22
I wake with a small, warm body nestled against my side.
Ruby.
I turn my face to the balcony, wincing at the bright blast of morning.
A groan tears from my chest.
I’m a man who never sleeps past seven. But this morning, the sun is at an angle I haven’t seen in a decade. At least not in my bedroom. Which means I’ve slept in. Something I never do. In the years since Maggie’s been gone, not once have I slept through the night.
My sleep last night—dreamless. Fucking perfect.
I blame the girl in my bed.
A soft sigh sounds from the sheets and Ruby wiggles closer, snaking an arm around my torso. I can feel the soft orbs of her breasts plump against my back and instantly, I’m hard as nails.
Carefully, I roll to face her.
She sleeps with one hand pressed against her chest, the sheet tangled around her naked body. Her thick rose-gold hair is wild and swirled up around me. A constellation of freckles is scattered across the apples of her cheeks and the bridge of her nose.
I lie here, watching her, waiting for regret to wash over me, for that telltale hollow ache in my chest, but there’s nothing. Just Ruby, soft and safe, beside me.
Hands down, last night was the best night I’ve had in a long damn time.
Unable to help myself, I caress her cheek, and she wakes.
Her long lashes flutter open. Sleepy blue eyes stare back at me. “Hi,” she says.
“Mornin’.” After a brief second of hesitation, I sweep a kiss to her brow. “How are you feeling?”
After Ruby fainted and her reluctance to stay over, I spent a good hour lying awake next to her, making sure she was okay. She scared the fuck out of me last night. Had ratcheted up the unease in my veins, that slow snap of fear that threatened to choke me.
“I feel great,” she says, stretching in the sheets, making a squeak of joy. Then she gasps and sits up. The sheet falls away, giving me a glimpse of her beautiful body. “Charlie, we missed the sunrise.”
“Guess that means we’ll just have to try again.”
A happy glow lights up her face, like I’ve promised her the moon, and I’m hit with the strange sensation to make her look like that all the time.
A door slams downstairs. The smell of coffee.
“Shit.” I shove up in bed and shrug on a pair of jeans. I need to take my own advice and start locking my door. Not like it matters to my brothers. Chimney, underground tunnel, parachute, one way or another, they’d find their way in.
“I need to go deal with my brothers,” I tell her.
Ruby sits up, her bare legs drawn up to her chest. With messy hair and flushed cheeks, she looks like a wild forest nymph.
It hits me sudden and sharp.
I want to keep her.
Biting her plump bottom lip, she pulls the sheet up around her. “I should go.”
The words are on the tip of my tongue to tell her to stay, ask what she has planned for her day, but I clamp my mouth shut.
It’s better this way.
We have lines, we keep them.
Even if after last night, it feels like we redrew every line between us.
I exhale, turning away from her to get my bearings, to find my fucking mind before I lose it.
Sex, good sex.
That’s all it is.
I can’t go down this road.
Easy to throw caution to the wind last night, but in the bright light of morning, it’s dangerous.
I stiffen when Ruby’s small hand runs up the curve of my back, her touch like a flame.
“Charlie?” she asks, worry in her voice.
I give a nod and look at her. “Take your time. Use the shower if you want. Make yourself at home.”
“Okay.” She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear and stretches out her arms.
I allow myself one last eyeful of her pert breasts, then I shrug on a T-shirt and hustle downstairs. Davis is in the kitchen pouring coffee while Keena noses her way around the room for fresh scents. There’s a brown paper bag on the counter from Zeke’s Hardware telling me he’s been into town.
“Mornin’.” I reach into the cupboard for a mug, keeping myself angled toward the cabinets, hoping it hides the fact I’m still sporting wood.
Davis lifts his mug in greeting. The dog tags around his neck catch the sunlight through the window. “Took care of the horses for you.”
I pour myself a cup of coffee, trying to fight off the guilt in my chest. “Thanks.” My mind should be on the chores I’ve ignored, instead they’re on the girl in my bed.
A smile tugs at the edges of Davis’s lips. “Heard you went dancing last night.”
“Heard right,” I say coolly and take a long sip of coffee. The Resurrection gossiphotline took less than twenty-four hours.
Davis clears his throat. “Playin’ hooky looks good on you, C.”
I grunt.
Glancing down the hall to the stairs, my brother says, “You got your girl here?”
My girl.
“Yeah. I do.” I grit the words out, trying to ignore the way they light up my chest.
Good things don’t last. Ruby isn’t an exception.
Deciding to let it go, thank fuck, Davis rests his elbows on the island. “Need to talk to you. We got problems.”
“With the ranch?” I ask, smearing a hand down my beard.
“No, with Wyatt.”
“Saw him last night at the Grizz.”
“With Sheena Wolfington?”
“Yeah. Why?” I feel a headache coming on.
“You hear what he did?” When I shake my head, Davis continues. “I saw her in town today. Hair’s chopped to her chin. Word’s going around town Wyatt’s responsible. Sheena says she took him back to her place and when she woke up, he was gone and so was her hair.”
The coffee scalds the back of my throat and sears my lungs. I sputter, choke. “The fuck?”
Anger flashes in Davis’s eyes. “That’s what I’d like to know.”
“That ain’t Wyatt,” I insist fiercely.
Davis considers this. “You think?”
“I know.”
