CHAPTER EIGHT
JONATHAN DIDN’T SLEEP. As soon as Hayley drifted off, he went into his office, busying himself with work that didn’t need to be done.
Women didn’t spend the night at his house. He had never even brought a woman back to this house. But when Hayley had looked up at him like that... He hadn’t been able to tell her to leave. He realized that she expected to stay. Because as far as she was concerned, sex included sleeping with somebody.
He had no idea where she had formed her ideas about relationships, but they were innocent. And he was a bastard. He had already known that, but tonight just confirmed it.
Except he had let her stay.
He couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or not. Couldn’t decide if letting her stay had been a kindness or a cruelty. Because the one thing it hadn’t been was the reality of the situation.
The reality was this wasn’t a relationship. The reality was, it had been... Well, a very bad idea.
He stood up from his desk, rubbing the back of his neck. It was getting light outside, pale edges beginning to bleed from the mountaintops, encroaching on the velvet middle of the sky.
He might as well go outside and get busy on morning chores. And if some of those chores were in the name of avoiding Hayley, then so be it.
He made his way downstairs, shoved his feet into his boots and grabbed his hat, walking outside with heavy footsteps.
He paused, inhaling deeply, taking a moment to let the scent of the pines wash through him. This was his. All of it was his. He didn’t think that revelation would ever get old.
He remembered well the way it had smelled on his front porch in the trailer park. Cigarette smoke and exhaust from cars as people got ready to leave for work. The noise of talking, families shouting at each other. It didn’t matter if you were inside the house or outside. You lived way too close to your neighbors to avoid them.
He had fantasized about a place like this back then. Isolated. His. Where he wouldn’t have to see another person unless he went out of his way to do so. He shook his head. And he had gone and invited Hayley to stay the night. He was a dumb ass.
He needed a ride to clear his head. The fact that he got to take weekends off now was one of his favorite things about his new position in life. He was a workaholic, and he had never minded that. But ranching was the kind of work he really enjoyed, and that was what he preferred to do with his free time.
He saddled his horse and mounted up, urging the bay gelding toward the biggest pasture. They started out at a slow walk, then Jonathan increased the pace until he and his horse were flying over the grass, patches of flowers blurring on either side of them, blending with the rich green.
It didn’t matter what mess he had left behind at the house. Didn’t matter what mistakes he had made last night. It never did, not when he was on a horse. Not when he was in his sanctuary. The house... Well, he would be lying if he said that big custom house hadn’t been a goal for him. Of course it had been. It was evidence that he had made it.
But this... The trees, the mountains, the wind in his face, being able to ride his horse until his lungs burned, and not reach the end of his property... That was the real achievement. It belonged to him and no one else. In this place he didn’t have to answer to anyone.
Out here it didn’t matter if he was bad. You couldn’t let the sky down. You couldn’t disappoint the mountains.
He leaned forward to go uphill, tightening his hold on the reins as the animal changed its gait. He pulled back, easing to a stop. He looked down the mountain, at the valley of trees spread out before him, an evergreen patchwork stitched together by rock and river. And beyond that, the ocean, brighter blue than usual on this exceptionally clear morning, the waves capped with a rosy pink handed down from the still-rising sun.
Hayley would love this.
That thought brought him up short, because he wasn’t exactly sure why he thought she would. Or why he cared. Why he suddenly wanted to show her. He had never shown this view to anybody. Not even to his sister, Rebecca.
He had wanted to keep it for himself, because growing up, he’d had very little that belonged to him and him alone. In fact, up here, gazing at everything that belonged to him now, he couldn’t think of a single damn thing that had truly belonged to him when he’d been younger.
It had all been for a landlord, for his sister, for the future.
This was what he had worked for his entire life.
He didn’t need to show it to some woman he’d slept with last night.
He shook his head, turning the horse around and trotting down the hill, moving to a gallop back down to the barn.
When he exited the gate that would take him out of the pasture and back to the paddock, Jonathan saw Hayley standing in the path. Wearing last night’s dress, her hair disheveled, she was holding two mugs of coffee.
He was tempted to imagine he had conjured her up just by thinking of her up on the ridge. But if it were a fantasy, she would have been wearing nothing, rather than being back in that black cotton contraption.
She was here, and it disturbed him just how happy that made him.
“I thought I might find you out here,” she said. “And I figured you would probably want your coffee.”
He dismounted, taking the reins and walking the horse toward Hayley. “It’s your day off. You don’t have to make me coffee.”
Her cheeks turned pink, and he marveled at the blush. And on the heels of that marveling came the sharp bite of guilt. She was a woman who blushed routinely. And he had... Well, he had started down the path of corrupting her last night.
He had taken her virginity. Before her he’d never slept with a virgin in his damn life. In high school, that hadn’t been so much out of a sense of honor as it had been out of a desire not to face down an angry dad with a shotgun. Better to associate with girls who had reputations worse than his own.
