He’d said the only woman who mattered at all called him Graham.
She was that woman. She mattered to him. Could it be his heart that was in danger?
Oh, yes, please. Fall in love with me. Fall all the way.
There was nothing dangerous about loving her. He had nothing to be cautious about. She was just a college student whose dreams kept getting delayed and delayed, just a girl who…
Emily swallowed.
Just a girl who didn’t stand up for herself.
She thought she was strong. She thought she was a fighter, but the truth was, her life wasn’t going the way she wanted it, and year after year after year after year, she’d failed to be strong enough to change it. Had she been standing in the jungle all this time, passively waiting for someone to come and show her the way out?
Maybe a man like Graham knew that it was dangerous to fall in love with a woman who didn’t really own her own life. He couldn’t fall if he didn’t think she was strong enough to catch him.
The vertigo was sudden. The rope, the dock, the wavering moonlight—the beating of her heart—scared her. She grabbed for the rope again and held on tightly to the knot, suddenly afraid to look at Graham.
Snap out of it. We don’t do helpless. Get your act together.
She took a breath. She let go of the rope, turned to face Graham and started walking toward him.
“Nice dock,” he said as she reached him, casual words from a man who was looking at her intently. “What do you think?”
“I think I could use that drink.” She walked right past him and headed for the SUV.
The six-pack was still on the floor of the passenger seat. The locally crafted beer came in an old-fashioned bottle without a screw-off bottle cap. Her pocketknife with the bottle opener was in her purse in her truck in the parking lot. It was that kind of night.
With a sigh, she kicked her foot up behind herself and smacked the beer bottle down on it, hitting the edge of the cap on the hard wooden heel of her cowboy boot. The cap flew off and she angled the bottle away, knowing a little foam would overflow because of the impact.
A whistle of male approval sounded right behind her. “Nice technique.”
“It wastes beer.” She looked over her shoulder at him. Are you falling in love with me? “That’s at least the third time tonight you’ve managed to get behind me without making any noise.”
He reached around her to take a beer for himself. “Rubber-soled boots are quiet. They won’t do me much good when it comes to opening my beer.”
“Here, I can open it for you.”
But Graham palmed the bottle cap and pried it off with his bare hand.
“Ouch,” Emily said, trying not to be impressed by such a macho trick.
“Oo-rah,” Graham said calmly.
A macho Marine trick. Even harder not to be impressed. It hit her then, that the hand that was Marine strong and apparently impervious to pain was the same hand that had touched her intimately, taken care of her—all the way to the end—with such gentleness, such finesse.
He tapped his bottle to hers and took a drink. She watched him, that amazing mouth, that sexy throat. Who is this man? What is it about him that makes him a hundred times sexier than any other man? They were the same thoughts she’d had when she’d first laid eyes on him in that dark hallway at Keller’s. Never had a first impression been so accurate.
Graham gestured toward her untouched bottle. “Is nostalgia still getting to you? You quit that dock pretty suddenly.”
She took a swallow. Despite the cold beer, she felt flushed. She looked away from Graham, the man who’d reined in his passion so easily, the man who was avoiding the possibility of breaking a heart, and looked toward the lake instead. The breeze was gone. The surface of the water was flawlessly calm. She wanted to churn it up, splash in it, disturb it so that it matched her emotions this night.
“It’s not nostalgia.” She had to answer Graham’s question, when she hardly knew how to feel or what to think at the moment. “I don’t belong here anymore.”
He looked up from the bottle in his hand. “Did you think you would? You’re on your way to getting an MBA. Profit and loss statements and power suits are a far way from a childhood pond.”
“Yeah, well…” She hugged his coat around herself more tightly, when what she wanted to do was hurl her bottle into the lake to ruffle the surface. “The MBA is my mother’s idea, not mine. I just found out yesterday that it’s expected of me. Apparently, the details were given to Mr. Schumer before me.” She sounded bitter.
She felt bitter. She couldn’t tell Graham she was bitter that he’d chosen to keep his heart safe instead of making love to her, but she could talk about the hated MBA. “I’ve taken their advice and gone for a bachelor’s degree. I’ve tried their path, but I can’t keep doing this.”
“Whose advice?”
“My family’s. They think they’re broadening my horizons. They think I’ll find some new talent or a new purpose in life or I don’t know what. But the truth is, I’ve just been a fish out of water all this time. It’s been years since I felt like I lived where I belonged.”
“Ah, Emily.” The empathy in his voice gave her chills. “So when’s the last time you felt like you belonged somewhere?”
She studied the still water. She was on the verge, on the edge—was she daring enough to put it all together and change her life? Was she brave enough to be herself, her fifteen-year-old self, her current self, her whole self? Because that woman could be strong enough for a bodyguard who was afraid to fall.
She turned her back on the lake and faced Graham.
“I felt like I belonged tonight. In the front seat of your car.”
“Ah, Emily.” The bass in his voice gave her chills.
She told herself she was strong enough to ask him the same. “When’s the last time you felt like you belonged somewhere, Ben Graham?”
