I wasn’t a caveman. Well, at least, I didn’t think I was. You can’t be raised by a badass woman who handles two wild, ridiculous sons, a huge congregation of nieces and nephews, and still manages to cook, clean, make the money, and pay the bills all on her own, and somehow end up thinking you have any say in what a woman does. Especially when that woman isn’t yours. Especially when you haven’t told her you want her to be.

“Fuck.”

The club was lousy with drunks, most of them, thank God, too damn twisted to recognize Kit or me. That still didn’t make me relax, but then, relaxing had been the last damn thing I’d managed since we left Ashford.

The car ride with Kit and Bill had been the most awkward bullshit in my life. He flirted, moving his hand a little too close to her knee as he tapped the cupholder. She hadn’t seemed to mind, something that irked me the whole way to the city. But then, I didn’t care about that. Even managed a grin when Bill’s fingers came too close to Kit’s leg, and I stretched out my leg, weaving one foot between the two front seats. Cockblock executed.

I had no clue what I’d done to make Kit ask Bill for a ride to Seattle. One minute I had my fingers inside her, loving the feel of her sweet, soft skin all around me, the next she was ignoring me and flirting with the asshole we always made jokes about when we snuck off to the diner for lunch.

But Kit had spent most of the day after we’d gone to the president’s speech with her girls in the makeup trailer, then the entire afternoon and night at a spa. So she said. Next day on set, I got the cold shoulder, and she was batting her damn eyes at that stupid fucker.

What the hell?

“I thought you hooked up with her,” Dale had said, two minutes after Kit had stormed off and told Bill to book the rooms for the weekend trip.

“What?”

Dale couldn’t have known. The guy didn’t listen to gossip, especially not about me, and we both knew it. But the former SEAL had stood there on set, glancing between me, showcasing what was probably a stupid glare, complete with smoke funneling from my ears, and Kit, as she moved her hair behind her ear and gave Bill a smile I knew she reserved for people she was trying to charm.

“You and Kit? I hear tell there was a second kiss.”

“The fuck, dude?” The admission had been the only thing that brought my attention away from Kit and Bill. Dale had grinned, shrugging like my question was pointless.

“Seriously, man…how can you work on TV and never pay attention to the shit the fans say about you? Don’t you have an Instagram?”

That question had my mouth dropping open and my eyebrows going up. Dale seemed too gruff, too smart for stupidity like social media. “You do?”

He’d laughed, and I hated the tone behind it. Dale slapped my shoulder before he’d pulled out his phone, moving his thumb across the screen before he came to an app and a picture of him and four guys all decked out in desert fatigues.

“My brothers from our SEAL team are obsessed with Instagram. They think it’s the only place to keep track of the women they have in different cities.”

“But you’re not active.”

“No,” he’d said, shoving his phone back into his pocket. “But those assholes still tag me in all the bullshit pictures they take.” Dale had looked back at Kit, and the smile left his mouth. “Seriously, man, stop fucking around. That’s two kisses that landed on the internet, and neither one was remotely innocent.”

“How did you know about…”

Dale laughed again, punching my shoulder with a tap of his fist. “Fans, brother. They post everything. And you can’t fake that shit you gave Kit after the president’s speech. I might be a grumpy asshole, but I still got eyes in my head.” He’d nodded to Kit before he picked up the tool belt next to his feet on the floor. “Woman like Kit ain’t hard to read, and that…” He’d jerked his chin toward where Kit stood with Bill, too damn close for my liking. “That’s a woman trying to get the man she wants to stake a claim.” He’d moved away, fastening his belt before he called over his shoulder, “Don’t fuck that shit up, Kane.”

But I was. No matter how many times I reached between Kit and Bill when the guy made a move—my elbow knocking his drink over on the table, or my pointless questions to Kit about the kind of armoire she was looking for when we’d stopped in the antique shops Bill had picked out—I still wasn’t getting any explanations from Kit. Or much respect from Bill.

“Kane, why don’t you grab us a beer?” he’d said not five minutes ago when I’d asked Kit for the fourth time about the last armoire she’d checked out more than five hours before. Bill was a little buzzed. I could tell by the way he slouched against the table as he slipped me a twenty, and Kit was irritated either at me—nah, no way—or at Bill. Yep, that was likely.