All that restraint had culminated in him screwing the pastor’s daughter.
At least when people came with torches and pitchforks, he would have a decent-sized fortress to hole up in.
“I just thought maybe it would be nice,” she said finally, taking a step toward him and extending the coffee mug in his direction.
“It is,” he said, taking the cup, knowing he didn’t sound quite as grateful as he might have. “Sorry,” he conceded, sipping the strong brew, which was exactly the way he liked it. “I’m not used to people being nice. I’m never quite sure what to make of it when you are.”
“Just take it at face value,” she said, lifting her shoulder.
“Yeah, I don’t do that.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“I have to take care of the horse,” he said. “If you want story time, you’re going to have to follow me.”
He thought his gruff demeanor might scare her off, but instead, she followed him along the fence line. He tethered his horse and set his mug on the fence post, then grabbed the pick and started on the gelding’s hooves.
Hayley stepped up carefully on the bottom rung of the fence, settling herself on the top rung, clutching her mug and looking at him with an intensity he could feel even with his focus on the task at hand.
“I’m ready,” she said.
He looked up at her, perched there like an inquisitive owl, her lips at the edge of her cup, her blue eyes round. She was...a study in contradictions. Innocent as hell. Soft in some ways, but determined in others.
It was her innocence that allowed her to be so open—that was his conclusion. The fact that she’d never really been hurt before made it easy for her to come at people from the front.
“It’s not a happy story,” he warned.
It wasn’t a secret one, either. Pretty much everybody knew his tragic backstory. He didn’t go around talking about it, but there was no reason not to give her what she was asking for.
Except for the fact that he never talked to the women he hooked up with. There was just no point to it.
But then, the women he usually hooked up with never stumbled out of his house early in the morning with cups of coffee. So he supposed it was an unusual situation all around.
“I’m a big girl,” she said, her tone comically serious. It was followed by a small slurp as she took another sip of coffee. The sound should not have been cute, but it was.
“Right.” He looked up at her, started to speak and then stopped.
Would hearing about his past, about his childhood, change something in her? Just by talking to her he might ruin some of her optimism.
It was too late for worrying about that, he supposed. Since sleeping with her when she’d never even kissed anyone before had undoubtedly changed her.
There had been a lot of points in his life when he had not been his own favorite person. The feeling was intense right now. He was a damned bastard.
“I’m waiting,” she said, kicking her foot slightly to signify her impatience.
“My father left when I was five,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, blinking, clearly shocked. “I’m sorry.”
“It was the best thing that had happened to me in all five years of my life, Hayley. The very best thing. He was a violent bastard. He hit my mother. He hit me. The day he left... I was a kid, but I knew even then that life was going to be better. I was right. When I was seven, my mom had another kid. And she was the best thing. So cute. Tiny and loud as hell, but my mother wasn’t all that interested in me, and my new sister was. Plus she gave me, I don’t know...a feeling of importance. I had someone to look after, and that mattered. Made me feel like maybe I mattered.”
“Rebecca,” Hayley said.
“Yeah,” he replied. “Then, when Rebecca was a teenager, she was badly injured in a car accident. Needed a lot of surgeries, skin grafts. All of it was paid for by the family responsible for the accident, in exchange for keeping everything quiet. Of course, it’s kind of an open secret now that Gage West was the one who caused the accident.”
Hayley blinked. “Gage. Isn’t she... Aren’t they... Engaged?”
Familiar irritation surged through him. “For now. We’ll see how long that lasts. I don’t have a very high opinion of that family.”
“Well, you know my brother is married into that family.”
He shrugged. “All right, maybe I’ll rephrase that. I don’t have anything against Colton, or Sierra, or Maddy. But I don’t trust Gage or his father one bit. I certainly don’t trust him with my sister, any more now than I did then. But if things fall apart, if he ends up breaking off the engagement, or leaves her ten years into the marriage... I’ll have a place for her. I’ve always got a place for her.”
Hayley frowned. “That’s a very cynical take. If Rebecca can love the man who caused her accident, there must be something pretty exceptional about him.”
“More likely, my sister doesn’t really know what love looks like,” he said, his voice hard, the words giving voice to the thing he feared most. “I have to backtrack a little. A few months after the accident, my mom took the cash payout Nathan West gave her and took off. Left me with Rebecca. Left Rebecca without a mother, when she needed her mother the most. My mom just couldn’t handle it. So I had to. And I was a piss-poor replacement for parents. An older brother with a crappy construction job and not a lot of patience.” He shook his head. “Every damn person in my life who was supposed to be there for me bailed. Everyone who was supposed to be there for Rebecca.”
“And now you’re mad at her, too. For not doing what you thought she should.”
Guilt stabbed him right in the chest. Yeah, he was angry at his sister. And he felt like he had no damn right to be angry. Shouldn’t she be allowed to be happy? Hadn’t that been the entire point of taking care of her for all those years? So she could get out from under the cloud of their family?
