Aria could not stop thinking about that kiss. The two of them were sneaking through the parking garage like a couple of villains in a bad movie, and her brain kept wanting her to stop and sigh over the warm kiss that Laredo had given her. It was all rather inappropriate. At least that’s what her brain kept telling her.

“Okay.” Laredo was peering around the corner of the garage that led to the exit. “I can see the valet stand. They look pretty bored.”

“Meaning that people have stopped arriving and haven’t starting leaving yet,” Aria guessed. She had to stay on task. This was not the time to act like a lovesick ninny.

He reached down and took her hand. She was utterly aware of the strength of his fingers laced with hers. The spicy male scent of him was delicious. She inhaled deeply and felt a thrill shoot from her head to her toes. He was so big and so broad-shouldered and strong. This wasn’t some paper cutout of a man. He was absolutely real.

“Exactly right,” Laredo murmured. He turned and looked down at her. Lifting her hand to his mouth, he gently moved his lips over her knuckles. It was like grabbing a section of electrical fence. Little tendrils of electrical excitement filtered through her senses until she was smiling without even knowing why. But Laredo wasn’t done talking. She had to focus! “So, we need to get to the cabinet thing and grab my keys.”

“I’m not sure I could spot your keys,” Aria decided. “How about I distract the valet guys and you grab the keys? Then we can go find your truck and get out of here?”

His grin made her feel like a queen. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say!”

He took her face gently between his hands and gave her a quick, hard kiss on the lips. She reeled back almost as if she had been stunned. Somehow, his proximity always had the same effect on her. It was immediate and devastating. Her whole body reacted in a way that made her want to jump and shout with excitement.

“Okay!” For once, Aria felt as though she could have taken over the world. “I’m ready for this. Are you ready?”

“Go knock ‘em dead, sweetheart,” he urged.

The sparkle in his blue eyes and the expression of confidence on his face was the sort of combination that no woman would ever be able to resist. How had Helena not realized what she had? It was a strange bit of circumstance, and Aria had to remind herself that this was not the time to be thinking about Helena and that whole debacle.

Sucking in a deep breath, Aria hopped to get one of her shoes off as she made her way to the valet station. “Excuse me? Oh, excuse me, please?”

Aria was actually lucky that all of the valet’s on duty were male. A female would not have been taken in by this particular ruse. In fact, it might have earned Aria a few eye rolls and a stern order to go away. At least that’s how Aria would have acted if she’d found herself in the reverse situation.

All three young men turned like animals on the savannah spotting prey. Their eyebrows went up, and each and every one of them got a smile on his face. The tallest one stepped forward. “How can we help you, ma’am?”

“I can’t find my car, and my shoe is broken!” Aria told them in a mournful tone of voice. “You know what it’s like! I parked and now I can’t even remember where.” She gave an inane giggle that made her want to kick her own ass. “Now I feel like I’ve been walking all over the stupid parking lot for like an hour, and I still can’t remember what section I parked in!” She let the last little bit come out in a whine.

From the corner of her eye, Aria spotted Laredo emerging from the garage. Fortunately for him, all three of the valets were utterly focused on her. The shortest young man held his hand out for her shoe. She handed it over. Good thing after the flight through the hotel the heel of her shoe was loose. It basically came off in the kid’s hand.

“Man, that’s rough.” The boy clucked his tongue. “I think we have duct tape behind the counter. We could try that.”

“I don’t want duct tape on my leather shoe,” Aria said quickly. “I can have someone repair the shoe if I can just find my car!”

“Oh. Right.” Middle guy, just a hair shorter and a lot chunkier than the other short guy, seemed to be the smartest of the three. “Let us find your car. What kind is it?”

Aria almost laughed out loud as she tried to decide just how girly to be. “Well it’s white. I like white, you know? It’s easy to keep clean.” She tried to talk as fast as possible and add as much mundane unnecessary information as possible. She could see Laredo opening the box full of keys behind the valet stand. “So, it’s a pretty small car. It’s got two doors.”

“What make and model, ma’am?” The tall one was looking annoyed.

