by Maisey Yates
“So, do you want me to come back here tonight?”
“Actually,” she said, grabbing hold of her hands, twisting them, trying to deal with the nervous energy that was rioting through her, “I was thinking maybe I could come out a little bit early. And I could see where you work.”
She didn’t know why she was doing this. She didn’t know where she imagined it could possibly end or how it would be helpful to her in any way. To add more pieces of him to her heart, to her mind.
That’s what it felt like she was trying to do. Like collecting shells on the seashore. Picking up all the shimmering pieces of Sam she possibly could and sticking them in her little pail, hoarding them. Making a collection.
For what? Maybe for when it was over.
Maybe that wasn’t so bad.
She had pieces of David, whether she wanted them or not. And she’d entertained the idea that maybe she could sleep with someone and not do that. Not carry them forward with her.
But the reality of it was that she wasn’t going to walk away from this affair and never think of Sam again. He was never going to be the farrier again. He would always be Sam. Why not leave herself with beautiful memories instead of terrible ones? Maybe this was what she needed to do.
“You want to see the forge?” he asked.
“Sure. That would be interesting. But also your studio. I’m curious about your art, and I realize that I don’t really know anything about it. Seeing you in the Mercantile the other day talking to Lane...” She didn’t know how to phrase what she was thinking without sounding a little bit crazy. Without sounding overly attached. So she just let the sentence trail off.
But she was curious. She was curious about him. About who he was when he wasn’t here. About who he was as a whole person, without the blinders around him that she had put there. She had very purposefully gone out of her way to know nothing about him. And so he had always been Sam McCormack, grumpy guy who worked at her family ranch on occasion and who she often bantered with in the sharpest of senses.
But there was more to him. So much more. This man who had held her, this man who had listened, this man who seemed to know everyone in town and have decent relationships with them. Who created beautiful things that started in his mind and were then formed with his hands. She wanted to know him.
Yeah, she wouldn’t be telling him any of that.
“Were you jealous? Because there is nothing between myself and Lane Jensen. First of all, anyone who wants anything to do with her has to go through Finn Donnelly, and I have no desire to step in the middle of that weird dynamic and his older-brother complex.”
It struck her then that jealousy hadn’t even been a component to what she had felt the other day. How strange. Considering everything she had been through with men, it seemed like maybe trust should be the issue here. But it wasn’t. It never had been.
It had just been this moment of catching sight of him at a different angle. Like a different side to a prism that cast a different color on the wall and made her want to investigate further. To see how one person could contain so many different things.
A person who was so desperate to hide anything beyond that single dimension he seemed comfortable with.
Another thing she would definitely not say to him. She couldn’t imagine the twenty shades of rainbow horror that would cross Sam’s face if she compared him to a prism out loud.
“I was not,” she said. “But it made me aware of the fact that you’re kind of a big deal. And I haven’t fully appreciated that.”
“Of course you haven’t,” he said, his tone dry. “It interferes with your stable-boy fantasy.”
She made a scoffing sound. “I do not have a stable-boy fantasy.”
“Yes, you do. You like slumming it.”
Those words called up heated memories out of the depths of her mind. Him whispering things in her ear. His rough hands skimming over her skin. She bit her lip. “I like nothing of the kind, Sam McCormack. Not with you, not with any man. Are you going to show me your pretty art or not?”
“Not if you call it pretty.”
“You’ll have to take your chances. I’m not putting a cap on my vocabulary for your comfort. Anyway, if you haven’t noticed, unnerving people with what I may or may not say next is kind of my thing.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“You do it too,” she said.
His lips tipped upward into a small smile. “Do I?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know. You’re way too smart for that. And you act like the word smart is possibly the world’s most vile swear when it’s applied to you. But you are. You can throw around accusations of slumming it all you want, but if we didn’t connect mentally, and if I didn’t respect you in some way, this wouldn’t work.”
“Our brains have nothing to do with this.”
She lifted a finger. “A woman’s largest sexual organ is her brain.”
He chuckled, wrapping his arm around her waist and drawing her close. “Sure, Maddy. But we both know what the most important one is.” He leaned in, whispering dirty things in her ear, and she laughed, pushing against his chest. “Okay,” he said, finally. “I will let you come see my studio.”
She fought against the trickle of warmth that ran through her, that rested deep in her stomach and spread out from there, making her feel a kind of languid satisfaction that she had no business feeling over something like this. “Then I guess I’ll see you for the art show.”
Nine
Sam had no idea what in hell had possessed him to let Maddy come out to his property tonight. Chase and Anna were not going to let this go ignored. In fact, Anna was already starting to make comments about the fact that he hadn’t been around for dinner recently. Which was why he was there tonight, eating as quickly as possible so he could get back out to his place on the property before Maddy arrived. He had given her directions to go on the road that would allow her to bypass the main house, which Chase and Anna inhabited.
