Stripped Down (6 page)

“What about him?”

“He deserves to know his father is in the hospital.”

“He deserves a wedding night with his wife,” Wyn retorted.

“So you’re suggesting we don’t tell him that Dad is in the ER and headed for Denver tomorrow, possibly for surgery?” Cres demanded.

“That’s exactly what I’m sayin’.”

“But—”

“End of discussion, Cres.”

Arguments started—and all seemed to be directed at him. So Wyn tuned them out and wandered over to the window.

He’d glared at the juniper bushes lining the sidewalk for several minutes when he felt a soft touch on his arm. He saw Melissa’s reflection in the window. “What?”

“You have to tell Sutton about your dad being in the hospital, Wynton. It’s his decision whether he leaves on his honeymoon tomorrow or stays here, not yours. By not telling him, you’re making it
your
decision. That’s not fair to him, to you, or to your father. If something unforeseen happens, and Sutton returns home to the worst news imaginable...he’ll blame you for a multitude of things—starting with him not getting to say good-bye. That’s too deep a burden for you to undertake.”

“Do you have any idea how much this honeymoon means to my brother?” For months, Sutton had planned the four-week getaway in the tropics. Wasn’t out of sight, out of mind better in this instance? Would Sutton even be able to relax and enjoy this special time with London if he was constantly calling home to check on Dad?

“I’d venture a guess...it doesn’t mean as much to him as your father does.”

“Jesus, Melissa.”

“You need someone to be the bad guy and you don’t want it to be you. But by letting Sutton know what happened and giving him the choice of what to do next, you are doing the right thing.”

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

“I know.” She swept her hand across his shoulders. “But trust me because I speak from personal experience, not telling Sutton is worse.”

Wyn turned and looked at her. “This happened to you?”

“My sister had an accident while I was at camp. And instead of bringing me home, my parents let me finish out the full two weeks. We weren’t allowed to have cell phones, so I didn’t have a clue she almost died until after my dad picked me up. And naturally, my sister thought I wasn’t there because my training camp was more important than her. It was ugly.”

Before he could ask what kind of accident, Cres strolled up.

“You done bein’ unreasonable?”

“Yeah.”

“So you’re in agreement that Sutton needs to be told?”

“Can we do it early in the morning? And at least give him the rest of this night with London? The doc pretty much told us nothin’ will change tonight anyway.”

“Makes sense. You cool with Aunt Marie bein’ the one who knocks on the honeymoon suite door at six a.m. and tells him what’s up?”

“That’d be best. He won’t punch her. And she does have that calming nurse demeanor.”

Right then, Aunt Marie yelled at the receptionist.

“On second thought...”

Cres chuckled. “She seems feistier than usual. I’ll walk them out.” Cres headed to the desk.

Melissa squeezed Wyn’s arm. “She followed me here, do you want me to lead them back to the hotel?”

“If you wanna go, that’s fine.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Wyn studied her. “Why would you want to stay? We just met today. For all you know I could be a total dick.”

“A total dick usually doesn’t know he’s a total dick, so that argument doesn’t apply. Try again.”

“Do you
want
to stay?”

“Yes.”

He exhaled. “Good. Because to be honest, I didn’t know how to ask you to stay. This is”—he gestured to the hospital and to her—“screwing with my head.”

She stood on tiptoe to whisper, “I’d rather be screwing with your body, but since that’s not in the cards…” Then she stepped back and pointed to his hand. “Speaking of cards…playing strip poker would be a great way to kill time.”

“Strip poker, huh?”

“Virtual strip poker, beings we’re in public.”

“How’s that work?”

“We keep score. The next time we’re alone together, we’ll have a specific order in how we remove our clothes.”

For the first time in two hours he had a sense of hope about something—it sounded like Melissa didn’t want this thing with them to be a one and done either. “You keep score, baby, and I’ll deal the first hand.”

Chapter Four

Mel laid down her cards. “Full house, jacks over sevens.”

“Damn. I thought I had you this time.” Wynton spread out three twos, a six, and a ten.

