by Maisey Yates
“He doesn’t like me associating with you,” Luke said, taking a seat and placing the cinnamon roll at the center of the table. She noticed that there was only one fork.
Olivia sat across from Luke, clutching the mug, the warmth from the drink seeping through into her fingers. “Well, good,” she said. “That’s kind of the idea.”
Luke shrugged. “Yeah.”
She took a sip of her Big Hunk Mocha. It was indeed very sweet. “Did he say anything about...wanting me back?”
“I doubt that was a conversation he was ever going to have with me, kiddo. He told me to keep my hands off you.” A smile touched Luke’s wicked mouth. And she could confirm for a fact the mouth was wicked—it was no longer supposition.
“Well,” Olivia said, feeling marginally pleased by that. “That’s something.”
Except, it also forced her to remember when Luke had put his hands on her in the truck. When it had had nothing to do with Bennett. She felt flushed again.
“We definitely caused trouble,” she said. “My mother was filled with questions this morning.”
Luke leaned back in his chair, lifting his hand and pushing the brim of his cowboy hat upward with his knuckle. “Was she?”
Olivia looked down into her drink. “She said you’re not good for me.”
Luke frowned. “That’s true enough. Of course, I don’t want your parents being angry at me, considering I want to buy that land from your father.”
“I don’t think he’ll stay angry with you when all is said and done. And anyway, he’ll care more about what I have to say about you than he’ll care about any kind of town gossip. My mother, too. She was worried, but...”
“What must that be like?”
“What?”
His lips quirked into a half smile, his large hands moving around his coffee cup, sending a strange shiver through her body. “To be the hen.”
She let out a long, slow breath. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m the fox,” he said. “No two ways about it, Liv. The predator. The one that everyone knows they need to protect their daughters from. Protect their virtue from. I’ve always been that. Nobody knew who my people were, nobody knew where I came from. And even though I had Quinn Dodge to vouch for me, people have always been a little bit wary of me. I know what that’s like. I don’t mind it. I’ve found a lot of ways around it.”
His words sat uncomfortably with her. With her image of him as that good ole boy who got along with everyone and everything. “Everybody likes you,” she pointed out.
“Sure,” Luke said. “Everybody likes me, but when push comes to shove they don’t want me anywhere near their daughter, right?”
She blinked. “I suppose that’s true.”
“So I just wonder... I wonder what it’s like to be the one everybody’s worried about.” He looked at her, long enough that it made her feel uncomfortable. Long enough that she had to look away. “Does it irritate you, kiddo?”
She frowned. “I don’t know any other way. People worry about me because... I’m me...”
“Does it have something to do with your sister?”
She looked up, startled, her eyes crashing into his. “Vanessa? What made you think about Vanessa?”
“Bennett brought her up when he raked my ass over the coals this morning.”
“He shouldn’t have,” Olivia said, looking down into her coffee again, her heart thundering sickly in her throat. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this.” She sighed heavily. “Or maybe she does. Vanessa is sad. And, I feel like underneath all of her rebellion she was obviously fragile. Because the world got to her. Addiction. Drugs. She just couldn’t find a way out once she got in. Like when you put your foot in the river and it’s moving a lot faster than you think. That’s what I always think happened.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Do you think that makes other people worry you might be fragile, too?”
He was treading on such a tender place inside of her, and he didn’t even realize it. Didn’t realize that she probably worried about her susceptibility to the weights that had dragged her sister down more often than anyone else ever did.
For some reason though, she wanted to tell him. Because his words—his honesty—were echoing in her head. What’s it like to be the hen?
There was something painful in that question. An acknowledgment that no one had ever worried for him.
She couldn’t deny his question. The man had had his tongue in her mouth after all. So this wasn’t more intimate than that, surely.
“My parents worry about me, because she’s not even around for them to worry about. She rarely makes contact. She’s impossible to find. For them, it’s about protecting the child they can protect,” she said slowly. “For the town? I don’t know. It’s like being the star of their favorite soap opera.”
“Everybody thinks you and Bennett are perfect for each other. It’s like watching your favorite couple on TV get destroyed by a very obvious interloper. A villain.” He flashed her a smile that looked not villainous in the least, and somehow the fact that it lacked malice made it all the more dangerous.
That was the thing about Luke. Like he’d said, everybody liked him, but nobody wanted him to get too close. He was easy, and he was a nice guy, a helpful and accommodating guy. But he was a predator. She could sense that. Could sense that one wrong move and she could find herself being hunted.
“That’s probably it,” she said, trying to speak around her tightened throat.
“We’re sure giving people something to talk about.”
Olivia looked around the room and noticed that half the people in it were looking at Luke and herself quite avidly.
She put her head down. “I should have stayed home today.”
“But then we wouldn’t have run into each other.”
Exactly. But she didn’t say that out loud.