He looked at her for another one of those long moments, the moments she realized were points of deliberation when he decided whether or not to touch her, or talk to her, or be silent and not risk breaking any hearts.
“Tonight, Emily. Tonight, in the front seat of my car.”
And then she was safe in his arms, his hand pressing her head into his shoulder, her arms holding him as tightly as he was holding her.
Chapter Nine
Sex with Emily would have been less intimate than this.
They were watching the stars, sheltered from most of the cold in the back of his SUV. The hatch was up and the lights were off so they could see the night sky, but they’d shed their jackets and tucked themselves in among the new towels and the old seabags. She’d kicked off her boots so he had, too, and their feet were warm in the untried fluff of the new comforter. It wrapped around them both as Emily rested her head on his shoulder with the comforter tucked under her chin.
Graham was aware that, for a little while, his bedding would now smell like Emily. And, for the rest of his life, a deep breath of cold night air would trigger warm memories of a woman who, for one perfect night, had belonged in his arms. He might not easily remember the last woman he’d had sex with, but he’d never forget parking at a pond, fully dressed, with a Texas girl named Emily Davis.
Sex would have been easier to file away, with its beginning, middle, end. I have to go now, good night, you’re lovely, yeah, I’ll see you next Saturday unless my battalion is in the field, or once he’d begun wearing business suits instead of uniforms, next Friday if I catch that earlier flight in from New York.
All that wouldn’t have worked with Emily—good night, you’re absolutely spectacular, I’ll never see you again—so instead he was here, baring his soul instead of his skin.
“How long were you in Afghanistan?” Emily asked.
“A year. T
wice.”
She paused. He breathed in the scent of her hair, tangled and windblown now, but still faintly floral. He looked at the stars.
“Were you scared?” she asked.
“Not every day.”
Under the covers, she was holding his hand as it rested on his jeans, on his thigh. She gave it a squeeze. “Most days?”
“You’re bored a lot of the time. You’ve got to stay alert while staring at the same boring landscape for days on end. As an officer, at least I could go from position to position to check on my men. But the privates and corporals were stuck at the same little piece of wall or bunker, manning the same weapon, hours or days on end. It takes mental discipline to keep your head in the game when nothing’s happening for weeks at a time.”
“So you had to always be on alert, waiting for something scary to happen?”
“That sounds about right.”
She nodded to herself. “You still do that.”
Yeah, he did. When they’d first parked here, he’d spotted the other pickup truck before it had turned on its headlights. He’d closed one eye at the first sound of an engine starting and hadn’t been blinded like Emily. Real useful, defending against the threat of teenagers kissing until curfew.
Was he doing the alert thing right now? He did a mental check on himself.
No, he wasn’t. He was focused on stars, on warmth, on one woman. At this moment, life was good. But she’d noticed that edgy alertness he was so tired of, and she was asking him about his combat experience. He braced himself for the mini-psychoanalysis so many civilians wanted to engage in, sharing news stories about PTSD or telling him about their friend’s friend who’d been deployed.
“Did you ever have any fun?” she asked.
That wasn’t the question he’d been expecting. He shifted her as she sat in his lap, so her cheek rested on his other shoulder, buying himself a little time.
It was hard to explain what passed as fun on deployment. The sense of humor was crude and macabre, but the camaraderie was real. There was no question whose back he had, or who had his back. They’d entertained themselves with tales of their families. The printed photos anyone received in a letter became nearly public property, passed around to remind each other that home existed, far away as it was. And they’d known that most of them would make it back to that home. Most of them. Almost all of them.
“We played cards. A lot. I can’t tell you…” He knew his own pause was awkward as he struggled to put into words the concept of fun in a combat zone. “There isn’t a dirty joke I haven’t already heard twice, I can tell you that.”
Under the comforter, Emily brought their joined hands up and held them against her heart. She knew. He didn’t know how, but she knew that he’d given her his best answer, sorry as it was.
His heart hurt, again. Still. How much easier it would be to unzip her dress, to slip his hand under those blue ruffles and touch her soft breast instead of her soft heart.
“And then you came home and had a whole year’s pay to blow on this SUV?” She had a little smile in her voice.
He rested his cheek on her hair, glad to leave Afghanistan behind. “No. I left the service. Eight years was enough. I became an executive with a civilian company that makes military gear. I made an obscene amount of money working in a much safer job. I bought this SUV because my bank balance was getting absurd.”
He’d bought it because the SUV had the widest wheel base on the market, making it very unlikely to roll over. This vehicle wouldn’t flip over if…wouldn’t roll on him in…in a situation. He resisted the urge to rub his shoulder.
“Was this the Graham who bought cigars and golf rounds and dinners?”
“Business cards and administrative assistants. All of it.”
After eight months, he’d quit. His second executive job had been with a smaller start-up enterprise. He’d thought the energy there would be different, better, but it had made him more impatient than the first—and he’d lasted half as long. He didn’t belong in a suit and tie and air-conditioning, filling out reports and trying to hit sales numbers he hadn’t set, no matter how obscene the money was.
