she’d shown her child pictures of her daddy as a teen with her uncle who was in heaven. And with her mama hiking, swimming in rivers, hanging on him like he was her entire life because he had been.
But she’d never met him until this morning and Montana was acting like seeing her daddy smile and swoop her out of a gallery and into a truck and away on a long ribbon of unknown asphalt was normal.
But stopping the truck and striding into the desert was not normal. Sky didn’t want to think about what that meant because Kane had always been crazy disciplined and controlled.
“What’s Daddy doing now?” Montana asked, and her voice quavered.
That snapped Sky to attention. She had to make this right. Somehow. She’d left Kane because she didn’t want to live with resentment and disappointment that would turn to hate and hurt like her parents’ marriage had. She’d vowed she wouldn’t live like that. She turned back to Montana and forced a smile, but Montana was having none of it. Her fingers fumbled uselessly with the childproof harness buckles.
“Montana. No.” Sky was stern. That was a hard-and-fast rule. “Don’t even try it. Only Mama or another adult unbuckles.”
“I want to go with Daddy.”
Her heart sunk. It was going to hurt Montana when her daddy rode back into reality on the back of a bull, his secret family out of sight and mostly out of mind. Had Kane even thought of that? He thought of everything else. Planned out and analyzed everything—his bull rides, the routes to the city, his nutritional and exercise requirements, his investments. And he’d burned through online classes like they were matches. He’d been wicked smart and most people probably thought all that intellect was wasted on the back of a bull, but oh, he was a thing of incandescent athletic and physical beauty when he rode.
“We’ll go get Daddy, okay?” Sky said snapping herself mentally and emotionally back into the truck. She watched Kane drop down into a small arroyo. Venturing out in the desert with no shoes was stupid, but it was her fault for speaking without thinking. Not like she didn’t know how much the wrong words could hurt. She’d grown up in a minefield of verbal grenades.
Sky bunched up the length of her silky skirt in her hand, trying not to think about the wrinkles she’d be creating and the deposit that Jonas had paid for the dress and the shoes despite her continued objections. She swung herself carefully out of the truck.
It was an embarrassingly long drop. The truck was big and the tires massive.
“I want Daddy.”
“Let’s go get him.” Sky infused her voice with false enthusiasm. Her brilliant daughter wasn’t fooled.
“I go get Daddy,” she said climbing out of the truck after Sky released her.
It would probably go better, Sky thought, wincing inside because in half an hour, Kane had already taken center stage in Montana’s life. And what would happen when he walked off again busy with the tour, his sponsor functions? Another busty blonde buckle bunny? Just the thought was a blow.
Worried about Cholla cactus and scorpions, Sky swung Montana up on her hip. She was probably using her daughter as armor. She winced as the hot sandy gravel ground into the soles of her feet. Damn Kane for flinging off her shoes and hurling them at the gallery. Not that they would have done her any good in the soft sand. She probably would have broken her ankle.
“Kane?”
No answer.
Calm down, she cautioned. He wouldn’t walk forever. Sky took a few tentative steps. Forget it. The pain if she stepped on sharp rocks or cactus would be her penance. And if she got a cut on the sole of her foot, at least it would be a reminder to keep her tongue controlled and to not lash out at Kane when she was really dealing with her own pain.
And then she saw him a short distance down a gentle slope. He was bent over like he’d been punched hard in the solar plexus and was struggling to suck in air. Hands on his knees, head down. Sky hesitated on the lip of the arroyo. She looked back at the truck and then at Kane. Indecision clawed.
“Are you hurt?” she called out nervously, not wanting to panic Montana.
No answer.
“Are you okay?”
Stupid question from a stupid girl who’d never known how to handle people well and Kane least of all.
She had done this. Hurt this beautiful, perfect man, and his pain seemed to manifest exponentially in her chest.
“Hey, do you see any wild flowers underneath the acacia tree?” she asked Montana and pointed to a tree only a few yards from Kane. “Maybe you could pick Daddy a flower to cheer him up?” she said, her worried gaze bounding between Kane and their child. She rushed down into the arroyo, sliding in the warm, almost hot sandy soil.
“Why Daddy sad?” Montana asked qu
ietly.
She really was the worst mother in the world. So determined to protect her child’s delicate heart, and face it, her own, that she’d just torched all three.