“You volunteer me?” I asked the man, eyes squinting as I watched him. I wasn’t an idiot. He had a plan. But then Kit sighed, slouching in her chair as another drunk tourist grabbed the karaoke mic and sang Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”

Even if Dale was right and Kit was playing some stupid game, she was still annoyed. At me? At Bill? Who the fuck knew? I’d spent the day getting between them, not letting there be even a second of a chance for Bill to make a move. But then, I didn’t take advantage of my upper hand either. It seemed that irritated Kit too.

Be cool, I told myself. Calm the fuck down.

I could do that. Pretend to cut my losses if only to get the frown off Kit’s face.

“Fine,” I told Bill when he didn’t answer me, and I pushed back from the table, leaving the twenty where he put it. I leaned my elbows against the bar as I waited for the guy slinging shots to finish up with the three drunk tourists in front of him.

There was no mirror above the bar that would make spying on Kit and Bill easy, and there was no way to pretend not to be watching them without watching them at all. Instead, I lowered my head, pretending to study the tip of my boot with my face lowered, but my gaze shifted to the side. I stood up with a jerk when I spotted the table and Kit and Bill missing from it. I moved my head around the column that hid the bar from the section of tables, relaxing a little when I spotted Kit next to Bill on the stairs that led to the stage, talking to the tall guy with the braids who manned the karaoke shit.

It was on the list, I reminded myself. Sing in front of a crowd of more than twenty people. A quick glance around the club and I spotted more than fifty. Requirement met.

I could build her anything at all. I could demo a house in under four hours. I could jump from a plane or ride a bull if I were asked. Tires, carburetors, even the fucking tango, all that shit was easy for me. But singing? Hell no. I couldn’t carry a tune in a steel bucket and damn sure not in front of a crowd. A man’s gotta have some pride.

I was actually relieved she was tackling this item on her own. I’d heard Kit sing when she was piss-drunk and a good Patsy Cline song hit the radio. She was amazing. Of course she was. Maybe a little shy about how she sounded, but she was damn good.

The crowd would love her, and she’d love them right back without my making an ass of myself at all.

So why the hell was I frowning? Why did it feel like something thick and burning took root in my gut and was growing painful, sharp prickles?

Bill stood next to Kit, taking the mic, waving his hands around for the crowd to stand.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you’re in for a treat! For one night only, here to sing with yours truly the classic Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty hit, ‘Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around,’ is The Rehab Network’s very own Kit Carlyle!”

The roar of applause was deafening, and soon a small group of people rushed to the front of the stage. No one crowded her. No one tried to touch her, but as the music started and she began to sing, that prickling sensation in my gut got sharper. They all watched her like she was a rock star. They loved her, and she thrived on the attention. Kit flung her hair, motioning her arms, twisting the mic stand back and forth as she sang just like Stevie, and the crowd sang along, a loud chant of lyric and laughter the longer the song went on.

Bill wasn’t half bad, I could at least give him that, but he was no Tom Petty, and he didn’t have a tenth of Kit’s charm. He could have been anyone. He was invisible, and if he touched her around the waist one more fucking time like he did just then, I’d make damn sure Bill disappeared.

But Kit handled him, pulling his arm from her body, playing to the crowd, leaning forward until she got to the line about needing someone to take care of you. Her gaze locked on to mine, her expression blank, but her eyes lit with something volcanic.

Then, the chorus. Stop draggin’ my heart around. That shit was meant for me. She wanted me to get the message. I would have. The look on her face was warning enough, but then two drunk assholes jumped on the stage, moved Bill aside as Kit continued to sing, and I forgot about messages and meaning and everything else but protecting Kit from the groping hands of the bastards that danced on stage with her.

Being as big as I was made parting a crowd easy enough, but the job got harder when the crowd in question was filled with drunk assholes who wanted to laugh and dance and generally be a nuisance.

“Move,” I tried several times, coming to a clogged table of shimmying females who couldn’t be legal. Got through them with a little struggle, my focus on the stage and the biggest of the two numbnuts who had his hand on Kit’s waist, pulling her back against his dick. “Fuck off,” I told the kid when I got to the stage, sending the guy trying to pass himself off as security a glare that had the man stepping back. He had too much of a gut to be any real threat and didn’t seem concerned enough to do anything when I jumped on the stage and pushed both idiots away from Kit.