So she’d done it. In a huge, spectacular way. She’d ended up with the man she’d been bitter about for years. She had let go of the past. She had embraced it, and in a pretty damned literal way.
But Jonathan couldn’t. He didn’t trust in sudden changes of heart or professions of love. He didn’t trust much of anything.
“I’ll be mad if she gets hurt,” he said finally. “But that’s my default. I assume it’s going to end badly because I’ve only ever seen these things end badly. I worked my ass off to keep the two of us off the streets. To make sure we had a roof over our heads, as much food in our stomachs as I could manage. I protected her.” He shook his head. “And there’s no protecting somebody if you aren’t always looking out for what might go wrong. For what might hurt them.”
“I guess I can’t blame you for not trusting the good in people. You haven’t seen it very many times.”
He snorted. “Understatement of the century.” He straightened, undoing the girth and taking the saddle off the bay in a fluid movement, then draping it over the fence. “But my cynicism has served me just fine. Look at where I am now. I started out in a single-wide trailer, and I spent years working just to keep that much. I didn’t advance to this place by letting down my guard, by stopping for even one minute.” He shook his head again. “I probably owe my father a thank-you note. My mother, too, come to that. They taught me that I couldn’t trust anyone but myself. And so far that lesson’s served me pretty well.”
Hayley was looking at him like she was sad for him, and he wanted to tell her to stop it. Contempt, disgust and distrust were what he was used to getting from people. And he had come to revel in that reaction, to draw strength from it.
Pity had been in short supply. And if it was ever tossed in his general direction, it was mostly directed at Rebecca. He wasn’t comfortable receiving it himself.
“Don’t look at me like I’m a sad puppy,” he said.
“I’m not,” she returned.
He untied the horse and began to walk back into the barn. “You are. I didn’t ask for your pity.” He unhooked the lead rope and urged the gelding into his stall. “Don’t go feeling things for me, Hayley. I don’t deserve it. In fact, what you should have done this morning was walked out and slapped me in the face, not given me a cup of coffee.”
“Why?”
“Because I took advantage of you last night. And you should be upset about that.”
She frowned. “I should be?” She blinked. “I’m not. I thought about it. And I’m not.”
“I don’t know what you’re imagining this is. I don’t know what you think might happen next...”
She jumped down from the fence and set her coffee cup on the ground. Then she took one quick step forward. She hooked an arm around his neck and pushed herself onto her tiptoes, pressing her lips to his.
He was too stunned to react. But only for a moment. He wrapped an arm around her waist, pressing his forefinger beneath her chin and urging the kiss deeper.
She didn’t have a lot of skill. That had been apparent the first and second times they’d kissed. And when they had come together last night. But he didn’t need skill, he just needed her.
Even though it was wrong, he consumed her, sated his hunger on her mouth.
She whimpered, a sweet little sound that only fueled the driving hunger roaring in his gut. He grabbed her hair, tilting her head back farther, abandoning her mouth to scrape his teeth over her chin and down her neck, where he kissed her again, deep and hard.
He couldn’t remember ever feeling like this before. Couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman so much it was beyond the need for air. Sure, he liked sex. He was a man, after all. But the need had never been this specific. Had never been for one woman in particular.
But what he was feeling wasn’t about sex, or about lust or desire. It was about her. About Hayley. The sweet little sounds she made when he kissed the tender skin on her neck, when he licked his way back up to her lips. The way she trembled with her need for him. The way she had felt last night, soft and slick and made only for him.
This was beyond anything he had ever experienced before. And he was a man who had experienced a hell of a lot.
That’s what it was, he thought dimly as he scraped his teeth along her lower lip. And that said awful things about him, but then so did a lot of choices in his life.
He had conducted business with hard, ruthless precision, and he had kept his personal life free of any kind of connection beyond Rebecca—who he was loyal to above anyone else.
So maybe that was the problem. Now that he’d arrived at this place in life, he was collecting those things he had always denied himself. The comfortable home, the expansive mountains and a sweet woman.
Maybe this was some kind of latent urge. He had the homestead, now he wanted to put a woman in it.
He shook off that thought and all the rest. He didn’t want to think right now. He just wanted to feel. Wanted to embrace the heat firing through his veins, the need stoking the flame low in his gut, which burned even more with each pass of her tongue against his.
She pulled away from him, breathing hard, her pupils dilated, her lips swollen and rounded into a perfect O. “That,” she said, breathlessly, “was what I was thinking might happen next. And that we might... Take me back to bed, please.”
“I can’t think of a single reason to refuse,” he said—a lie, as a litany of reasons cycled through his mind.
But he wasn’t going to listen to them. He was going to take her, for as long as she was on offer. And when it ended, he could only hope he hadn’t damaged her too much. Could only hope he hadn’t broken her beyond repair.
Because there were a couple things he knew for sure. It would end; everything always did. And he would be the one who destroyed it.
He just hoped he didn’t destroy her, too.