CHAPTER THIRTEEN
FINN HAD A feeling that Lane was avoiding his calls. But finally, about midday she had answered a text. And, much to his surprise, she had agreed to have dinner with him at Ace’s. He had considered asking her to go to the brewery with him instead, but that would be a half step fancier than they usually were together, and he had a feeling given the precarious nature of things the change might send her into a tailspin.
He was sort of surprised she wasn’t in one already. After the way things had gone down at her house yesterday he had expected her to commit a little bit harder to avoiding him.
But she had promised to meet him after work, and even though very little about being around Lane was a relief right now, that promise was.
He needed to get away from the ranch. He needed to get away from his brothers. Needed to get away from his sullen niece, who wafted around the house like a specter complaining about her boredom.
After work, he took a quick shower and changed into a fresh T-shirt and jeans. Then he put on his cowboy hat.
He walked out of his room, and met Liam partway down the stairs. “Going out?” his brother asked.
“Yes,” Finn said. “There’s a surplus of leftovers in the fridge. Help yourselves.”
“Are you going on a date?”
“Did you want to come upstairs and help me choose my shoes while you asked me these questions?”
Liam’s lips twitched. “No. But I was wondering if I could catch a ride down with you if you weren’t going on a date. Because I need to get out.”
“You want to hook up—that’s what you’re saying.”
Liam lifted a shoulder. “We’ve been here for a couple of weeks.”
Finn could have laughed at his brother’s blatant objection to what he clearly felt was a horrendous dry spell. Finn himself hadn’t gotten laid in nearly a year. That was what happened when you were hung up on the one woman you couldn’t have.
Or maybe it was why he was feeling so increasingly hung up on her. Because it had been so long since he’d been with somebody else. Chicken or egg, it didn’t much matter to him. It was what it was.
“The place I’m going to is crawling with local girls, and it is definitely where people go to hook up. But, local girls. That means they have family here. That means if you do something dumbass, their dads are going to show up at the door with a shotgun. And I don’t particularly want to deal with the fallout of that.”
“Hey, I get very few complaints,” Liam said.
“Stay away from virgins and farmers’ daughters,” Finn said. “And stay away from my table. It’s not a date, but I’m meeting my friend Lane.”
Liam’s gaze was assessing. “Your friend, huh?”
“Go to hell,” Finn said, continuing down the stairs, not able to inject all that much heat into the invective.
Alex chose that moment to walk into the house. “You going out?” he asked both Finn and Liam.
“Yeah,” Liam said. “We’re going to the bar. You want to come?”
“Did I say this was an open invitation?”
“I need a drink,” Alex said. “Give me a minute.”
Alex walked back toward the stairs, and took them two at a time. Finn looked after him incredulously. “Let’s go find Cain,” he said, his tone resigned. “Maybe he wants to go get laid too.”
As if on cue, Cain appeared from the kitchen. “Well, as tempting as that sounds,” he said, “I have to spend some time with Violet. I can’t leave her alone. Not right now. She’s acting depressed. Or maybe she’s not. Maybe she’s just a teenager, but I can’t tell and it makes me nervous. I might take her out, though. That would be a good idea. Let her see the town. So that maybe she feels a little more enthusiastic about living here.”
Liam snorted. “You don’t remember the town very accurately, do you? Because if you did, then you would know that showing a teenager around the place isn’t exactly the way to make her excited about it. If your goal is to make her run away, though, by all means give her the grand tour.”
Cain scowled. “Thanks for that. I hope someone breaks a beer bottle over your head tonight.”
And that was how Finn ended up with a full truck driving down into town. Because he was in a particularly bad mood, he made Alex sit in the bed, rather than having the three of them squeeze into the cab, on his bench seat. If his brothers touched him in addition to crashing his evening, there was going to be bloodshed.
“I remember this place,” Liam said when they pulled into the parking lot at Ace’s. “It used to be called something else, though. Also, the last time I was here I wasn’t quite old enough to drink.”
