Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Emerson
The side-by-side’s engine drones loudly in the trees, and it’s a relief when Lane kills the motor. A wide-open sky sweeps above us, visible behind me until the mountains block the way. The dark blanket of the valley spreads out before us.
“It’s gorgeous.” I rub my arms. The day was warm, but with no sunlight, I’m not prepared for the chill.
He reclines against the back of the Ranger and draws me to him, my back to his chest. When he hooks his arms around me, I’m secured to him, and the contentment that fills me is boundless.
I’m supposed to be looking at the stars, but I’m basking in the moment for a different reason.
This whole day has been . . . unexpected.
I woke up in Lane’s bed. Now I’m in Bourbon Canyon, staying in the same room, the same bed, with him in his brother’s house.
And I sat around a firepit for the first time in a long time.
Brooks doesn’t fire his up that much anymore.
Lane has more money than me. That was clear before I met him.
He has a new pickup that costs more than I made in a year at my old job.
If I could only make that much on my own, I’d be doing well.
I was enamored with his house the first time I saw it, and my family no longer owns the property it’s on. I barely own the house Brooks is in.
But his brothers? This whole day with them, roasting marshmallows with Lane’s niece and nephew? Amazing.
“I’m glad I came.” I hook my thumbs in his hands and soak up the warmth of his hard body.
“I am too.” His lips are on the shell of my ear. “I wanted to lick that marshmallow off you.”
“Do you think anyone else saw?”
“We’re not going to chase you away because you got food on your face.”
My throat grew thick. “I wasn’t thinking that.” Maybe a little. I wore the nice clothes I bought in Billings.
“Ranchers aren’t afraid of a little muck, and Em, you’re far from a dirt pile.” He nuzzles the nape of my neck. “First of all, most guys love piles of dirt, but you shine like a diamond no matter what.”
“Mm. I missed your coveralls when you were working with your brother.”
His chest rumbles with his laughter. “When we get back, I’ll put them on for you. As long as you promise to give me more overalls and ponytails.”
“I might have to find more. Are there thrift stores in Bourbon Canyon?”
“We’ll run to Bozeman.”
He says it with so much assuredness that I chuckle. “Okay. More overalls it is.” My smile fades. “One more pair should get me through when the house sells.”
His muscles twitch. “Right.”
I put that distance between us on purpose, but the hurt from his simple acknowledgment startles me. The corner of the bandage that got jerked up. Might as well rip it all off.
I turn in his embrace. The fading sunlight turns his eyes a midnight blue, the irises barely lighter than the pupils. “I had a nice talk with Wynter.”
“Good.” His expression remains tense, like he’s waiting for me to toss a wrench on the floor and make a clatter.
“She knows about the holiday campaign.”
He works his jaw back and forth. “I knew she’d appreciate it.”
“She was hoping I’d consider Foster House Gold.” I should come out and ask what’s on my mind, but the words are stuck in my throat. “Don’t you want me?”
“Yeah,” he says roughly. “I haven’t talked to the guys yet.”
“Afraid I’ll move to town and you’ll be trapped by me?” I try to sound like I’m joking, but it comes out as the real question that it is.
His brows crash together. “No. You were stuck marrying me. I don’t want you to feel trapped.”
He said the same last night. He tried to talk my dad out of it, and when push came to shove, he was the better option over anyone else. To him, it was the right thing. It was the best for me. “You don’t have to talk to them.”
“I will, if that’s what you want. You’re clearly in tune with our message and our product. It’d help you and it’d help us.”
My heart sinks. Discussing the option with the other owners would be just another right thing to do for someone he felt responsible for. “I have enough”—barely—“to get by until I return to Denver. I followed up on one of the queries from last week, and I think a kombucha place might hire me.”
If I stayed, Lane would feel like he had to do right by me some more.
Would he feel like he had to watch over me for my father?
Be more than a friendly neighbor to Brooks and Hillary?
Huckleberry Springs is his home. That shop of his is the only place he can be Lane Foster, a gearhead raised by an addict and abandoned by a convict.
“Em, I can talk to them.” His hands land at my waist. “Your thoughts can’t go to waste.”
