Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
AUbrEY
A cowboy? Really, Aubrey?
And young.
What the hell was I doing? Oh, right. I was taking a chance and trying to save my business just like everyone kept telling me to. Although, Pretty Woman probably wasn’t what my friends had envisioned when they’d told me to “go get some.”
And how exactly did Ryder Graves think he was going to “satisfy” me?
When we parked in the middle of nowhere, on a roadside lookout off Highway 10, I stared at him, waiting for an explanation. Pulling off on the side of some lonely mountain road was not my idea of a “date.”
Actually, maybe it was. There were no tourists or crowds here. Highway 10 was usually deserted this time of night.
Rye reached for my hand still sliding smoothly over the top of his hat, which was some kind of nervous reaction I seemed to be having. When he lifted it to his mouth and kissed the tip of my finger, I couldn’t breathe. All the dirty, improper things he’d done to me in my imagination made him touching me now feel downright forbidden.
It was ridiculous considering the times we lived in, but a small part of me felt like Hester Prynne from The Scarlet Letter . Where was my big, fat, red A, which now in my mind stood for Aubrey, the floozy?
“C’mon, darlin’,” he said, “this don’t have to be the big thing you’re makin’ it out to be in your mind,” and when he reached over to swipe my hair away from my face, my heart began to race.
He was talking about the favor—the money he’d loaned me—but that wasn’t where my thoughts had gone. I was thinking about sex with Rye Graves. About how it would be beyond the pale, and how, right now, I didn’t care.
Was I really back here again? Letting myself get seduced so easily by any man who paid me the smallest bit of attention?
I shook my head, and Rye frowned.
“Get out of your head,” he said, touching the rough pad of his finger lightly between my eyebrows. “You spend entirely too much time up there.”
He wasn’t wrong. Some days it felt like I lived my whole life in my mind. I had so many plans and ideas—and dreams—running like a river up there, but in my head was where they stayed.
Certain things were expected of a woman my age. Screwing someone more than a decade younger was not one of those things. What would my boys say? Ryder was only twelve or thirteen years older than Benji and Micah.
Oh God . I had to work out the math in my head. Was I old enough to be Rye’s mother? Ugh. Wait, okay, so forty-seven minus thirty-four… The relief I felt when I came to the conclusion that no, in fact, I couldn’t be his mom, unless I’d had a baby at thirteen, was so strong that I felt kind of dizzy.
“Wait here for just a minute,” he said.
He got out of the truck, grabbed the picnic basket from his back seat, and disappeared. I didn’t want to turn blatantly to see what he was doing. His ego was already bloated. He didn’t need me gawking at him to make it bigger, but I couldn’t really see him in my side mirror, so I sat there chewing on the inside of my bottom lip and silently arguing with myself about whether I should make a mad dash down the highway.
The whole thing made me nervous. It seemed like this man might do anything to impress me, and I’d go along with his plan if it saved Your Local Bookie and got the IRS off my back, but would he take it too far? We’d passed Cade Ranch on our way up. If I showed up there out of breath, I was betting they’d take me in. I was seventy percent sure. Aislinn lived there, and if Billie happened to be there, I’d be golden!
But I didn’t run. I waited, and when he finished his mysterious preparations, he caught my eye through my open window and smiled. “Come eat.”
He opened my door for me and took my hand to guide me around to the bed of his truck, which had been lined and lit up with twinkle lights.
Soft-looking flannel blankets had been strewn haphazardly over the bed, and oversized, fluffy pillows lined the bulkhead. He’d set the picnic basket off to one side by the wheel well, and next to it was a small cooler, on top of which sat a wooden tray with empty wine glasses, two cold cans of beer dripping with condensation, and two bottles of water.
I planted my feet in the dirt to stop him from pulling me further towards this disaster in the making. “What is this?”
“What’s it look like?”
“A way too romantic picnic.”
“Naw, Goldilocks,” he drawled, “it’s just the right amount of romantic.”
“Rye, look?—”
“Please, Aubrey? I finally got you here. Would you just hear me out? I’ll beg again if you want.”
He smirked, and I had to work hard not to blush while I imagined him down on his knees for me again.
“Ryder Graves, we do not need fairy lights and pillows in order for me to hear you. I am not havin’ sex with you tonight. Understand?”
His face fell, and he backed up a step and kicked at the rocks in the dirt. “That ain’t what I… I just wanted to do somethin’ nice for you. That’s all. I figure you deserve it. Things’ve been hard for you lately, and?—”
Oh man. And now I was officially the biggest bitch on the planet.
I took a deep breath, released it, and apologized. “I’m sorry. Thank you for doin’ a nice thing for me. It’s sweet, really. But I guess I’m just afraid this all means somethin’ different to you. I don’t wanna hurt you, Rye. I just want to save my store.”
“I know. I get it,” he said, sliding his hands in his front pockets and looking at his boots.
“Aw, hell, Rye. You look like I just kicked your puppy.”
He raised his eyes to mine at that. There was a newfound resolve in them that had me backing up too.