“Lucky for Copper Ridge,” Finn commented as he got out of the truck and made his way across the parking lot. “One of you better stay sober,” he added. “I’m probably going to get a ride home with my friend.”
“I’m hoping to get a ride myself,” Liam said.
“Don’t worry.” Alex clapped his hand on Finn’s shoulder, a wide grin on his face. “If anyone asks if we know him, I’ll deny everything.”
Finn walked in ahead of his brothers, then scanned the room, looking for Lane. He saw her sitting in the corner and forgot about the two jackasses who had come along with him. He forgot everything except last night. Or, more specifically, the way it had felt when her lips met his.
And then she’d told him about the baby and he’d broken inside for her. The thought of her going through that alone like she had. The thought of her being so young and making such a hard choice tore at his guts.
It was no wonder she’d seemed so fragile when she’d come to Copper Ridge all those years ago. No wonder he sensed that same vulnerability inside her now.
But knowing about the baby didn’t change the fact that he wanted her. He wanted her more than he could ever remember wanting another woman. And until he had her, it wasn’t going to go away. What he’d said to her last night had been the God’s honest truth. Nothing and no one had done anything to dim his desire for Lane Jensen. At this point, he doubted anything could.
Except maybe having her. That might do it.
It was about the most pleasurable solution he could think of.
He took his hat off, placing it on the table, before sliding into his chair. “You came.”
“I wasn’t about to say no to a free dinner.” The corner of her mouth quirked upward, but there was no shimmer in her dark eyes. She looked tired.
“Who said I was paying?”
“Hey,” she said, frowning, “this was your idea. That means you’re paying. I, of course, already took the liberty of ordering for us.”
“What am I eating?”
“Fish and chips. Regular French fries.”
“Don’t tell me you pulled some bullshit like ordering a salad thinking you were going to eat all of my fries.”
Her lips twitched. “You don’t need all the fries. And I’m in the mood for salad.”
“You have never in the entire history of our friendship been in the mood for salad. You get it so you have something green to look at on the table. And so it looks like I’m the one who eats fried crap.”
She seemed to be warming to him a little bit now, and some of the exhaustion had faded from her expression. Still, the conversation felt strange and unstable. Like a truck driving on a muddy dirt road. At any moment it could all skid off course, no matter how well it seemed to be going now.
“Oh, I’m sorry. You can have my salad. Then everyone will think you’re healthy.”
“No. I don’t want your salad. I want my French fries. And you don’t get any.”
She gasped. “I don’t even know you anymore.”
Her rage was fake, but his resolve not to let her have his French fries was real.
Because he was done with this. With this thing that she did. Wanting something, pretending she didn’t. Using him for certain things and not for others. The woman needed to ask for what she wanted. And then maybe she would get it.
When his dinner was placed in front of him, he pulled it back away from Lane. “I told you, no fries for you,” he said, when she extended her hand.
She frowned. “You were kidding.”
“I wasn’t. If you want something, ask for it.”
Her gaze turned stormy. “Are these French fries an object lesson?” she asked, her tone stiff. “Because I didn’t come here for a lesson, Finn. I thought we were going to let the weird stuff go.”
“Why?” he asked. “Because you want to?”
“Yes,” she said, reaching down toward her plate, touching the edge of a lettuce leaf and frowning. Then she slowly picked up one piece of lettuce, dunking it in a blob of ranch on another lettuce piece before sticking it in her mouth. “That is exactly why.”
“I know it pains you to hear this, but you aren’t in charge, Lane.”
“Of what?” she asked, looking at him angrily. “The world? Because I am pretty aware of that.”
“Of our friendship. You don’t get to be the one that sets the rules and makes sure they never change.”
And just like that, the metaphorical truck skidded off the road.
She looked miserable, and for a moment he felt like a villain. It made him want to let it all go. To drop it, and to put things back where they had always been.