“Oh? I’m not sure about that stuff. It has a really pretty logo though. It’s on the hood. It’s sort of round right here, and then it curves down…” Aria was actually moving her fingers in the air to outline a probable shape for the logo of a car that she did not have. Under other circumstances, she would have been laughing her butt off.

“Ma’am,” the first valet was looking distinctly annoyed. “We can’t go into the parking garage to help you find your nondescript white two-door car. Do you have any idea how long that’s going to take?”

Suddenly, she saw Laredo wave at her. “Oh!” Aria exclaimed brightly. “I think that nice gentleman found my car! He was helping me look inside, you know?”

“Hey!” The valet shouted to Laredo, looking suspicious. “Were you helping this lady find her car?”

“Yep. I’ve got it.” Laredo gave those young men a nod that was filled to the brim with that man-to-man full annoyance with the stupidity of a woman. If Aria hadn’t purposefully portrayed that image of the helpless and silly woman, she would have been offended. As it was, she deserved whatever those poor valets wanted to dish out.

With that in mind, Aria gave the young men a jaunty wave. “Thanks so much for your help!” She snatched her shoe from the one guy. “Y’all have a nice evening!”

Aria schlepped down the sidewalk with one shoe on and one shoe off and knew she looked silly but did not care. Laredo was smiling at her as though he had just won the lottery and was thrilled with his prize.

“You crack me up,” he told her after they were well out of earshot. “You played that to the hilt, and you’re not even that kind of girl!”

He put one arm around her waist, put the other beneath her butt, and swept her off her feet and into his arms. She gasped as she was swung off the ground. She had never been that kind of woman before. Men didn’t pick her up or carry her around. Her build was a little solid for that kind of thing. Yet right now she felt like she was pixie sized. It was strangely exciting. She’d never felt so feminine before in her life.

Aria gently touched his cheek. “You don’t have to carry me.”

“You’ve got one bare foot,” he pointed out. “I can’t let you walk around in this parking garage with one bare foot. Besides, you weigh about as much as a newborn calf.”

“Did you just tell me it’s like carrying a cow?” she teased. Her mock outrage was just that, and she could not help but laugh as she said it. Then she touched his cheek and gently let her lips nibble their way across his jaw. “But do your baby calves do that?”

One corner of his mouth quirked up in a wry grin that gave her heart palpitations. “Sometimes.”

“I had no idea some ranchers were so involved with their cattle’s well-being. But you must really care about their emotional development as well as their physical traits,” she told him with a laugh. “You Hernandez boys were always so in love with your livestock.”

“Oh, that’s us!” Laredo grunted. Then he sighed. “You saw my father, right? No, wait. I know you did.” He shook his head and started to slow down. She realized that his truck was right there in front of them. “You saw how drunk and crazy he was acting. Right?”

“I did.” She wondered where this was going.

Laredo unlocked the truck and opened the passenger door. He set her very gently on the seat but did not step away. He was standing between her knees. The skirt of her dress had been pushed up to the middle of her thighs, and she could feel the heat of him through her pantyhose. Right now, she was really beginning to hate the pantyhose.

She kept her hands on his forearms. For some reason, she felt as though she needed the contact. His expression suggested that he was gearing up to say something very uncomfortable.

“Do I act like that?” Laredo suddenly wanted to know.

Aria didn’t know what to say. For just a moment, she was frozen. Then she realized that all of this talking and thinking about drunkenness and alcoholism and her past and her present and her future and whatever the hell else continually went on in her head was coming down to this moment and this conversation.

“No.” She exhaled a breath of air that she did not even realize that she’d been holding. Her lungs felt tight, and she was worried that she was making an unforgivable error with Laredo. “You’re the melancholy, and sometimes rather mean, sort of drunk.”

He drew back a little. She held tight to his arms. She needed the contact, and she knew he did as well even if he did not realize it yet. Finally, his brows drew together and she could see him trying to put that together.

“So, basically,” he began slowly, “my father is a belligerent, wordy, and pretty attention-seeking sort of drunk.”

“Yes.”

“And I’m more the hide at home and pretend nothing is happening kind of drunk.”