“Three of a kind with deuces?” she tsk-tsked. “With two players that’s never a good gamble.” She eyed his shirt collar and imagined peeling that pristine white shirt off his broad shoulders and down his muscular arms. Her gaze caught on the thick column of his neck. She wanted to sink her teeth into that hard flesh. Taste the salt and musk on his skin. Fill her senses with the overpowering maleness of him.

“Melissa, darlin’? You okay?”

Her focus snapped back to him. “I’m fine. Why?”

“You moaned like you were in pain.”

She leaned forward. “That moan was your fault. See, I imagined stripping you out of that pesky shirt and my mind wandered south from there.”

“You’re already kicking my ass at poker and now you gotta give me a hard-on in the waiting room?”

“Just keeping you updated on how eager I am to get my greedy hands all over your naked body. You had way too many clothes on before.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

But he was distracted when he said that so Melissa turned toward the front entrance when he muttered, “I’ll be damned.”

The good-looking military guy who’d first offered Jim medical assistance at the wedding paused inside the doors and scanned the waiting area. At the end of the row, Cres straightened up and ran his hand over his hair before he stood.

The guy saw him and smiled. Cres met him halfway and they shook hands, but not in the usual way guys shook hands. Their connection lingered.

Holy crap. Cres Grant was gay.

She sent a sidelong glance at Wynton. Did he know?

He watched the two men, not exactly circumspectly, as he shuffled the deck.

“Is that a friend of your brother’s? I saw them talking at the wedding. And he left with Sutton’s boss when I got here. Think he came back to see how your dad’s doing?”

Wynton said nothing but then she felt him staring at her.

When their eyes met, she got her answer—wariness. Like he was afraid she’d pass judgment on his brother.

As if.

Other people’s sexual preferences weren’t her concern—she had enough issues with her own sexual needs to worry about someone else’s. “How long have you known that Cres is...?”

“Gay?” he said softly. “He came out to us last year. Right after Sutton and London got engaged.” His eyes narrowed. “But it’s not common knowledge.”

“Those two keep looking at each other like that in public and it will be,” Mel said dryly. She picked up her cards without really looking at them. “I’d never take it upon myself to point out the obvious to others who can’t see it.”

“Thank God for that.”

“Were you surprised when he came out?”

“Honestly? Yeah. I guess the signs were there if I cared to look. He hadn’t had a serious girlfriend...ever really. Hadn’t dated any girl since high school. He didn’t like trolling the bars with me. Even before I hit pause on my libido last year, he preferred that we hang out and play video games on the weekends.”

What did he mean…
hit pause on his libido
?

“And he always did love men’s wrestling a little too much.”

Mel’s gaze snapped to his. “Seriously?”

He smirked. “Nah. Just seein’ if you’re paying attention.”

“Jerk.” She tossed her cards down. “This hand is crap. Re-deal.”

Wynton shuffled again. Surprisingly, he kept talking. “As an adult, Cres has always seemed preoccupied. When I think back...I just wish he would’ve told us sooner. Because right after he told us, it was as if a giant weight had been lifted from him. I hated that he carried that weight at all.”

You sweet, thoughtful man.
He was a good brother—did
his
brothers appreciate that? “So your family is fine with everything?”

“Cres has always been tight-lipped. But like I said, it filled in some of the pieces about Cres that hadn’t fit before. So he’s got our acceptance, and I think that’s all that really worried him. Who else he chooses to tell ain’t my concern. It sure as hell ain’t my business who he dates. I’m just happy he can be himself and date who he wants.”

Mel held her fist out for a bump. “Amen. I’ll just throw it out there that we wouldn’t be having this conversation if Cres was on the rodeo circuit. If there’s even a whisper of that kind of relationship, they’re unofficially blackballed.”

“That’s what Sutton said too.” Wynton dealt them each a new hand. “So tell me about your sister. You said she had an accident. What happened?”

How did she explain this? The few times she’d bothered, she worried she’d come off sounding like a poor little rich girl or resentful, which wasn’t the case. So she usually avoided the topic entirely with men by just dropping to her knees.

A rough-skinned hand skated up her arm. “With all that we’ve been through today, I hope you won’t start holdin’ back on me now.”

