Chapter 17

Becca blinked at the odd glow creeping from behind her curtain. It wasn’t the warm shaft of light that existed when the sun rose in the morning, and when she glanced at her clock, it was only one in the morning, so there shouldn’t be sun at all.

She pushed out of bed and pulled the curtain back, something in her heart catching at what she saw. The light outside the bunkhouse door was on, as were a few lights inside. All lights that hadn’t been on when she’d gone to bed a few hours ago giddily dreaming about her date with Alex.

Alex, who was probably the culprit. She sighed, worry lodging like an uncomfortable weight in her stomach. He worked too much and too hard.

She knew he’d want her to pretend she hadn’t seen this. He’d want her to forget it and go back to bed, but…

Well, they had kissed, and they were going on a date, so didn’t she have some…well, not say necessarily, but input? She could voice her opinion, and that didn’t mean he had to take it, but she had something of a right to speak up.

Someone had to say something. Gabe hadn’t liked her poking her nose into things, and she understood that. He’d objected to her telling Gabe about something that had been between her and Alex. What she should have done was take it up with Alex himself and not involve other people.

So now she would.

She dug through her closet for a hoodie and pulled it on before padding downstairs. In the dark, she felt around for her boots and coat, not wanting to wake anyone else up. She eased the door open and stepped out into the frigid spring night.

Moonlight lit her way to the bunkhouse, and she glanced up at the pattern of stars above her. “I sure hope you’re looking down on me, Burt. I need all the help I can get with this son of yours,” she muttered.

She steeled herself on a deep breath in and pushed the door open as she slowly let it out.

Alex glanced up from where he was working on something with the floors. He held a hammer in one hand, a variety of tools lined up next to the wall.

He got to his feet. “Becca. What…are you doing?”

“Wondering why a light is shining into my window.” She hugged herself against the cold and bit her tongue against telling him he should be wearing a coat.

“Your window?”

“The light on the outside shines directly into my bedroom window.”

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.” His forehead scrunched into lines of confusion. “How did a little light wake you up?”

“I’m always a light sleeper when I’m worked up about something.”

“What are you worked up about?” he asked, clearly ready to swoop in and fix it for her. She wished she could decide if she liked that or hated it, but all she ever felt was some mixture of both.

So, instead of deciding, she went with a joke. “Oh, just this guy…” She sighed heavily, trying not to smile. “He asked me out, and I have no idea what I’m going to wear.”

She got the reaction she’d been hoping for—something very close to a laugh—and she grinned. But even with the levity, her heart pinched and her smile died.

“Why are you out here, Alex?”

“I…found mice.”

“Gross.” Becca wrinkled her nose. “But why are you finding mice at one in the morning?”

Alex glanced at his watch. “Oh. Huh. Must have lost track of time.”

She forced herself to move forward, to be strong and determined. Not her area of expertise, but every new thing had to start somewhere. “I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be.”

“You do realize telling someone not to worry is like telling someone not to breathe. It’s not a voluntary action.”

“I’m fine.”

“Do you ever get tired of saying that?”

His mouth firmed and she knew she was going about this all wrong. The problem was she didn’t know how else to go about it. As long as he was so determined he was fine, what could she do?

“Go to bed,” he said, and there was a touch of gentleness to that order that he didn’t usually use. She’d hold on to that.

“I’ll go to bed if you come with.” When his eyebrows winged up, she realized how that sounded. “Oh, that’s not what I meant,” she stuttered, her cheeks flushing pink.

Alex chuckled, but then she kind of thought of it. Of the kiss earlier today, and the kiss in the bar parking lot, and Alex. “But maybe it could be what I meant.”

“No,” he said firmly, though his mouth was curved in that almost-smile she liked so much.

“Don’t jump to an automatic answer. We should consider it. You know, really think about—”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because we haven’t even been on a date yet,” he said, as though people went around not sleeping together because they hadn’t been out on some official date.

“So?”

“So that’s how you do things,” he replied, holding out his hand and ticking off steps. “You go on a date. You go on multiple dates and then you…”

“Then you what?” she asked as innocently as she could manage. “Rescue goats together?”

“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”

“Oh, stop everything! We need to memorialize this day.”

“What day?”

“The day Alex made an actual joke, and it was even about sex!” She grinned up at him, stepping closer, gathering the courage to touch him. This man so determined to do things the right way, who had this hidden sense of humor that was all the more special because she’d only seen it come out around her.