Suddenly, his green eyes turned serious, and that sent her stomach into a free fall. She could handle Luke when he was being an ass. She could handle him when he was teasing her. It was a lot harder to handle him when he looked at her like this. Like he might say something grave. Or lean forward and kiss her again.
When it quit being a joke, quit being a show and became something much more real.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me,” he said.
Her stomach hollowed out, her fingers feeling restless. She wiggled them, tapping them against the mug. “You don’t think I should be afraid of you?” she whispered.
“I didn’t say that.” She chanced a glance at him again, caught his eyes, and then held them. “I said you don’t have to be afraid of me. You maybe should be. But you could push it aside for a little while, too.”
Her heart skidded to a halt, then began to beat rapidly, flinging itself against her chest as if it was on a desperate mission to get itself out of here. To get away from him.
Her body was smart. At least, parts of it were. The parts that housed emotions, fear. Other parts...
Her breasts felt heavy, and that thick ache had started up between her thighs again. Those parts of her wanted more of what Luke had given her last night.
Because, of course, only Luke had ever made her feel that way. She had actively avoided ever making herself feel that way, and she had put such a careful distance between herself and Bennett physically. And it had been easy.
Bennett, who was such a beautiful man, had been easy for her to resist.
Bennett, with his broad shoulders and physique comprised of all lean, well-honed muscle. Bennett, with his dark hair, brown eyes and square jaw. She had been able to resist him. Had been able to put up that wall and stay firmly on the right side of it.
She wanted desperately to be able to do that with Luke and couldn’t seem to.
That was galling.
“I
think fear might be for the best,” she said, her lips numb.
He lifted a shoulder. “Possibly.”
She looked down at the cinnamon roll, at the melted icing pooling at the center. She wanted to lick it. But that was better than wanting to lick Luke again. “I’m not sure I’m hungry.”
“Do you have to be hungry to eat a cinnamon roll?” he asked.
“You should be. That’s the point of food, Luke. You’re hungry, and you eat it.”
“But sometimes you just eat it because you want to. Because it tastes good.”
Suddenly, she had a feeling that the food in question was becoming a metaphor. She would rather it didn’t. But then, as with all things related, it didn’t seem to matter what she wanted and what she didn’t.
“I don’t,” she said, sniffing loudly. “I don’t believe in indulgence for the sake of it.”
He reached out and grabbed hold of the fork, taking a large slice off the cinnamon roll and putting the bite in his mouth slowly. So very slowly. It was gratuitous. It forced her to watch the motion of his lips, the play of his throat as he swallowed.
“I do,” he said finally. “Whiskey and cinnamon rolls. I do it because it feels good.”
“Not me,” she whispered. She wouldn’t have been able to make her voice louder now if she wanted to.
“Try it,” he said, his voice holding more temptation than all the butter in the cinnamon roll ever could. “You might find it’s not as scary as you think.”
She looked down at her hands, which were curled into fists on the table, her nails digging into her palms. Her heart was pounding, her throat dry. And she felt... She felt like she was being asked to make a choice she didn’t think she could make. To jump over a hurdle she wasn’t sure she wanted to clear. “That’s what scares me most.”
He swept his fork through the roll again, getting another bit and holding it out toward her.
In spite of herself, her mouth watered. “I’m really not hungry.”
“But do you want it?” he pressed.
Yes, yes she wanted it. The cinnamon roll. And, worse, the metaphor attached to it.
He held the fork out and she parted her lips wordlessly. And allowed him to give her the bite. Flavor exploded over her tongue and she couldn’t keep herself from groaning. Luke smiled. And suddenly the fox-and-hen comparison seemed all too apt.
She felt like a little cornered hen, shivering in the back of her coop, facing down a gleaming-eyed fox who most definitely wanted to eat her.
What a strange thing that was. That feeling. Being wanted. Hunted. Pursued. And for it to be something other than unpleasant.
But the worst part was, part of her wanted to rush out of her corner and offer herself to him, even knowing how it would end.
This was the kind of thing she’d avoided. Because she knew there was no good end to this, and she had to do what was right, not what was indulgent.
You’re in charge here. You know what you want. You want Bennett. Luke and his hotness are just a distraction.
He leaned back in his chair, looking as self-satisfied as if he’d just beaten her at a game of darts. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“That’s the problem,” she said once she had swallowed. “It’s not bad tasting. That doesn’t mean it isn’t bad for you.”
“Then you go work outside a little bit. The physical equivalent of Hail Marys.”
“That doesn’t work with everything,” she pointed out.
He reached out, and her heart stopped as he pressed his thumb against her lower lip, dragging it along the edge. “You have a little frosting there.”
Then he pulled his hand back and stuck his thumb in his mouth, licking the frosting that had just been on her lips off his skin.
An intimate shiver went through her.
“Maybe not,” he said. “I still think it might be worth it.”
