1
Everything about Charlotte O’Malley drove Cowboy crazy, from the taste of her full, red lips, to the curve of her hip sunk deep into his mattress. But it was her ability to frustrate him like no other woman on God’s green earth that really made him insane. “Damn it, Charlotte! You know that isn’t what I meant!”
He swiped at the sweat on his brow, the late fall Atlanta sun bearing down on him like an old, heavy iron, the freakish heat contrasting with an equally freakish Nor’easter a thousand miles away. Everything about this weather was wrong, and it struck him that the atmospheric clusterfuck that was chewing on the country was the perfect backdrop to the surrealism of this conversation.
When had talking to her gotten so difficult, every phrase hanging in the air like testimony in a courtroom? The tension between them that warped her interpretation of his words only seemed to abate when they were in bed.
His cock stirred in his mesh shorts, his stare raking over her fiery red hair and deep blue eyes, then over her cheeks, flushed with anger. Angry sex was good sex, and he’d hadmore than his share of it lately, but he was growing tired of never having the sweet, loving intimacy they used to share so intensely.
They’d been together two years. As the younger sister of his HERO Force teammate, Logan, Charlotte had been off-limits to Cowboy despite the intense attraction he felt for her. He couldn’t make a move, so Charlotte had done it for him, booking herself on the same cruise where he was protecting a royal couple and ensuring she got her way. Cowboy had been resistant at first, but in the end he’d been captivated, and had remained that way ever since.
She put her hands on her hips, her full breasts rounding out the snug coral-pink tank top that precisely matched her lipstick. “Then what did you mean? I’m not your property, Leo. You can’t just tell me what to do and expect me to obey.”
There was that word again. It had been slung at him lately, along withcherish,honor, andvow. He ground his teeth together, fighting the temptation to point out the perseveration in her vocabulary as he stared at the yard work he still needed to complete. It was supposed to rain that afternoon despite the blazing rays that threatened to melt the skin clean off his body.
This whole mess started when he dug up a clump of fountain grass that was blocking the view from the living room and moved it over a few feet. He didn’t ask her first, as she’d already complained about it several times. Ironically, he’d done it to make her happy. “I wasn’t asking you to obey,” he said.
Her cell phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket, glancing at the screen before silencing it. “Good, because I am not a dog.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and raised his head to the sky.Not the dog line again. That was one of her favorites, along withyou don’t own meandI don’t need any help, thank you very much. Talking to her lately was a minefield of passive aggressive innuendo, and it was fucking exhausting. Suddenly, he was so tired, so desperate to get back what they’d once had, he could only speak the truth. “We can’t keep arguing like this. I can’t take it.”
“You’re the one who?—”
He held up his hand and met her eyes. “Stop. This isn’t about flower beds, and it isn’t about whether I truly enjoy eating salad with dinner, or who should clean the bathroom.” Those were just two of the dozen arguments they’d had in the last three days since he returned from his most recent HERO Force mission. “This is about me wanting to marry you.”
Her nostrils flared, and she pointed a manicured fingernail in his direction. “No, this is about you not listening to me and doing whatever you damn well please, and just expecting me to fall in line.”
“Because in your mind, that’s what marriage is. One person controlling the other.” God knows she had every reason to feel that way. From what he’d heard about her marriage to Rick, the guy was a douchebag of the highest order. He’d been verbally abusive, leaving her self-esteem in shambles—a hell of an accomplishment given Charlotte’s powerful personality—before he took up with a nineteen-year-old model and cheated on her.
She waved. “I don’t want to talk about this.” She turned on her heel.
“Charlotte, wait.” He jogged after her, taking her by the arm and spinning her around. There was a growing rift between them, widening by the day. It fucking hurt to watch it happen, never knowing how to turn things around ormake things right between them. “We have to talk about it. It’s ruining everything between us. Don’t you see?”
She yanked her arm back. “Then stop bringing it up! You’re the one who’s so determined to get me to agree, even though I’ve told you a hundred times I don’t want to get married. Not to you. Not to anybody!”
He was opening the whole can of worms, like a goddamn shipping container full of those creepy crawly little bastards, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself from going on. “I am not Rick. I will never treat you the way he treated you.”
She narrowed her eyes, and he imagined he’d poked a bear with a very sharp stick and was about to regret it. “This isn’t about Rick,” she ground out.
“Hell yes, it’s about him!”
“No, you know what this is about? You. You’re so fucking stubborn, you can’t appreciate how good we’ve got it. Everything about our relationship has to be exactly your way.”
He’d leaned back when she dropped the f-bomb, realizing he hadn’t heard her use that particular embellishment in a long time. Charlotte talked like an ex-con in a bar, which is one of the things he liked about her, but come to think of it, she rarely swore at all these days. Why hadn’t he noticed that? “Not everything.” Hell, he just wanted to marry her. He wasn’t trying to control anything else.
Was he?
He frowned, suddenly concerned she might have a point.
Her head moved from side-to-side as she talked, one hand on her hip, the body language a warning for him to run as she said, “God forbid I have any opinions of my own about how our relationship ought to look, andLordhelp me if I don’t want to take your last name and promise to put upwith your shit—no matter how bad it gets—for the rest of my fucking life, ‘till death do us part. I have been here, not because I signed a piece of damn paper at a courthouse, but because I wanted to be with you, Leo. And I don’t think I do anymore.”
Something shifted inside him. Had she really just said what he thought she’d said? “What?” he said dumbly, knowing it was stupid, but unable to put words into a string that made any kind of sense.
She stared off into the distance and crossed her arms. Her phone rang again, and she huffed as she pulled it out and swiped the screen, stopping it.
His throat fisted closed as silence filled the space where angry words had been. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. He’d been doing yard work, for God’s sake. Yard work to make her home beautiful for her. Sure, he knew he’d pressed the envelope these last few months with the marriage talk, but he’d only meant to wear her down, convince her of what he already knew without question—they’d make the perfect husband and wife.
They’d have a family. Kids and a dog. Go camping in the Appalachians and ride jet skis in the sun. They would be happy together. They would build a good life, the life he’d always dreamed about.