“Mommy was mean,” she whispered, surprising herself with her honesty although the understatement choked in her throat.
Holding Montana’s hand, they walked down the gentle slope.
“Find a flower,” she whispered, seeing a few, but wanting to give Montana something to do and to give Kane time to pull himself together again.
“Kane.” She put her hand out. Touched his back. It was like touching one of her sculptures when she was working with them. Hot. Hard. Detailed. She could feel the delineation of each muscle group without even pressing hard with her fingers.
He’d be an exquisite model for an artist’s anatomy class. She’d certainly done an obsessive amount of sketching him while they’d been together. And she’d taken a lot of pictures.
All that strength trembled beneath her tentative fingers, which scared the heck out of her. Yelling she’d grown up with. Broken dishes, slammed doors and sometimes more. As a child, she’d been terrified. She’d hidden under her bed and later had curled up in her closet, but at least that was familiar. Kane’s tight control fraying was something scarier because she didn’t know what to expect. What if he couldn’t piece himself back together?
“Tell me what’s wrong,” she whispered, not sure if he was still dealing with what she’d said or if he’d been bitten by a scorpion or a rattler or a…
He sucked in a ragged breath, and then another. Then jerked up and spun to face her. She jumped back and cringed. He stepped closer, the tension pouring off his body in waves. Sky wanted to run, but her body had short-circuited. She was numb. Useless. His face was pale and tight.
“How can you ask that?”
“I’m sorry.” Her voice broke, and she was aware of the utter inadequacy of the words. “I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I need to know.” She brushed a trickle of sweat off her hairline with the back of her hand. It was getting hot as the sun climbed higher. And Montana’s life depended on Kane pulling himself together. She needed to suck up her own pain and not cause him more. “Are you okay?”
Stupid question. He was a long way from okay. Neither of them could even see okay in their rearview mirror. But she meant to drive. His eyes shimmered. He looked agonized.
“Why?” he asked taking two steps toward her, lurching in the sand a little. It was the first time she’d seen him move awkwardly in the twelve years she’d known him. “Why?” he asked, eyes and face stark and bleak.
“Why what?” Her voice trembled more than his.
“Why did you think I’m unfit to be a father?”
She hadn’t said that, exactly, had she?
“I…” She took a step back. And another, her feet sinking in the gravelly sand that poked the soles of her feet. “I…you and I are so…different.” The sun, rising higher in the sky, now felt like needles in her eyes. She had to squint against the brightness and the morning breeze whipped her long, dark hair sideways across her face making Kane blur in and out of her vision.
“Bullshit.” He knocked away that excuse. “Why did you keep me apart from my child?”
“I don’t want to talk about this now,” she said nervous about what might pop out of her mouth and reveal just how desperately she’d been in love with him, and how much fear and insecurity had once ruled her life. Once, she reminded herself. Not now.
“We’re going to talk about it until I can wrap my head around how you could do something so cruel.”
“Cruel?” she echoed. She’d loved him. She’d wanted him to pursue his dream. She’d wanted him to be free, not to saddle him with a wife and kid he didn’t want. And she didn’t want to go from one cold, dysfunctional family to another with snarling tension and broken hearts. She’d wanted better for her child, better than she’d gotten.
“How could you do that?” he demanded, his voice a lash. “How can you not understand what the fuck you did by keeping our child a secret from me?” His breath sawed in and out.
The barely restrained anger in his voice sent panic rocketing through her. Her breath reduced to tiny puffs as if by every part of her getting smaller she could escape the growling fury that was battling to get out of Kane. She’d always sucked at confrontation and was completely unable to deal with Kane like this.
“I…I…” It struck her now how appropriate that pronoun was and had been. She hadn’t even thought about Kane’s feelings. Not really. She’d been protecting their child. And honestly herself as well. “I didn’t…” She was so bad at this. Thinking under pressure. Everything just froze up and shut down. Fight or flight. What a joke. She just froze when she panicked. She would have been the first person in her evolutionary tribe to be gobbled down by the saber tooth or whatever wild animal stalked her ancient ancestors.
“I knew you wouldn’t want a baby,” she finally whispered. “It was so obvious.”
He’d always used a condom. Always. And he’d suggested she go on the pill “just to be extra safe.”
Extra safe hadn’t been safe enough. Kane should come with a potency warning. She forced herself to meet his angry glare.
