Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
AUbrEY
I stopped so fast my shoes squeaked on the floor.
But I wasn’t going to face Rye now. No way would I let him know just how desperate I was to save my bookstore. Who the hell blabbed? Roxi would be lucky if I let her live out the day.
“Rye, I don’t want your?—”
“Hear me out,” he said, and I heard his big boots on the tile when he moved closer. “What if we came to an arrangement? What if I pay your back taxes?”
That had me spinning in a second. “How do you kn?—”
He shrugged indifferently. “Just ran into your friend Roxanne down Main Street. She seemed a little flustered when I asked her about you. She kinda gave up the goods. Plus, it’s goin’ around that your shop may not be… viable. Small town and all that.”
I screeched, “You don’t even live here!”
He took one more step closer. “Aubrey, we’ve known each other a long time. Let me help you. Let me take?—”
“Stop. You stop right there. What gave you the impression I need a man to swoop in and solve all my problems? Lemme just get somethin’ straight right now. I do not.”
“That’s not what I was gonna say.”
“Oh no?” I countered. “You weren’t about to say ‘let me take care of you ’?”
He shook his head. “No, I wasn’t. You got me all wrong. All I wanted to say was let me take some of your stress away. And if you’d just listen, you can help me too. We can help each other, and if things get a little… heated, well then, I figure it’s fate.”
Barking a laugh in his face, I said, “Fate? You’re out of your mind.”
But my condescension didn’t stop him. “Yeah, fate.”
He fixed his hat back on his head and took the last two steps in my direction, which put him one foot away from me.
Looking up into his eyes, I had to focus extremely hard not to be charmed by the way his sun-bronzed curls peeked out beneath his hat. They twisted and flicked around his ears, and all of a sudden I had an urge to reach up and coil one around my finger.
Visions of a country love story swirled in my head. Me in some dusty blue-and-white gingham dress and Rye in his jeans and hat, lifting me into his arms and swirling me around, with the high, arid desert surrounding us, mountains behind us, and horses running free in the distance.
Who cared if I was older? In Rye Graves’s eyes, it was plain to see that the rumors were true: he really did want me.
What would be so wrong with giving in?
Would anybody really care? Who would even know?
Didn’t I deserve some satisfaction? After giving my entire adult life to a marriage that should’ve ended in divorce instead of death and to raising two barely behaved boys, I sure as hell did. Why was I denying myself?
“Fine. I’ll hear you out.”
I could see no harm in listening to the sound of his voice a few minutes longer. Then, after I denied him again because the words coming out of his mouth were cuckoo, maybe later I could imagine him ravaging my body while I tried my luck at “sexy me time” again.
“Look,” he said, “my old man is stubborn as fuck. I’ve been tryin’ to prove to him I’ve got what it takes to run G I did remember. I still owned that dress. I used to love that dress. My mom had bought it for me at a boutique down near Salt Lake City when I graduated business college.
I’d worn it for Tommy, but he told me he didn’t like it, that it was too immodest. The thing went down to my ankles, but the square neckline accentuated my chest. I thought I looked beautiful, but all Tommy had seen was something other men might covet, so it made him mad.
“Th-that was over twenty years ago.”
One nod of Rye’s head and the unflinching look in his eyes told me he knew exactly how many years it had been.
He’d been pining for me for twenty years?
Me ? He could have literally any woman he wanted.
Reading me again, he said softly, “You got married. I was too young. Life went on.”
His name came out of my mouth in a whisper, “Ryder.”
It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me.
He squeezed my hands softly. “Make this deal with me. Spend time with me. God, I’d love to take you out. Shit, I’d take you to Paris if it’s what you want.”
“I don’t want Paris. I just wanna save my store.”
“So is that a deal?”
Catching my bottom lip between my teeth, I sucked in a breath to say yes, but then I felt a boldness overtake me. It felt dangerous, but it felt like the old me, before I became the mother of two delinquents and the wife to a man who saw me as nothing more than his property.
The me who’d worn that sexy dress.
“Beg me,” I breathed, and I pointed to the floor with one unbending finger. I could worry about the impropriety and all the gossip people would be spreading later.
Instantly, Rye dropped to his knees. He looked up at me, and there was so much vulnerability in his eyes that he took my breath away. Vulnerability that said that this man would give me anything I wanted.
Was five-thousand dollars going too far? It was. I knew it, but I could pay him back.
And seeing him like that, down on his knees for me, did something to my body. Nerve endings fired in the most inappropriate places, and for the first time in more than ten years, mind-bending orgasms didn’t seem so far off.
Girl, you really need to quit with the dark romance books.
Lifting his hands to my hips, he squeezed and slid one slowly down my leg and back up the inside until he was a hair’s breadth away from where I knew he could do some real damage. “ Please , Aubrey. Let me give you what you need.”
Breath hitched in my throat at his double entendre. Oh, who was I kidding? I wanted this man. What was the point in denying it any longer? Maybe he could give me what I needed. And even if he couldn’t, I’d get to keep my store.
But I kept coming back to my original question. Why me?
“Rye, I’m withered and scarred. Compared to you, I’m an old lady, for Christ’s sake. What could you possibly want with me?”
He growled, “You are fuckin’ beautiful. Don’t you ever let me hear you say different.”
Heat rushed through my body, from my toes to the ends of my hair. Another hot flash? Now? Or was it a reaction to the words coming out of his gorgeous mouth? The wetness growing between my legs, heating his hands waiting inches away, told me it was the latter.
Fuck it.
Taking the hat off his head, I fixed it on my own, cocked to the side to emphasize my new, bold mood, and arched an eyebrow.
“Deal.”