Chapter 13
Generally speaking, she was doing okay with her attraction to Clark.
She did a decent job not remembering that moment in the hallway when he’d touched her cheek.
She had dinner with him, picnics, she talked to him about the future—though somehow they never discussed when she was going to move out—and she managed not to imagine what it would be like to kiss him.
Well, she didn’t let herself imagine it every day.
She shivered. Then she wrapped her robe more tightly around herself and went down the stairs.
It was six thirty, early for Ellie, though Clark would already be out and working on the ranch.
But when she entered the kitchen, there he was, dressed for the day’s work, looking gorgeous. She could have turned around, hightailed it right back up the stairs, and waited for him to leave. Not let him know she was there.
Well. At least this time she was wearing pants.
“Good morning.”
“Morning,” he said, sounding sleepy.
“You’re getting kind of a late start.”
“I didn’t sleep that well last night.”
She wanted to ask him why. She also knew better than to do that.
Because she knew why. It was the same thing that was dogging her.
She wouldn’t say that she was the sort of person who was driven by physical attraction, but her physical attraction to him was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. Well. Except with him.
She took a step toward him and pointed toward the coffee maker. “I just want to get … I could just use some …”
“Yeah,” he said.
He abruptly put his coffee mug down on the counter and walked toward her. He wrapped his arm around her, and pulled her up against his body, and she gasped.
She should tell him it was a bad idea. She should tell him not to.
She didn’t. Instead she looked up at him, her heart threatening to pound its way out of her chest. She didn’t move. And when he lowered his head and claimed her mouth with his, she reached up and clung to his shoulders, doing everything she could to keep herself from melting into the floor.
She’d never been kissed like this. He was masterful. Passionate. Even in the early morning, the whiskers on his face were rough. His mouth hot. His tongue slick. His body was just so big and hard and wonderful. She wanted to cling to him forever.
She’d never kissed a man who was so tall. He gathered her up in his arms, holding her on her tiptoes as he kissed her.
She felt as if her entire body was suffused with warmth. Need poured through her like honey.
She returned the kiss with enthusiasm, answering each slide of his tongue against hers.
“Clark,” she whispered.
How did she tell him? How did she tell him that she had wanted this for so long? That one of the reasons she was so wound up every time he was near her was that there was always this need, throbbing beneath the surface. This thing she had no control over.
This thing that made her feel shame.
Though not for the reasons it once had. She felt shame now because the reason he had felt like such an illicit craving was tied up in what she believed about his family.
Shame that she hadn’t realized immediately what a good man he was.
Such a good man.
He pulled away from her. “I’ve wanted to do that for years.”
The raw admission almost stunned her into total silence. But she managed to squeak a question through her tightened throat. “Really?”
“Yes,” he said. “You know you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen?”
Of course. Back when they were young. Before he got on the rodeo circuit. Before he’d been exposed to thousands of beautiful women.
“What are you doing?”
“What?” she asked, sounding dazed.
“You’re looking at me like you don’t believe me. Or like you’re trying to find some reason to pull apart what I said. Don’t pull it apart. Just take the compliment.”
“I was just … never mind.”
“You’re still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
She felt as if her heart were being torn in two. “Clark. We have to raise a baby together.”
“Yeah. I know,” he said, taking a step away from her. “But I’m glad I got to kiss you. You know, I always imagined it would happen at night. Our first kiss.”
“You thought about our first kiss?”
“Hell yeah,” he said. “I figured it would happen at night. Maybe during a thunderstorm. There would be lightning, and the earth would shake. But yeah. You’re right. We’re raising a baby together. And that’s the most important thing. But I’m glad I got to do it.”
She took a step away, her throat feeling tight. She was good at this. Self-denial. She was good at doing what needed to be done, and stepping away was something that needed to be done.
She and Clark didn’t know the first thing about relationships. Not real, long-term ones. Not the kind that made families.
It was so tempting.
Her urge to take a kiss and turn it into a whole lifetime was exhibit A about why they couldn’t make it as a couple. The stakes would always feel too high. The risk would always be too great, and the probability of failure would always be too likely.
