by Wendi Darlin
Garrett stood up and slung Gavin’s clothes across the desk. “I hope it’s worth it,” he said on his way out the door.
Gavin stared at the phone, the leg of his sweatpants covering the receiver. She wanted him to call her, to take her bed again. His little brain had done enough thinking.
Chapter 9
“You didn’t call,” Rebecca said, rubbing the remnants of sleep from her face. Fog hung low over the ranch, and the sun had just begun to color the sky when she answered Gavin’s knock at the door.
“I’m sorry. And I know it’s early,” he said from the porch, “but if we’re going rock climbing, we need to hit the road.”
An apology was better than a lie. He looked tired, but his shorts revealed the muscles that carved lines in his thighs and ran along the outside of his shins beneath the sexiest curls of blond hair. The man continued to get hotter by the day. Unbelievable. Forgiving him for a phone call was easy. Too easy. An explanation would have been nice though.
“I’ll wait out here until you’re dressed,” he said.
“Why would you want to do that?” She took his hand, pulled him inside and lifted her eyes to the corner of the room. The vent near the ceiling was covered with a hand towel. “Is that the only camera?” she asked.
“Yep.” The tendons in his neck tightened, but other than that he didn’t move. The door stood open at his back.
“Well what are you waiting for?” She stood on her toes to cover his mouth with hers. His response was cool, not an ounce of the heat they’d shared only a few hours ago.
Something heavy settled in her chest. He either had a hell of a night after he left her, or she had imagined something between them that had never really existed. Even her imagination wasn’t that good.
“You want to tell me about it?” She positioned his hand on her breast and coaxed his lips until his response became more urgent, more in line with what she had come to expect from him, minus the tenderness.
“This isn’t a good idea.” Heat welled in his eyes. His voice was soft and low, moving through her, revving her right back up to where she’d been the night before, but the rest of his body language was more in line with his words. Whatever had happened with the police had him on edge. Or he had a problem with intimacy that only surfaced in the daylight.
“You’re tense.” She ran her hands down his chest, giving him one more chance, hoping her nagging doubt was wrong and his coldness didn’t have anything to do with her or his attraction to her. “Tell me there’s a condom in your wallet.”
“There’s one,” he said, still holding his hands at his sides.
She steeled herself. “Is this what happens the morning after? I’m new at this, so please tell me how it works.” Her lip trembled, but she bit down hard, clamping it motionless, refusing to show weakness.
Gavin closed the door behind him and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to.” He blew a heavy breath between them. “That disc I made,” he said. “I’m afraid if anyone ever found it. If anyone else ever knew…hell, we could lose the ranch over something like that.”
“So destroy it.” She motioned toward the table by the bed where the disc lay next to her phone. “Those kinds of things usually do come back to bite you.” She tried a smile. So, he didn’t trust her as much as he’d wanted to. She could live with that. Trust usually took more than a few days, and he had a lot riding on the gesture he’d made to calm her down last night.
He ran his hand through his hair and watched her. There was more to his angst.
“You’re smart to be scared.” She tried a compliment, not knowing what else he needed. “You look a whole lot better than Tommy Lee. The sharks on the internet would have a feeding frenzy.”
If that’s all that had him worked up they could still have a memorable morning. Without a word, she reached into his back pocket and offered his wallet to him.
“You can get it,” he said.
“No regrets,” she said, her heart pounding. “Not one.” She waved the little foil package at him and licked the dryness from her lips. “Unless you’re not being honest with me right now.”
He bent his face to hers and took her mouth in a kiss so gentle it was like a drug, a toe-curling, womb-gripping drug whose hold she didn’t ever want to break from. He could have thrown her across the bed and taken her like an animal and she would have been just as happy to join him, but this approach left her quivering with anticipation, anxious to see how long he was willing to let the build-up last, how much time he was willing to spend to take her back to where they had been.
His tongue seemed directly connected to the muscles behind her knees and the ones between her legs. Gripping the condom so hard the sharp corners of the package poked her palm, she pressed her mouth harder to his, forcing her hunger on him.
She stepped closer as he lifted the sweatshirt over her head. The muscle in his jaw tensed and his chest moved beneath his shirt. He hesitated, gripping her arms. She could practically see him changing his mind, debating whether or not he wanted to do this with her.
She shrugged free and crossed her arms over her chest, feeling too naked. “Just forget it,” she said. He caught her wrist, stopping her as she darted away.
“Last night was my mistake,” he said. “Not yours.”
“Mistake?” She swallowed hard. She had been a fool to think last night had meant something to him.
She turned the condom package over in her hand. Her thumb dipped into the recessed center of the smooth plastic, rubbing hard. “I’m glad you cleared that up. I don’t believe in repeating mistakes.”
“That makes two of us. I’ll meet you outside.” He swept the disc off the night table and started for the door.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on here,” she said, following him off the porch, her arms crossed over her bare breasts. The cold air drew her skin into bumps and shot chills through her. “Or are you just going to be plain mean about it?”
“I’m sorry.” His response was automatic.
“The apology without explanation is old. Give me one reason I should go anywhere with you right now.”