That wasn’t exactly what she would have said, but it certainly got the point across. “I suppose that’s one way to put it,” she told him. “I would say that you’re depressed. That’s why you drink. Right?”

“I guess.”

“That’s self-medication.”

“And you know all of this how?”

Aria swallowed. This was where her baggage came into play. How nice. “My father. He was a mean drunk. He used to clear a twelve pack every night starting at about seven o’clock. Then he would start yelling at me and my mom.” Aria tried to muddle through the myriad of complex feelings that she had regarding her father. “My dad taught me a lot. He taught me how to ride and to rope and to break a horse. He was wonderful with a horse. He was great at the rodeo. But he was a man who could not survive without his alcohol binge every night, and I never understood why my mom let that go on.”

“I had no idea.” Laredo looked utterly aghast. “Did anyone know?”

“That’s the thing with alcoholism,” she whispered. “It’s very easy to hide if the family is willing to pretend it away.”

“Bella isn’t willing to pretend it away.” Laredo whispered the words.

“No,” Aria agreed. “Your daughter is a far better, far stronger person than I was. She also has other family members to support her. She loves Darren and Maggie. She loves Jaeger. She loves her grandmother, and I know Avery has been there for her. That means Bella doesn’t feel alone, and that’s a good thing.”

“She likes you,” Laredo pointed out suddenly. “I’ve noticed that. She’s really comfortable with you, and yet I can’t imagine how the two of you have even met.”

Aria swallowed back the shame. This was so bad. Here they were, sitting in the truck having a very solemn conversation about something extremely important, and she was lying to him. It was unforgivable, but she could not do something about it just yet. It wasn’t really her secret.

Laredo leaned forward until his forehead was resting on hers. “I need help,” he whispered. “I don’t want to be like your father. I don’t want my family to hide my drinking. I don’t want to be like my father and embarrass myself and my entire family by airing personal business in public. I want to be a good man. Will you help me?”

She felt the enormous weight of what he was asking. She wasn’t that kind of woman. It wasn’t her thing to get involved with a person and become their accountability partner or their buddy. She didn’t do stuff like that. Aria Callahan was a loner. She always had been. That was her thing. It was what she was comfortable with.

“I don’t think I’m qualified,” Aria began softly. She wanted to draw back, but it felt so good to be close to him. If she closed her eyes, she could pretend that they weren’t even talking about something this serious. “I can’t keep you sober. I can’t take away all of the triggers that make you want to drink. There are professionals for this sort of thing, Laredo. I’m not one of them.”

“I don’t want you to do this for me,” he told her. There was such gentleness in his voice. How could she deny him anything? “I just want you to help me. I want you to be there for me. I want to be with you. I want you in my life.”

It was a tall order. It was a lot. She already was in his life. She was helping him with this ridiculous notion to start competing his horses. She was teaching his daughter to ride, but that wasn’t public knowledge. How could she be any more enmeshed in his life without losing her own sense of independence and freedom in the process?

“I have to think about this,” she whispered. “You’re a great guy. I really enjoy being around you. I always have.”

“You have?” He actually drew back far enough to laugh. “You used to ride me like a naughty pony, woman. Do you remember that?”

“Do you remember when I stopped?” Aria licked her lips. Why shouldn’t she tell him? He had just asked her to help him with his drinking, for goodness’ sake!

“No. Why did you stop?”

“Because I saw a woman named Helena ream you up one side and down the other with a pack of lies that made you look like you had just been cut down at the root. That’s why. I heard her tell you all that stuff about looking ridiculous on a horse and being a terrible cowboy. I heard that. And even that night I knew that she was wrong, and that she was as jealous of you as she was in love with you.”

Laredo stumbled back a step. “I had no idea.”

“I never said anything because it would have felt wrong. It was a very private moment, and I know that neither you nor Helena knew that I happened to be sitting up in the stands. I used to watch you. I always loved to watch you. Then you got together with her, and all of a sudden, you weren’t you anymore.”

His head was nodding, but she could see from the vacant expression on his face that he was having a tough time with what she’d told him. Maybe it was better this way. Maybe things between them would cool down and eventually things would go back to normal. That was good. Right?