He’s so damn thoughtful. I want to be bitter, but I’m just sad. Crestfallen that this can’t be real. That’s not his fault and he’s taken care of me. Who takes care of him? I cup each side of his face. “When’s the last time you did something purely because it’s what you wanted to do?”
Those lips of his turn downward. I trace the corner of one side with my thumb. Not a full frown, but enough to show that he doesn’t like where my question leads him. “I do a lot that I enjoy.”
“Unfiltered delight?”
“Being buried in you.” He brushes his hands down to the flare of my hips. “Having my face between those legs. That’s a whole lotta unfiltered joy.”
Lust tightens my belly. “Sex aside, what do you do that’s for you?”
“Everything I do is for me.”
It’s to earn a place for himself. “When I lived with Brooks, and he started dating Katie, I could tell it was getting serious.” I shrug and slide my hands onto his broad shoulders. “She had her claws in him and it didn’t bother him enough to care.”
He scowls. “I’m not your brother doing things out of obligation.”
That’s not exactly what I’m getting at. Is this a pointless endeavor? Lane is Lane. He does what he does and he doesn’t think about the why, only that someone he loves needs him. “You like working on an engine. What’s that other vehicle in the shop?”
“A 1969 Chevy C10. I got it after my first year of working for both Bailey Beef and Foster House. The previous owner found it in the back of his dad’s garage after he passed.”
“How often do you get under the hood?”
Lane’s gaze swivels toward the valley. “I’ve been busy.”
“When’s your next day off?”
He slowly inhales as he thinks. “Next Saturday. I work the tasting room that evening, but I have the day off.”
So no real time to himself. “Work on that car.”
“But your dad’s old pickup still needs—”
I put my finger over his lips. “It runs. Work on that car.”
He flicks his tongue out to lick my finger. I groan, but I don’t jerk my hand away. I run it over his lips.
He tugs me against him and the growing erection in his pants. “If I do, will you come visit me in those cutoffs?”
The heat curling through my belly answers before I say, “Yes.”
“Then you have a deal. Now . . .” He starts gathering the material of my skirt. “It’s plenty dark enough for me to do that other thing I enjoy.”
Yes, please. It’s just the escape I need after our earlier conversation. “What about your family?”
“Why do you think Wynter suggested this? My brothers have also probably smuggled their wives off somewhere private where teens can’t overhear.”
Need whips through me like a forest fire. “Okay, but I’m keeping my boots on.”
Emerson
I wake up smashed into a chest. Strong arms are wrapped around me, and my legs are tangled with Lane’s. Blinking, I pull away, but he tugs me back to him. I bury my face in his pecs. “I need to brush my teeth.”
“Me too.” His voice is sleep-rough and sexier than it has a right to be. “Just let me hold you. It’s not often I don’t have to rush out as soon as I wake.”
I relax. He usually spends the morning with stinky animals so he’s probably not scared away by a little morning breath.
He traces circles on my back, and his morning wood is pinned between us.
My body is still satisfied from the valley-view sex we had last night against the side-by-side, but I know we’re not going to do anything.
Lane’s gone out of his way to make me comfortable, and he was willing to sleep on the floor.
He won’t push me to do anything while his family is on the other side of the wall.
“Mae’s coming over for breakfast,” he says.
Usually, that sort of news would make me stiffen, but in the cove of his arms in a quiet room, I’m not bothered. “She sounds amazing.”
“She is.”
“You’re going to work on the tractor today with the guys?” His brothers and Devon will all be in the shop.
“Elsa too. You can join us.”
“Nah, as much as I like to take apart an engine, I’m going to pass.” I smile against his skin when he chuckles. “You going to check in with Brooks?”
Lane hired Brooks to cover for him while we’re away. Brooks only agreed to Hillary earning some money. He claimed he’d ask for the same someday. My brother should be done with the morning duties for both Fosters.
“Nah. He seems like a guy where no news is good news.”
“Most definitely. I heard my phone go off. I suspect it’s Hillary with more pictures of the animals. She got that orange barn cat to snuggle her.”
“Meringue is a closet cuddler. He doesn’t like to be obvious about it.”
