4. Scarlett
— ? —
Scarlett
The sun is barely down when I hear the helicopter.
I’m in the nursery with Josie, rocking her even though she doesn’t need rocking, even though she’s been asleep for twenty minutes and my arms are starting to ache. I just can’t seem to put her down. Can’t seem to let go of the one person in this house who doesn’t know how to lie to me yet.
The rotor blades slow and stop. A truck door slams. Boots on the porch, the back door, the hallway.
“Scarlett?”
I don’t answer. I keep rocking.
He finds me in the dark, silhouetted in the doorway with his hat in his hands, and even now, even after everything, my stupid heart does that thing it always does when I see him.
That little skip, that catch of breath. Because Beck Cooper is the kind of man who makes a room feel smaller just by walking into it.
“Hey,” he says softly. “Didn’t know if you’d still be up.”
“Where were you?”
He crosses to the crib and looks down at Josie, and his face goes soft. “Salt Fork. Had to check on some things.”
Salt Fork. He says it like it’s nothing. Like he hasn’t been lying about it for six months.
“I didn’t know we had a ranch in Salt Fork. How is it out there?”
“Dry.” He runs a hand through his hair, and I watch the muscles in his forearm flex, and I hate myself for noticing. “Flat. Brown. That’s about the whole report.”
I stand up slowly, carefully, and lay Josie in her crib. She stirs but doesn’t wake. Her little fist closes around nothing, searching for something to hold onto.
“Two of the cattle crew’s wives stopped by today,” I say, keeping my voice light. “They wanted to know when their husbands are coming back from Salt Fork.”
Beck goes still behind me.
“Not if,” I continue. “When. Like they’ve been out there a while. Like they might be out there a while longer. And I had no idea what’s in Salt Fork.”
I turn around, and he’s watching me with that look he gets when he’s trying to figure out how much I know. I’ve seen that look before. I just never knew what it meant until now.
“It’s a big operation,” he says carefully. “Takes a lot of hands to get it running.”
“Must be. You’ve been out there a lot lately.”
“Have I?”
“Six days last week. Five the week before.” I walk past him, out of the nursery, and I feel him follow me down the hall. “Robert keeps good records.”
“Scarlett.”
“I’m not upset.” I am so upset I can barely breathe. “I’m just asking.”
We’re in the main kitchen now, the big one with the marble counters and the copper pots hanging from the ceiling and the six-burner stove.
Beck catches my wrist and turns me around, and his hand is warm and rough.
I want to pull away and I want to lean into him and I don’t know which feeling is worse.
“Hey.” His voice is low, the voice he uses when he’s trying to gentle a spooked horse. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on.”
“You’re upset.”
“I said I’m not upset.”
“Your jaw does this thing when you’re upset.” He touches my face, and I hate that my eyes close, hate that my body still responds to him like this. “Right here. You clench.”
“Maybe I’m just tired.”
“Maybe.” He steps closer, and I can smell him now, cedar and that expensive bourbon. “Or maybe you’ve been waiting for me to come home so you could pick a fight.”
“I’m not picking a fight.”
“Good.” His hands find my hips, and he lifts me onto the counter. “Because I don’t want to fight.”
“Beck.”
“I know what you need.” He’s standing between my legs now, his hands sliding up my thighs. “You’ve been here all day by yourself, thinking too much, and now you need to get out of your head.”
“That’s not…”
He kisses me, and I lose the rest of the sentence. Lose everything except the heat of his mouth and the grip of his hands. My body opens for him like it’s been trained. Because it has been. Two years of him knowing exactly how to touch me, exactly how to make me forget whatever I was angry about.
His fingers find the button of my jeans. “Let me take care of you.”
I should stop him. I should push him away and make him answer my questions and demand to know why he’s been flying to see another woman from his past he never bothered to tell me about.
But his hand is inside my jeans now, and he’s touching me the way he knows I like, and my head falls back against the cabinet.
“There she is,” he murmurs against my throat. “There’s my girl.”
I hate that it works. I hate that he can do this to me, can turn my brain off with his hands, can make me forget everything except the pressure building between my legs.
I hate that I let him push my jeans down and pull me to the edge of the counter and slide into me with one long stroke that makes me gasp.
“Feel that?” His forehead is pressed against mine, his hips moving in that rhythm he knows I can’t resist. “Feel how much I love you?”
I want to ask him to say it. Just say the words. Not with his body, with his mouth. I love you, Scarlett. Three words. So easy.
But he’s moving faster now, and I’m gripping his shoulders, and the thing building inside me is about to break, and I can’t think, can’t do anything but hold on.
“Come on, sweetheart.” His voice is rough, strained. “Give it to me.”
I shatter because I can’t help it. My whole body clenches around him and I cry out, and he follows me over with a groan that rumbles through his chest.
We’re both breathing hard. He’s still inside me, his weight pinning me to the counter, and for a moment I let myself pretend everything is fine. That this is just a normal night. That I didn’t spend the afternoon staring at a calendar covered in red marks.
Headlights sweep across the window.
Beck pulls out of me, and I feel the loss. He’s already buckling his belt, already straightening his shirt, and I’m still sitting on the counter with my jeans around my ankles.
“That’s Manny.” He kisses my forehead. “I have to run back out. Meeting with the accountant got moved to tomorrow morning, so I need to be there first thing.”
“You just got here.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” He’s not looking at me. He’s looking at his phone, checking something, already somewhere else. “I’ll call you from the air.”
“Beck.”
“Get some sleep, sweetheart. You look tired.”
And then he’s gone. The back door, the porch, the truck. The helicopter rotor starts up again, and I listen to it until the sound fades into nothing.
I’m still sitting on the counter. My jeans are still around my ankles. The place between my legs is still throbbing from what we just did.
I asked him a question, and he answered with sex. That’s what just happened.
I pull my jeans up. I button them with shaking hands. I go to the sink and splash cold water on my face and look at myself in the dark window.
I was going to ask him about the drawings, about my name in the corner, about the lumber from my shop being trucked. I was going to demand answers.
But he touched me, and I forgot.
That’s how it’s always been with Beck. He smiles at me and I forgive. He dances me across the yard and I tell myself that’s enough, that’s love, that’s what marriage is.
I don’t know when I started being so easy to manage.
I don’t know when I became the kind of woman who lets her husband fuck the questions right out of her head.
But I know I don’t want to be that woman anymore.