“Who’d you tell?” His neck tightened, and the anger and hurt in his eyes confused her
“Who’d I tell what?” She stared at him dumbfounded until her mind worked out what had to be the problem. “You think I told the police something?” His silence gave her the only answer she needed.
“Why would I do that? I wasn’t feeling violated until now.” Her arms tightened in a protective embrace. The condom wrapper bit into her hand again. She flung the little package at him. “I’m not going anywhere with you, and the last people I expect to protect me from sexual stupidity are the police!”
* * * *
“What did you say!” Chet’s voice barreled through the phone with so much force, Marge’s spine vibrated.
“I’m…” She breathed deep. “I’m not cooperating.” Last night the wine had made it seem so easy to dish the dirt on Rebecca and Gavin. The harsh light of morning made that notion a lot harder to swallow. Love wasn’t meant to be persecuted. If anyone knew that, she did.
“You will cooperate unless you want to sleep in your own piss and eat peanut butter when your teeth fall out! That married man you been messing around with ain’t gonna have any use for you much longer.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me.” She eyed the bottle of wine open on the baker’s rack, but held firm. She could do this. Without alcohol.
Chet’s laugh was full of condescension. “Yeah, that’s right. You couldn’t even pay your light bill last month.”
“My rent went up.” Her voice sounded too weak. She straightened her spine and swallowed hard. Clayton’s number two rule echoed in her mind. Control your own destiny. There were mistakes she had made. Things she couldn’t change, but the choices she made right this minute weren’t any of those things. “I’m not going to help you put nice people in jail.
They don’t deserve it.”
“Since when do you know anything about what people deserve? You think that old man’s wife deserves having her husband’s dick in you?”
Marge gasped, and her face flamed. “Chester Lamar Bening, your mother would roll over in her grave if she heard you speaking to me that way. And God bless her soul, I’m not giving you a chance to do it anymore!”
“You’ll do what I say and you’ll listen to whatever I feel like saying!” Chet yelled back. “And if you don’t, I’ll come out there and make you sorry you ever—” She clapped the phone closed, cutting off the last of his threat. Her legs wobbled as she crossed the room and lifted the wine bottle directly to her lips. Before she came up for air, her phone rang again.
* * * *
Gavin climbed into his truck and threw the condom on the seat. So much for not pissing Rebecca off. He’d already given her enough rope to hang him with, he should’ve just fucked her. His temple throbbed. Was he really such a jerk? Until last night he would have defended her dignity against anyone, and now he was acting like she didn’t deserve to have any. He still didn’t know who she was talking to in the middle of the night. Or if she had anything to do with the cops showing up. What if he’d just lost the best thing that could have happened to him because he was a dumb ass. Too dumb to find out if his suspicions had merit. He could’ve asked her, explained why they were watching her, but she could easily lie. He expected her to lie. The acknowledgement hit him like a hoof to the head. He didn’t trust her. When push came to shove, he would never trust any woman.
The best thing he could do was book her on the next flight out of Wyoming. He clipped his cell phone onto the charger and saw the message envelope in the corner of the screen. Garrett had probably called last night when the cops showed up. He dialed into his messages.
“You have one message. Received at three oh seven a. m.,” the electronic voice announced. He waited, expecting to catch another round of hell for the same crap, but it was Rebecca’s voice that played in his ear. She had called him last night, when the cops were at the ranch.
“You’ve barely been gone and I’m already missing you in the worst way.” She whimpered playfully. “Call me as soon as you get this and please tell me you have a DVD player in your room.” Her voice shot straight through him erasing his anger in a flash of heated adrenalin. “I got my hands on a pretty hot movie tonight,” she continued, “and I enjoy this kind even more than scary ones. I came up with some ideas. Lots and lots of ideas. I think you’ll like them all.”
There was no doubt which head was doing the thinking when he folded the phone in his hand and snatched the keys out of the ignition. They both were, and it didn’t take a man with two brains to figure out he was a bigger dumb ass than he’d thought.
“I just got your message. I’m an idiot,” he said almost before she had the cabin door open, his breath still heavy from sprinting across the yard.
“You’re such an idiot.” She smiled wiping a tear from her cheek. “We could still be in bed right now. Making mistake after mistake. And I could still be fool enough to think we were making love.”
His chest pounded. He didn’t deserve her to let him off easily. “You’re a lot of things to me, but you’re not a mistake. The cops had to check the monitors. You were on the phone. With the disc.” He kissed the damp trails on her face and sank into her eyes. “I thought…”
“You thought I slept with you and then called the police?”
He could see how he had hurt her, and he wanted to give her the honesty she deserved.
“No. I thought your sister called the police.”
“But you thought I slept with you and told my sister I had the disc?”
“I have an issue with trust,” he said, bending his face to hers. “But it’s not your fault, and I won’t pawn it off on you again. Please give me another chance.”
“I haven’t talked to anybody but you since we…” She frowned. “Did what we did.”
He believed her and he wanted to trust her more than any woman he’d ever known. “Can you forgive me for being such a dick?”
“Are you going to make a habit of it?”
