And Rae quickly discovered that a major disadvantage to living in town—with Hope, no less—was that it severely limited her ability to put distance between the two of them when Hope was being impossible.
Instead of heading back to the Mortimer house, seat of the supposed curse, she took a detour to Cold River Coffee instead. She found it fairly empty at this hour on a Saturday evening, thirty minutes before the coffee shop closed for the day. She loved the place, from its battered wooden floors to its distressed brick walls. The fireplace in one corner, the comfortable sofa, the overstuffed bookshelves. Perfect for a sulk and a huge mug of hot chocolate.
Rae was asking herself why she didn’t come and hang out here more often when the answer presented itself.
In the form of Amanda Kittredge coming out from the back.
She was Amanda Everett these days, Rae corrected herself. Who had spent years working here, but had given up her job as a coffee slinger to open up her adorable little barn filled with local goods down by the river. Or anyway, Rae had heard it was adorable, because she certainly hadn’t gone in and looked herself. She and Amanda had an unspoken agreement to avoid each other whenever possible.
But here they were. Face-to-face.
Rae smiled. Amanda … did not.
And Rae was forced to consider the possibility that the reason no one from the fast-approaching Harvest Gala had returned her calls was standing right in front of her.
“I’m surprised to see you here,” Rae said, choosing to act as if Amanda was being perfectly polite. And as if the notion Amanda was deliberately excluding Rae—and therefore her family—from the gala didn’t make her stomach hurt. “I thought you were busy with your new place.”
Amanda smiled then, which wasn’t much of an improvement, because it wasn’t a particularly nice smile. But the minute she thought that, Rae cautioned herself against it. She barely knew Amanda any longer. She shouldn’t be categorizing her smiles, for God’s sake.
“I had every intention of extending an olive branch,” Amanda told her.
“I wasn’t aware we needed an olive branch.”
“I meant to. I really did. But that was before you decided to party with some other guy right in Riley’s face.”
Rae would have preferred to discuss the Mortimer family curse for another twenty hours, conclude that it existed and was the reason all the Mortimer women were single, and then apologize to Hope for doubting her. That would have been much better than this.
“I actually came in here for a hot drink,” she said as steadily as she could. “Not for an attack.”
“I’m not attacking you. I’m telling you.”
“That you decided to stop being mean to me after all these years, but thought better of it? You could have just continued to be mean, Amanda. I wouldn’t have noticed the difference.”
“I’ve never been mean to you,” Amanda protested. “The same thing can’t be said for how you’ve treated my brother, however.”
That was so unfair it made Rae feel scraped raw. Like she’d had a marriage on her own—but this was Riley’s younger sister. As much as she might want to, Rae couldn’t unload on her. It wouldn’t be right, and she knew it.
But it was a close call.
“I’m not having this conversation with you,” she managed to say.
Rae turned to head back out again, but stopped, shocked, when Amanda grabbed her arm.
“You have to know how Riley feels about you, don’t you?” Amanda looked at her as if she were searching Rae’s face for clues. “I’ve spent all this time assuming that you know, but maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re not deliberately being cruel. He’s been head over heels in love with you forever, Rae. Whether you were together, not together, or whatever in-between state there might have been, that’s never changed.”
“Riley and I are friends,” Rae gritted out, though she was getting tired of saying it, and it was starting to make her mouth hurt. “I don’t understand why that’s so hard for people to get their heads around, but it’s true. And I don’t think this is anybody’s business but ours, but nothing happened last night that your brother didn’t heartily approve of. If not cheer on.”
“Oh, come on, Rae.” Instead of looking angry or spiteful, Amanda looked almost … sad. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
And that was how Rae found herself in her truck, making the drive she’d told herself she would never make again. Out of Cold River, over the hill, and way out into the far reaches of the Longhorn Valley. Skirting the roads that led to Cold River Ranch or the Bar K and taking the unmarked dirt roads that led toward the foothills instead. She followed the road she knew best by heart, into the woods and then up and around that long drive. She knew the way here better than she knew the way home.
It was like déjà vu.
She pulled into the yard and sat there a moment, questioning herself.
This time was different, she was sure of that, but still. She sat where she was, staring up at the house. Try as she might, she could never convince herself that there was a prettier house around. Probably because Riley had built it. And she’d helped. And every last board, nail, window, and porch had been crafted for a future they’d believed in deeply, once.
“Things change,” she muttered.
She slid out of the truck, slamming the door loudly behind her. Usually, that brought Riley out, but there was no sign of him. One of these nights you’re going to show up here and I’m not going to open the door, he’d said a lifetime ago. But she told herself that couldn’t be happening tonight.
They. Were. Friends.
Rae stood there a moment, rethinking her decision to come out here—but no. She was here already. Creeping off back into town wasn’t going to make her feel any better about things.
There were lights on inside the house, but she made her way toward the barn instead, because if he were in the house, she knew he would have made that clear.
