That’s why she couldn’t take the job offer. That’s why she couldn’t see him again. It hurt too damn much, and she felt like a fool for falling for him even when she knew the kind of man he was.
I’ll send you the contract, anyway, Linda had said after being surprised by Ashley’s response. Think about it for a few days and get back to me by the end of the week.
Ash didn’t need a few days.
Between Miles City and Bozeman, Montana, Ash came up with a plan to go forward. She would stay in Half Moon for the rest of the summer, earning money like she’d originally planned, being there for Jasmine’s wedding—if it even happened—and then leaving in the fall, following the original route she’d mapped out, starting on the West Coast and moving east, up and down through the states.
No more lies. No more half-truths. She would not let a man interfere with her plans again. In fact, when she got home, she was going to purge Colton Cross from her system and start over.
So, when Ash finally turned onto the street she’d grown up on, she didn’t feel quite as downtrodden as she imagined she might have felt. When she carried her bags up to the porch, only to have Brandi open the door for her, she actually was thankful for her older sister’s arms opening to her.
“You were right, Brandi,” she whispered.
Brandi rubbed her back. “I know. And sometimes I hate the fact that I’m right all the time.”
Ash didn’t even know she was crying until after Brandi had said that, making her laugh through her tears. “I should have listened to you.”
With a wry smile, Brandi said, “You never have before. Why start now?” She motioned toward the inside of the house. “You look exhausted. Come in and I’ll make you something to eat.”
19
COLTON’S EYE, THAT had been sore and swollen after the fight with Colin, now felt like it was filled with sand. He’d barely slept in the last twenty-four hours, only stopping at rest stops en route back to Montana. After the fight, he’d checked Ashley’s blog and was surprised to find that she’d posted a message to followers that she’d be taking a short hiatus and returning to blog in the fall.
He made a call to Dillon and Gloria to get Jasmine’s information, and it had been Jasmine who told him Ashley was on her way home.
He should probably have stopped for a shower first, but instead he found himself driving down Ashley’s street, parking and walking up to her porch, ringing the bell of the Ozark residence.
His chest heaved when the door opened and then filled with disappointment when Brandi stood there instead of Ashley.
“What do you want?”
“Is Ashley home?”
“No.” Brandi stuck her fists on her hips. “But even if she was, I wouldn’t tell you.”
Her words felt like a slap. “Why?”
“You know why, asshole.”
Colton tilted his head to one side. “No, I don’t.”
“Don’t play dumb.” She squinted at him. Hard. “You know, Ashley’s not like all those other girls. You can’t just use her.”
“I’m not using her.”
“Oh, really.”
“Look. I don’t know what she told you, but I didn’t use her.” He felt like mentioning that if anyone had been using anyone in this situation, it was Ashley when she asked him to pretend to be her boyfriend. But pointing that out would probably not be helpful right now.
“Look—” he rubbed the back of his neck “—I really need to talk to her.”
“And what would you talk about, exactly?” She tilted her head to one side. “Perhaps the fact that you’re going to be a daddy?” She gave him a shove. “Don’t you think that’s a talk you should have had long ago?”
“What?” Colton fell against the frame of the door, not from the force of Brandi’s shove but from the power behind her words. He took a deep breath and regained his balance. “Where is she? Please tell me.”
“Please? Okay, okay. Quarry Road. By the swimming hole.” He released her, and she straightened her collar. With a sneer, she added, “She’s purging you from her system.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“Why don’t you go find out, Daddy-O?”
Colton didn’t say another word to Brandi. Didn’t thank her, nothing. He turned and sprinted down the path to his truck, hopped into the driver’s seat and started it, pulling away with a spray of gravel, doing a U-turn in the middle of the street so he could head out of town toward Quarry Road.
Holy mother of hell.
No wonder Ashley had acted so weird. No wonder she hated him and didn’t want to talk to him. She was pregnant with his child.
Only one thing to do in this situation when a woman was carrying his baby.
He was going to have to ask that woman to marry him.
* * *
THERE WAS ALREADY a circle of rocks set up for a fire pit right on the lip of the quarry above the swimming hole. Ash gathered as much dead fall as she could find, and once she had a nice little blaze going, she pulled the stack of prints out of her backpack and went through them one by one.
Colton forking hay.
“Bye, bye, bastard,” Ash said as she stuck a corner into the fire and watched the colorful flames lick across the photo paper. “Too damn hot for your own good.”
The next ten were all from the rodeo, a sequence of pictures from Colton getting ready inside the chute to him being whipped around on the back of a bull.
“Adios, amigo.” Ash watched each one go up in smoke.
