“Can’t sleep?” The deep, husky timbre met her the minute she stepped outside the door and started down the stairs toward the dark rodeo arena.
She found Tyler standing in the shadows at the bottom. The sight of him wearing nothing but a pair of snug, faded jeans stalled her heart for a long moment. Soft denim molded to his lean hips and strong thighs, and cupped his crotch.
He had the hard, well-defined physique of a rough-and-tough bull rider. Broad shoulders. Muscular arms. Dark hair sprinkled his chest from nipple to nipple before narrowing into a thin line that bisected his six-pack abs and disappeared into the waistband of his jeans. Her gaze riveted on the hard bulge beneath his zipper for several fast, furious heartbeats before shifting north.
“Hungry?” he asked.
She swallowed. “You have no idea.”
“Me, too.” He glanced past her at the stairwell leading to the apartment. “I was thinking I could grab a shirt and we could go for pancakes or something.”
The mention of the word made her stomach grumble and he grinned.
“The diner is already open if you want some.” She didn’t miss the heat that simmered in the aqua depths of his eyes, which made her all the more confused as to why he’d stopped before the main event last night.
He obviously wanted her.
She could see it.
Feel it.
But then his gaze darkened and he stiffened, as if he’d just remembered some all-important fact.
“Just give me a few minutes.” He moved past her, up the stairs, and into the apartment while she stood there, her heart aching for something she couldn’t quite name.
Pancakes. Sex. Love. Luckily, he hauled open the door at that moment, a shirt stretched tight over his broad shoulders, and she didn’t have to think too hard about that last thought. Instead, her stomach grumbled again, helping her to hit rewind until the only thing on her brain was scarfing down some breakfast.
“Let’s go.” He took her hand and she followed him to his truck.
Half an hour later, they were seated across from each other at the diner, a stack of pancakes between them.
The first breakfast of many over the next few days as Monday loomed ahead of her like a black cloud.
* * *
“Looks like we’re early,” Tyler said as he pulled the truck to a stop outside the bus station early Monday morning and noted the empty seats inside. He glanced at his watch. “Looks like we’ve got an extra half hour.” He eyed his brother. “You hungry?”
Cooper shook his head and stared at the window.
“Thirsty?”
Another shake and his brother caught his stare. “I’m still not sure about this.”
“About what? Making something of yourself? That’s the one thing you should be one hundred percent sure of. You can do this, Cooper. I know you can. It won’t be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is.”
Not bull riding.
Or falling in love.
The last thought struck and Brandy’s image danced in his head. But he didn’t see her stretched out on the bed in front of him. Not this time. Instead, he saw her sitting in the car that first night, her hands sticky with chocolate shake, a smile curving her full lips. And again at the diner, her mouth stuffed with pancakes, syrup dribbling down her chin. She was as beautiful out of bed as she was in it.
Breathtaking.
“You earned the scholarship. College is going to be a piece of cake.”
“But what if it’s not? What if I wind up right back here?”
And there it was. The fear that haunted his brother.
The same fear that haunted Tyler himself.
The notion that he would bust his ass in Cheyenne, that he would break an arm or a leg and wind up stuck back in Rebel, holed up in the two-bit trailer that held so many bad memories.
He was terrified to wind up back here, but he was even more afraid not to leave in the first place. To at least try.
To never know if maybe, just maybe he might have been something.
“So what if you do go off to college and fail? What if you wind up right back here? You’re no worse off than if you say to hell with it right now and just stay. At least if you go, there’s a chance at more. But there’s no chance if you don’t get on that bus, little brother. No chance in hell.”
“You really think I can do this?”
“I know you can, but even if you don’t, you’re still my brother and I’ll always love you.”
Just as he would still love Brandy whether she loved him back or not.
The truth vibrated through him. Yep, he loved her, all right. Not that it changed anything. He was still going. She was still staying.
That’s the way it had to be.
He wanted her to be happy, and if that meant her staying here, then he would let her when the time came.
He just wanted to know how she felt before then. To at least feel it for a little while.
Until Tyler packed his bags and left Rebel, Texas, for the last time.
Because no way was he coming back this time.
“You can do this,” he said again. “I know you can and so does she.” He motioned to the petite brunette sitting off to the side in the bus station, a small suitcase next to her. Erin stared around, her gaze searching and finding Cooper in that next instant. A smile touched her face and just like that, Cooper didn’t look quite as scared.
“She chewed me a new one last night when I told her I still hadn’t made up my mind.”
“Because she knows how important this is.”
“That, and she doesn’t want to do it alone.”
“So go and play the hero. Help her out. You can’t let her go off all by herself.”
“We did promise each other we would do this together.”
“A man’s only as good as his word.”
Cooper nodded and gathered up his duffel. “You’re right.” He reached for the door handle. “I still might fall on my ass.”
“It’s okay if you do,” Tyler told him and he realized in that instant, that it was. If Cooper failed miserably, Erin would still care about him.
