“He really fucked me up, Beau. Mark. The divorce. All of it. I’m… I’m trying.”
I hold her tighter. Pull her closer. Feel her whole body melt into mine …every soft, warm, trembling inch of her. “I know you are.” I tip her chin up with one finger. Look her dead in her beautiful brown eyes …wet, wide, so dark they’re almost black in the morning light. “And I’m not him. I’m never gonna be him. You’re stuck with me now, cowgirl.”
She smiles. Watery. Real. Her full lips trembling. A tear slipping down her cheek. I catch it with my thumb.
“Yeah,” she whispers. “I think I am.”
I kiss her forehead. Then her nose. Then her mouth …soft, slow, tasting salt. Her hand comes up to my jaw, her small palm cupping my face, her thumb tracing my cheekbone. We stay like that. Mouth to mouth. Skin to skin. Breathing each other in.
“Now, let me make you breakfast. Since somebody interrupted the first course.”
She shoves a pillow in my face. I just laugh.
Twelve
Ina
I don’t mean for it to go public. It just… happens. The way everything happens in a small town. Somebody sees something, tells somebody, who tells someone else, and by the time you’re pouring your morning coffee, the entire county knows you’re seeing the youngest Redding boy.
It starts at the feed store.
Beau insists on driving me. Which is ridiculous because I’ve been making this run by myself for eight months. But he stands in my kitchen with his keys in his hand and his hat already on, forearms crossed, veins popping, looking like he was carved out of oak…and says, “I’m coming with you,” in that low, no-room-for-discussion voice.
And my dumbass just grabs my purse.
He opens my door. Helps me into his truck. His hand lingers on my waist as I climb in…big, warm, firm…and my whole body lights up like he plugged me into a wall socket. I’m still sore from last night. Still sore from this morning. My inner thighs ache when I settle into the seat. And the second his palm lands on mybare thigh, heavy and possessive, all that soreness blooms into a low, sweet throb that makes me press my knees together.
This man has ruined me. I can’t even ride in a truck without getting wet.
We drive into town in broad daylight. Together. Like a couple, like this is normal.
It is not normal. My heart is hammering.
The parking lot at Miller’s Feed & Supply is half full. Trucks and SUVs. A few guys loading bags in the heat. Normal Saturday morning. The air smells of dust, diesel, and baked earth. But the second Beau comes around to my side, opens the door, and puts his hand on the small of my back as we walk in …his palm hot through the thin cotton of my shirt, fingers spread wide like he’s branding me through the fabric…I feel it. The shift. Eyes. Everywhere.
Martha Gaines is at the register and does a double-take so dramatic that her reading glasses slide down her nose. Dave Coolidge stops mid-sentence and just stares, mouth half open, a receipt dangling from his hand. Patty from the co-op elbows her daughter so hard that the girl stumbles.
And Beau? Beau doesn’t notice. Or doesn’t care. Probably both. He walks next to me with his hand burning a hole through my shirt, nodding at people. Completely unbothered. Meanwhile, I’ve got beard burn on my inner thighs, and I’m pretty sure if Martha Gaines looked hard enough she could see the hickey on my collarbone that I tried and failed to cover with concealer.
“Everybody’s staring,” I mutter through a smile that’s more like a grimace.
“Let ‘em.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not the divorced woman whose ass is still sore being escorted through the feed store by a manwho looks like he belongs on the cover of a ranch romance novel.”
He glances down at me. His golden eyes crinkling at the corners. “You read ranch romance?”
“That is NOT the point, Beau.”
His mouth twitches. He squeezes my hip …his thumb finding the exact spot where his grip left marks last night …and keeps walking. My clit pulses. In a feed store. Between the mineral blocks and the de-wormer. I hate it here.
We grab what we need. Supplements Miguel requested: mineral blocks, fly spray. Beau loads the heavy bags without being asked, hoisting fifty-pound sacks onto his shoulder like they’re filled with cotton. His T-shirt rides up when he lifts. I catch a flash of tan skin, the trail of dark hair below his navel, the hard V of muscle disappearing into his jeans. His biceps strain against his sleeves. His forearms flex, veins roping under golden skin.
I’m standing in a feed store staring at a man’s lower abdomen like it holds the meaning of life. This is what I’ve become.
A woman I vaguely recognize sidles up to me near the hay bales while Beau’s loading the truck.
“That your new man?” She asks with a smile that’s half friendly, half fishing expedition.
