Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Rowan stood rooted to the spot, his heart pounding like he’d sprinted a ten-mile ruck in full battle rattle. He could still feel the imprint of Enya’s hand on his arm, see the flush of her skin, the drip of water from her hair tracing a path down her neck, disappearing beneath the towel.
A fucking towel.
He scrubbed a hand over his face, his stubble rasping against his palm.
This was bad. This was really fucking bad.
He shouldn’t be thinking about her like that.
Shouldn’t be thinking about the curve of her waist, the freckles on her shoulders, or the way her eyes had widened when she’d looked at him.
She’s not yours to want, asshole.
He turned on his heel, stalking down the hall to the kitchen.
Gael looked up from his laptop as Rowan entered, his eyebrows rising. “You look like you heard I’m fixin’ to bring home another critter.”
Rowan yanked open the fridge. “You better jus’ be fucking with me.” He grabbed a beer, twisted off the cap and flicked it onto the counter. It spun like a top before clattering to a stop.
“That bad, huh?” Gael asked, leaning back in his chair.
Rowan took a long pull from the bottle, the cold liquid sliding down his throat.
He didn’t trust himself to answer. Instead, he leaned against the counter, crossing one ankle over the other, in a futile attempt to pretend like he hadn’t a care in the world.
Not that he thought his brother would buy it for one second, never mind two.
Gael’s chair creaked as he stood, and he reached past him to grab his own beer from the fridge. “You wanna talk about it?”
“Nope.”
Gael chuckled, the sound low and knowing. “Fair enough.” He mirrored Rowan’s pose, leaning against the counter. “You know, I’ve been thinking. We need to get some groceries for the trip. You might as well grab some stuff for the house, too.”
Rowan glanced at him, grateful for the change in subject. “You want me to go to the grocery store? Me?”
Gael shrugged. “The usual. Bread, milk, eggs. Maybe a couple of steaks, the thick-cut ones.”
Rowan nodded, draining the last of his beer. “Alright. Maybe Enya will keep me from lookin’ like a lost puppy while I fill the damn cart.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Gael pushed off the counter, tossing his empty bottle into the recycling bin. “I’ll go check on the horses. Make sure Enya didn’t leave any messes behind.”
Rowan’s grip tightened on his bottle, but he didn’t rise to the bait.
Just nodded, focusing on the cool glass under his fingers.
He heard Gael’s retreating footsteps, the soft creak of the screen door opening and closing, then silence.
Which was nearly worse. Silence offered too much time for his imagination to take flight.
Rein it in, buttercup.
She’s not for you.
He released a breath, his shoulders slumping.
He needed to get his shit together. Needed to stop thinking about Enya, about the way she’d looked at him, about the way she hadn’t.
He needed to focus on the task at hand. The feedstore.
Groceries. The fucking steaks. Not Enya, or Enya in a towel.
Or those seriously sexy freckles on her shoulders.
Freckles aren’t sexy.
They fucking are now.
Fucking hell. I’ve regressed to twelve years old.
He pushed off the counter and grabbed his keys from the hook by the door, the metal jingling in his hand. He had shit to do, and he was going to get to it and stop allowing his cock to lead the whole damn show.
“Enya,” he yelled down the hall, “I’m starting the truck.”
He stepped outside, allowing the screen door to slam shut behind him, and slid his sunglasses on, the world darkening to a more bearable shade as he headed for his truck.
“Rowan?”
Her voice stopped him in his tracks. He turned, slowly, his heart pounding in his chest. She stood on the porch, her hair still damp, her cheeks flushed. She was wearing jeans, and a faded t-shirt that clung to her curves.
He swallowed. “Yeah?”
She took a step forward, her hands twisting together. “I—I’m ready to go. If you still want me to.”
Rowan looked at her—at the uncertainty in her eyes, at the flush of her cheeks—and he knew.
He was fucked. Completely and utterly fucked.
But he nodded, his voice steady as he said, “Let’s go.”
The truck roared onto the main road, and his grip on the wheel tightened, his knuckles flexing as if he could strangle the tension coiling in his gut.
Enya sat beside him, rigid, like she was bracing for a collision or for him to open his mouth and say something that would make them both uncomfortable.
The cab smelled of worn leather, damp hay, and—damn it—that faint floral trace of her shampoo.
The same scent that had wrapped around him last night, the same one that made his fingers itch to reach for her hand now.
He jabbed at the radio before the silence could settle in like a suffocating weight and bit back a sigh of relief when static hissed through the speakers.
He flicked a glance towards her, and there she was, twisting the hem of her shirt between her fingers, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.
Christ.
A wry smile tugged at his mouth before he could stop it. “You gotta help me out here,” his voice was rougher than he meant it to be. “I can’t stand country, but Gael got mad at me last week and did some shit, now I can’t change the fucking station. Got any ideas?”
Enya’s eyebrow arched. “You don’t like country? Isn’t that, like, a felony in Kentucky?”
A laugh tore out of him. “Hard rock’s my thing. But even I won’t argue with Cash or Strait. But anything else is pretty much a no from me.”
Her laugh was real, warm, and unguarded, and something in Rowan’s chest loosened, like a rusted bolt finally giving way.
“Let’s find you something that won’t insult your ears,” she said, leaning forward to twist the dial.
Her fingers brushed the knob, and fuck, he couldn’t look away.
She studied the stereo and frowned before fiddling with the buttons.
A CD jutted out of the player. She pulled it free and turned it over. “Hah.”
“What?”
“He put a disk with a country station recording on it in the player.”
“He did what?”
“Well, it’s a disc, and if you were hearing a country music station, then it has to be that.”
