Cowboy After Dark (10 page)

Edie blinked, sniffed and then fanned her face with her hands.

Hope left the table and rushed over to her. “What’s wrong? Are you worried about the weather?”

“N-no.” She sniffed again and wiped her eyes carefully as if trying not to smudge her mascara. “It was when he said
both moms.
That got to me, being included in the mom category.”

“Aw.” Hope wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “That’s sweet.”

“I so want Phil to think of me as her mom, even if I’m really not.”

“I’m sure she does think of you as her mom.” Hope had no idea if that was true or not, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

“You are her mom in every way that counts.” Rosie came over to give Edie a hug, too. “She told me how thrilled she is that you love Damon and are excited about this wedding. She isn’t into clothes shopping, so—”

“Tell me about it!”

“She said you were a lifesaver when she had to pick out a dress.”

“She did?” Edie dabbed at her eyes again. “That’s...that’s so nice to hear. I thought it was a chore for her.”

“It might have been if you hadn’t been there to help.”

Cade stood there shifting from one booted foot to the other, looking uncomfortable. “So, uh, does that mean you two can come out and take a look at the arbor thing or what?”

“Yes.” Rosie winked at Hope. “We’ll all come out. The more, the merrier.”

Hope appreciated that suggestion more than Rosie could ever know. She was like a schoolgirl with a crush when it came to Liam. If Cade hadn’t shown up, she would have found some excuse to go out and check the progress on the tent.

But as they all trouped outside, she thought about Edie’s emotional reaction to being accepted as Phil’s mom. Hope had a loving mother, and she’d taken that blessing for granted. In the past year, she’d shut her mom out. Talking about the breakup wasn’t her favorite thing, but her mother must be worried about her.

After the week with Liam, she’d go home and give both her parents a clearer picture of what had happened. They knew only that she’d stopped writing, quit her job in Cheyenne and moved to Cody. They had to have figured out that the breakup had prompted her behavior, but she’d confided nothing.

Yet they hadn’t pestered her for details. That must have taken loving restraint, something she hadn’t fully appreciated until now. They’d raised her, educated her and loved her unconditionally. They deserved better.

Lexi and Cade teased each other the entire way to the meadow. Hope got a kick out of it. She thought they probably belonged together, but Lexi wasn’t ready to commit. Hope was on her side. A woman had to be absolutely sure that she’d found the right guy before handing him her heart. Or her cherished manuscript.

10

L
IAM
HAD
SPENT
most of breakfast waiting for Hope to appear. Eventually he’d had no choice but to leave the ranch house where she was sleeping
right down the hall
and help his brothers and Phil put up the wedding tent. Distracted as he was, he wasn’t sure how much use he’d been.

He’d tried to be quiet as he slipped into the cabin the night before, but Grady had woken up, anyway. They’d talked for a while, and Grady had offered to switch places with Hope and take her room in the house, but that seemed a little obvious. Liam wanted to be with her, but he’d rather not turn it into a drama involving everyone.

Still, he hungered for a glimpse of her. Knowing she was nearby but not within touching distance drove him crazy. Any second he expected her to magically appear. And then what? How should they act toward each other?

When Cade had been sent up to the house to fetch the two moms, Liam had wondered if Hope would come along. Fortunately she had. Cade, Rosie and Edie led the parade with Lexi and Hope following.

Liam’s body tightened with yearning as she came closer, her golden hair shining in the sun. Had he seriously promised to walk away after a week if that was what she wanted? He could taste her kiss and feel the warmth of her body. His cock twitched at the thought of how effortlessly he’d slid into her heat.

Yeah, sure, she’d said all those things about not wanting a commitment and making a clean break, but she couldn’t possibly mean it. And if she had meant it then, she wouldn’t continue to think that way after they’d spent several hot nights together. He held on to that belief as she stepped into the meadow.

This morning she wore a crisp white blouse tucked into a pair of jeans that looked newer and not as soft as the ones she’d worn on the ride. They might pose a greater challenge for him to take off. Then he realized he was thinking about undressing her when they’d all gathered to discuss the placement of a white wicker archway. Time to dial it back.

If he’d had any sense, he’d have kept his distance, but instead he walked over to her and Lexi. “Good morning.”

Her gray eyes and soft smile welcomed him. “Good morning to you, too.”

“How did you sleep?” He’d tossed and turned. Every waking moment had been filled with thoughts of her lying in that guest room bed alone. He should have told her to leave the window open. He knew how to take off those screens.

“Like the dead.” She told him about her drink and chat with Rosie.

“Sounds like fun.”

“It was.” She edged away from the group endlessly debating whether the arch should stay or go, and whether any stabilizing would make it look ugly. “I told her we’re not serious about each other and all we want is a temporary fling.”