There were forty pictures altogether. It wasn’t enough to erase the images from her hard drive; she had to burn them symbolically. She had to let Colton Cross go.
For good.
She was so absorbed in what she was doing, she didn’t hear the sound of the truck coming down the road. Even the crunch of footsteps on gravel went unnoticed because of the pop and sizzle of the burning photos.
“What are you doing, Ash?”
She looked up. Somehow, even though she hadn’t heard his approach, Ashley was not surprised to see Colton there. Like her symbolic purging had evoked old pagan magic that made him materialize in front of her.
“Can’t you tell?” She indicated the floating bits of singed photo paper. “I’m turning you into Ash.” Like me.
Colton knelt down beside her. A concerned look on his face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“C’mon, Ash. You should never have kept this from me.”
“Kept what?”
“When you first learned about the baby. You should have told me.”
Seriously? She gave him a shove. “Why is it my job to bring it up with you? Don’t you think that’s your job?”
“Hard to bring it up when I didn’t even know about it.”
“Like I believe that.” Ash paused because the emotions flitting across Colton’s features were confusing.
Concern?
Gravity?
Responsibility?
What the hell was he doing here instead of in Chicago with the woman who looked like she was about to have a baby any second?
She went through the pictures in her hands and found the one she was looking for. She looked at it, trying to see it through new eyes. “So, you’re saying you just found out about the baby at this moment?” She handed it to him. “And that was your reaction?” She pointed at the expression of joy on his face as he bent down to touch the woman’s rounded stomach.
“What are you...” Colton frowned down at
the picture. “Where did you get this?”
“I took it. In Chicago.”
He met her gaze. Blinked. Then shook his head. “Ash...are you pregnant?”
“Me?” She placed her hand on her chest. “No. God, no.”
He held up the picture. “And are you saying you think this woman is pregnant with my child?”
Ash wet her lips, suddenly uncertain. “Yes?”
“Do you know who this is?”
“A random woman you knocked up, I’m guessing.”
Jabbing his finger into the image, Colton said, “This is my cousin’s wife, Daisy. She’s Gloria’s best friend. She is not, nor has she ever been, my girlfriend.”
“That’s not your baby?”
“No. Fuck, no.”
“Shit.” Ashley snatched the picture from Colton’s hands. “So...you didn’t knock up some woman?”
“No. God.”
She plopped herself down on the grass, sitting cross-legged on the lip of the swimming hole. “Okay.” She blinked a couple of times, trying to make sense of everything. “So what are you doing here?”
“Honestly?” He rubbed the back of his neck, going to stand at the edge of the short cliff, looking down at the clear waters below.
Ash got up and joined him. “Yes. Honestly. You thought I was pregnant and you came up here to do what?”
He glanced down at her. “I was going to ask you to marry me.”
It was like he’d clubbed her, except not in a bad way...exactly. Though breathing was impossible for a couple of seconds. “What?” she finally managed to stutter.
“Brandi said you were pregnant and I—” Tilting his head to one side, Colton considered things for a moment. “Maybe that wasn’t exactly what she said. She just insinuated I was going to be a daddy.” Colton slapped his forehead. “Oh, my God. She knew about the picture.”
Ash nodded. But she couldn’t quite get over what Colton had said. “So...you thought I was pregnant.”
“Yes.”
“And, you came up here to ask me to marry you?”
Colt rubbed his jaw “Yeah. I did.”
Holy hell. Could she have been this totally wrong about Colton? Was he really as noble as he was currently pretending to be?
What if it wasn’t pretend?
What if it was real?
Suddenly, a crazy idea sprang into Ashley’s head. “Okay.”
His brows drew together. “Okay, what?”
“Propose.” She smiled so wide her cheeks hurt.
“What? But...well, ah...”
She put her hands on her hips. “C’mon. If you’re going to do it, do it.” She waited, tapping her toe, barely able to contain the mirth building inside of her.
With a groan, Colt dropped to one knee in front of her. He swallowed. His face was serious, and sweat had broken out on his forehead. “Um, Ashley Ozark?”
“Yes?”
“Would you...ah...do me the great honor of...ah...becoming my—”
She didn’t let him finish. Instead, she pushed him over the lip of the quarry and into the swimming hole down below, where he made a thunderous splash.
He sputtered to the surface moments later. “What the hell was that?”
“That was my answer,” she called. “It’s no, by the way. But you’re welcome to try again at a later date.” Then she did a little hop and a skip and dove down into the clear water beside him.
* * *
THE SECOND COLTON opened the bunkhouse door for Ashley, she smelled something familiar. Something delicious.
“Is that...?”
“Coconut oil?” Colton grinned. “Yep. I seem to remember someone liking it.”
