Breaking Brent (22 page)

Looking completely satisfied with herself, she cuddled up next to his side, laid one of her legs across the both of his and rested her head against his shoulder. He felt his muscles roll and play underneath his skin and was sure she felt them as well. When she spoke, her voice sounded soft and sleepy and the tone reverberated throughout his body and soul.

“This is nice.”

He could only grunt in reply. Entwined together, per her doing, they both lay still and silent with the overhead blanket of light as their only cover.

“How long have we been friends?” Without thinking, he brushed a few of the fallen locks of hair away from her face and tucked them behind one of her dainty ears. When had her skin become so soft? When had she stopped being just a
friend
and turned into something so much more? A year ago? Maybe two?

“Forever. But things change. Who’s to say that when I come back for Christmas you won’t be settled down with some old skank?” The way she snarled her nose brought a laugh to his lips.

“What makes you think I’m the one that’ll end up with a skank?” He felt her shrug and watched as a whole book of emotions played across her face. If it hadn’t been for the light if the moon he wouldn’t have seen a one, but thanks to its shine he saw them all. Fear. Disappointment. Pain. What was going on with her? “Besides, who’s to say when you get to college you won’t find a boyfriend or two and forget all about Carter and me.” Forget about
me
. He was glad he’d included Carter in his statement—it was better that way.

“I might just do that.” She put on one of the fake smiles Brent had seen a thousand times before. Maybe it was the alcohol making her talk and feel the way she was. Or maybe it was her nerves talking. It was something—he just didn’t know what.

“Well, when we come to visit you at college you best tell him to hit the road while we’re in town. You know how we are about what’s ours—we’re not real big on sharing.” He tried to make his comment light, funny and friendly, but he felt he failed miserably.

“Yeah, right.” She pushed herself up from her curled position and scooted to the edge of the blanket and started again with her damned fiddling and brushing. “Carter’s already told me he’s going to be entirely too busy to drive down and see me, and you know as well as I do the two of you always travel in a pair.”

“That’s just Carter talkin’. You know he doesn’t mean half of what he says, and then you can’t believe the other half that comes out of his mouth.” Carter was a sweet talker who very rarely followed through with what he said—no matter how big or small.

“You know he’s heading off with his brother to rodeo?” That fact wasn’t news to Brent. He knew Carter was itching to get out of Millbrook. He always had been. Nothing could tie Carter down—nothing at all.

“He just wants to see some of the world before he settles down is all.” Brent tensed a bit as she moved closer and as her fingers toyed with the buttons of his shirt. Shit, at this pace he would bust the seams of his breeches in no time. He tried to think about anything besides her and her fingers and her hair and her everything.

Trees came to mind.

His mother’s chicken casserole.

His grandmother, Faith, and how she always smelled like Windsong and soap, but apple blossoms were so much better. Shit.

Brent closed his eyes and counted to ten and then to twenty. When he opened them again, feeling more calm and more in control, her face was just inches away from his.

“What about you?”

“What about me what?” He tried to make his breathing more shallow so that her breasts didn’t flirt and play as much against his chest.

“Do you want to see the world before you decide to settle down?”

“My world’s right here. It always has been—it always will be.” Once more, he tucked a few loose strands of hair behind her ear and couldn’t help but linger.

“If I asked you to do a favor for me, would you do it?” Her voice had dropped to barely more than a whisper, but he had no trouble hearing her, thanks to their close proximity.

“I always have before. I don’t see why that would change now.” Brent sent her a teasing smile and tugged on the strand of hair he couldn’t stop running his fingers through.

“Kiss me.”

“What?” To Brent’s ears he sounded as if he had swallowed a frog. He tried to move her off and away from him, but she wasn’t budging.

“Kiss me.”

Brent tried once more to put some space between her soft, sweet body and his, which seemed to be growing harder by the minute. He finally gave in, lifted his head and pecked her lips with his. When he drew away, he saw a disappointed look mar her features.