“Kane!” I heard, then Kit screamed, both of us turning to watch one of the guys I’d just roughed up fall off the stage and into a throng of utterly wasted frat boys. “Oh God!” she said, scrambling toward the kid on the floor. She only stopped when I grabbed her arm, holding her back. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“He had his hands all over you!” I told her, shooting a middle finger at one of the guys’ friends when he picked up the kid from the floor. I spared half a glance at them both, then felt like shit when I spotted the kid’s face. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen and might have been a hundred and twenty-five pounds soaking wet.

“You didn’t have to do that, asshole,” his friend said, holding the guy around the shoulder.

“This will be bad if it gets out,” Bill said, head shaking as he jumped from the stage and followed the kids across the bar as they left.

“Kane, what the hell is your problem?” Kit asked, tugging me off stage with a death grip on my wrist.

I couldn’t keep my gaze from the kids across the bar and Bill’s frantic gestures as he seemed to be trying to control the potential shitstorm.

“Kane?”

“I…I don’t know,” I told her, finally looking down at Kit’s heart-shaped face. The tension in my shoulders went rigid, and I still felt that prickling sensation in my gut, only now it burned me with worry.

This was what I feared on the off times I thought about Kit and me together. Drama. Irrational reactions, all mine. Fucking complications.

“I don’t know,” I told her again, stepping out of her reach when she tried taking my arm. I waited for Bill to return, let him get halfway through the crowd before I finally shook my head, eyes squeezed tight. “I’m sorry. About…this,” I said, waving toward the crowd before I looked at her again. “I’m sorry about fucking everything up.” She knew what I meant. The disappointment came quick and sharpened her features. “I’ll…see you in the morning,” I told Kit, walking away from her just as Bill returned to her side.

There were groups of kids cloistered around the exits, all drunk and calling me an asshole as I moved through the crowd and out into the parking lot. Our hotel was only a block away, and I took that small walk to try to get the guilt I felt squashed down deep. It could go right next to the disappointment and worry I had any time I thought about Kit and me and how things had been before that damn list. Before that damn kiss.

No. That was a lie, I thought, just as I cleared the hotel’s parking garage. I’d been twisted up about Kit for way longer than that. The kiss only made things worse, in the best possible way.

I leaned against the elevator door when it shut, head back, trying and failing to clear the look on Kit’s face when I pushed that kid. Disappointment. Insult. I’d gone all caveman, despite anything I tried to tell myself about who I really was. Hell, I’d done that before we ever left for this fucking trip. My mom would whip my ass if she saw me.

“Shit,” I said to the empty hallway when I left the elevator. My mom would whip my ass. I’d already ignored several messages from her about the video in the bar and me and Kit. I’d managed to put her off by claiming to be busy, and she’d been satisfied, only because I’d sent her a picture of Kit and me with the president and first lady. Mom was a little bit of a fangirl. But if anyone had caught me on film roughing up that poor kid and posted it… Five feet two or not, Mom would whip my ass.

Hell, everyone would. How bad would this be? I dropped my keys and wallet on the lounge table when I made it into my room, ready to drown myself in a shower by the time another round of guilt and pointless questions shot into my head.

Had Bill smoothed things over?

Worse still…had Kit gone to his room?

“Fuck!”

I stood under that steaming spray for a good twenty minutes, doing my best to let the stinging water punish me, wipe clear the bullshit mucking up my head, but it didn’t work. Nothing would. Not unless I could apologize to Kit, something I considered as I slipped on my shorts and ran a towel over my wet hair.

Would she listen? Had I fucked things up for good?

Would Kit…

The thunder of knocking on my hotel room door paused my train of thought, and I stepped to the door, forgetting I was half naked. Forgetting everything at all when I glimpsed the top of Kit’s head through the peephole.

I threw open the door, resting my arms on the trim as I looked down at her, trying to ignore the sharp heat I swore I could feel as Kit moved her gaze all over my body. Just that look alone got to me. Each shift of her eyes over my thighs, up my stomach, to my chest and arms and back again, felt like a kiss, something hot and wet and sweet that I wanted from her. From only her.

But would that ever happen now?

“Kane?” Kit said, inhaling, small pink tongue sliding over her bottom lip like she wanted a taste of something that wasn’t hers.

“Yeah?” I managed, unable to say more, that look she gave me taking up most of my attention.

“Let me…let me in,” she said, stepping over the threshold. I couldn’t move. It felt too good to have Kit so close, to feel the slip of her fingers against my chest as she touched me, likely trying to get me to step out of her way. “Let me in,” she said again, and this time, her voice was low and sweet and fucking sinful. “There’s something I want from you.”