Worth Winning

by Tricia Johnson

  “I’ll have to convince you to take it off,” he breathed.

  Before she could protest, he closed the distance, his mouth across hers. It was as if that last bit of contact was too much for her emotional dam to hold back and it burst. The desire she’d held at bay all day rushed forward and spilled over into the pit of her belly. Desire swirled like whitewater, churning, releasing the need she’d held back as well. Everything was hot—his lips, his skin as he hugged her chest harder to his, his hands, the one still at her back, the other now cupping her chin, caressing her cheek as his lips explored hers.

  She moaned and he used the opportunity to slip his tongue into her mouth, deepening the kiss. Her hands found his chest, and she touched him tentatively, still unable to believe he was here, real. The hard muscles under her hands were definitely real. His kiss was too real. She stroked upward then along his wide shoulders to clasp behind his neck. Her fingers buried in the hair at his nape.

  He backed up, and she followed. He broke the kiss for a moment when they tumbled backward to the bed, but then he quickly claimed her lips again, as if he were afraid to let her go. He rolled until he was on top of her, his hips slanted across hers pressing her to the quilt beneath. The kiss became harder, more insistent, as if he knew she was holding back. Could she just give in, for one night, and pretend that he loved her?

  Yes.

  Desire quickly combusted into lust. Sarah found herself chucking caution to the wind, using the love she felt for him to fan the flames, feeding the lust with conflicting emotions she’d controlled for so long to deepen the kiss on her part. He moaned and she felt a twinge of victory. Drew wanted her, not some skinny bimbo. Drew needed her, not that ginger-haired witch.

  She angled her hips under his, which put him smack between her legs. She moaned again, this time from the knowledge that he truly needed her. The evidence was there, hot between her thighs. Lust took on a headier burn, and when he cupped her breast with a large hand, she arched into him, wanting nothing more than to be his.

  “God, Sarah. I’ve dreamed of this for years. Make love with me.”

  Years.

  Sarah tensed in Drew’s arms, his words like ice water across her flaming body, unable to believe what she’d heard. A part of her was giddy with excitement. Drew noticed, he liked what she had to offer, and he wanted the whole picture. But there was a big part of Sarah that was smarter than that. He hadn’t noticed her for ten years, damn him. She’d been here, available, would have jumped at the chance to spend an evening in his arms, if he’d only noticed her. Yet he’d said, years.

  He lied.

  “Drew, no.” She pushed at his chest. “You don’t want me.”

  “Of course I do.” He ground his hips suggestively, and her cheeks flamed at the need he displayed.

  “I’m serious. Get off.” She smacked his hard chest, and he rolled from her, always the gentleman.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked in between heaving breaths of air.

  “Why?” she said on a hiss, still panting with desire. “Why now? Out of the blue? Am I your rebound sex? Is that it? Your way to get over Gina?”

  “What? No!” He sat up and ran a hand through his unruly hair, his eyes so dark and turbulent.

  Sarah sat up, too, and quickly jumped to the other bed. She grabbed a pillow and held it in front of her, ashamed. “It’s rebound sex, an early midlife crisis, or insanity. Pick one.”

  “I told you I made changes in my life. Three changes—I quit my job and dumped Gina. Do you want to know what the third change was?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Yes, I think you do.” He slid to the edge of his bed to stand in the channel between the two. She inched back to the headboard, staring at him warily.

  “The last change was that I finally decided to follow my heart. My heart belongs to a certain horse girl with hay in her hair and smudges of dirt on her nose. I love that you’re you, Sarah. You are who you are—sassy, talented, beautiful, smart. You’re a hell of a horsewoman. I love you. I want to be with you. I want to make love to you. I want to spend my life with you.”

  Sarah shook her head. Her dream had just become a nightmare. There was no way he was sincere. This had to be about something else. The horse. Her stomach did a flip-flop, and she fought for a breath. “I don’t believe you.”