Ash pressed her lips together to keep from smiling too wide. “And what, pray tell, do you plan to do with that coconut oil?”
“I will show you as soon as you take off your clothes.” Colton came forward and starting undoing the buttons on her top.
“Sounds like a trap.” She teased, halfheartedly slapping his hands away.
“No trap. It’s more like a reward. Which I will give you once you give me something.”
“I already gave you something at the swimming hole.”
“Yeah, but I couldn’t see anything.” He went right back to undoing her buttons. “I want to see you, Ash. It’s been too long. I missed you.”
Ash grinned. Hard not to when the man she’d fallen for was admitting to pretty much the same thing. She let him finish undoing her buttons and stood completely still as he unclasped her bra. Her hands strayed to her jeans, unsnapping the button after her bra had slipped to the floor.
“Leave your panties on,” Colt commanded as she pushed her jeans down her legs. “I’ll take those off at my own leisure.”
When Colton picked her up and carried her to his room, she felt like she’d died and gone to heaven. She’d never felt so secure as she did, nestled against Colton’s broad chest, loving the way his voice rumbled around inside, making delicious vibrations against her cheek. She felt so well cared for when he gently laid her out on the bed, and she rubbed her knees together in delighted anticipation, knowing he might not be so gentle in an hour’s time.
“Roll onto your stomach,” he said. “I’m going to give you a full-body massage.”
“You are?”
“I once promised, and I always follow through on my promises.”
Ash collapsed onto her stomach, turning her head to the side and enjoying the sight of Colton removing his clothing, realizing that what he said was the truth. He’d never lied to her. When he said he was going to do something, he did it.
He was the best man she’d ever known, and the fact he was now naked and crawling up onto the bed to straddle her made her shiver. Equally good was the warm drip of oil followed by Colton’s strong hands working the oil into her skin.
“So...what is it about you and coconut oil?”
“The smell makes me randy.”
“Is there a reason?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“There was this guy...”
“Okay. Stop.”
“We met on holiday.”
“I said, stop, Ash.”
“He was Spanish.”
Colton smacked her ass. “If you ever talk about being with another guy again, I’m going to lose it.”
Ash rolled onto her back, grabbed Colton’s shoulders and pulled him down on top of her. “There were basically no other men before you, Colton Cross.”
“Now that’s a lie I can live with.”
She kissed him full on the mouth. He kissed her back softly before pausing. “Ash?”
“Yeah?”
“I know this is still pretty new, but I don’t know, I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.”
Ash almost teased him about proposing again but stopped herself when she saw how serious Colton’s expression was. She swallowed down her sarcasm and refused to put up her standard defenses she’d created over the years to protect herself. “I’ve never felt this way before, either. Not even close,” she admitted instead.
“What are we going to do?” He stroked the hair away from her forehead. “I can quit the tour. Or maybe you can come along with me. I mean, you can do your photo blog from anywhere, right?”
“Yeah, but didn’t you hear?”
“Hear what?”
“I’ve been given a contract with NBRA.”
&nb
sp; “Are you shitting me?”
“Nope. It’s just for six months, but it means I’ll be at all the pro events.”
“You don’t say.”
“I do.”
“So you’re saying we’re going to be on the tour, together? Living our dreams?”
“Yep.”
He kissed her. It was passionate and warm and soft and sexy and everything oh, so good, all at the same time.
“Thank God, because I don’t want you out of my sight again.” He nibbled her lip. “I hated it when you left.”
“You did?”
“I did.”
Ash circled Colton’s nipple with her fingertip. “And I hated leaving. I even lied about having to leave.”
“Ash?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t lie to me again, okay?” His mouth was suckling the underside of her jaw.
“Okay.” She arched into him. “It’s just I was starting to feel too...”
“Too what?” Colton teased her lips gently as his hand roved up and down her body.
“Too much,” she sighed.
“Of this?” His hand settled over her mound.
“It was more than that.”
His fingers penetrated her damp folds, entering her. “Was it this?”
“That and more.” She moaned as he withdrew his fingers.
“Ash?” He nibbled his way up the cord in her neck to her ear. “Are you saying you love me?”
Her body jerked beneath him, and Colton propped himself up on his elbow, gazing down at her. Not smug, but with great tenderness.
“I—”
“No lying now, you promised.” There was the smugness she loved.
“Bastard.” She smacked his ass.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” He settled his weight on top of her again and touched the inside of her ear with his tongue. “That was for making me propose for your own warped enjoyment.” He nudged her legs apart. “And for pushing me in the water.” He took her hands and held them down above her head. Then he fit himself between her thighs. “And this,” he groaned into her hair as he entered her slowly, “Is because I love you, too.”
Wild Seduction Page 19