Except, it wasn’t what he needed. It also wasn’t what she needed. Last night had definitely demonstrated that she’d been holding things in for too long. She couldn’t hold all this in too.
They lapsed into silence, and Lane continued to crunch angrily on her lettuce. He ate his French fries without remorse.
He looked up and past her and saw Alex sitting at a table surrounded by women. They were leaning in, and he was gesturing broadly, clearly telling a story. Probably one about his deployment that made him sound like a very brave hero. Not that his brother wasn’t a very brave hero. Finn had nothing but respect for his brother’s choice to serve in the military. That didn’t mean Alex wasn’t milking that service for all it was worth when it came to impressing women.
Liam was sitting between a couple of Alex’s admirers. They couldn’t all hook up with Alex, so he had a feeling Liam was going to sit there and brood until one of them decided that the quieter, more intense energy he put off was something she wanted to explore.
Watching them together made Finn feel old. He didn’t want to do that. Didn’t want to go to a bar and pretend to be interested in what a woman had to say just so he could get into her pants. That had lost its appeal when he was in his twenties. Hell, it had never had all that much appeal to him, but sex had, so he’d done what he needed to do.
It was a damned inconvenient thing. To be a man who didn’t care for shallow hookups, but didn’t want a long-term relationship.
Suddenly, he saw Liam’s expression change. Turn sharp. Turn hard. He followed his brother’s gaze to the door of the bar, where he saw Sabrina Leighton. He didn’t know Sabrina all that well.
Her sister-in-law, Lindy, owned Grassroots Winery just outside of town, but Finn had always been more of a beer drinker, which kept them pretty far outside his circle.
Still, there was no denying that Sabrina’s presence affected Liam.
But it was Sabrina’s reaction that really stood out. Because when her eyes locked with Liam’s she froze, and then she turned right back around and walked out the door.
Finn half expected his brother to follow her, but he didn’t. Instead, he picked up his beer and took a long drink before turning resolutely back to the woman sitting on his left.
And that, Finn supposed, was the aftermath of what happened in small towns when things went wrong.
Sure, Finn was making assumptions about Liam’s association with Sabrina, but he didn’t think he was wrong.
That, he supposed, was the possible fate of himself and Lane if things went wrong.
But how could they? He and Lane were friends. And maybe for him it all made sense because the sexual feelings were new. He knew that he could be her friend and want her. He knew that he could handle both aspects of their relationship. That desire didn’t have to lead to any kind of deeper emotional connection. Hell, for him there wasn’t really a deeper emotional connection to be had.
He looked back at Lane, and saw that her gaze was focused elsewhere. Just past his shoulder and aimed up high.
He turned and looked, following her line of sight to the TV mounted on the wall. It was him. Cord McCaffrey. The man who had fathered the baby Lane had given birth to. The man who had given her the legion of issues that Finn had always sensed was there and knew it was best to stay well away from.
Which is why you’re stepping all over them now?
He chose to ignore that obnoxious voice. She had shown her hand. She was the one who had kissed him back. She had made it clear that she felt this attraction too. If she hadn’t done that, if she had gone stiff in his arms, if she had remained unmoved by what had passed between them, then it would be easy to leave her alone. But she’d responded to him. She put her hands under his shirt. And she’d sure as hell wanted him right back.
That changed things. It changed everything.
At least as far as the physical was concerned. Emotionally... The feelings that he saw playing across her face right now, that wounded light in her eyes, were well above his pay grade. He didn’t know the right words.
It struck him then how much their friendship was built on the connection they had in the present. Neither of them talked much about the past. And maybe that was why it worked.
He didn’t know what to say to her right now. With her face looking like that.
He might know all about secrets, secrets that you kept from everybody, even your own brothers. He might even know how to fix things. All kinds of things. The lights in Lane’s house, a tractor, a milking machine. But hell if he knew how to fix an emotional wound like this. In his experience, they were best left buried.