Olivia pulled the cinnamon roll toward her and took the fork from his side of the table. Then she proceeded to eat it far more quickly than anyone should eat a giant cinnamon roll. But she couldn’t sit there and have Luke watch her like that. Couldn’t sit there and allow him to feed her. It was too much. She needed the cinnamon roll to just be a cinnamon roll.
She needed her body to go back to being her own.
She needed some sanity, and she was worried that she might not get it.
“Are you done with your coffee?” She was afraid that if she finished the coffee she might die of glucose trauma. Between the drink and the cinnamon roll it was all a bit more sugar than she had anticipated.
She was prosugar, but she had a feeling any more and she wouldn’t be able to pass a sobriety test. Walking in a straight line would be above her pay grade.
“Yes,” she said.
“Great,” he said, standing. “Why don’t you drive out to that property with me.”
“What?”
“I figure,” he said, “that since you’re a Logan and it’s Logan property, you’re free to show me around.”
Olivia felt like she’d been bulldozed. Seeing as she was typically the bulldozer in such scenarios, it was a bit shocking. She hesitated. “I suppose so.”
“Are you busy?”
She was not. It was why she was tramping around in leggings in the middle of the day. “Well, I had some things I thought I might do,” she said. Lying, obviously.
He smiled. “What things are you doing?”
“You know. I was thinking I might go get...a manicure. Or maybe have coffee with a friend.”
“You already had coffee with a friend,” he said, that smile widening.
“Not what I meant.”
Actually, she kind of would like to have coffee with a friend. Maybe with Lindy, or with Lindy’s sister-in-law Sabrina. Somebody who might be able to talk to her about all of the things that were going on right now. Except, then she would have to admit them. She would have to verbalize them, put them into words. She wasn’t sure she could do that. She was having enough trouble thinking about them as it was.
“Well, you’re done with your coffee. And, I don’t actually think you need a manicure.”
“And you’re an expert on things like that?”
“I’m an expert on women’s hands,” he said pointedly. “Hands I think I might want on my body. And let me tell you, yours would do just fine.”
Her eyes caught his and her stomach tightened. Because while she had expected to see that smart-ass glint in his eye, it wasn’t there. It was that grave, serious face again. The way he’d looked before he’d kissed her in the bar last night.
And again in his truck before he’d pulled her onto his lap.
“Luke...”
He put his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I promise I’ll behave.”
“You never behave.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Fine. I promise I won’t touch you.” He paused for a moment. “Unless you ask me to.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Okay.”
Then, he headed out of the coffee shop and she stood, scrambling after him. What was it about him that compelled her to follow him? She could just let him walk out, and yet, there she was, following his lead, walking with him to his truck.
“Thank you,” he said, opening up the passenger side door for her, just like he had done last night. She rolled her eyes and got in, allowing him to close it for her.
Luke started the engine and they went down the highway, in the direction of Get Out of Dodge, headed out to the old family property that Olivia hadn’t been to in years.
“It’s strange,” she said as Luke turned his truck down the dusty road that badly needed to be regraveled. “My family owns so much land here in the county and I never go to much of any of it. I just go into town, go home, go to my job. I’m not really that conscio
us of it.”
“Have you ever thought of moving to one of the bigger properties? Setting a place up for yourself?”
No, she hadn’t. Because her entire goal had been to marry Bennett. Which meant that she would be moving to Dodge land. And that meant that Logan land didn’t factor in.
“Okay,” he said, adding no further commentary.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. I’m just saying okay. If you’ve never thought about doing anything on any of your family’s land, that’s not totally abnormal, I would suppose. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up with all of that.”
“Where did you grow up?” It occurred to her then that she actually didn’t know.
“A ways from here,” he said. He offered up nothing more.
Olivia looked out the window and took in the scenery. It was a beautiful piece of land. Pastoral, with a heavy ridgeline of pine trees around the edge of the fenced-in fields, mountains rising up beyond. “What are you going to do with this place?”
She didn’t know why on earth she should care. Only that she did.
That was almost scarier than kissing him.
CHAPTER TEN
LUKE QUESTIONED WHY he had taken Olivia out here. Hell, he questioned everything he had done since he had walked into Sugar Cup and seen Olivia in there placing her order. He shouldn’t have bought her a cinnamon roll. He sure as hell shouldn’t have made it a sexual experience. He shouldn’t have teased her.
Because it hadn’t stayed teasing, not for long.
He couldn’t keep it light with her. Not anymore. That kiss had changed things.
Now that pissed him off. He wasn’t inexperienced. Not in the least. He didn’t let women get under his skin.
What he was realizing was that Olivia Logan had been under his skin for such a long damn time, like a dormant infection or some shit. And now it was no longer dormant. And there was nothing that he could do about it.
He didn’t characterize himself as controlled. Not at all. It was just that he didn’t struggle against things often. But this... This he was trying to struggle against. He was doing a piss-poor job.
And now he was bringing her to this ranch. This place that felt like a strange, spiky dream that had more pricks and pitfalls than it had promise.