  His blue eyes widened with shock. “Why not?”

  “Because it took you forever to notice me.” She shook her head again and hugged the pillow closer to her. “This has to be about Prima. Lay on the charm, get me to do whatever you want, even if it means taking me to your bed. You want money, and when she’s sound, that horse is worth a ton of it. You want a foal, and if sex with me gets you one, then so be it.”

  He stared at her as if she had grown an extra head. “Why would you think that? I’ve known you forever. You know I’m a nice guy.”

  Hysteria bubbled up in the form of a laugh. “You own fifty-one percent of my horse for a reason, and it’s not because you’re a nice guy. You could sell her out from under me, and I wouldn’t have money to fight you in court—you know that. But hey, you’re a nice guy. Why not sleep with me instead? Get me on your side, and when the time comes, who am I to fight you?”

  His eyes narrowed and his fine lips thinned. “Sarah. I don’t want to sell your horse.”

  The calmer he became, the more she felt out of control. “Then what? Why? Tell me the truth, because I find it hard to believe you’d just suddenly be interested in me after knowing me for this long.”

  “It’s not like that. Sarah, listen—”

  She shook her head again. “I’ve waited for you since I was sixteen. I am still a virgin because God help me, a part of me hoped. A part of me stacked up the competition against you, and they all fell short. And now I’m too busy and too tired to even want a boyfriend, never mind feeling like putting myself out there to make the beginning moves. So you think long and hard about what you just said to me, because I don’t believe for one moment your motives for wanting to be with me are sincere.”

  Drew blinked and sat down on the opposite bed, his face growing pale, as if she’d slapped him. He looked at her, his hands, and then back at her, as if he wanted to do something. Shake her, hold her… But instead, he rose and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry.”

  She didn’t feel the least bit sorry for him. “So am I. You just killed the one dream no one could take from me.”

  ****

  The next morning, Sarah rolled over at the knock on the door, still in bed, in his T-shirt. She’d been up, brushed her teeth, tried to shower and show she cared about life in general, but instead she’d returned to bed to sulk. It had to be Drew wanting in since he’d left right after apologizing and hadn’t returned. She didn’t ask where he was going, and at that point, a part of her hadn’t cared.

  She didn’t want to face him. She’d said way too much. She wished she had gone though with her New Year’s resolution to give up her virginity this year, to some nice guy, but it hadn’t happened. If it had, she wouldn’t be mortified that Drew knew. Crushed that he’d been willing to take the only gift she had for him in exchange for her horse. It wasn’t fair.

  He knocked again. No, she didn’t want to see him, but what choice did she have? She’d play it cool. Today they’d go home, he’d go back to being her silent partner, and she’d somehow pick up the pieces of her trashed heart.

  She pulled on her pajama bottoms and opened the door. Drew brushed past her, looking ragged, worn. So unlike any Drew she’d ever seen. He held a paper in his hand, and he shoved it at her.

  “What’s this?”

  “Just read it.”

  Angry, frustrated Drew was still a pleasure to the eyes, even though he scared her just a little. She stared, her heart in her throat, because again, this was so unlike him.

  “Read it,” he growled. “I’ll make it official when we get home, but this will do for now.”

  She glanced down at the p
aper in her shaking hands.

  I, Andrew Davenport, sell to Sarah Ames, my entire controlling portion of the mare Prima Dulce, for the sum of $1.

  She looked up at him in disbelief. “You’re crazy.”

  “Get me a dollar. Now.”

  “Why?” Her feet were rooted to the spot. She didn’t think she could move unless he shoved her, never mind get her legs to function willingly.

  He blew out a breath and gave her a look that told her he thought he was dealing with an idiot. “Because you don’t think I’m sincere that I love you. You think I’ll take her from you. Well, there’s your proof. Give me a dollar and she’s all yours.”

  Well, she wasn’t an idiot. There had to be more, though her heart wanted to believe him so badly. Drew was too much a businessman to give her this much of a gift. “You’d sell her to me. What’s the catch?”

