A Real Cowboy Never Says No (12 page)

Chase moved his hand, spreading his palm over her left breast.

She tensed, hating the way her nipple tightened at the contact. She wouldn't have sex with him again right now. She couldn't. She needed her space—

"Your heart is racing," he mumbled, his voice still heavy with sleep. "What's wrong?"

Her heart was racing
? That was why he'd spread his hand over her breast? To check on her, not seduce her? Tears suddenly filled her eyes, and exhaustion overwhelmed her. "Don't be nice."

He grunted, and shifted. Before she could react, he pulled her onto his chest, so she was looking right at him. His eyes were at half-mast, and he looked so sinfully sexy that she wanted nothing more than to scoot up his body and kiss him until he made love to her again.

He reached up, gently moving her hair off her face. He sifted through her curls, his fingers deftly untangling the knots. As sleep wore off, his eyes were becoming more alert, roaming her face carefully. "Why are you panicking?"

She cleared her throat. "I'm not panicking."

He smiled, a half-smile that showcased the dimple in his left cheek. "Sweetheart, I make a living by knowing how to read the physical cues of my horses. I'm really good at it." His fingers were comforting as they worked through her hair, and she couldn't help but begin to relax. "I wake up after the best sex of my life, to find that your entire body has gone rigid, your heart is racing like a filly in flight, and you don't even want to look at me. So, yeah, panicking. It's my job to make that go away. It's what I do."

She immediately dragged her eyes off his chin and met his gaze. "The best sex of your life?"

"Hell, yeah." His gaze was thoughtful, still roaming over her face and her hair, as if he were trying to imprint her on his memory. "This complicates things," he said.

"I know." She bit her lip, trying desperately not to lose herself in the magic he was weaving in her hair. "I'm not ready for this."

His fingers stilled. "You loved AJ," he said quietly. "Shit. Sorry. I rushed you into this."

"Well, of course I loved him..." She saw his face become shuttered, and realized what he was thinking. "Not like that. He was my best friend, but I didn't love him romantically." She suddenly saw a chance to try to explain. "We'd never even kissed before a month ago. We were both so devastated by my mother's death. It was like we were trying to hold onto her through each other. It's weird to say, but it wasn't sex. It was more like...survival, trying not to drown in the grief. I don't know if that makes sense." She felt her cheeks redden. "I don't sleep around. AJ was the first guy I'd been with since Brian, and then you. I mean, that's it. I—"

She stopped when he brushed a kiss over her knuckles, her belly clenching.

"Mira."

She swallowed. "What?"

He pressed another kiss to her knuckles. "I know who you are. You don't need to try to explain it. I've seen you through the eyes of a man who respected and trusted you more than anyone else on the planet. There's no chance that I'd be judging you."

For a moment, she started to relax, and then his words sank in, the truth behind his beautiful speech. "You know me through AJ," she said.

"Of course. I've known you for more than ten years." He brushed a tendril of hair back from her face. "You're the one who saved him. You brought him back home to your family and you welcomed him. You never cared about his deformed foot, and you taught him to look past it." He frowned, searching her face. "I've been waiting for you for ten years, Mira. I didn't know it, until I saw you in that church two days ago."

"Ten years?" She frowned.

He nodded. "Since the first week of college, when AJ first mentioned you. I was bitter, and I hated women. You seemed to be an exception, though, a woman worth trusting. AJ didn't believe in anyone except you, and I soon realized you were someone I had to meet." He grinned. "It took ten years, but at least we finally met."

Betrayal seemed to wrap around her heart, and she bit her lip, reality finally sinking in. She now, finally, understood why he'd brought her back to Wyoming. It wasn't simply because of AJ, which she had been able to accept. It was also because he saw her as some magical fantasy woman who would save his world. He wanted her to rescue him, the way she'd rescued AJ.