He laughed. “You’re kidding me, right? You didn’t really say that.”

“I did. I felt obligated to let her know what’s going on.”

He blew out a breath and forced himself to calm down. “I know what that’s like. I’ve had many discussions with her, and she has that effect on a person.”

“There’s more” Motioning him closer, she spoke in a near whisper. “She gave us a key to the unused cabin so we don’t end up conducting our wild affair in the barn.”

“You told her about the barn?”

“She knows we don’t have a lot of options until after the wedding.”

He glanced over at Rosie talking with the others. “Do you think she disapproves?”

“If she does, she didn’t let on.”

“Because she knows me better than that.”

“Oh?”

Damn. Wrong thing to say. He met her questioning gaze. “This isn’t the best time and place for this discussion.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

He turned toward the group. “Hey, guys. Hope and I are going for a walk. Be back in a few.”

“We’ll still be here, haggling over this arbor,” Damon called back. “Either that or we’ll have decided to turn it into firewood for the cookout tonight.”

“I’m sure you’ll make the right decision, bridegroom.” Liam glanced at Hope. “Let’s see how the forest service road looks in the daytime.”

“Okay.” She fell into step beside him.

He took her hand but didn’t say anything more until they’d gone through the gate and had started down the dirt road. “Look, just because I’ve never done something like this doesn’t mean I can’t. For one thing, no woman has ever suggested it.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll discover a week of sex with no commitment is right up my alley.”

“Or maybe you and Rosie both think a week with you will change my perspective.”

“Are you completely closed to that possibility?”

“Yes.”

“Really?” He looked over and noted that her jaw was rigid and her gaze was focused on the road ahead. “I guess you are.”

“I’m not in the market for a steady boyfriend, so if you’re going into this with an agenda, we need to call it off now.” But she didn’t pull her hand away, which was encouraging.

“I wouldn’t say I have an agenda, but I’m not so sure we’ll finish up the week and be sick of each other.”

“We probably won’t be.”

“So what would be the harm in tacking on a little extension?”

“That would ruin the whole concept. One extension would lead to another, and then you’d want us to start living together.”

“Maybe you’d want that, too.”

“No. Never again.”

He sighed and drew her to a halt. “What did that dirtbag do to you, Hope?”

She stared at him with a mutinous expression. “I don’t want to talk about Tom. It’s a closed book.”

“I do want to talk about him.”

“You’re asking a lot. I haven’t even told my parents the whole story.”

He took a deep breath of the pine-scented air. “I’ll leave it up to you, then, but hearing about the issues will help me understand why you feel so strongly about being totally on your own. Then we can permanently drop the subject if you want to.”

“We can?”

“Yep.”

“So we’ll never mention this again and go on with our original plan for the week?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And this will be just between you and me.”

“That goes without saying.”

“All right, then. I guess that’s only fair.” She slipped her hand from his and began to pace in front of him on the dirt road “We were best friends, buddies, both of us in the creative writing program. We shared books, our fledgling attempts at novels, meals and eventually a bed.”

He did his best to block that last image.

“It was cheaper to live together, so we did. We talked about marriage, but both sets of parents expected a big deal, and we didn’t want to take the time to plan it. After graduation, I got a job in the college admissions office and wrote in the evenings. Tom waited tables at night and wrote during the day. We each had a computer, but if one went on the blink, we shared the other one.”

“Doesn’t sound like you spent much time together, though.” He was convinced the story ended with Tom cheating on her when she was at work.

“Oh, we found time to be together.” Her pacing became more animated. “We spent hours talking about our writing projects. I finally finished a book I’d started writing my sophomore year. It was the first in a series, and I’d plotted out three more. He was after me to either submit or self-publish, but I didn’t feel the manuscript was ready. He’d read it and said it was good. He got very impatient with me.”

Liam’s pulse rate shot up. Here it came. She’d lied about the physical abuse. “Is that when he hit you?”

“No.” She turned toward him, and her face was expressionless except for her eyes. The tortured agony in those gray depths was painful to witness. “That’s when he took my manuscript and self-published it as his.”

He gasped. “And you didn’t sue his ass?”

“I had no case. My word against his. He took all of it and erased everything on my computer that was in any way related to it—my notes for the rest of the series, my character charts, everything. All gone.” She swallowed. “All gone.”

“What about your friends? Didn’t you tell them about this project? Couldn’t they have testified that you’d written it?”

“That’s the irony.” Her mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “He was the only person I trusted with the details. He was paranoid about people stealing his ideas, and he made me paranoid, too. Friends knew I was writing something, but I wouldn’t talk about it. Only to him.”

“That’s evil.” His body vibrated with anger. “What’s his last name?”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

“He shouldn’t be able to get away with this, damn it!”