I’d stake my life on it. Wyatt’s as reckless as the day is long, but him laying hands on a woman like that isn’t happening. “Wyatt wouldn’t take Sheena to a public place where half the damn town was, if that was his plan.”
A muscle jerks in Davis’s jaw. “He’s on his way over. We’ll get to the bottom of it.”
I open my mouth to tell him to take it easy on Wyatt, but the sound of soft footsteps stop me.
“Hi,” Ruby squeaks, moving fast past me and Davis. Her cheeks are unnaturally pink. “Sorry. I’m just gonna go ...”
She’s fast, but I’m faster.
“Hey.” I stop her at the front door, snagging her wrist before she can slink away. For some reason, I don’t want her leaving thinking the wrong thing. I pin my eyes on her. “I had fun last night.”
A shy smile pulls at her lips. “I had the best time, Charlie.” She hesitates, her eyes flicking to Davis, who stands there grinning like a smug son-of-a-bitch, then stands on tiptoes to press a soft kiss to my cheek. “See you later, Cowboy.”
I can’t help it. I tug her back toward me. “Tonight?”
I don’t want to miss a day with her.
Her brilliant blue eyes widen, and she smiles. “Yeah. Okay.” Her flirty little grin’s enough to have me wanting to toss her over my shoulder and take her back upstairs.
She gives a wave as she goes. I watch her sashay out the door, sundress clinging to her tight little ass like cellophane.
“She’s good for you,” Davis says when I return to the island.
I know what he means. She’s the first woman I’ve been with where I’m not looking for a ghost.
I toss Keena a bone from the Folger’s can. “She’s good for a summer.”
Davis gives me a yeah right look, because he knows I’m a goddamn liar.
Good for a summer.
The words settle in my stomach like a brick. It feels wrong to put Ruby in a box like that. Like she’s just another girl.
The door eeks open and Wyatt enters the house, looking like the cat that ate the canary. Just as I’m ready to ask if he needs a fucking neck adjustment because of the way he’s staring after Ruby, he turns to me. “How was the date?”
“Wasn’t a date,” I insist.
Wyatt smirks. “So, you’re saying Fairy Tale’s gonna fuck you, not date you?”
“Shut up,” I snarl. If Wyatt wants me as backup with Davis, he better quit talking while he’s ahead.
“I think Charlie is saying it’s complicated.
” Davis crosses his arms, his biceps bulging.
“And we’re not here to talk about Charlie and this girl he’s supposedly not serious about.
Even if he is gonna let her go at the end of the summer and end up regretting it for the rest of his life.
” I roll my eyes, hating my big brother right now. “We’re here to talk about you.”
“Man.” Wyatt exhales and drops his lean frame onto a stool at the island. “What’d I do now?”
Frowning, I search my younger brother’s face for guilt, but there’s nothing to give him away.
“Sheena Wolfington,” Davis announces, in full-on interrogator mode now.
“What about Sheena Wolfington?”
Davis tucks his hands in his pockets, his expression poker-faced. “She was in town this morning telling everyone about how you chopped off that head of hair of hers.”
Honest surprise crosses Wyatt’s face, and I know he didn’t do it.
“What?” Wyatt straightens and looks at me, his eyes wide with shock. “No. I wouldn’t fuck her and I definitely wouldn’t cut her fucking hair.”
“Then why were you out with her?” Davis demands.
Now, Wyatt looks guilty.
“I wasn’t trying to get in her pants, I was trying to ...” Embarrassment stains his expression. “I was trying to figure out where the Wolfingtons stashed that colt.” The last of the sentence rolls out of his mouth in a drawl of a mumble.
I groan.
“Jesus a horse?” A vein pops in Davis’s temple. The universal signal his patience is hanging on by a thread.
Nostrils flaring, Wyatt rips off the stool with a clatter, causing Keena to launch into a series of frenzied barks.
I dig my thumb into the throbbing spot between my eyebrows.
“It was my horse,” he snaps back. “Dad gave me that thoroughbred. I fucking trained that horse. It was mine, and those assholes stole it.”
“Calm down,” I growl. “Both of you.”
Still staring daggers at Davis, Wyatt tears a hand through his hair, twists it. “I thought one last prank. I’d find the horse and take it back. But she wouldn’t tell me where it was, and I left.”
Davis considers this. “And that’s all it was?”
Wyatt presses the heels of his palms in his eyes.
His voice comes out pained, muffled. “Why’re you fucking breaking my balls, man?
I told you I didn’t do it.” On a sigh, Wyatt lifts his face.
Weariness burns bright in his eyes. “You know that isn’t me, Davis.
Messing with a girl like that ...never.
I didn’t touch Sheena. In bed. Or her goddamn hair. ”
“I believe him,” I tell Davis.
Wyatt gives me a look of thanks.
“I believe him too,” Davis finally says. “But the town won’t.” He looks at me, then back at our younger brother. “It’s bad. It’s still bad, Wy.”
Davis is right. It’s gone too far now. Even if Wyatt didn’t do it, the Wolfingtons think he did it.
Wyatt swallows, chagrined. “What kind of bad?”
Davis looks grim. “The kind that means we better watch our fucking backs.”
Worry has me turning my gaze to the large front window. Has me whipping my eyes to Ruby as she tends to the sunflowers on the front porch of her cottage. The need to go to her, to call her back into my arms, a raging beast inside of me.
And as the clear blue Montana sky stretches out over the ranch, I hope like hell my brother isn’t right.