The sparks that had been practically shooting out of his eyes went out like a dead battery and something invisible inside seeped out. Kane fell to his knees in front of her.
Kane Wilder on his knees in the dirt.
Her mind just spun like the Apple icon with too many open tabs. Kane was so proud. So vividly alive and on fire and now he had crumpled to the sand like a discarded shirt.
She took the long, hard three steps toward him, and her fingers gently threaded in his curls. This time he let her touch him. She stroked her fingers once, twice, letting the dark silk curl through her fingers.
“Daddy.” Sky had been so absorbed in the seething family drama all of her own selfish making according to Kane, she thought bitterly, that she had forgotten she’d sent her daughter on a mission. Montana clutched a fistful of white flowers. “These will make you happy,” she said, so sweet and innocent, Sky felt like she needed a whip or one of Kane’s spurs to flagellate herself.
He looked at his daughter, his face and his eyes softer, some of the tension drained out of his body. He took the flowers.
“Mommy’s sorry, Daddy.” She looked so serious. “Mommy won’t be mean again. She promises.” Montana’s eyes swiveled toward her clearly worried. Of the few times she’d allowed herself to imagine a reunion with Kane, it had always been joyful, never this awfully painful and awkward. She didn’t know who hurt more. Him or her, and Sky had thought she was done being hurt by Kane a long time ago.
His eyes closed. He sucked in a breath. Sky couldn’t breathe. At. All. She felt like a criminal. Worse—all the reasons she’d kept her pregnancy and her child a secret seemed all wrong. But she knew, absolutely knew that the reality of Kane’s life would not make her reasons stand out so starkly black or white. Daddy a hero. Mommy a villain.
“She’s not mean, baby girl.” He leaned forward and kissed his daughter’s sweet curls. “She’s just… just…” And it seemed like for the first time since she’d known him, Kane Wilder was out of words.
Chapter Five
“Now that’s a walk of shame worth getting to the arena early for.” The voice was low and amused and drawled like warm honey but with enough of an edge that Kane—walking into a side door of the arena in Santa Fe, his duffel bag slung over a wide shoulder, a garment bag dangling from his fingers and his free hand holding his daughter’s tiny hand—paused.
Sky, bare feet burning from the hot asphalt even though Kane had parked as close as he could to the arena, struggled behind him. One hand bunched up the flared lace dress that was too long without the heels. She also held Montana’s backpack and clutched at the front of the dress that was embarrassingly low now that the body tape she’d used to hold the halter dress in place on the sides had lost its stick.
; The cowboy, who’d been looking at videos of bulls on his phone, while he stretched in an isolated area of the arena, casually arched into another stretch, but his eyes were sharp on Sky and then her child. His gaze lingered, lit with knowledge and then homed in on Kane. Sky had a feeling he had cool indifference down to an art form.
She struggled to control her blush. She shouldn’t care what some random cowboy thought. But no, full bright pink washed over her, but she did force herself to hold the cowboy’s gaze for all of two seconds. Damn Kane again.
“Prom date?” He smirked.
Kane’s eyes said ‘fuck you,’ while his trademark smile that sold enough products to fill a house, slid easily into place, and the other rider clearly didn’t like it, or him, at all.
“Cody, this is my fiancée Sky Gordon, and I’d thank you to keep your hands and your attitude, and your speculations to yourself.”
Sky was so shocked at the F word he dropped so casually, Montana’s backpack slid to the floor, and as she bent to retrieve it, her foot landed on the skirt, tugging her bodice down precariously low. She clutched at it as if it were the only thing between her and a fiery doom.
The cowboy laughed. “Guess we won’t shake hands,” he said, his eyes briefly lit with amusement, and despite the situation, Sky suddenly had the urge to smile. The whole day was absurd. Her in this glamorous dress at four in the afternoon hundreds of miles from the artist pre-auction brunch she’d been attending. Now she was skulking barefoot through a side door of the arena that in a few hours would be packed with fans and families and buckle bunnies all wanting to watch a bull rider give his all to make history.
“So I guess hanging tight for eight seconds isn’t your entire skill set.” Cody went into another stretch. “Who’s the kid?”
“This is my daughter…” And then Kane’s face shut down like a computer screen. He was pale under his tan, and a muscle ticked in his jaw.
Kane (American Extreme Bull Riders Tour Book 6) Page 7