Chapter 14
There had to be alcohol in here somewhere.
I shoved open the door to my office, kicked it closed behind me, and looked around. The desk, probably. I set the box of Emily’s stuff in the corner and went to investigate.
Before I had taken over Lodestar Ranch, this had been Dad’s office. He had put on a good show the first couple weeks after Mom’s death, showing up here every day to “work.” By evening, he would stumble home, smelling of liquor, and pass out on the couch. I was willing to bet there was still a bottle or two somewhere.
The bottom drawer was the obvious answer. It was locked, and I had never opened it. I located the key from the middle drawer, turned the lock, and bingo. Whiskey. And a nice glass to go with it. Good ol’ Dad.
I poured a finger’s worth into the tumbler and tossed it back in one gulp right as the door opened and James slid inside. The whiskey burned, but its heat couldn’t reach the coldest parts inside me. I needed more. Two fingers, this time.
“You here for a drink, buttercup?” I didn’t look at her as I poured.
She glanced at the clock on the wall, registering the fact that it was not yet noon. “No.”
I shrugged. “Suit yourself. I don’t mind drinking alone.”
“You’re not alone.” She closed the door quietly behind her.
I leaned my hips against the edge of the desk, crossed one leg over the other, and eyed her over the rim of my whiskey glass as she came closer. “You offering to keep me company?”
There was an invitation in my tone that shouldn’t have been there. Fucking whiskey.
For once, she wasn’t smiling. She took the chair in front of me, folded her knees up to her chest, and looked at me with those big brown eyes that saw far too much. “What was that all about? With Deacon?”
I grunted into my whiskey. I never talked about Emily. Never. Out of respect for Ben, I kept my mouth sealed tight. But fuck, I had a lot to say. And right now, I wanted to say it to her. I could probably blame that on the whiskey, too.
“We were high school sweethearts, Emily and me. She was…shit, she was the love of my life. From the moment I saw her, I knew I was going to marry her. That was when I was fourteen. Same age my dad met my mom, so that made sense to me. When we graduated high school, I stuck around here in Aspen Springs. She went to the University of Colorado in Boulder.”
James propped her chin on her knees, listening, with nothing but compassion in her eyes even as I took another sip.
“I had my whole life planned out, and I was thrilled about it. Work the ranch with my dad. Take over the breeding program. Marry Emily when she graduated. Have a couple of kids. Live happily ever after. Step by step, I did all that.” I laughed. Not a happy sound, judging from her flinch. “Well, except the happily-ever-after part. I didn’t do that.”
I stared at the amber fluid, swirling it around the glass, seeing how it caught the light. “I used to visit her on weekends. She had a friend. Deacon.”
James sucked in a breath.
“Yeah.” I shook my head. God, how stupid was I? Thinking they were just friends. “We hung out a few times. I could tell he had a thing for her, but I was so sure she loved me. So sure our story would be just like my parents. I didn’t doubt her for a second.”
I fell silent, remembering what Deacon had told me only moments ago. She wasn’t unfaithful to me physically. She hadn’t slept with Deacon while we were together. But still…she had loved him even then, hadn’t she? Why hadn’t she made a clean break back then, before marriage and a kid made everything messy? I glanced at the box in the corner. How badly did I want to know?
Not enough to find out, I decided. Why torture myself by reading how my wife fell in love with another man?
“She graduated. We got married. Deacon moved to town right when she got pregnant with Ben. It was a hard pregnancy. She was sick for most of it, but her doctors told us it was perfectly normal. It wasn’t until after Ben was born and she kept right on feeling sick that we discovered the cause wasn’t pregnancy at all. It was cancer.”
“Oh, god, Adam. I’m so sorry.”
James leaned forward and touched the outside of my leg, right at the knee. I stared down at her hand, so tiny against my leg. It was an oddly intimate gesture, but it felt right somehow. I could feel the heat of her palm through my jeans. It sank into my skin, burning as hot as the whiskey in my throat.
She squeezed and then released my knee, leaving me cold again. I frowned.
“Stage four. There was no question it would kill her. It was only a question of when. The doctors told us it could be weeks or months or, if she was really lucky, a year. I spent the next month dragging her to specialists all over the country, but they all told us the same thing. Finally, she put a stop to it. She didn’t want to spend what time she had left searching for a miracle. She wanted to spend it living. With the people she loved.”
I could tell from the way James’s entire body tensed that she suddenly understood where this was going.
“I came home one day to find her bags were packed and ready by the door. She told me…” I gripped the glass so tightly I could almost feel it start to give way beneath my fingers. “She told me she couldn’t die as my wife. Her heart belonged to Deacon, and it was time the rest of her did too.”