And if Tyler himself failed?
Brandy would still care.
At least he thought so. But there was only one way to be sure.
CHAPTER 36
They were three weeks shy of the wedding and Callie still couldn’t make up her mind.
Brandy fought down the urge to scream and took off the powder-blue dress before stuffing it back onto the hanger and reaching for the hot-pink number sitting nearby.
Her twenty-ninth dress.
Seriously.
She slipped it on and tugged the bodice up over her breasts but it wasn’t about to fit. Not when the dress was made to fit a twig with zero figure.
She was just about to shove it back down when she heard the deep, husky voice.
“Not bad.”
Excitement rushed through her for several fast and furious heartbeats before two all-important facts registered.
First, she wasn’t doing fast and furious with Tyler McCall. Not anymore. Not since fast and furious led to long and slow and, well, she couldn’t go there with him any more. She wouldn’t.
That’s why he’d spent Sunday night alone while she’d walked the floors at home all by herself.
Actually, she hadn’t walked so much as she’d moved. All of the boxes from her grandpa’s room out onto the front porch. With the exception of the one box containing a few pairs of shoes, James Harlin’s grandmother’s old Bible, and three belts that Sheriff DeMassi had confiscated on Saturday morning. The rest Brandy had transferred to the front porch to wait for the church van to pick up the donation.
She’d finally decided on the church when she’d come to realize that it really didn’t matter which one she picked, just as it didn’t matter if her grandfather had really and truly loved her—or not. It was something she might never know and she had to be okay with that.
She was, she told hers
elf for the countless time. So what if he hadn’t given her the time of day? He’d eaten a cookie or two in his time, so she knew he’d at least noticed her.
And that would have to do. She accepted it, just as Tyler had been forced to accept that their booty calls were officially a thing of the past.
She blinked, praying that he would disappear. He wasn’t real. This was just a figment of her imagination. Another fantasy to add to the long list that had haunted her each night as she waited for Tyler to ride out of town and leave her like he always did.
He didn’t disappear.
The curtains swished closed behind him and he simply stood there. He looked so tall, dark, and delicious in his white button-down, his shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal tanned forearms, his faded Wranglers worn and snug in all the right places. He’d left his hat behind and so there was nothing except a thick fringe of black lashes shadowing the intense aqua of his gaze.
He eyed her, his attention sweeping from her head to her toes and back up again.
Her heart thundered and goose bumps chased up and down her bare arms. Bare, as in naked. She was naked in front of him. Again.
When she’d vowed to keep her clothes on.
Hello? You’re wearing underwear. Granted, it’s a pair of skimpy bikini briefs, but still.
The last thought killed some of the panic she was feeling and she drew a deep, calming breath. She wasn’t completely nude, and she certainly wasn’t going to forget everything she’d worked so hard for. She wasn’t giving up the bakery and he wasn’t giving up his career, and so they were at a standstill.
On opposite sides of the spectrum.
Hopeless.
She reached for the straps on the dress and pulled it up, eager to cover up as much as possible.
“You look good in that,” he said as he took a step toward her.
“It doesn’t fit,” she responded. “It’s too small.”
“That’s why I like it.” He took another step.
“I can’t go prancing around in front of everyone like this.”
“Not everyone. Just me.” The deep, husky words slid into her ears and thrummed the length of her spine. He stood even closer now, his body so hard and warm and tempting in the frigid air-conditioning of the dressing room.
He stepped up behind her, his chest kissing her shoulder blades.
The scent of him surrounded her and his hard warmth teased her shoulder blades. When she felt his large, callused fingers at her waist, her own grasp went limp. The straps of the dress slid from her desperate grip. Her head snapped up and her gaze collided with his in the mirror.
His aqua-blue eyes glittered back at her, bright and hot and mesmerizing. “You’re really something, you know that?”
“I…” She swallowed. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself. I can’t stop thinking about you and that photographer your sister tried to set you up with. You can’t go out with him.”
She hadn’t meant to tell him, but the subject of Callie and the wedding had come up over pancakes and, well, she’d needed to talk to someone. Especially since she was dreading the blind date.
“Says who?” she countered.
“Please don’t go out with him.” He shook his head, a strange light glimmering in his gaze. “When I think about the two of you … about him touching you.” His hand slid around her waist and trailed down her abdomen to her panties. His fingers skimmed the pink silk triangle covering her sex. “About him touching you here—” His voice caught. “It’s driving me crazy.”
“I…” she started, but his intimate touch stalled her frantic thoughts before she could come up with something coherent. Reason fled in the face of so much sensation, and the only thing she could do was feel.
His fingertips burning through the thin material of her panties. His hard pelvis pressed against her buttocks. His strong arms surrounding her. His warm breath ruffling the hair at her temple.
“You’re mine, Brandy. You’ve always been mine.”
“You’re leaving,” she pointed out. “Cooper got on the bus this morning. Duff told Ellie.”
“It doesn’t change anything. I still don’t want you to see anybody else.”
