Chapter Seven
Casey watched as Rowan familiarized herself with the contents of his kitchen. He didn’t know what was in half of his cupboards but she didn’t know what was in any of them. She looked and he thought she liked what she saw of his home and the mountains around it, and she fit into his world in a way that made sense to him. She was of the land and born to hard work. Neglected as a child, not that she’d ever admit it, and ever so slightly daunted yet fascinated by traditionally female domains. Furnishings, kitchenware. Mothers.
Heaven only knew what she’d said to his mother.
He wanted her here, and on one hand that was a surprise and on the other hand it was no surprise at all.
He’d been trying to downplay his feelings for her.
No more.
They raided the food basket as the sky darkened to azure, bringing it down with them to the nest they’d made in front of the fire. She’d put on the new dress she’d bought on her travels and laughed at the approving look he’d given her. She’d kept to the caramel bronze colors and soft fabrics, because why mess with a good thing? But this one had turquoise ribbon below the shirred bust line, and half a dozen similar ribbons that made up the shoulder straps. When she sat and moved and reached for things they sometimes fell from her shoulders, and maybe he was a sucker for ribbon but he couldn’t stop touching her.
“Why aren’t you coming to Omaha?” he asked.
“Because I’m going to Denver to talk about printing paper for the coffee table bull riders book.”
“Do you know anything about printing paper?”
“I know there are about a thousand types to choose from. They want a foreword from me. A snapshot of my life on the tour.”
Her tone told him she wasn’t any more inclined toward the idea than when he’d mentioned them wanting more of her story. “Told you.”
“I don’t want to do it.”
He took a breath and let it out and the arm she’d rested on his chest moved with him. She liked tucking into him after sex, boneless and pliable. She liked it when he put his arms around her and let his fingers trace lazy patterns on her back, even if he worried that his hands were too rough for the soft delicacy of her skin. For someone so skittish about being around him nine-tenths of the time, she denied him nothing once they were naked. Not her thoughts or her reactions, not her feelings.
“People hear how my mother died and how I was raised on the road and that bulls and bull riding is all I know and they get that look about them,” she murmured. “The one that says child services should have been called twenty years ago.”
“Do you think child services should have been called?”
“No. But I don’t want to go back to those days either. Not even in my head. My father worked hard. Traveled hard too. Drank some. Especially early on. He’s better now. But I don’t want people to get the wrong impression if I say something that calls my upbringing into question. Something I don’t even realize is wrong.”
“Get someone you trust to look at what you write before you send it in,” he suggested. “Or focus on how unique your upbringing was.” There was a haunting melancholy to some of her photos, a despairing air to some of her down-and-out cowboys. “Bull riding’s a tough sport. People expect big highs and devastating lows. You’re part of that. Give them that in the foreword without getting too personal. You can pick and choose what you want people to know. There’s always stuff we’d rather other people not know.”
She pulled up onto one elbow, the palm of her other hand still resting on his chest. “Tell me something other people don’t know about you.”
“Then it wouldn’t be a secret.”
“I bet you had an idyllic childhood, full of rainbows and cookies.”
“There were cookies.” There’d been dark times too, when he’d grown tired of being overlooked and unheard. “I ran away when I was six and took Jett with me. We were going to Alaska to save the baby seals. There’d been pictures on the news and I couldn’t believe people could let that happen, and my eyes had started to water and a couple of my older brothers were teasing me about being a crybaby. So I whomped on them and Jett joined in and then my father came in and sent me and Jett to our room before we even had a chance to speak, and the injustice of it burned all night and into the next morning.” He smiled to take the sting out of his words. It was a memory, not even that powerful. Young boys trying their alpha on for size, taking sides, and realizing the world wasn’t perfect.
Rowan was smiling down at him, her perfect lips curved. “What happened the next morning?”
“Jett and I stole all the school lunches Dad had made, grabbed our coats and headed for Alaska. We got ten miles up the highway before one of our neighbors drove past and offered to give us a lift in the right direction. But he was heading home first so we went with him. By the time my father turned up Jett was fast asleep on the lounge and rancher Hicks was telling me about endangered species and wildlife conservation and I’d fallen in love with Bengal tigers. I never got to Alaska, but I did spend a lot of my childhood collecting and rehabilitating injured animals. Drove my local vet mad. I was there so often he ended up taking me on as a volunteer. Raptors were his specialty and he showed me a thing or two. You want to reset a broken bird wing, I’m your man.”
“Huh,” she said. “A runaway vigilante.”