Her plush mouth went slack. “What did you do?”
“I drove her to Deacon’s, of course. I sure as fuck wasn’t going to let that asshole step foot on my property. She lived another fifteen months. Long enough to get that divorce she wanted and die with his name. She wanted Ben with her full-time for as long as she could have him. I agreed to that, knowing what was coming.”
I paused, remembering. That had damn near killed me, parting from Ben. Deacon, being a decent human being despite his wife-stealing tendencies, had made it easier on me by bringing Ben to a park every day so I could spend an hour or so with my boy.
“That lasted only a couple months before her body wore down to the point she couldn’t care for a baby. Ben came home with me, and I brought him to her every day for a visit. Sometimes only five minutes before she was in too much pain or fell asleep again.”
“Oh, Adam,” James said softly.
“A love like that only happens once in a lifetime. That’s what my dad says. It was true for him. I figure it’s true for me, too.” My god, I had loved Emily. Even at the end. “Kinda sucks that my once-in-a-lifetime love was nothing more than an obstacle in theirs.”
James pushed to her feet with so much force that the chair went rolling across the room behind her. “That’s bullshit, Adam. Bullshit. Humans have an infinite capacity for love. And we’re not static. We grow. We change. Love changes us. The person you were then? The person who loved Emily? He’s not here. Loving her changed you. How could it not? My god, Adam. You went through hell. The person you were then, he had his once-in-a-lifetime love, and you’re right. That sucked. But you’re not him anymore. The man you are now still gets a shot.”
She probably meant that to be encouraging. It wasn’t. It was terrifying. Holy shit, I had barely survived love once. No way in hell was I looking to try that again.
I had no interest in love.
But the woman standing in front of me, smelling like hay and vanilla, had my attention. Maybe it was the way she looked at me. Like I was something worth looking at.
Or maybe I was kidding myself. She’s had my attention since the moment I heard her laugh in the coffee shop. Warm and full. She was like the sun. The closer I got to her orbit, the warmer I felt. And I was so fucking cold. Cold and empty.
Which was why, with one quick motion, I captured her arm at the elbow and pulled her into my space. When I parted my thighs to bring her closer, she fell forward against my body, catching herself with a hand against my chest.
Our hips lined up together, my cock against her belly. Her fingers curled into my shirt as she arched her head back to look at me. Those doe eyes searched my face. Thinking. Assessing.
I didn’t want to think. I wanted to burn.
With one hand still holding her elbow, I slid my other hand behind her neck to cup the back of her head. Held her steady as I pressed my mouth to hers. Completely fell apart when she welcomed me in.
I slid my tongue against hers. She whimpered into my mouth, and I greedily swallowed the sweet little sounds, letting them heat me up inside. Felt myself slowly thaw like a winter garden inching toward spring.
Her hands slid up over my chest, leaving trails of fire on my neck, coming to rest on my cheeks, her fingertips digging into my skull. Now we were both holding on like we were afraid the other one might let go.
I had no intention of letting go first.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had kissed a woman like this. Felt a woman touch me like this. The intimacy of it jolted me awake, like I had been sleepwalking until she breathed her warmth into me. I soaked it up. Asked for more. Grabbed a handful of that sweet ass of hers and ground my hardening cock against her. She pushed back almost frantically.
And then I felt her smile against my mouth.
Like she was happy. Like she didn’t know I was too fucking wounded to make anyone happy.
Fucking hell, what was I doing?
I wrenched my mouth away. Grabbed her by the biceps and pushed her off me. She stared at me as I slid away from her body. Her hair was mussed from my hands, her lips all puffy and wet, her eyes dreamy. I almost reached for her again, but she deserved better than that, so I kept my hands to myself.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” I said, knowing it was the wrong thing to say even if it was true.
“I beg your pardon?”
“My mind was…in a bad place. The whiskey…” Like any of it excused my behavior.
“Oh.” She blinked away the glassiness in her eyes. “Right. No, I get it. You were caught up in your feelings about your ex-wife, and you kissed me. A surrogate for what you couldn’t have, I guess.”
There was a bite to her words. Hurt. My brow furrowed. I had lost my fucking mind, no doubt about that, but one thing I was certain of was that I had not been thinking about Emily when I put my mouth on James.
“James—”
“Don’t,” she said. “You were vulnerable and I…I should have known better. I don’t know what I was thinking. That wasn’t what you needed.”
I stared at her. What was James apologizing for? She hadn’t done anything wrong.
I tried to find the words to tell her that. I wasn’t fast enough. She slipped out the door, shutting it quietly behind her.
Leaving me cold again.