But hers hadn’t stayed buried. Part of that was his fault. It made him feel like he should say something, do something. But he didn’t know what.
“I would punch that guy in the face if I ever saw him,” he said, in lieu of anything comforting or insightful.
He was fresh out of comfort and insight.
“I have to go,” Lane said, pushing back from the table and walking out of the bar.
Finn watched her retreating form, then threw some money on the table, knowing that he had overpaid and not caring, and rushed out after her.
Dammit. He had said the wrong thing. But what the hell was the right thing to say?
“Lane,” he said, catching up to her in the parking lot. “What’s going on?”
She looked edgy, her eyes wide, her lower lip currently being punished by her teeth. “You know. That’s the thing. You know.”
“Is that what’s bothering you? That I know about the baby.”
She pressed her hand to her forehead. “It’s weird. Nobody else knows. Nobody.” He moved in, brushing his fingertips over her forearm. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t touch me.”
Anger roared through him and he took a step back. Those words cut into him like a knife, and damned if he knew why they landed so deep.
He looked at her face, at the stark fear on it. Fear of him. Of his touch and what it made her feel. And there wasn’t a thing he could do. She wouldn’t let him. He couldn’t even touch her to offer comfort. Couldn’t say what he wanted, couldn’t do what he wanted.
He wanted to hold her. Wanted to kiss her until she forgot. What the hell did she want? To show him her wounds, and then not let him close? To push him away?
He wouldn’t have to be pushed, then.
“Fine, Lane. If that’s how it’s going to be, then I’m going back inside. Maybe I’ll join Liam and Alex—they look like they’re having a hell of a lot more fun than I am.”
And then, feeling like every inch the asshole he knew she thought he was, Finn turned and walked away from his best friend when she needed him most.
* * *
PANIC ROSE UP in Lane’s chest as she watched Finn walk away. She didn’t know what she was doing. Honest to God, she had no idea. But she’d felt like she was falling apart, and sitting there with Cord on the TV while Finn was right there, knowing everything that had happened, was just too much. It was all too much.
Why had she ever thought she should tell him? Well, that was stupid. She knew why. She had told him to shock him, to make him take a step back. To make him rethink wanting her.
But it was more than that. She had also told him to try and prove to him just how important their friendship was. But it hadn’t worked. If anything, she felt more distant from him. And he was walking away from her. He knew she was falling apart and he was walking away. He was making good on what he’d said. That he needed something different than what she was offering and he was tired of hanging around while she continued to ignore that need.
She needed him. What was she going to do if he removed himself from her life? There was nothing she could do. She didn’t have anyone else. Nobody else knew what she’d been through. And she frankly didn’t want to have that conversation with anyone else.
“Wait!” She jogged after him, her heart thundering in her chest, her entire body shaking.
Maybe this wasn’t a new meltdown. Maybe it was just an extended meltdown from yesterday. She should have stayed home. She shouldn’t have agreed to meet him. But she had been so desperate to cement their friendship. To prove that the kissing hadn’t meant anything, that the revelation about her past wasn’t important. That it didn’t have to change anything.
That nothing at all had to change.
Finn stopped, his broad shoulders going stiff. He didn’t turn. “What?”
“Please don’t leave. Please don’t leave me.”
“What is it you want me to say? What do you want me to do? You don’t want me to touch you.” He shook his head. “I’m not going to tiptoe around you.”
“Well,” she said, panic giving way to anger, fury rising inside of her, “that’s your fault.”
Now he turned to face her, more than six feet of enraged male advancing on her now. “My fault? So I was the only one doing the kissing?”
“You started it,” she said, her voice low and trembling. “I didn’t. I never would have started it. Now you know. You know why I have to protect myself like I do. Your friendship is so important to me, and I never wanted to do anything to compromise that. That included touching you. Kissing you. How dare you take that from me? How dare you take away my safe place?”