“Maybe I haven’t made it clear, Aubrey, and maybe you don’t wanna hear it. I’m fully aware that it’s not why we’re here, but just ’cause the reasons you agreed to my plan are serious, it don’t mean we can’t have some fun. Back in the day, I knew I had no shot. I knew where your heart lay. I was too young for you, and there was Tommy.”
The mention of my husband made something pinch inside my chest. Rye had no idea, no one did, really, that my marriage was a regret I’d held onto for far too long.
“It seemed like you didn’t wanna let him go after he passed. Or maybe it was you you couldn’t let go—the you you’d been with him—but for so many years, it was like you were wearin’ one of those dark widows’ things. You know, the see-through hat things?”
“A black veil?”
“Yeah, that’s it. It was like when I looked at you, your face was hidden behind a veil, but then I came back to Wisper last year and, I dunno, you looked different to my eyes. And I would know ’cause I’ve been lookin’ at you since I met you.”
Lifting a hand to my chest, I tried to hide the sob that wanted to escape. He’d noticed that? I thought no one had.
And he was right. I couldn’t explain why at the time, but last summer, I’d finally let Tommy go. For good.
I still remembered the night it happened. I’d sat outside, in my back yard on the twins’ old broken-down swing set alone in the dark, dangling my bare feet over my overgrown grass and releasing all the complicated love I’d had for Thomas George back into the universe. There was a time I never could’ve imagined doing it, but for some reason, that night, the night a bright shooting star zipped across the midnight sky, dreams felt possible again.
And then a meteor came crashing down on me. My business took a nosedive, and it was my own fault. I’d been so scared to move for so long that I guess life just went on without me.
But Rye had seen everything I’d tried to hide from my family and friends. He’d respected boundaries I hadn’t even known I’d put up, and now, here he was, doing this amazing thing for me and politely asking me to take those boundaries down to help him.
And to help myself. I needed to remember that I was the one truly benefiting from his kindness and this whacked-out idea of his. I couldn’t even describe how relieved having the IRS weight lifted off my back made me feel.
When I reached for his hand and pulled him closer, the surprise on his face was adorable, and I realized then how handsome he really was.
Yeah, sure, his ass was a thing of horny dreams the world over, but now I knew it was the kind look in his eyes that made him beautiful, the optimistic view he had of the world, and the teasing smile I thought I might commit a crime to see again.
Pushing up on my tiptoes, I kissed him. I closed my eyes and let myself really kiss him, and he wrapped his well-worked hands around my ribcage and squeezed.
I pressed my whole body against his and felt just how much he wanted me, and in that moment, dreams felt real once again.
Everything felt real, like I’d just woken up from a long nap I hadn’t even known I needed and found myself in the middle of the most vibrant story. Definitely the sexiest.
Against my lips, he said, “I have wanted you for so long,” and he deepened the kiss, tilting his head and seeking entrance inside me with his tongue. I opened for him, and he moaned into my mouth.
I breathed, “Rye.”
“Mm?” One of his hands worked its way up my spine and the other headed in the opposite direction.
So much for “Oh yeah, I totally know this is about us helpin’ each other.”
“You have to stop this,” I said, clutching at his shoulders with greedy hands, pulling him even closer. “I can’t. It’s been so long, and you feel like heaven.”
That just made him kiss me harder.
Crushing his lips against mine, his tongue did wicked things to my mouth. He had me imagining that tongue in other places again, and suddenly, I couldn’t breathe. Like, not a sexy breathlessness, but a panting, messy, “Shit, I’m about to hyperventilate” kind of breathless.
“Aubrey? What’s wrong?”
It amazed me how quickly such a simple act had turned into a burning need.
My hands had been snaking beneath his T-shirt—sweet Jesus, his body was hard and hot—but now I dropped them and stepped away. I bent at the waist, trying to force oxygen to my brain so I could figure out what the hell I’d just done.
“I-I’m sorry.”
“You okay?” he asked as I struggled to catch my breath, and he tried to pull me back into his arms. “Was that not?—”
“No,” I said, holding my hand up between us to stop him. “It’s my fault. I started it.”
He dropped his arms. “Ain’t nobody’s fault. It’s what you needed. It’s definitely what I needed.”
“No. You don’t get it. I don’t need a man.” I shook my head and finally stood up straight. “Yeah, there are things you can give me that some might argue I lack.” I rolled my eyes when Roxi’s and Juneau’s faces popped into my head. “But I’ve spent too much of my life givin’ all the good things I had inside me to someone who didn’t appreciate them. I can’t do that again. I won’t.”
Disregarding the space I’d put between us, he stepped forward and gripped my hips, and my fingers dug into his shoulders again as I squeaked my surprise and he lifted me onto a fleece blanket spread across his open tailgate.
He plopped me down and lowered his face to mine so we were eye to eye. He was so big, he took up all the air around us. I couldn’t even see the road behind him.
“You listen here, woman. I watched you do that. I saw how he wore you down and treated you like he owned you instead of loved you.” He moved between my legs, widening them until they were practically wrapped around him. “I grieved for you then because I knew what that meant for you, even when I was a teenager. I’ve waited all these years just to see the spark back in your eyes. Now it’s there again?
“You best believe I’m gonna be front row for that.”