The night and the weather were conspiring against her, she thought as she walked across the yard. The snow had held off, but the air still felt swollen with the promise of it—especially farther up and closer to the mountains. There was that sweet, sharp scent in the wind and a kind of agitation inside her that made her belly tremble in on itself.
Her boots seemed loud against the cold earth beneath them, but then again, her heartbeat was so loud it was drowning everything else out.
Calm down, she ordered herself. You didn’t come here for that.
For one thing, if she’d been here for the usual reasons, she wouldn’t be here so early in the evening. That had always been a late-night mistake. One she’d repeated entirely too often.
She wasn’t here tonight to make any mistakes.
Rae slipped into the barn and stood there a moment, another wave of déjà vu and sweet familiarity sweeping over her. While her flower shop smelled like hope, this barn smelled like a whole selection of dreams that had belonged to her at a different point in time. She liked to think of those dreams as lost, but here—where it smelled of hay and horses, rich and comforting and warm—she thought maybe they weren’t lost, after all. Maybe they were here and always had been, waiting all the while.
They’re not waiting for you, she reminded herself starkly, the sharp edge inside her reminding her it was there. That it could draw blood. None of this is yours any longer. You chose that yourself.
She was still feeling buffeted by that when a figure detached itself from the nearest stall, materialized into Riley, and was suddenly … right there. Much too close.
Much too … him.
All she saw was that face of his. That mouth. That gleam in his dark eyes that was wired straight into the deepest parts of her but particularly between her legs.
And worse, her heart.
“Riley…,” she tried to say.
“Friends with benefits?” he asked, something too hot to be amusement in that low drawl of his. “Works for me.”
Then he slid a hard, p
ossessive hand around the back of her neck, held her where he wanted her, and kissed her.
12
Riley kept telling himself he wasn’t pissed.
Rae had danced with Tate Bishop. She’d had a drink with him. Riley had been right there, witness to the entire thing, and had even done Rae the considerable favor of grinning like a fool the whole time so no one could claim he’d had any problem with the scene she was making. The scene he’d encouraged her to make.
Why would he be pissed about that?
If he’d happened to pay extra close attention to who left when and where they went, all that meant was that he’d been concerned for Rae. He’d wanted to make sure no harm came to her. He would have done the same for anyone.
Bonus was, he knew that Tate and Rae hadn’t gone anywhere together.
One dance and one drink. It was exactly what he’d wanted her to do.
Because she’d been lying to herself for a very long time and hadn’t exactly welcomed his attempts to point that out. He figured that meant she was the one who had to work her own way back to the truth.
Riley just hadn’t expected it to get to him the way it had. The way it did.
Reason had nothing to do with it. Rational thought? Forget it.
Once he’d made sure that Rae had walked herself to the Mortimer house safely, which he told himself he would have done for any woman wandering around the streets, he’d fumed all the way home. Nor was his mood particularly improved by morning, when he had to listen to entirely too much commentary from Jensen, as usual, and this time with Connor there to get in a few licks himself.
It had taken his new client’s treacherous filly to nip at him a little, obviously annoyed that she wasn’t the focus of his full attention, for Riley to get it.
He was insanely jealous.
Something he thought he’d wrestled under control until he heard her truck in his yard.
He’d thought he was hallucinating it. But no. There was only one death trap that sounded like that and still only one person who would drive up here in it.
And he hadn’t meant to kiss her. Really, he hadn’t.
But he also didn’t do a single thing to stop himself.
Because Rae didn’t taste like a friend. She tasted like his.
The way she always had.
All that heat and longing. The grip of their history, the kick of new desire that he was always sure wouldn’t turn up again. Not this time. Until it did.
And it had been too long. Weeks without her. It was like torture.
It wasn’t only him. Rae made a low, almost pained sound, then melted against him. Her arms snuck around his waist, under his coat, the way she always liked to hold him. And she kissed him back, ferocious and something like feral, and nothing at all like friends.
Not even friends with benefits, to his mind. But he was too busy intoxicating himself with her to point that out.
She shrugged out of her coat. He got rid of his.
All the while, he kissed her again and again, hardly aware of it when she knocked his hat off. But loving it when she launched herself at him, knowing that he would catch her. And he did, hauling her up against him so she could wrap her legs around his waist and he could remind himself that she was in possession of the finest butt in Colorado. And possibly the whole freaking world.
Better still, it meant that all their best parts were pressed tight against each other.
She was little and he was big, and Riley had always enjoyed things they could do with that. He carried her over to the nearest wall, easily, and then wedged her there the way he’d been doing since they were teenagers.
Because he liked to take his time. He liked to kiss his way down her neck until she shivered against him and her skin broke out in goose bumps. He liked to move his hips against hers, a little roll that made her breath catch. He tugged her shirt off and got his hands in all that thick hair of hers, then tortured them both with the way he kissed her. When the only thing separating her from being naked up top was one of those outrageously lacy, feminine bras she wore.
And when she was shaking, and he was half-crazy with it, he took that off too.
Because her breasts were a wonder.