He moved closer to her and she backed away, pressing her back up against the light post behind her. “I am not your fucking house pet. I’m not some therapy dog you can use to help calm your anxiety. I want things. I don’t exist solely to fill a void in your life. That void that you can’t fill with a husband or a partner because you don’t want a real relationship. So you use some other guy for sex and me to fix your shit. That isn’t happening. Not anymore.”
Angry tears stung her eyes. “That isn’t fair. I don’t think you’re a pet. I never have. But I did think that we were friends. I thought I could trust you. Good grief, Finn, I had you in my house late at night thinking of you like any of my other friends, and the whole time you were trying to scam your way into my pants?”
That was going too far. And she knew it. She hadn’t meant it either. She was just mad, mad and hurt and breaking apart piece by piece, and so she was lashing out at the one person that she wanted to hold on to more than anyone else. It didn’t make any sense, but then she wasn’t sure her emotions had made sense for the past ten years.
“Is that the game now? Because I admitted that I was attracted to you, are you going to act like I was just lying in wait planning to jump on you when I had the opportunity? Here’s some real talk for you, Lane. If I wanted to, I could make you forget all of the issues you have with us getting physical. If I wanted to, I could make you want me. I could make you forget all the reasons it’s not a good idea. I wouldn’t have to coerce you or talk you into a damn thing. You would beg me.”
Suddenly, the reckless heat inside of her changed, melted into something else. Something she couldn’t define, or rather didn’t want to. “Well, aren’t you full of your damn self, Finn Donnelly.” She led with that. With the anger that was still simmering there at the surface, and she left whatever was happening beneath it—all of that molten intensity of feeling that she didn’t want to name—alone for now. “I have never begged a man in my entire life, and you would hardly be the first.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes.” Something small and mean dug at her, spurred her on. “But you’re right about one thing. I have treated you differently than I’ve treated my other friends. My other friends have heard more about my sex life.”
The expression on his face turned sharp, dangerous. “And you want to talk about it with me now?”
“Sure. Why not? You might as well know, since you’re expressing an interest in getting on the ride.” She continued to advance on him, heart pounding, stomach clenched tight, feeling something more than reckless now. “When I want a man, I usually make him take me on a few dates first. Mostly because I want to like the guy that I go to bed with. I’m pretty choosy. I can think a man is hotter than the surface of the sun, but if I don’t want to talk to him at least a little bit, it isn’t going to happen.”
“Is that it? The Lane Jensen system?”
She crossed her arms, cocking her hip out to the side. “Yes. My system.”
“So, is that the problem? You don’t like me enough?”
That landed hard, and it almost made her take a step back. Almost made her call a truce. Defuse the bomb. But only almost. “Usually?” She lifted her brow. “I like you a little too much to take you to bed, but that’s another story. But right now, I don’t like you enough, no.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “But since we’re sharing, let’s have a little talk about my sex life. I have wanted you since you were eighteen and your fingers brushed against my thigh, and you lit me on fire. You were so clearly off-limits. I was too old for you. But then, over the years that gap has shrunk. But I still knew that I couldn’t give you what you deserved. But you know what? None of the other men that you’ve dated have given you what you deserved either. What I think you deserve is something you don’t seem to want. I think you deserve all that white picket fence stuff. A dream wedding and a guy who will make vows to you and keep them. In a perfect world that’s what you’d have. But the world isn’t perfect. Whatever you want later... Right now, I think we want the same thing, and if you’re really honest we both want each other.”
Her mouth dried as she looked into his face—that angry, beautiful face that could never just be her friend’s face ever again. Because she’d kissed his lips. Had felt the slow, luxurious slide of his tongue against hers. Had felt his arousal, hard and insistent and a mirror of her own.
But she couldn’t let him know that.