“And you gave it up? Most people would be happy to have an easy job that paid well.”
I didn’t belong there. Graham rubbed the curve of her perfect shoulder, her body firm under the frills. He had a sudden desire not to appear like the drifter he’d become. “It was safe, not easy. It was a different kind of hard than the Marine Corps, but it was a challenge. A challenging job, money, safety. It should have been enough.” He stopped himself. This was the part he couldn’t figure out. Why hadn’t it been enough?
It hadn’t been. Something was broken or missing or worn out inside him, and he didn’t know what it was. He was tired of trying to figure it out. He was going to live where it didn’t matter.
“Uh-oh. You quit your job and drove from Chicago to Texas. I think I know what’s coming next.” She sat halfway up and twisted around to look at him, pretending to be dismayed. Since a smile was her default expression, she wasn’t doing a good job of not smiling. Thank God. It gave him something to think about besides that wasted, restless year.
She not-smiled at him. “Is this the part where you tell me you’re having a midlife crisis and running off to join the rodeo? You want to fulfill that boyhood dream of bucking broncos?”
“That would require me to know how to ride a horse, I assume.”
She sat all the way up and faced him fully, eyes big. “You’ve never ridden a horse? Not once?”
“Not once.”
“Never?” All the air seemed to whoosh out of her lungs, her shoulders falling. Now her smile was truly gone. “That’s terrible. You’ve missed out on so much.”
He wanted to laugh, but her pity was so sincere. Sweet girl, that horse-crazy phase wasn’t a phase for you, was it?
“I’ll teach you how,” she said. “My family owns a ranch. I’ll take you riding, okay? When you come back this way.”
He tucked her long hair behind her ear.
“Silence isn’t cool, Graham. You are coming back this way, sooner or later.”
I’m leaving at dawn. But he stayed silent. She knew it already, and he didn’t want to say it again.
Emily got to her knees, clutching her corner of the comforter to her neck as if she were nude and being modest as she knelt on a mattress, and holy hell, his body responded to that. I wish you could, she’d said. Had he really turned her down tonight? Idiot.
“When you come back, I’m going to teach you how to ride a horse. That’s a promise.”
He knew she sincerely thought it would be a wonderful gift to him. She was killing him with her generosity, her genuine desire to share with him what were obviously her favorite things in life. Her horses. This lake.
She sealed the promise with a kiss, kneeling over him once more, hot mouth, warm body, cold air making its way between them as the comforter was pushed aside.
My addiction, my craving…
He took her head in both hands. He kissed her harder, deeper. She trapped his hips, one knee on each side, and sank down, her dress riding up, only his denim fly and her thin underwear separating them. He gave in; he had to have her, just once, just one time. My Emily, my heart—
He sat back abruptly, breathing hard.
Sex with Emily wouldn’t be less intimate than stargazing. She was such an addiction, he’d forget himself and pour everything into it. Then he’d be truly spent, with nothing left. The last piece of his soul would disappear with his heart.
He’d want to stay with his heart and soul. He’d want to stay with Emily. He couldn’t. She was going back to college and a life where he couldn’t belong.
Emily broke the silence. Her voice was gentle in the dark. “I only promised you a horseback ride.”
/> “I know.” He ran his thumb over her lower lip.
“It was only a kiss,” she said. “I’m not pushing you to cross any line.”
He paused, his thumb at the corner of her mouth.
“Graham, are you scared of me?”
He dropped his hand. He was being so easily read by a twenty-two-year-old girl with long hair and a short dress and a bright spirit. He started to shake his head like No, I’m not scared of you, but knew he should shake his head like How did you know?
Instead, he started to laugh at himself. “If I’m not, I sure as hell should be. You are something else. Come here.” He pulled her off her knees to sit sideways in his lap, wrapping her in a bear hug, dropping a kiss on the side of her neck, breathing in deeply.
“So, if you don’t have a secret desire to join the rodeo, where are you going? Passing through means you have a destination, right?”
The moment of light-heartedness died. She shouldn’t hope. She shouldn’t wait for him. He was wrong for her. He’d met her too late.
His answer was curt. “I’ll be off the grid.”
“That sounds mysterious. Not some undercover Marine Corps mission?”
“No.”
“You wouldn’t be able to tell me if it was.”
He couldn’t tell if she was teasing or not—but he was not. He didn’t want to tell her much, but not because it was top secret. He didn’t want her to hope and wait—or worse, to look for him. “No, it’s nothing like that. I was offered a chance to get away from it all. A job, and I took it. I made the commitment. I need to be there in the morning.”
“Yes, at dawn. I got that part. But for how long?”
He hesitated. Don’t wait for me; go live your beautiful life. “It’s open-ended.”
It was an evasive answer, but it was true. Emily only had to tilt her head a single degree, only had to narrow her eyes the tiniest bit, and he knew she wasn’t foolish enough to take that for an answer.
He might have been disappointed if she did.
Lost in Cottonwood Canyon & How to Train a Cowboy--Lost in Cottonwood Canyon Page 32