“What?” he asked as if he didn’t know.

“Not like that. I want a real kiss. I want you to kiss me like you mean it.” Again, her lips were inches from his.

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” The pouty look she had on her face made him want to laugh, but he resisted. Just as he resisted his natural instincts to kiss her and keep on kissing her until she forgot all the other kisses she’d ever had and any she would ever have.

“Because. If I kiss you, for real, I won’t be able to stop myself.” There was the truth. She could take it or leave it. He just wondered what she would do with it now that she had it.

“Then don’t.”

Without hesitating, Brent grasped her by the neck, pulled her face to his and took her lips just as he dreamed of doing every night when he went to sleep.

The kiss was meant to be sweet and suggestive and it did the job. Moments after her lips opened for his, he rolled her underneath him, locking them together for an eternity. When he finally stopped and pulled away, he liked what he saw. Her lips were swollen from his assault and her breathing was just as ragged as his own. Brent didn’t think his mind and body could race out of control any more than it all ready was—he was wrong.

“More.”

That was the end—or the beginning. Brent’s next kiss led into another and then another. Before dawn crept over the plains of the Kiel ranch, Brent had kissed nearly every inch of her body, clothed and unclothed, and taken what she had given him without a bit of guilt.

They’d both watched the sun break the night into a thousand pieces as they lay wrapped in each other’s arms, his body still deep within hers. The fact that she was leaving in a week’s time had left him with a bit of emptiness deep down, but he had known she would come home. She would come home to him—and he would be waiting for her.

Brent opened his eyes and the memory vanished, but the ache lingered. He had waited on her—waited on her and then pushed her out without a blink of an eye. But this time it was different. This time he hadn’t pushed her away, but he hadn’t tried to pull her away from Carter either. He had let her go—along with his heart.

Chapter Twenty-One

“We need to talk.” Peyton heard Carter’s voice before she saw his face. He was standing just outside the bathroom door, out of arm and fist’s reach.

“You still mad at me?”

Peyton lifted her head from the bathroom sink, toothbrush still stuck in her mouth, and scowled at Carter via the mirror.

“I said I was sorry.”

She shook her head, rolled her eyes and then spit the combination of toothpaste and water into the sink in a less than ladylike manner. She grabbed the towel from the towel rack, scrubbed her mouth with it and then left the bathroom and Carter staring after her.

“Peyton,” he called after her, but she ignored him. “Peyton will you stop?” Carter caught up with her as she was about to enter her bedroom—the one place he was forbidden to enter as of last night. Carter had slumbered in the guest bedroom on the bed that had mysteriously lost its sheets and blankets. They were resting safely in the bottom of Peyton’s closet and she would replace them when she didn’t see red when she looked at him.

“Where the hell have you been, Carter?” She turned quickly on her bare feet, crossed her arms over her breasts and stared him down and waited. “I have called you every day, several times a day, for the past week, and you pick two days ago, of all the fucking days, to show up.

“Sorry, darlin’. My phone got turned off and by the time I got it turned back on I had missed all of your calls.”

“You know, if you would pay the bill your phone wouldn’t get turned off and you wouldn’t miss my calls and my voice messages telling you that I hadn’t had the chance to tell anybody that our
engagement
was off. If you had paid your phone bill you would have known what a shit storm everything was around here and why I haven’t gotten around to telling anybody yet.”

“You’ve had months, Peyton. Months. Don’t blame me for coming to check on you and interfering with you and Brent and whatever the hell is going on between you two.”

“Well, there’s nothing going on between us so you don’t have to worry about
interrupting
anything.”

“Didn’t look that way from where I stood. You looked a little flustered to see me, and Kiel didn’t look much better. At least he didn’t hit me this time.” Peyton could hear the stupid smile cross his face before she saw it. She knew he was goading her and loving it at the same time.

“Don’t mess with me, Carter. I’m not in the mood.”