I giggle and tuck myself into him. What would this be like?
A future full of relaxing trips to see family.
Waking up, chatting about our siblings and our plans, and then spending all day with those important to us.
I’ve experienced it on such a small scale.
None of my partners made it as far as having breakfast with my brother and niece.
He cradles my head. “What’s going on in that sharp mind of yours?”
Moments like this make me believe him when he says he knows me.
If it wasn’t impossible, I just might buy into soul mates or something.
He can’t know me based off a headshot, and he can’t have figured me out after a month and a half of marriage.
“I’m just thinking about how nice having a big family must be. ”
“It is. When you didn’t grow up with it, it can be hard to believe, and you always expect to eventually be on the outside looking in.” His chest rises and falls. “But it’s been fifteen years, and that hasn’t happened yet.”
I chew my bottom lip, a small well of fear rising up. “Do you think it will?”
“No.”
“Why not?’ I have to ask. He sounds so confident. Not arrogant or smug. Just matter of fact, but how can he know?
“Because I won’t let it.” His fingers draw lazy lines against my skin. “If nothing else, I will make that space for others.”
Heat prickles the back of my eyes. It’s like he’s holding a hand out, and my heart wants to stretch out and put itself in his big palm, but it knows . . . there’s an end to all this. “That makes you a very good person, Mr. Foster.”
I kiss his chest and push away. He lets me. I roll over and hang my legs off the side of the bed. A sadness hangs over me that I can’t shake. Too much talking about the end of our marriage and no argument from Lane.
Acid chews at my stomach walls. I knew this was coming.
I know it is coming. So what am I going to do?
Just wait for it? “What we’re talking about, it reminded me .
. . Brooks closes soon, and then after that, the paperwork to sell him the house won’t take long.
” Lane’s a steady presence behind me, but the intensity radiating off him is more.
I can’t put a finger on what’s changed. He’s listening, but he’s feeling too.
I glance over my shoulder. “We’ll need to get the divorce papers ready to go. ”
His eyes narrow. “Talking about family made you think of divorce?”
Naturally. “I’m just being practical. I have a life, Lane. And it’s been hard to build it while I’m hundreds of miles away in an office that isn’t mine.”
“Right.” He sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed, our backs facing each other. I crane my neck to look over my shoulder. His broad back is curved. He’s tense and staring at the floor.
I can’t read into that. It’s only asking for hurt.
“It’s not going to be acrimonious on my end or anything.
I really appreciate what you’ve done. Knowing that Brooks and Hillary have you and Cruz as neighbors?
That’s a big comfort. Brooks said he’ll move the coop, and Hillary will incorporate the chickens into her flock. ”
He makes a chuffing noise. “Sure.”
I dig my teeth into my lower lip. I’ve fucked up this whole morning, but it has to be done. I can’t pretend that this is my future. The happy Foster unit with the surrogate mom who’s coming over later with breakfast rolls is theirs. I can’t delude myself into thinking any of this is mine too.
It’ll hurt too much when reality shows me it’s not. “Do you want the bathroom first?”
“It’s all yours if the kids are out of it.”
“Okay.” I breathe shallowly as I gather my clothes and toiletry bag. He’s upset, and I don’t want to make it worse by annoying him.
The whole conversation was for the best. Yet his taut shoulders tell a different story. Maybe it’s my timing. Maybe it’s the cost, or that it’s more for him to do.
Maybe he wants to stay married.
I feel so much lighter with that thought. Then I pop the balloon above my head and ground myself again. Eventually he’ll realize that he didn’t choose me, and that I’m not really what he wants. And one day, maybe I’ll pretend a guy can decide his future from one photo.
“When we get back, I should just probably sleep in the guest room. Not that we can’t . . .”
Blue eyes pin me. “Fuck?”
“Yeah, we can still have sex.” Is that better or worse? It’s going to be hard to walk away from him no matter what, so why not have more orgasms? “If that’s okay with you.”
He contemplates for a moment and my lungs don’t have enough room to expand. If he says no, I’m going to be embarrassed. I’ll have to act normal around people I don’t know, but then that’s what I’ve been doing most of my life.