“You’re pretty confident in your appeal,” she said, “but my entire point in bringing up my sexual history is that you should know I’m selective. I don’t get led around by the lady downstairs. My brain does the leading. And maybe I kissed you back, but that was momentary insanity. Once I was able to think and rationalize I realized it was crazy. And that it was the last thing on earth I wanted.”
She knew that it was going to happen. She had known it, probably from the moment she had demanded he wait when he had decided to walk away. And, if she was honest, part of her had been gunning for it. There was no other reason she would have stopped him from leaving, when she damn well should’ve just let him go.
No reason she should have kept poking and pushing and saying the meanest, most pointed things she could think of.
Still, when Finn wrapped his arm around her waist and hauled her against his chest it was a shock to her system. A shock of heat. A shock of desire.
And most of all, a shock of relief.
She wanted this. This was what she had wanted from the moment she had stormed out of the bar, and that was what had really disturbed her.
That what she wanted was to be as close as possible to the one person who knew about her past. The one person who knew exactly why she felt like every image of Cord that flashed across the news was another strip taken off of her soul.
She waited. Waited for him to close the distance between them. Waited for him to give her what she wanted more than her next breath.
What she feared more than anything else.
But he didn’t kiss her. She wished he would. Wished he would crush her mouth with his and drown out all the uncertainty. Do something to fix the restlessness that was eating away at her, that was all his fault.
He should have the decency to do something about this—this horrific desire that he had created inside her. It was his monster. The least he could do was slay it for her.
He didn’t.
Instead, he just held her. And looked at her, those blue eyes glittering with an intensity that burned away all of the anger that had been simmering inside of her. And without that, it left nothing but the truth. Nothing but the base reality of the situation.
She wanted him. God help her, she wanted her best friend.
He gripped her chin with his thumb and forefinger, pinching it firmly, his hold tight. Too tight for her to move. To look away. “I am damned confident,” he said, his voice rough. “There’s nothing logical about this. There’s no decision to be made. You want me. I want you.” He moved his thumb up, just a bit. Until the rough, calloused pad brushed the edge of her lip. She shivered. All the way down. “The only question right now is when. Not if.”
She shivered, and she would have liked to pretend that it was a jolt of anger, that it was good sense and common decency coming to her rescue. But she knew that instead it was anticipation. A little thrill at the promise he had just made.
He tilted his head upward, and for a moment, with the way the light above them cast his face into stark shadows, the planes and hollows of his angular features made even sharper, he was a stranger. This man who was holding her against that hard body wasn’t the Finn Donnelly she had always known.
But how could it be? The Finn she knew was easy to talk to. Quick to smile. Easy to smooth over any perceived insult. He protected her.
This man didn’t look like he could smile. And he certainly didn’t look like he wanted to protect her.
He looked like he wanted to eat her alive. Heaven help her, she might let him.
This rough, masculine side of him was new to her. This wicked, cocky, sexy cowboy who made her tremble all over wasn’t her comfort zone at all. Far from it.
And it made her wonder if this was what Rebecca had felt when she had nearly hooked up with him a few months ago. If this was what every woman felt when he turned that blue gaze onto them, and she had just been so committed to keeping up that facade that she had been blind until this moment.
It was like a switch had been flipped inside of her and now she couldn’t put it back.
If she was honest, she couldn’t even blame the kiss. It wasn’t the kiss, not really. It had started before that. That moment she had brushed her fingertips against his arm on his porch at the ranch that night his brothers had first come.
That moment she had touched him and felt something other than skin beneath her fingers. That moment she had felt possibility, excitement, a crackle of electricity and a need that hit her low and dragged her down even lower until she ached.
He was right. That was the worst part. It was too late. There was nothing she could do to not feel this. It was between them. Part of them. Right in the middle of their friendship. In the middle of what was usually easy conversation. And then she had gone and heaped her past on top of it. There was no safe space here. Not with him. Not anymore.
And she had to wonder if the only way back was to go forward first.
So that was exactly what she did.
She stretched up on her toes and closed the distance between them, pressing her lips against his.