The hurt bit deep, as deeply as it had when Brian had betrayed her. Her college love had wanted her to be a fun-loving co-ed, and he'd tossed her aside when he'd realized she wasn't always the carefree socialite she'd been in college. Now, Chase was the opposite. He saw her only as a salvation who could soothe the scars he still carried from his terrible childhood. He wanted her to save him, like he thought she'd done for AJ, like she'd tried to do for her mother.

She had nothing left to give him, nothing left to give anyone else. She wanted him, someone,
anyone,
to see her as she really was. She wanted someone to see that the woman who put on a brave front was terrified. She wanted someone to realize that the woman who took care of other people wanted someone to hold her up. She needed someone to realize that even though she cried, sometimes she just wanted to forget life and be a little irresponsible and fun.

"I'm not a goddess," she said, rolling off him. "I'm just me. I get angry. I cry. I yell. I break promises. I'm not perfect, Chase. Not at all. I'll make terrible mistakes as a mother, and I'm sure I'll make my kid cry. I can't save anyone. I can't save you. I'm not this fantasy woman that you have created in your mind. I'm real, and I'm a mess."

She sat up, grabbed the nearest item of clothing, which was his plaid, button-down shirt. She yanked it on and held it closed over her breasts.

Chase frowned as he watched Mira withdraw from him. What had just happened? He leaned over the bed and grabbed her wrist as she tried to climb out of the bed. "Mira," he said gently, trying not to spook her any more than she already was. "Come back here."

She looked down at his fingers wrapped around her arm. "Please let me go."

"What happened? What's going on?" A rising sense of urgency pulsed through him. She was slipping through his fingers. After all these years, he'd finally found her, and he was already losing her. "Mira. Talk to me."

She looked over at him. "For ten years, you've had this vision in your head about who I am. You don't see me."

He frowned. "Of course I see you—"

"No." She touched his lips, silencing him. "You don't. You had a terrible childhood, which I understand, and my heart breaks for you. You see me through the eyes of AJ, not for who I am." She sighed, realizing the truth of the words before she even spoke them. "I see you the same way. I never would have slept with you last night or even come out here if it wasn't for everything AJ had said about you."

He nodded. "Yeah, of course. He connects us more deeply than we would have been able to do on our own this quickly. But that's okay. It means we know who we really are, and we don't have to do that stupid dance while we figure each other out."

"That's my point! Don't you get it?" She pulled her wrist free of his grasp, and he reluctantly let her go. "I'm not the woman you've created in your head. I can't save you. I didn't save AJ. He saved himself, and I was just his friend." She touched his face. "And you can't save me, either. I have to go figure out who I am, Chase. I can't live in the shadow of who I once was, which is who you want me to be."

Swearing, he rolled out of bed, catching her arm as she walked toward the door. "I don't want you to be anyone but yourself," he said. "What are you talking about? It's you that I made love to last night, not some figment of my imagination."

She turned to face him, and he went cold at the resolution he saw in her eyes. "No, you didn't. And I didn't make love to you. I made love to a sense of safety and trust created by AJ. And I'll be honest, all I want to do is fall into your arms right now and let you make love to me a thousand more times, until the rest of the world disappears and all that's left is you."

Something twisted in his gut at her words. He would have expected it to be fear, maybe even terror at the thought of getting irrevocably entwined with a woman, but fear wasn't what he felt. It just felt...right. The most intense feeling of satisfaction. "That's a problem?"

"Yes. I need it to be real, Chase. I need you to be with
me
, not a fantasy, and it needs to be the same for you." With a sigh, she laid her hand on his cheek. Her fingers were so soft that it was almost surreal. "I think I fell a little bit in love with you the moment you said your name at the church, and that's how I know it's not real. It's too soon for how strongly I feel about you, which means I've fallen in love with a fantasy who isn't real, and it's the same for you." She dropped her hand and stepped back. "I'll leave today, Chase. I have to. I can't live under false pretenses anymore."

Before he could respond, she grabbed some clothes from her luggage, and ducked out into the hall. He heard the bathroom door shut, and the shower began to run.