He smiled smugly. “If only my parents had glossed over that whole leading your brother astray and putting yourselves in grave danger bit, I’d have been set. My badass reputation assured. As it was, every last one of my brothers—bar Jett—was instructed to keep an eye on me forever more because I couldn’t be trusted. That part of the fallout went on years too long as far as I was concerned.” He didn’t step sideways when everyone else was marching in a straight line for no good reason. “I’m not impetuous,” he finished gruffly. “There’s always a reason.”
“Uh-huh. Baby seals in Alaska.”
“I was six.” Kiss her mouth because it was right there and he couldn’t resist. Curl up to a half sit and he could hold that position forever in order to lose himself him her sweetness. “My point is, you can spin a story any way you want, look at a situation from a dozen angles and find both good and bad in it. All you have to do for that foreword is find the right slant and keep the rest of it hidden.” He’d moved on from her lips; it was her collarbone that received his attention now. So slender and fine, and from there it was only a short dip to her breasts. So sensitive there as she raked her hand through his hair and directed him where she wanted him. “Yeah?”
“There,” she murmured, and he took his time, and savored the freedom with which she gave herself over to him. “And there.” He rolled her onto her back, hooked her thigh beneath his arm and slid into her again. It was always like this between them. Unexpected soul baring followed by heart-stopping pleasure, and there was fear in there too for just how much of himself he was giving away to this woman without knowing which way either of them were going.
Thing was, he wanted this. All of it—the good and the bad and all the awkward angles. He wanted her.
And here she was and that was good enough for now.
*
Rowan arrived home the following afternoon to no fanfare or welcome. Her father had gone to collect Mab from Jock Morgan’s and would be back in a couple of days. Beyond that, their ranch foreman and cowboys had everything under control. The house was empty and felt like it and when she walked into her part of it the difference between her living conditions and Casey’s couldn’t have been clearer. She kept her place neat and clean but it was full of things she’d never bought. Leftovers from another time, her mother’s time or maybe her father’s parents before that. She’d never known them because they’d had her father late in life, long after they’d given up all hope of ever having a child. In all likelihood they were the ones responsible for the boxy brown leather sofas and wooden tables, wooden floors, whitewashed walls. Not their fault that the place had no color or whimsy or comfort to it.
They hadn’t been living in it for the past twenty-four years.
Her kitchen cupboards had never been full of utensils or cookware. Her crockery was beige, thick, heavy and mismatched. She didn’t need more than four dinner plates.
Casey’s kitchen cupboard held matching dinnerware for sixteen and he didn’t even live there. For the tourists, he’d said. His mother’s doing.
Rowan had sidled past anything to do with mothers.
Her father had never prioritized making living areas super comfortable or pretty. His quarters were sparser than hers. Bare bones and no memories at all.
Tomas James Casey was a bad influence on her. Expanding her horizons with no effort at all. Fine dresses and fancy boots and now she was standing here wanting cushions and throw rugs and laughter and warmth. A dinner set and matching cutlery. Little things, easily affordable, but she’d never wanted them before. Never taken even half a step toward them.
Instead she’d done her damnedest to please her father by staying invisible and working hard. Earning his approval had been her guiding light for as long as she could remember, and she was doing all right in that direction as long as she stayed off the bulls and did her job.
He’d even approved of the bull-riding book and her upcoming week away at the fancy photographer’s course. A look of surprise had penetrated the cold and he’d smiled and his eyes had lit up all bright and blue as he’d told her that sounded good, real good. She’d basked in the glow of her father’s brief warmth.
Casey didn’t do cold. He didn’t do closed off. She’d left him with a lingering kiss and a promise to catch up with him in Deadwood and stay on with him after the rest of the tour had moved on. Stay on and make no secret of it, no matter what other people thought.
It was time.
She unpacked and put some washing on, made eggs on toast and opened a bottle of wine that had been sitting cold in the fridge since last year. And then she went to her office, turned on the computer and started looking for cushions and blankets and bed linen and things to put in kitchen cupboards, and vendors who delivered.
Four hours and several thousand dollars poorer, Rowan pushed back from her computer, refilled her wineglass and picked up her phone.
“I’m home,” she said. “And I’ve just been online shopping for household linen and kitchen appliances. I don’t even know what some of these kitchen appliances do. But the toaster is purple and it matches the kettle and the wings of the three flying ducks for the wall. I’m also bidding on a wrought-iron chandelier that’s approximately the size of a wagon wheel.”
“Glad you had a safe trip home,” Casey told her.
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say? I’m blaming your mother’s Mad Hatter afternoon tea table and your sixteen-piece dinner set for all of it.”
“Did you have fun?”
“Maybe.” Maybe yes, once she’d gotten into the swing of it.
“Did you get what you liked?”
“Yes.” She was more definite about that.
“So when are you going to invite the family and the foreman and the ranch hands around for a barbecue?”
“What?”
And Tomas James Casey laughed.