She slid her palm against his cheek and enjoyed the rough scrape of a day’s worth of whiskers. She pressed her thumb to the corner of his upturned mouth because she wanted to commit to memory that expression. As though he was helpless against her charm. Or goat jokes.

He reached out, but sadly not to touch her. Instead, he pulled up the collar of her coat so it covered her neck better. “It’s cold, Bec.”

“Yes, it is, and you’re not wearing a coat at all.”

“I’m used to that.”

“And I am used to Montana. You should have a coat on. Actually, you should be in bed. Again, I’d like to bring up, my bed is available, with me in it.”

His hand left her coat collar, but instead of going back to his side, he gave her braid a little tug.

“You even wear your hair in a braid to bed?”

“Otherwise Hannibal plays with it.”

He opened his mouth, she was sure to quiz her about Hannibal, but she found she didn’t really want to talk about her cat or her goat or anything else. She wanted to press her mouth to his, so that’s what she did. She kissed him.

When he didn’t resist, when he instead wrapped his hand behind her neck and pulled her closer, she sighed into it and him. Into the feeling of a quiet, lazy exploration that had her insides humming with some mix of nerves and excitement she’d never experienced before.

She moved onto her tiptoes, pressing her body against his, wrapping her arms around his neck to give her better leverage against his much taller frame, and she kissed him with everything she had.

Clumsy or clueless, she didn’t care. Because Alex would never make her feel those things. He would guide her somewhere sweet and perfect.

“What are you wearing underneath this coat?” he murmured into the cold.

“A hoodie.”

“Well, that is disappointing.”

“There’s nothing underneath the hoodie if that helps,” she offered hopefully.

“It does.” His mouth lowered to hers again, this time the hand on her neck tightening its hold and his other hand sneaking under the hem of her coat and hoodie, cool, long fingers touching bare skin.

Alex’s hand was touching her bare stomach, and he was kissing her mouth. Alex Maguire. And it felt like puzzle pieces coming together, like fate finally aligning in the right part of her universe. Like a perfect, electrified hope.

He groaned, pulling his hand from her clothes as he stopped kissing her. His eyes were a dark swirl of emotions she couldn’t parse. “This has to stop,” he said in a voice that sounded awfully strangled.

“Why?” she asked on a dreamy sigh.

“Because we are going to do this right.”

“That sounds boring.”

“Oh, does it?” he said, his voice a deliciously dangerous rasp before his mouth was on hers again, hard and hot and insistent.

Not boring at all.

* * *

He had to stop. Had to control this side of him. She was new to all of it, and she deserved it to go in the right order. She deserved it to happen the way these things were supposed to happen.

Not in the middle of the night in a crappy bunkhouse that still wasn’t livable. Not before he’d even taken her out to dinner. There was a way you did things with women you cared about. There was a way his father would expect him to handle this.

Of course, that was laughable. He didn’t have a clue what his father would think about him making out with Becca anywhere, let alone here, but it was the thought that helped him finally step away. Not just stop kissing her, not just stop touching her, but step away and put distance between them.

Her cheeks were flushed, her mouth curved in that beautiful smile he wanted to soak in like summer heat.

“You need to go inside.” For her own damn good. And definitely his.

“I’m not going inside without you, Alex.”

Oh hell. He didn’t want to go back in there. Didn’t want to be faced with all of the pieces of himself that didn’t fit. The pieces all felt jagged and broken, and he didn’t know how to fix it.

The bunkhouse he knew how to fix, and he was certain once it was finished, he would feel finished too. Once this goal was achieved, all those jagged hurts living in his chest would go away.

“What about this?” she said softly, still close and warm and all too pretty. “We talk.”

“Sure? The calving is going well and—”

“Not about ranch stuff. Not about foundation stuff. Us stuff.”

“I like football. Soccer is confusing as hell. I firmly believe Taylor Swift is not country and tequila was invented by the devil.”

“Those are important things. More important, of course, is that baseball is superior to football, Taylor Swift is the best of country, and tequila…well, I’ve never had tequila so I’ll have to reserve my judgment.”

Damn it, why did he have to like her so much? He’d never known someone who talked like this, who was unafraid to poke at the rigid way he held himself. At least not in female form. Not in a very, very appealing female form.

“As firm as my opinions about Taylor Swift are though, your feelings about her weren’t really what I was getting at,” she added.