“Imma going to beat him.”
“I have to remember that trick next time someone makes me mad.” The static cleared, and George Strait’s voice filled the cab—some old song about heartache and backroads. Enya’s face lit up. “I love this one.”
Rowan listened, his thumb tapping an uneven rhythm against the wheel. Strait wasn’t terrible. Not his usual music, but there was something honest in it. Raw, like the way she’d looked at him last night—
No, don’t go there!
He glanced at her again and saw her lips moving slightly as she hummed along. Before he could second-guess himself, his voice joined hers. He was more than a little rough and off-key, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter right now.
She turned, eyes wide, her smile faltering for just a second. “Wow. Rowan. You’ve got an amazing voice.”
Heat crawled up his neck.
Shit.
He shifted in his seat, suddenly too aware of how small the cab was, how close she sat, and how good she smelled. “Nah. Just good at shouting. Comes with the job. I yell at horses and idiots all day.”
Enya shook her head, still grinning. “No, really. You should sing more often.” And there it was—that tone, the one that made his pulse kick up. Like she wasn’t just talking about the song.
He shrugged, forcing his eyes back to the road.
Don’t read into it. Don’t.
“Maybe. Or I’ll stick to shouting orders at Gael, and make him pay for screwing with my tunes.”
She turned up the volume, just a notch. The music swelled between them. “You should sing,” she said, like it was a God-given fact. “But for now… let’s just enjoy this.”
Rowan stole glances when he thought she wasn’t looking—the way her fingers tapped her thigh in time with the beat, the way her eyes sparkled when she caught him watching, the way her lips curved into a smile that made his stomach clench. As if she knew exactly what she was doing to him.
The highway stretched ahead, the feedstore still thirty minutes out.
But for once, he didn’t mind the drive. Not with Enya beside him, or with the way she hummed along to the songs, her voice slipping through the cracks in his defenses like water through scorched desert sands.
Not with the way she looked at him sometimes—like he was more than just the guy who’d pulled her out of hell.
Sometimes Enya looked at him as if he was someone worth looking at, and for a man who’d lived his life taking the scum of the earth out of commission, it brought a sharp pang to his chest, every damn time.
Don’t think about last night.
Don’t think about the towel, or the way she’d kissed me like I was the only thing keeping her from losing her mind.
Never mind her losing her mind, what about him?
He was beginning to want things he had no business wanting.
Determined not to ruin their trip and the easy, relaxed vibe that filled the cab of his truck, he decided that for now, he’d just take this—the music, the road, and the way her voice blended with his, rough and sweet all at once.
He would just ignore the way she looked at him like he was worth something.
Also on his ignore-list was his cock. That bastard hasn’t been invited to this car ride, so it had exactly zero business standing up, looking for attention.
The truck’s tires hummed against the asphalt, the rhythm steady, hypnotic almost, as the miles slipped by beneath them.
Rowan lowered his window and leaned his elbow on it, while his fingers held the wheel.
His other hand dropped onto the gearstick as the landscape blurred into a haze of green fields and weathered fences.
Every so often, Enya’s fingers would brush against the seat between them, just barely, like she was testing the space, testing him, and every damn time, his pulse jumped like a spooked colt.
She’d stopped humming along to the music a while back, but the silence between them now wasn’t uncomfortable.
It was charged with something that felt like the air before a storm, and thick with things unsaid.
He could feel her eyes on him sometimes, quick little glances when she thought he wasn’t looking.
He’d catch the flicker of movement in his peripheral vision, the shift of her body as she turned just slightly in her seat.
Each time, he’d have to fight the urge to look back, to meet her gaze and see what the hell she was thinking.
Because if he did that, if he really looked at her, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to remember all the reasons why acting on the attraction growing between them was a fucked-up idea.
Instead, he focused on the road, on the sun slanting through the windshield, casting shadows across the dash.
He rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the tension knotted between his blades.
“You ever been to Six Crosses before?” he asked, his voice rougher than he intended.
Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Town, I mean. Where everyone knows every damn thing about every damn thing.”
Enya shook her head, her fingers tracing idle patterns on her thigh. “No. At least not when anyone was awake. It was the middle of the night when I drove through on my way to your place.”
“Well, Hay at the feedstore’s got the best damn peanuts in the county. If you’re nice, I’ll buy you a bag.”
That got him a small but real smile. “Peanuts, huh? That’s your big sell?”
“Hey, don’t knock ‘em ‘til you try ‘em. Salted, still in the shell. You crack ‘em open right there in the truck, toss the shells out the window. It’s an experience.” He grinned, despite himself. “Besides, what else you gonna do in a feedstore? It’s not exactly a thrill a minute.”
Enya laughed, the sound bright and unexpected, and something warm unfurled in Rowan’s chest. “Alright, you’ve convinced me. I’m in for the full Hay’s feedstore peanut experience.”
“’At’s my girl,” he murmured, and then immediately wanted to kick himself, because ’at’s my girl, cut a little closer to the bone than he’d ever admit.
But Enya just leaned back in her seat and offered him a smile he felt all the way to his boots, and he told himself to take the win.
Even if it did make his skin feel too tight, his cock too hard, and his thoughts too loud.
The speed limit dropped as the truck rolled into town a few minutes later, and the squat, utilitarian shape of Hay’s Feed & Supply loomed up ahead.
Rowan drove around the back and reversed the truck up to the loading bay and killed the engine.
The sudden silence was almost deafening, the absence of the music leaving a void that felt too big, too obvious.
He turned to Enya, ready to ask if she was coming in, but the words died on his tongue when he caught the sparkle in her eye the moment before she looked away, her cheeks flushed pink.