“Maybe not, but he did. So now you know, and we can permanently drop the subject like you promised.”

Fists clenched in frustration, he gazed at her.

“You did promise,” she said quietly. “Ready to go back now?”

“No, I’m ready to break the guy’s face.”

A gleam of approval flashed in her eyes. “I used to want that, too, but I’m over it. What’s done is done, and I can’t change what happened, so the best thing to do is forget about it and move on.”

“Except that you haven’t.”

“Yes, I have. This is the most thought I’ve given Tom in months. I have a new life in a new town. I’ve moved on.”

“But you aren’t writing anymore, and you only want a man around for a temporary affair. Is that what you call being over it?”

She lifted her chin. “That’s how I’ve chosen to handle the situation. And
now
can we permanently drop the subject?”

“Yes.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry. I just didn’t expect it would be something that horrific.”

“In the grand scheme of things, it’s not. It’s just a book.”

Just a book.
The dismissive way she said it sent chills down his spine. He wanted to argue the point, but he’d promised to drop the subject. He needed to stop making promises he later regretted.

He’d expected to find out this Tom slimeball had betrayed her with another woman. It was a crummy thing to do, but common enough, unfortunately. And not so difficult to get past, given time to realize you were better off without such a person.

But
this.
Being Grady’s brother had taught him so much about the creative process. Last year someone had made a crude copy of one of Grady’s sculptures and had put it up online as a Grady Magee original. Grady had gone ballistic. He had taken legal action, and the perpetrator wouldn’t be trying that again.

What Hope had suffered was far worse. She’d lost something she’d spent years working on, and it hadn’t simply disappeared because of a computer glitch or a natural disaster. Instead, the one person she’d trusted with her precious work had stolen it and taken credit for her creation. It was mental rape.

He wanted to find the asshole and make him sorry he’d ever been born, but he couldn’t do that because he didn’t even have a name. Barring that, he wanted to tell other people so they could share his outrage. Grady would be beside himself. But Grady wouldn’t hear about it, because Liam had promised not to tell.

Hope touched his arm. “Sorry you asked?”

“No.” He blew out a breath. “I needed to know.”

“You look really upset.”

“I’ll be okay.” He wasn’t convinced that she would be, though, and that bothered him a lot. He’d never had someone he completely trusted betray him.

Yeah, there’d been a few little incidents. In high school he’d found the girl he was dating kissing another guy. Another supposed friend had stolen his ID and used it to buy beer, but that was the extent of his experience with betrayal. Small potatoes compared to what Hope had endured. He could imagine how Tom’s actions would affect every close relationship she had from that moment on.

“We should go back.” The upbeat lilt in her voice sounded forced. “The others must think we’ve gotten lost.”

She was right, but he didn’t want to go just yet. “I don’t know how you feel about this, but I’d like to kiss you before we leave. It might not make you feel any better, but it sure would cheer me up.”

She smiled. “I’d never turn down a kiss from you.”

Not this week, anyway.
He didn’t say it, though. Instead he pushed his hat to the back of his head and drew her into his arms. She came willingly, but there was a reserve about her now, a stiffness that hadn’t been there before.

When he looked into her eyes, he saw a hesitancy that tore at his heart. “Are you sorry you told me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you must think I was stupid.”

“No! I don’t—”

“But I was stupid! What idiot would allow that kind of thing to happen?”

“Not an idiot. A loving, trusting—”

“Fool. There were signs that he was capable of this and I ignored them. He stole wineglasses from the restaurant where he worked. He figured out a way to cheat on a semester final and bragged about it to me. There were other things like that, and he always justified his actions. The restaurant owner was a cheapskate, and the professor’s grading system was unfair. I should have seen this coming.”

“Hope, it wasn’t your fault. He took terrible advantage of you.”

“Because I let him.” The despair in her voice was the saddest sound he’d ever heard.

“It’s not your fault.” Leaning down, he placed soft kisses on her forehead, her cheeks, her nose and her chin. “Not your fault,” he murmured over and over between kisses.

Finally she groaned and cupped his face in both hands, holding him still. “Kiss me for real, cowboy.”

“Love to.” And he settled his mouth firmly over hers. The moment he did, she relaxed, wound her arms around his neck and nestled against him. Ah. This was more like the woman he’d made love to in the barn.

Thank God they’d established that intimate connection. She might still believe their attraction was based on sex, but he knew it was so much more. Sharing the pleasure they’d found had the power to heal if she’d let it. Their private times together could be a place of refuge as they navigated whatever rough waters this week might bring.

She aroused him with breathtaking ease. Seconds into their kiss, he was hard and wishing they could enjoy some of that private, healing time right now. Lifting his head, he gazed into her flushed face. “I want to drag you into the woods and have my way with you.”