With a deep sigh, he sank down on the bed, and ran his fingers through his hair. Was she right? Was he making shit up because of ten years of idealization? He wasn't a fool. He knew that she was flawed. She had to be. So what would he do the first time she did something that triggered a memory, one of those hot spots that made him shut women out? Would he still believe she was different from all the other women? Or would he react instinctively to protect himself and his brothers from a perceived threat, and boot her to the curb without giving her a chance, like he'd done with every other woman he'd ever been with? She deserved more than that, so much more. But could he give her more? Could he give her the trust she deserved and was worthy of, when the shit got difficult, which he knew it would?

He turned his head to look at the picture on the nightstand. It was a photograph of him and two of his brothers from when they were kids. They were on the Johnson ranch, standing around Killer, the dead-mean old bull that ran the place. All three of them were grinning their heads off, each of them with a hand on the bull that they'd once been too scared of to go near. He picked up the photograph and looked at it, running his finger over the faces of his brothers.

Without the Johnson ranch, he would be dead now, and so would his brothers. Old Skip Johnson had chosen to put him to work on the ranch instead of turning him over to the cops when he'd found him drunk and trying to steal his booze. That ranch had been Chase's salvation, and that was the ranch he now had his home on. He'd bought it from Skip five years ago, giving his former mentor one year to live his fantasies out as a retiree in Florida before he'd died.

Was Chase really willing to risk the dream of rebuilding his family just for a chance at a fantasy with a woman, a fantasy that was so lofty that he knew it wasn't based on reality? Mira was right. There was no way she was the flawless woman he'd created in his mind, and there was no way she, or any woman, was worth risking his relationship with his brothers for. Silently, he set the picture back down.

The answer had to be no.

It wasn't only his life. It was his brothers' as well. He couldn't do this thing with her. He would have to let her leave. It had all been a mistake.

Regret pouring through him, he stood up and strode across the room to retrieve his jeans, which were in a pile on top of her suitcase.

He grabbed his pants off it, but the belt buckle caught on the suitcase, jerking it off the table. It landed with a thump, dumping the contents across the pine flooring.

Swearing, he scooped everything up, trying to shove it all back inside before she returned to the room. He tried not to notice the black lace bra or silk underwear. He ignored the bottle of nail polish that was in the exact shade of his favorite wild flower in the spring. And he refused to contemplate how that crazy-soft light cream sweater would hug her curves.

But when he picked up a pair of light blue baby socks, he couldn't toss them aside. He just stared at them, shocked by how tiny they were. How in the hell could a kid be small enough to fit in them? Then he noticed another pair. Pink. Slowly, he reached down and pulled those free of the pile.

He held both pairs in the palm of his hand, two tiny pairs of socks. They were so small, it was as if they were for dolls. He instinctively cupped his hand around them, already prepared to protect the tiny being who would wear socks that small. She'd bought one of each, ready for whatever gender she was carrying. Even though she was facing hell, she was set to take on the challenge.

Those socks would be on the feet of the kid she carried, the one who had no dad, and was saddled with a true bastard of a grandfather. Chase looked at the burn marks on his forearm. He looked back at the socks, then back at his arm. He was going to sentence a kid to that? AJ's child? The baby of the first woman he'd trusted enough to allow into his house and his bed? Yeah, technically, it was the guest bedroom, but it was the same thing. His world. His sanctuary.

He wasn't a fool. He was a bitter, cynical bastard who didn't trust anyone. If there was
any
reason for him not to trust Mira, he would have seen it. But instead, he'd brought her into his world.

Yeah, maybe he saw her through his fantasies, but he knew he was right about her being worth trusting. She was willing to walk away from his help and face AJ's dad herself, rather than lose her freedom to a man.

He gently laid the socks on top of her clothes, and he knew what he had to do.

He'd won over a lot of battered horses, and gained their trust. It was time to do the same with Mira. He could make this work.

Mira leaned against the wall in the shower, letting the hot water wash Chase's scent off her skin. She felt surprisingly, achingly alone. She knew she had to leave the house, but last night in Chase's arms had been amazing. It was the first time she'd felt alive in a long while.