“God, I hope not,” he said before taking her lips with his. Her response filled him. The sweetness of her tongue pulled him into a place that was too deep to climb out of. His instinct was to run, get as far away from her as he could, but there was nothing he wanted more than to stand there and love her, to try and be a bigger man than he was.
Her tongue swirled his, her hands held the back of his neck like she was as desperate for him as he was for her. Like this week wouldn’t be enough. Forever might not be enough. He was thinking crazy thoughts, and he didn’t care, she rattled his brain until every one of them made sense.
* * * *
“You didn’t meet me for breakfast. Are you okay?” Clayton peered at Marge through the cracked door of her cabin.
“I’m fine.” The lie rolled off her tongue, but she closed her eyes and her chest shook with sobs.
“Let me in there,” he said softly as she moved aside. “My lord, what happened to you?” He wrapped his arms around her, and every tear she’d ever held in threatened to pour out of her eyes.
He walked her over to the loveseat and lifted the almost empty bottle of wine sitting on the coffee table. “Girlfriend, this is not what we were drinking last night.” He eased her down, but the motion tipped her stomach.
She gestured toward the trashcan, and Clayton set it at her feet without a second to spare. She vomited, retching everything she could and knowing it would never be enough.
He held her hair and fanned the back of her neck with his hat. When the worst had subsided, he helped her sit back then brought two washcloths. One he cleaned her face with, the other he folded across his thigh. “Lucy, you got some splainin’ to do,” he said in his best Desi Arnaz.
Despite the nausea that still churned her stomach and crept like a hot glove up her throat, she smiled. And then she laughed, until the tears came again and it took all she could do not to choke on self-disappointment.
She had caved. Chet had played his trump card, and she had folded completely, giving him everything he’d ever need. She had to. If Chet phoned Harry’s wife, Harry would never forgive her. She wouldn’t even exist in his world. All those years of giving herself only to him, would end in nothing. She would be totally and completely alone. She dragged in a jagged breath and clutched her chest before the sobs took her again. Her eyes were too heavy to open, and even in the cool morning the room was suffocating.
“We’re going to talk,” Clayton said, helping her to her feet and over to her bed. “But first you need to sleep this off.” He pulled the covers back, then tucked her in like a child once she’d settled between them. “Leave the door unlocked.” He folded the clean washcloth and laid it across her forehead. “I’ll come back to check on you, and I’ll bring you something for your stomach.”
“You’re taking care of me?” she murmured, sinking into the pillow. No matter what she owed Chet, she couldn’t let Clayton fall into the trap. He was too good to her, better than anyone had ever been.
He turned to go, but she grabbed his wrist. “He’s coming back,” she said.
“Who?”
“My nephew.”
Clayton clasped her hand in his and gave it a squeeze. “Sleep now. You can tell me all about your nephew when you feel better.”
She wanted to argue, but her lips didn’t cooperate. The bed swayed slightly beneath her, and sleep crept in from the corners of her mind.
* * * *
“This is so good,” Rebecca said, holding a cheeseburger in one hand and a grease-spotted napkin in the other. “Climbing rocks makes me hungry.” About a mile outside downtown Canyon Creek, beneath the roadside marquee for Mike’s Burger Joint, she sat on the open tailgate of Gavin’s truck swinging her legs. The shorts and shoes she’d bought at the sporting goods store were dusted with red clay, but her new
dark jersey top hid the dirt well.
“Best in Wyoming. The place is a dive, but you can’t find a better burger.”
“I’m starting to think I can believe all these things you tell me,” she said, raking her gaze over him from head to toe. Her mind was still wrestling with the hint of a future he had thrown at her after they had scaled the rock face earlier. Next time we’ll climb the Tetons. They’re good for beginners and they’ll give you some bragging rights. She smiled. Next time. She played with the possibilities caught in those words, twisting them like putty. Turning them over and over. Front to back. Side to side. Corners stretched taunt and rolled together again. Next time.
Gavin wadded his wrapper and tossed it back in the bag. He squeezed her thigh and his eyes grew earnest. “I never imagined I’d meet you like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I never thought the woman I couldn’t live without would sign up for a week at our hokey ranch.”
“Now you’re really laying it on thick.” Her heart skipped. She could sell the connotations to Parker Brothers as a mind game. Next time. Can’t live without. The ball of energy that spun in her chest grew more frantic and she swallowed hard. Hints of a possible future together had unlocked what she had clamped down so tightly, not dared to let herself imagine.
Everything she had been holding back flooded her. It was too late to go home now, too late to save her heart. She had gotten everything she paid for, even the stuff she hadn’t banked on. Gavin really could make a woman fall in love with him in only a week, less than a week. There was still a day to go.
“I like you like this.” She wrapped the last of her burger, dropped it in the bag and stretched. Above, an eagle loop-d-looped in the pale blue sky. She would ride this as long as it lasted, ride it into the dirt, and figure out how to dust herself off when the time came.
“Like how?” His features softened and he cradled her neck in his hand.
“Without the hat.” She ran her palm up his thigh until she was leaning close enough to brush his lips with hers when she spoke. “Tell me why your marriage didn’t work.” This was it, either he was a man who could be trusted or he wasn’t. If he wasn’t, at least she would know who she was climbing into bed with.