  “No catch. She’s yours. You can choose to believe that I love you or not all on its own. The horse is no longer in play.”

  She looked at him with growing horror. “Are you doing this for sex? I give you my virginity, you give me the horse?”

  “Do you honestly think I’m that shallow?” he asked, his voice a terrible whisper, his face shocked in a way that matched exactly how she felt. “Is that what you really think of me?”

  She swallowed, ashamed. “No. I’m sorry.”

  He sighed and looked away. “Just get me a dollar, Sarah. She’ll be yours, and we can go home.”

  “No foal.”

  “No. I don’t want any part of it,” he snapped. He pointed to the bed. “Sarah, sit.”

  The command got her legs to function. She sat.

  “Can I sit next to you without you flipping out on me?”

  She eyed him warily. “Yes?”

  The mattress sagged as he sat on the bed, so close his thigh brushed hers. He took a calming breath, and his features schooled into a version of Drew she was more comfortable with. “I’m sorry I didn’t think this through better. In my mind, you were thrilled that I loved you, and we made love, and you accepted my ring, and it was perfect.”

  “There’s a ring?” She didn’t even want to talk about the love-making part. She would have wanted that more than anything if there weren’t strings attached. But a ring?

  “The condition to dating you, as far as Todd was concerned, was there had to be a ring involved.”

  The nightmare was getting worse and worse in her book. “Todd knew about this? Am I the last to know about everything?”

  He frowned as he looked down at her. “The day you turned sixteen, Todd took all of his friends aside and made it quite clear he had a can of whoop-ass for each one of us. If we wanted any part of you, there had to be a ring involved. Not a class ring, either. An engagement ring.”

  “But how could you just assume that I loved you? I never told you.”

  He looked a little uncomfortable and even a little sad. “Oh, baby, you’re not as closed about your heart as you think. Maybe you didn’t take out a billboard and proclaim your love, but there’s only so many times you can write Mrs. Andrew Davenport on a piece of paper in a notebook and not have me get it.”

  “I was sixteen!”

  “Yes. And at seventeen, you spent the summer alternating between checking me out and glaring at me. At eighteen, you drank too much and you reamed me out for being stupid and not realizing how much you loved me, and then you kissed me. At twenty-one you fed me cotton candy with your fingers, and I wanted nothing more than to suck them clean. I think you wanted that, too. As you grew older, you hid it better, but Todd loves telling me how filthy your mouth is when you go off about Gina and how wrong she was for me.”

  He remembered all those things, about her. She concentrated on the last one, since it was the easiest and safest. “She was a witch.”

  “That’s a polite assessment.” He reached over and took her hand in his. She didn’t struggle because it felt so good to touch him.

  He placed it on his lap and stared into her eyes, so earnest. “You want to know why she was a witch? Because she saw you as a threat. When we fought once, she told me I talked about you more than I mentioned Todd, and I realized that was bad. And every time she did something, I’d think, ‘Sarah would never do this.’

  “The last straw was when she cheated, because I knew you would never do that, and a part of me said, ‘So why aren’t you with Sarah?’ Gina found out I was looking at rings and assumed it was for her until I finally let her know I was ready to meet Todd’s conditions.”

  It made absolutely no sense to her aching mind, though her aching heart wanted to believe so badly. “So Todd is the one who kept us apart all these years?”

  Drew shook his head slowly. “Todd was right. I wasn’t ready, and I would have hurt you if he let me date you without the ring condition. At times, I was cocky and definitely stupid. Wall Street went to my head, and that man would have turned you into someone horrible, someone shallow and hateful, because that was who I had become.”

  She sucked in a breath. He could be an ass at times, but he was a guy. That’s how testosterone worked. “That’s not how I saw you.”