She inhaled a deep breath and let it all spill out. “My parents are loaded, okay? One of those requirements of being a Lockhart was making sure I excelled at riding, horsemanship, dressage, the whole package. The camp I attended when my sister Alyssa was injured was an exclusive, by-invitation-only camp at a training facility for Olympic athletes. The best trainers in the world were there. So in my parent’s eyes, pulling me from camp would’ve been viewed in the same horrifying light as dropping out of the program because I couldn’t cut it. And the Lockharts couldn’t have anyone believing that of them or their human progeny.” She closed her eyes. The ache of that time had lessened but hadn’t disappeared completely.

Wynton cupped her jaw in his hand and lifted her face to his. “Hey. If it bothers you too much to tell me—”

“It doesn’t. I just haven’t talked about it in a while.”

“Then I’m flattered you’re sharing all this with me.”

“Anyway, throughout my entire life I’d been groomed to win the gold medal in the Olympics while riding a Lockhart horse, thereby increasing its worth and mine.”

“Harsh assessment, baby.”

“But it’s true.”

“How old is your sister?”

“Alyssa is six years younger than me.”

“What happened?”

“She was at a birthday party. There were go-cart races and she crashed through a fence. The fence crushed her legs and she ended up paralyzed from the waist down.”

His jaw dropped to the floor. After he picked it up, he said, “Keep goin’.”

“My parents focused completely on my sister—as they should have. Alyssa was really awful after the accident. She especially hated the sight of me. She resented me. Not solely because I wasn’t by her side immediately after the accident, but because I was…whole, if that makes sense. As accomplished a horsewoman that I was, Alyssa was better. I’d always known if I’d failed to meet my parent’s expectations, the Lockharts had another shot of having an Olympian in the family with Alyssa. I stopped riding and training after her accident because I wanted to be there for her. But she didn’t want me anywhere near her. After enduring two solid months of her screaming at me to get the hell away from her, the doctors and my parents asked me to stop coming to visit her, at least until she wasn’t so angry. And because it was in Alyssa’s best interest, I left.”

Wynton picked up her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist.

“So while my sister recovered from a near-fatal accident, I reset my priorities.”

“Ran away with the rodeo, did you?”

She smiled. “Something like that. I continued to check on her, but since I was out of sight, I wasn’t on my parents’ minds. And don’t think I was resentful because I wasn’t. I was an adult. Alyssa needed them so much more than I did.”

“Did your sister come around? Stop resenting you?”

“Yes. I never held the way she acted against her because she suffered a horrible life-altering ordeal at such a young age. Eventually we mended all fences. But I had no interest in going back to that world and competing on the level I’d been at before her accident. After two years, Alyssa set her mind to competing again. She trained for the Paralympics and won several national equestrian championships. She’s competed in the international Paralympics, winning a silver and a bronze medal. She’s so determined to succeed for herself—not just for our parents—that she won’t quit until she’s won a gold medal. I’m so proud of her. She’s turned out to be an inspiration to so many people.”

“I wish I had your attitude. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t. Not either time Sutton was injured. The second time I was so mad at him when he opted to go back into rodeo. It seemed selfish of him to continue. And when he was in the hospital, I stayed away. I claimed I had extra ranch work to do because Dad was at Sutton’s side, but that wasn’t the reason. I just couldn’t handle seein’ my brother like that. I don’t do well when it comes to illnesses and hospitals.”

She experienced that familiar punch of sadness. She’d heard that so many times—not only over the last six months, but whenever she talked about her sister’s struggles. She’d walked away for her sister’s benefit—not because she couldn’t deal with it. Now their relationship was solid, but she hadn’t even considered calling Alyssa when she’d gotten her diagnosis—especially not after how their mother had reacted when she’d finally told her.

“Hey, Kentucky, where’d you go?” he said softly.

Mel returned her focus to him. The man had the most expressive face. More rugged than handsome, if she had to put a name to it. His features weren’t as sharply defined as either of his brother’s—Sutton Grant defined gorgeous and Cres Grant was almost pretty—but Wynton’s raw-boned features gave him an equally striking look. His hair, in the vivid brightness of the fluorescent lights, held a dark red hue, which made the pieces curling around his ears more boyish looking.