“You ain’t kidding. By the way, why haven’t you told anyone about us calling it off? I mean, we decided this months ago. Didn’t anyone question my absence or my lack of attention concerning my fiancée?”

“Carter, you weren’t around when we were engaged for real, and now that we aren’t here you are. You and all your glory.” She turned her back on him and moved into the confines of her bedroom. She needed to clear her head and get ready. True to his form, Reed had taken up with his old ways and asked her to take his night shift. True to hers, she’d agreed. She didn’t have anything better to do

“Did you want me to look like the bad guy, Peyton?” he spoke to her back and his soft, guilt-filled tone made her insides clench with regret. She met his eyes in the mirror above her dresser and saw that he still remained more in the hallway than not. He was still abiding by her rule that he not come anywhere near her, her room or her bed on pain of death and dismemberment.

“You’re not the bad guy in my book, Carter. You never have been and you never will be.”

“But I’m not the hero either, am I? I never was. That spot was reserved by someone else a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

“Carter—”she started, but he stopped her by holding up his hand.

“You know you and I never kept any secrets. Not a one. I told you everything and you told me everything. When did that stop, Pey?” Peyton only shook her head as if she didn’t know when that had happened, but she knew when it had. Their secret sharing had stopped when he had dropped to his knee and asked her to marry him. Everything had changed that day or soon after.

“Do you think we would have ever gone through with it? Getting married? Living in the same house or even the same town for longer than a few weeks at a time? Would you have been happy?”

“You make me happy, Peyton. You always have, but this town has never held anything for me. Never has—never will. I thought for awhile that as long as I had you here waiting for me everything would be okay. That I could make a go at it, but then I realized something.”

“What’s that?”

It was then that Carter crossed the threshold, moved behind her and turned her from the mirror so she had to look at him without the safety of the mirror separating them. He took her hands in his, ran his thumbs carefully over her fingers and the ring he had given her and then spoke.

“I realized you weren’t happy.”

“I was happy.”

“You can say it, but it doesn’t make it true. You put a smile on your face, but it was a fake one to say the least. I know you probably better than anyone. Your smile has always been so carefree and without thought. It was natural. It was one of the things I love about you, but it changed. I don’t know when, but I know it did, and I didn’t like it. I worried myself about your smile. I thought I was the reason your smile changed, that it faded, and I hated myself for that.”

“I never wanted you to worry about me or hate yourself over a stupid little thing like a smile.”

“A smile is never a stupid little thing, especially yours.” He moved his hand to her jaw and his knuckles tipped her head from his chest to his face. “I love you too much to make you miserable.”

“You don’t make me miserable.”

“But I don’t make you happy. I tried, really I did.”

“I know you did. You tried more than you should have.” She took one of his hands between her own and gripped it tightly. She was relieved when he squeezed hers in return.

“When are you going to tell your folks about us?”

“I don’t know. With all that’s going on I just don’t think that now would be a great time to pop in with my problems. We’ve got enough of those already.”

“I’m not staying in town, Peyton.” She knew that he wouldn’t. She didn’t expect him to. There was nothing keeping him here.

“You don’t have to stick around on my account, Carter.”

“Would it be easier if talked to Brent and told him what was going on instead of him hearing it from the town gossip?”

She started to speak, once, then twice, but nothing would come out. She didn’t know what to say. “I got the feeling last night that he was there to see you for more than just a friendly chat and was shocked as hell to see me.”

“It’s nothing. I thought maybe it could have been something, but I was wrong. Again. Go figure.”

“Did you want to be right?”

“Of course I wanted to be right. Who doesn’t want to be right? I thought that maybe, after all this time, that things could be different. Chase and Willa are married now, all the boys are grown—well, nearly, and the ranch is flourishing. I let my heart fool my head enough to think that his words had only been words and not anything more, but like I said, I was wrong. He only wants me when he can’t have me.” To add momentum to her point she held up her left hand and let her ring sparkle for all it was worth.

“Why are you still wearing that?”

“Would you believe that I didn’t want to lose it?”