He had thought so years ago, and the wonder hadn’t dimmed in the slightest in all the years between. He bent and took one straining peak in his mouth, because she was velvet and she was sweet and, best of all, she was sensitive. When he sucked, she jolted—and that was even better.
She was as greedy as he was. Her hands were beneath his shirt, tracking up his spine like flames. Her nails dug into his back, and that was like throwing gas into the situation.
Riley welcomed the rush of the ignition.
He lifted her away from the wall, one hand on the back of her head and the other around her hips. Their mouths crashed together. They each plundered and explored, tasted and teased, because this fire had always been uncontrollable. It had always burned too hot, too bright, too wild.
He liked carrying her. All those curves pressed against him, his arms full of her and the way she liked to ride him with her ankles crossed around his back.
But he wanted her too much. He always had.
Riley carried her over to the nearest stall, filled with sweet-smelling hay and empty of any occupant at the moment, and set her down. But only long enough to strip off his shirt, throwing it over the hay like a blanket.
Then she was in his arms again. And they were fighting the way they always did, but this fight was the one he liked. This was a fight of clever hands and hot mouths. This was a fight to tear off each other’s clothes, and once they did, they fell down together into the bed he’d made.
And it had been so long. They always burned hot, but this seemed brighter.
His hands moved over her skin, reveling how soft she was, how warm. How perfectly she fit him, wherever he put his palms.
Rae was throwing a leg over him, straddling him as he fell back into the embrace of the hay. And he was helping her, or she was doing it. It didn’t matter which.
It was the fight of it, the battle, his favorite thing in all the world, and then—
She reached between them and took hold of him where he was the hardest. Her breath came in desperate pants as she guided him between her legs.
He felt her heat. Her need. He felt his own like a pulse.
Then he slid himself home.
And Rae exploded.
He gripped her hips as she arched backward, surrendering herself completely. It was the hottest thing he’d ever seen. It always was. She gave herself fully, and watching her come apart was raw and beautiful. It made him so hard he had to fight to maintain his control.
She shook and she shook. And before she was done, he began to move her. He lifted her up, then slammed her back down, and laughed at the sheer joy of it.
Of this.
Of finding himself deep inside her again. That seamless, perfect fit that she would say was the ruin of them when he thought it was their glory.
And it didn’t matter which one of them was right, or if they both were, because there was only the thrust, the retreat.
The way she said his name and the way she slumped forward, so that her hair fell between them and around them. The way he lifted up so he could get his mouth on one of her nipples again.
This dance that never ended.
Riley didn’t see how he would ever have enough of it. Of her.
He felt her begin to tighten again. And still he kept going, that fierce, hard, demanding rhythm he knew she loved as much as he did.
And soon enough, she began to quiver, then shake. He watched her do it, marveling in all that raw beauty that was only for him, only and ever for him—
Rae cried out his name. And as she shattered and soared, Riley went with her.
And for a long time afterward, there was only the weight of her against his chest. The way her breath and his sawed in and out of their lungs, tangled together. He was still inside her. His hands were
still tangled in her hair, he could feel her heart hammering in her chest and his own too.
At moments like this, Riley sometimes forgot there was any tension between them or ever had been.
Because how could there be? When they had this?
But that wasn’t a question that he was likely to ever know the answer to. He was better off lying there and enjoying what he had. Because soon enough, she would stir. And when she did, she would come to her senses the way she always did. And then take off, the way she always did.
Riley knew that if he wanted anything to change, he had to change first. And maybe do something neither one of them always did.
When she finally did move again, pushing herself away from him, he didn’t do what he always did. He didn’t ask a rough question designed to scrape at her. He didn’t act like he didn’t know exactly what she was doing. He didn’t start up their endless fight again.
Riley was amazed how difficult it was not to poke and prod at her with all the same old weapons. Suggesting that he was not, in fact, the saint in this he sometimes liked to pretend he was.
Especially when her face fell and she looked at him as if she despaired of them both. That he was familiar with that expression didn’t make him like it any. He knew this was usually when he started in on her with the same old questions she never answered.
You’re about as far from a saint as it’s possible to get, he told himself then. Who are you kidding?
But he was being friendly tonight. If it killed him.
“Hey,” he said, in his best approximation of the kind of genial, amiable person who engaged in these scenarios with friends. “We’re friends with benefits, that’s all. And you have to admit, Rae. It’s a pretty great benefit.”
She rolled away from him, shoving her hair away from her face and not meeting his gaze. “I promised myself this was never, ever going to happen again.”
“What you’re talking about didn’t happen,” Riley said, practically hurting himself in his attempt to sound completely casual. And so freaking friendly it made his throat ache. “This was something else.”
He jackknifed to his feet and tugged his jeans and boots back on. Then he moved around the stall, gathering the rest of their clothes. He handed her what was hers, pretending he didn’t notice the way she kept her eyes downcast. Unfriendly Riley would have been all over that, but Friends with Benefits Riley left her to it. By the time she finished pulling her pants back on, he was already dressed and coming back into the stall to give her the shirt he only vaguely recalled stripping off her.
Secret Nights with a Cowboy Page 15