“Sam.” His sister-in-law’s voice cut into his thoughts. “I thought you were going to join us for dinner tonight?”
“I’m here,” he said.
“Your body is. Your brain isn’t. And Chase worked very hard on this meal,” Anna said.
Anna was a tractor mechanic, and formerly Chase’s best friend in a platonic sense. All of that had come to an end a few months ago when they had realized there was a lot more between them than friendship.
Still, the marriage had not transformed Anna into a domestic goddess. Instead, it had forced Chase to figure out how to share a household with somebody. They were never going to have a traditional relationship, but it seemed to suit Chase just fine.
“It’s very good, Chase,” Sam said, keeping his tone dry.
“Thanks,” Chase said, “I opened the jar of pasta sauce myself.”
“Sadly, no one in this house is ever going to win a cooking competition,” Anna said.
“You keep me from starving,” Sam pointed out.
Though, in all honesty, he was a better cook than either of them. Still, it was an excuse to get together with his brother. And sometimes it felt like he needed excuses. So that he didn’t have to think deeply about a feeling that was more driving than hunger pangs.
“Not recently,” Chase remarked. “You haven’t been around.”
Sam let out a heavy sigh. “Yes, sometimes a man assumes that newlyweds want time alone without their crabby brother around.”
“We always want you around,” Anna said. Then she screwed up her face. “Okay, we don’t always want you around. But for dinner, when we invite you, it’s fine.”
“Just no unexpected visits to the house,” Chase said. “In the evening. Or anytime. And maybe also don’t walk into Anna’s shop without knocking after hours.
”
Sam grimaced. “I get the point. Anyway, I’ve just been busy. And I’m about to be busy again.” He stood up, anticipation shooting through him. He had gone a long time without sex, and now sex with Maddy was about all he could think about. Five years of celibacy would do that to a man.
Made a man do stupid things, like invite the woman he was currently sleeping with to come to his place and to come see his art. Whatever the hell she thought that would entail. He was inclined to figure it out. Just so she would feel happy, so he could see her smile again.
So she would be in the mood to put out. And nothing more. Certainly no emotional reasoning behind that.
He couldn’t do that. Not ever again.
“Okay,” Anna said, “you’re always cagey, Sam, I’ll give you that. But you have to give me a hint about what’s going on.”
“No,” Sam said, turning to go. “I really don’t.”
“Sculpture? A woman?”
Well, sadly, Anna was mostly on point with both. “Not your business.”
“That’s hilarious,” Chase said, “coming from the man who meddled in our relationship.”
“You jackasses needed meddling,” Sam said. “You were going to let her go.” Of the two of them, Chase was undoubtedly the better man. And Anna was one of the best, man or woman. When Sam had realized his brother was about to let Anna get away because of baggage from his past, Sam had had no choice but to play the older-brother card and give advice that he himself would never have taken.
But it was different for Chase. Sam wanted it to be different for Chase. He didn’t want his younger brother living the same stripped-down existence he did.
“Well, maybe you need meddling too, jackass,” Anna said.
Sam ignored his sister-in-law and continued on out of the house, taking the steps on the porch two at a time, the frosted ground crunching beneath his boots as he walked across the field, taking the short route between the two houses.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, looking up, watching his breath float up into the dense sky, joining the mist there. It was already getting dark, the twilight hanging low around him, a deep blue ink spill that bled down over everything.
It reminded him of grief. A darkness that descended without warning, covering everything around it, changing it. Taking things that were familiar and twisting them into foreign objects and strangers.
That thought nibbled at the back of his mind. He couldn’t let it go. It just hovered there as he made his way back to his place, trying to push its way to the front of his mind and form the obvious conclusion.
He resisted it. The way that he always did. Anytime he got inspiration that seemed related to these kinds of feelings. And then he would go out to his shop and start working on another Texas longhorn sculpture. Because that didn’t mean anything and people would want to buy it.
Just as he approached his house, so did Maddy’s car. She parked right next to his truck, and a strange feeling of domesticity overtook him. Two cars in the driveway. His and hers.
He pushed that aside too.
He watched her open the car door, her blond hair even paler in the advancing moonlight. She was wearing a hat, the shimmering curls spilling out from underneath it. She also had on a scarf and gloves. And there was something about her, looking soft and bundled up, and very much not like prickly, brittle Maddy, that made him want to pull her back into his arms like he had done earlier that day and hold her up against his chest.
Hold her until she quit shaking. Or until she started shaking for a different reason entirely.
“You made it,” he said.
“You say that like you had some doubt that I would.”
“Well, at the very least I thought you might change your mind.”
“No such luck for you. I’m curious. And once my curiosity is piqued, I will have it satisfied.”
“You’re like a particularly meddlesome cat,” he said.
“You’re going to have to make up your mind, Sam,” Maddy said, smiling broadly.
“About what?”