  “That man didn’t come home, though. That man stayed in Manhattan, and the real me came home to you, to Todd. I finally got sick of being two people, when my heart is here, with you. I love you, Sarah. I’ve waited ten years to say that.”

  Her eyes blurred with unshed tears as she stared at his face, so handsome as he proclaimed his love. She looked down at the paper in her hands, and a tear fell onto the white page. “But selling me your part of Prima, that’s a lot of money you’re giving up. Don’t you need it to start your business?”

  He shifted on the bed. “No, I sorta lied.”

  She looked up to see his discomfort. “What?”

  He smiled gently and wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “Well, I wanted you to go away with me, so I came up with this crazy plan.”

  See, he was crazy. “Why didn’t you just ask me to go away with you?”

  He arched a brow. “Would you have gone? Seriously?”

  “No.” She wouldn’t have believed him, even then. Her mind raced as fast as her heart. “You don’t need a foal.”

  “No. I made a lot of money in New York. I could happily retire. I didn’t lie about starting up a business. I’m doing that. I’m doing some consulting for other companies as well, because I’ll go crazy if I retire this young. But baby, I could buy you a hundred Primas and it wouldn’t hurt the bank account.”

  “You don’t need her.”

  “Nope. She’s all yours. You can breed her, ride her, retire her. I don’t care. I want you to be happy.”

  All mine… Suddenly, the nightmare became a fairy tale, one she was willing to believe. “But Doreen is expecting you to breed a mare to Festivo. You’ve already made payment.”

  “I’m looking into purchasing a couple of mares I can breed. I’ve talked to Todd, and he thinks it’s a great idea. That’s my motive behind learning to ride. If I own a horse, I should know how to put it through its paces.” His gaze took on a softer quality, and he rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. “I never realized that would be a hot button for you—my wanting a foal from Prima. And seeing your face when your nemesis rode in to the Gala last night, I realized I was way, way too close to stomping on your dreams. I’m sorry for pushing you like that.”

  The tears threatened to fall again. He understood. Maybe not all of what she felt about riding and Prima, but he understood enough to make it count. Maybe someday, she’d share the entire dream. “Everything I love gets taken away.”

  He nodded. “Starting with your parents.”

  “Yes.” That was the beginning. “After they died, I had this horse I loved that I was working with for clients. I was an idiot, pretending the horse was mine, but I was young, and I guess girls do that sort of thing. The owners changed barns after my parents died. They were unsure of how things would be run. It almost killed me. There were ot
her things, small things. And every time you moved in, and then moved out, it broke my heart.”

  He looked uncertain now and perhaps a bit shy. Her Drew never looked this way. He stared at her hand, and then back up at her face with earnest need. “So was I right? Do you love me?”

  “Yes. Yes, I love you.” Saying the words aloud she’d said so many times in her dreams, in her mind, was a heady, foreign experience. She swallowed, needing to hear them again. “I love you, Drew.”

  He pulled a small box from his pocket and opened it. A ring glittered with three diamonds set into the band—not the usual engagement ring but something just as beautiful that she could actually wear in the barn without worrying that it would hook something. She’d looked at the same ring over Labor Day weekend when she heard about Drew’s search for the one she was sure would be Gina’s. Sort of her way of saying goodbye to the entire dream. Her eyes flew to his. “How did you know?”

  “I caught you looking. I was already in the process of dumping Gina and making my plans to win you over.” He slid off the bed to one knee, removed the ring, and held it up. “Will you wear my ring? You don’t have to marry me, yet. I realize we need to get to know each other better, on this level. I don’t think Todd wants to force you into marriage. I think he just wants to make sure my intentions are very clear and noble.”

  “And are they noble?”

  “Of course. Sarah, your heart is a prize worth winning.”

  She laughed, the joy bubbling up from her heart. She allowed him to slide the ring on her finger, and she did something she had wanted to do for ten years—she grabbed his face in her hands and kissed him then leaned her forehead against his and gave him a soft smile. “Then I award you first place.”

  About the author…