He closed his eyes for a second. He’d known that and tried to sidestep it, and still, he’d known he’d sidestepped nothing. Not by kissing her. Not by changing the subject. Becca did not give up once she zeroed in on something.

It was the most annoying damn thing—and the most admirable.

“Then what were you getting at? What is it you want to know?” More about the accident? The things he’d done as a SEAL? Maybe she wanted to know about his mother’s accident. Did she even know anything about it?

The problem was there were so many places he didn’t want to go. So many compartments he kept locked down.

Except in your dreams.

“Why didn’t you come home?”

He blinked. Of all the places he thought she might go, that wasn’t it. “I don’t know.”

“You can ignore a question, Alex. You can say you don’t want to answer, but I don’t ever want you to lie to me. I think that’s more than fair.”

Fair. She had to throw that word out there. None of this was fair. He’d always thought of himself as a fair man, but a fair man would not drag her into his life when he wasn’t one hundred percent on top of things.

But he’d get there. Once the bunkhouse was fixed, once the foundation was up and running, this thing lodged in his gut would disappear. It was just another reason the order of things was so important. If they dated, if they took things slow, he would be right and fine once… At some point. Maybe he didn’t know the exact point yet, but it was out there.

“When, specifically, are you talking about me not coming home?”

“The entire time after our parents were married. You came home…what? Twice? And…the thing is I don’t get it. I thought maybe you hated it or Burt, but you loved him and he loved you. You love this place. It’s home. I know coming back and building this is complicated, but it’s still so clear you belong here. So why would you have kept away so much?”

“How do you know all that?” he asked, surprised at how raspy his voice sounded, how affected.

“I have eyes, don’t I?” she said with one of those sweet smiles he wished he could see as pitying, but from her it just felt like comfort. “I’ve seen you look at the sky, at your father’s truck, at the mountains in the distance. I’ve seen you work with the cows with a smile on your face and laugh with Hick. You love this place. That’s obvious to anyone who’s watching, and I have…well, I’ve been watching. In a totally not-creepy way.”

He laughed, and it was so easy with her to remember how again. To lose that weight on his chest and remember life had all this—humor and light. Love and people.

“So?” she prompted, a tenacious fighter to the end.

Alex sighed. He wanted to lie or to refuse to talk about it, but he was a fair man, and it was all too fair a question. “I didn’t know I was doing it, I don’t think. I just…” He raked a hand through his hair. It was easier to admit things to himself in the privacy of his own thoughts than it was aloud to another person. “I never wanted to see someone take my mother’s spot. I thought Dad had every right to remarry, and I never took issue with your mother. I just…I didn’t want to see it—this place that was my family’s turned into someone else’s.”

She was so quiet he wasn’t sure she was breathing, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to look at her, because all of that still hurt. That he hadn’t realized he was doing it to himself, and he’d lost all those chances to have another moment with Dad.

“I never knew my father,” Becca said into the eerie quiet.

He did look at her then, not sure why she was offering that kind of confession.

She shrugged jerkily. “Mom was seventeen. He disappeared when she told him she was pregnant. Her family kicked her out. So it was always just…us, and then I was so sickly.” She swallowed. “That’s why Burt was such a miracle for us. For both of us. After all that bad. That something and someone so good could happen was a miracle.”

“And you still believe that, even after he died so out of the blue?”

“Yes.” She smiled, her eyes bright with tears, but she didn’t shed them, and her smile was real. “Because…because once you know it can happen, that miracle, you have to believe it can happen again.”

His chest was too tight, and so was his throat. Everything was squeezed, and for a few panicking seconds, he didn’t think he’d be able to breathe. He might die right here—death by hope.

Except Becca reached out and touched his hand, a featherlight brush of her fingertips, and suddenly he could inhale and then exhale. Suddenly, she was close and she was all the air he needed.

“You are something like a miracle, Becca Denton.” And he knew without a shadow of a doubt he didn’t deserve that miracle, but somehow she was still here. “Let’s go inside.”

“Are you coming to my bed?”

“No.”

She huffed. “You’re such a stick-in-the-mud. No wonder your nickname was Dad.”

“Who told you that?” he asked, stepping into the dark night with her and closing the door behind them.

“Jack told me.”

“Jack needs to shut his mouth.”

And she laughed as they walked, hand in hand, back to the house they’d both grown up in at different times of their lives, and somehow that felt just about right.