“Am I vegetable or mammal? You have now compared me to both.”
“A tomato is a fruit.”
“Whatever,” she said, waving a gloved hand.
“Do you want to come out and see the sculptures or do you want to stand here arguing about whether or not you’re animal, vegetable or mineral?”
Her smile only broadened. “Sculptures, please.”
“Well, follow me. And it’s a good thing you bundled up.”
“This is how much I had to bundle to get in the car and drive over here. My heater is not broken. I didn’t know that I was going to be wandering around out in the dark, in the cold.”
He snorted. “You run cold?”
“I do.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
She lifted a shoulder, taking two steps to his every one, doing her best to keep up with him as he led them both across the expanse of frozen field. “Well, I’m usually very hot when you’re around. Anyway, the combination of you and blankets is very warming.”
“What happens when I leave?”
“I get cold,” she returned.
Something about those words felt like a knife in the center of his chest. Damned if he knew why. At least, damned if he wanted to know why.
What he wanted was to figure out how to make it go away.
They continued on the rest of the walk in silence, and he increased his pace when the shop came into view. “Over here is where Chase and I work,” he said, gesturing to the first building. “Anna’s is on a different section of the property, one closer to the road so that it’s easier for her customers to get in there, since they usually have heavy equipment being towed by heavier equipment. And this one is mine.” He pointed to another outbuilding, one that had once been a separate machine shed.
“We remodeled it this past year. Expanded and made room for the new equipment. I have a feeling my dad would piss himself if he knew what this was being used for now,” he continued, not quite able to keep the thought in his mind.
Maddy came up beside him, looping her arm through his. “Maybe. But I want to see it. And I promise you I won’t...do that.”
“Appreciated,” he said, allowing her to keep hold of him while they walked inside.
He realized then that nobody other than Chase and Anna had ever been in here. And he had never grandly showed it to either of them. They just popped in on occasion to let him know that lunch or dinner was ready or to ask if he was ever going to resurface.
He had never invited anyone here. Though, he supposed that Maddy had invited herself here. Either way, this was strange. It was exposing in a way he hadn’t anticipated it being. Mostly because that required he admit that there was something of himself in his work. And he resisted that. Resisted it hard.
It had always been an uncomfortable fit for him. That he had this ability, this compulsion to create things, that could come only from inside him. Which was a little bit like opening up his chest and showing bits of it to the world. Which was the last thing on earth he ever wanted to do. He didn’t like sharing himself with other people. Not at all.
Maddy turned a slow circle, her soft, pink mouth falling open. “Wow,” she said. “Is this all of them?”
“No,” he said, following her line of sight, looking at the various iron sculptures all around them. Most of them were to scale with whatever they were representing. Giant two-ton metal cows and horses, one with a cowboy upon its back, took up most of the space in the room.
Pieces that came from what he saw. From a place he loved. But not from inside him.
“What are these?”
“Works in progress, mostly. Almost all of them are close to being done. Which was why I was up at the cabin, remember? I’m tryi
ng to figure out what I’m going to do next. But I can always make more things like this. They sell. I can put them in places around town and tourists will always come in and buy them. People pay obscene amounts of money for stuff like this.” He let out a long, slow breath. “I’m kind of mystified by it.”
“You shouldn’t be. It’s amazing.” She moved around the space, reaching out and brushing her fingertips over the back of one of the cows. “We have to get some for the ranch. They’re perfect.”
Something shifted in his chest, a question hovering on the tip of his tongue. But he held it back. He had been about to ask her if he should do something different. If he should follow that compulsion that had hit him on the walk back. Those ideas about grief. About loss.
Who the hell wanted to look at something like that? Anyway, he didn’t want to show anyone that part of himself. And he sure as hell didn’t deserve to profit off any of his losses.
He gritted his teeth. “Great.”
“You sound like you think it’s great,” she said, her tone deeply insincere.
“I wasn’t aware my enthusiasm was going to be graded.”
She looked around, the shop light making her hair look even deeper gold than it normally did. She reached up, grabbing the knit hat on her head and flinging it onto the ground. He knew what she was doing. He wanted to stop her. Because this was his shop. His studio. It was personal in a way that nothing else was. She could sleep in his bed. She could go to his house, stay there all night, and it would never be the same as her getting naked here.
He was going to stop her.
But then she grabbed the zipper tab on her jacket and shrugged it off before taking hold of the hem of her top, yanking it over her head and sending it the same way as her outerwear.
Then Maddy was standing there, wearing nothing but a flimsy lace bra, the pale curve of her breasts rising and falling with every breath she took.
“Since it’s clear how talented your hands are, particularly here...” she said, looking all wide-eyed and innocent. He loved that. The way she could look like this, then spew profanities with the best of them. The way she could make her eyes all dewy, then do something that would make even the most hardened cowboy blush. “I thought I might see if I could take advantage of the inspirational quality of the place.”