“I gotta go to work.”
“I need to drink my coffee.”
“I’ll see you later.”
She brooded for the rest of the day, and in the late afternoon she stood on the back patio, watching as gray clouds rolled in.
I thought maybe it would be during a thunderstorm.
She tried not to dwell on his words.
She wondered about the psychological reason behind that kiss. Was it just that they were a man and a woman living in a house together, attracted to each other, and looking for a connection that felt so familiar? That felt like it was the recognizable shape of a family?
Was it just hormones?
Or was it something deeper?
Something that had been stirring inside her for longer than she was letting herself admit.
Thunder rolled, and it echoed through her. She thought about what he’d said.
About the lightning striking. That’s what his kiss had been like.
He’d always felt off-limits. She’d told herself that was why she’d been so attracted to him.
Why sometimes when they went to deal with their siblings, she’d imagined immediately booking their own room in that rent-by-the-hour motel and burning off the heat between them.
That was why her brain hounded her with intrusive thoughts about him.
Because those thoughts were taboo.
Now she’d let herself kiss him, though, and her longing was more than just the lure of the forbidden. It was chemistry such as she’d never experienced before.
She sighed heavily, turned, and went back into the house. Marjorie was cooing in her little baby swing, looking up at the dangling cherries and bananas on the mobile above her head. The little swing was set up right in the living area, and Marjorie was beginning to enjoy watching everything.
Marjorie was, at least, a good distraction.
She could give thanks for the occasional exhaustion she felt after staying up with the baby all night, because it stopped her from obsessing about Clark. When she wasn’t thinking about Marjorie, she fantasized like a teenage girl. All over again.
Except now she was old enough to do something about her fantasies.
She made herself a sandwich and hid up in her room instead of joining Clark for dinner, which felt cowardly. Particularly since she kept Marjorie with her, giving her a bottle in bed while she ate the sandwich with her other hand. He could’ve come looking for her. He didn’t.
Maybe he needed a reprieve as badly as she did.
When she finished she crept silently out of the room and into the nursery. She read Marjorie a book, gave her a bath in her bathroom, and rocked her for a long while before putting her in the crib.
It was very unusual for Clark to stay away, and she felt guilty that he was doing it now.
But as she exited the space she realized that the baby monitor was still in Clark’s room.
She would have to sneak in and grab it. She hadn’t heard him come up the stairs, so she was reasonably sure he was not there yet. His bedroom door was cracked open, and she walked in just as the bathroom door opened and Clark stepped out, his lower half barely covered by a towel.
“Oh,” she said, standing there staring at him like a deer caught in the headlights.
He had just gotten out of the shower. His hair was wet, his skin glistening.
His muscles were the epitome of masculine glory, his chest the sort of sculpted wonder that poets could compose sonnets about.
Or at least, she could, and she didn’t particularly like poetry.
A shameful thing for an English teacher to admit, but it just didn’t move her.
However, the stanzas created inside her body by the ripple of his ab muscles were really making her rethink.
“What are you doing in here?”
“The baby monitor,” she said, gesturing to it on the nightstand.
“Oh, Ellie, we are really in trouble now.”
The thunder rolled outside. Like a commandment.
Without thinking about it, she closed the door, slowly and softly until it clicked.
“Are you sure you want this?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered.
He walked toward her, dropping the towel and exposing the rest of his body to her hungry gaze.
She was about to say something. Something she shouldn’t say, something very inappropriate—and she wasn’t the kind of person who made comments like that to a lover—when he claimed her mouth. Didn’t wait. Didn’t pause. Didn’t hesitate.
It was a bad idea for all the reasons they’d already discussed.
It was bad. But it was oh so good. It was something she couldn’t turn away from. It was something she didn’t even want to deny.
She wanted him. With everything she had in her.
She wanted him, because he was wonderful. Because he was perfect. The most beautiful man, the most glorious man, the best caregiver for Marjorie, the most loving brother to Ty, even when Ty was difficult. And by extension, he’d also been there for Melanie.
Most of all, he’d been there for her.