Because he loved her? Because he wanted her?
The questions rolled through her head and she waited, her breath stalled, to hear the words.
Not that it would matter.
That’s what she told herself.
“I love you, Brandy. I don’t know what the hell to do about it. I just know that I always have and I always will,” he murmured once more and then he walked away.
It doesn’t matter.
She repeated the mantra to herself, but as he walked away, she couldn’t shake the crazy rush of joy that went through her, followed by an emptiness so profound that Brandy found herself blinking frantically when Callie and Jenna threw open the curtain and walked in from the opposite room.
Because it did matter.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Brandy sniffled and shook her head and did the only thing she could—she played off her rush of emotion as dress-inspired. “It’s just so beautiful,” she cried, motioning to the latest disaster.
Callie smiled as Jenna fought back a look of horror. “I think we’ve got ourselves a winner.”
CHAPTER 37
I love you.
The words echoed through Brandy’s head throughout Tuesday morning, taunting her as she tried to concentrate on pulling a batch of blueberry muffins from the oven. She had to get back on track and forget all about Tyler and the fact that he loved her.
Just where did he get off loving her? He wasn’t supposed to love her and she wasn’t supposed to love him.
Her heart pounded double time and tears burned the backs of her eyes as she tried to concentrate on refilling another muffin tin.
One scoop per tin. Top off with crumbles. Extra blueberries on top.
Just the way Tyler liked them.
Not that he was going to get a taste. Not this time. He was leaving in a matter of hours, regardless that he loved her.
Regardless that she loved him.
She did.
Denial rushed through her. No, she didn’t love love him. She was close … Dangerously so. That’s why she’d barricaded herself in her kitchen and left Ellie and the others to handle the front business. Because she needed to keep busy, to work and not think.
Because she wasn’t falling all the way, not head over heels, body, heart, and soul, in love with Tyler McCall. Love required sacrifice, and as much as she wanted to, she just couldn’t sacrifice everything she’d worked so hard for.
She wouldn’t.
She wouldn’t do something so self-destructive as to fall in love with any man. She wouldn’t give up everything.
If only everything didn’t seem like nothing at all without Tyler McCall.
* * *
“What do you mean you can’t see me?” Tyler demanded when he stomped into the bakery later that afternoon, after a very heated phone conversation. He’d called to ask to see her, no doubt to discuss the bomb he’d dropped the night before and tell her he still had to leave. Of course, she’d turned him down.
And turned him down again when he’d called back the second time.
And the third time.
Now here was Tyler himself, standing on the other side of the counter, wearing a black T-shirt that read IT’S ALL ABOUT THE RIDE and faded jeans and an intense look that made her pulse leap.
“Let me rephrase that, I don’t want to see you.” There. She’d said it, despite the fact that she was inhaling the all-too-familiar and terribly sexy scent of warm male and leather and him. Her nostrils flared and her lungs filled, and Brandy damned herself for being so weak.
She wasn’t weak. She was holding her own, keeping up her defenses, until Tyler made a run for the hills and she could let her guard down again. And, more important, before she gave in to the hunge
r inside her and begged him to stay.
“We need to talk—”
“—you’re leaving,” she cut in. “I know. It’s no big deal. I know you didn’t mean what you said the other day. You were worked up and so was I and you didn’t mean to say what you said.”
“Oh, I meant it, all right—”
“Oh, wow, would you look at the time? I’ve got a birthday cake due over at the church for Maureen O’Reilly’s eightieth. I promised to deliver it myself and I’m late,” she said, untying her apron and hanging it on the nearest hook. “Look, you just run along and don’t worry that I’m making more out of it than you meant. We all get a little crazed in the heat of the moment. Chemistry is a powerful thing. People mistake lust for love all the time. Just look at the divorce rate. Lust,” she rushed on before he could say anything to shake her determination. “The other night was just a bad case of lust, but now it’s sated and—”
“Is it?” he cut in, his gaze deep and searching, as if he struggled to see everything she was trying so hard to deny.
“Yes,” she declared with as much bravado as she could muster considering he smelled so good and she had this insane urge to press her head to his chest just to hear if his heart was beating as fast as hers. “It’s definitely sated.”
He eyed her for a long, breathless moment, and she knew he was going to argue with her. That, or throw her over his shoulder and tote her back to the rodeo arena and make love to her over and over until she developed such a craving for him that she couldn’t keep from loving him back. And damned if a small part of her didn’t want him to do just that. To take the decision out of her hands so that she didn’t have to think, to worry, to be afraid of what she felt for him.
What she almost felt, she reminded herself. She wasn’t there yet. She wasn’t in love. Not with him. She wasn’t.
As if he sensed the turmoil inside her, his fierce expression eased into his usual charming grin—which made her that much more wary.
“It was fun,” she blurted, “and now it’s over. Let’s not make more of it than what it was. You go your way and I go mine.”
“Lust, huh? Just lust?”
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