Reckless Hearts (Cowboys of Wild Creek #4)

Prologue - Emmett

Everyone around me was in love, and I hated it.

All three of my sisters. Most of my friends. I even had buddies from the Army sending me wedding invitations in the mail, even though they knew I wouldn’t go.

I pretended I didn’t care. That it didn’t bother me that I was now a goddamn eleventh wheel.

But it was a constant thorn in my side, splintering deeper inside with each breath I took.

How pathetic was that? Everyone was finding their forever person while I was stuck here alone, watching from the sidelines, because I was too scared of women.

Well, I wasn’t scared of women, just…scared for them.

I didn’t trust myself. It’d been two years since I retired, and there were still nights I woke up in a cold sweat, my throat raw from screaming, my mind stuck in the sandbox.

I’d heard too many horror stories of guys accidentally strangling their wives in their sleep or throwing their girlfriends against a wall because they touched their backs.

I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I hurt some poor girl, all because she took a chance on me.

So I didn’t let them.

But shit, I was lonely. I was thirty-one with nothing to show for it but a few medals and a fucked up head. By the time my parents were my age, they had four kids and ran a ranch. I felt like a failure for not being even remotely close to those things.

I’d tried everything under the sun besides therapy to fix myself.

The idea of baring my soul to a stranger seemed about as pleasant as pulling teeth.

But nothing has worked. So, when my sisters finally wore me down enough to start seeing their lifelong friend, Delilah, for equine therapy, I actually had a little hope.

That lasted a month.

After four sessions of doing shit with horses I did every day, nothing changed.

She wanted me to do all this intimacy-building stuff.

Shaking people’s hands. Hugging. Eye contact.

I did things like that all the time and was still like this—closed off, testy, afraid to get too close.

So I knew continuing wouldn’t help, and she wasn’t understanding the main thing I was struggling with.

My problem was deeper and much more humiliating, which was why I never told her.

The problem was that I missed sex. I craved that closeness.

Having the ultimate trust in another person, and having them trust me in return.

I hadn’t felt it in three years—not while deployed, and then because I’d been too messed up.

And over my dead fucking body was I going to tell a hellion like Delilah Chase something so vulnerable about myself.

I knew she’d throw it right back in my face the first chance she got, so I quit instead.

And man, did she give me hell for it. We had it out in the alleyway of the Bull Pen on her birthday, of all days.

I felt like shit for it, but she just kept pushing, and I snapped and said some things I didn’t mean.

Three weeks later, and she still wouldn’t speak to me. Even now, while I was helping put up shelves in her office at the ranch, she used the poor contractor as a messenger.

“Rick, can you tell Emmett that the right side is a quarter inch too high?”

I rolled my eyes. She probably didn’t even know what a quarter inch looked like. “We’re in the same room, Delilah,” I sighed, annoyed. “I can hear you just fine.”

“Rick, please tell Emmett to kiss my left ass cheek. The left one specifically.”

“For fuck’s sake,” I snapped under my breath, tossing the two-by-four to the ground with a smack. “Can you please be an adult for once and speak to me?”

She was leaning against her desk, gazing at her nails. Her hair was down today—long, reddish-orange waves that always reminded me of a wild bonfire. Fitting, because if there was any word to describe Delilah, it was wildfire.

Rick shifted nervously in the corner of the room, his eyes darting between us warily, not knowing what to do. My lips pressed into a thin line, and I tilted my head, gesturing toward the door. Save yourself. Here’s your escape from this nonsense.

Once he was gone, I went to her. Leaning against the desk beside her, I crossed my arms over my chest. “Look, I know you’re still pissed at me.” She snorted. “But you doing this immature, not speaking to me thing is getting old.”

She peered up at me through her lashes. “Why? You miss me?” Of course, she couldn’t take anything seriously.

I was the one snorting now. “Hardly.” She scowled, hazel eyes flashing. “I’m just trying to do my job here. But it’s kinda hard to help someone who won’t talk.”

I knew as soon as the words left my mouth, I’d fucked up.

She straightened off the desk, glaring at me, nostrils flared. “Are you fucking serious? You did not just say that to me!”

My gaze dropped to the floor, eyes closing. I didn’t like upsetting her, or anyone for that matter, but it always seemed like I was stepping in shit when it came to Delilah.

“I didn’t—”

“I tried for weeks to get you to talk to me!” she yelled. My hands curled around the edge of her desk. “But you just stared at me like some brain-dead zombie with your monosyllabic responses and half-assed attempts at the exercises I gave you.”

Her words hit like a slap. Not because they offended me, but because they were true, and I hated it.

I hated that I couldn’t open up. That I’d wasted both of our time.

That I was too messed up to be a normal fucking man.

I glared at her through my brows. Every word was laced with the disdain I felt. “Because they weren’t working.”

“When that happens, you’re supposed to talk to your therapist, not just up and quit.

” Something flickered in her eyes, looking a lot like hurt, when she said, “We were supposed to be a team.” But it couldn’t have been hurt; Delilah didn’t get hurt.

She was one of those rare types where shit just rolled off her back—always.

Nothing ever bothered her. Nothing was ever wrong.

It irritated the shit out of me.

I lifted my head, shaking it. “I couldn’t talk to you, Delilah, that’s the whole issue. Not about this.”

“Why? Because I’m Savannah’s best friend? What’s so terrible that you think you can’t tell me? I’m treating Tess, and I don’t go spreading her shit. You should’ve heard what she just told me earlier, it’d make your head explode.” Well, now I was irritated and worried about my youngest sister.

My sigh was heavy, defeated. “No, it’s not you.

It’s me.” I knew she could keep a secret, or she never would’ve become a therapist. But there was something extra humiliating about explaining to your sisters’ best friend that you were terrified to love someone.

Terrified of letting someone in and letting them down.

“Don’t feed me that regurgitated line of horseshit, Emmett. I’ve treated veterans before, and I know how to handle PTSD. I’m about to be treating ten of them in two months, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Restless energy sizzled in my veins. The muscle in my jaw ticked. “It’s not the PTSD,” I murmured. Even now, she was the only person I’d been able to outright admit to that’s what was wrong with me.

“Then what is it? Did you do something over there? I don’t understand why it’s so hard for you to just open up to—”

“I want to fuck somebody!” I flew off the desk, arms spread wide. She staggered back, her jaw slack. “Happy now?”

“I…”

With every step I took toward her, she took one step back.

“It’s been three years, Delilah. Three years since I’ve even touched a woman.

Do you have any idea what that’s like?” Her back hit the wall, and she just stared at me, blinking quickly.

In the nearly thirty years I’d known her, I’d never seen her so stunned.

“I’ll clue you in, it’s absolute torture to want something so badly you ache with it, but you don’t trust yourself enough to do anything about it.”

Of course, this was the first time since I’d known her that she chose to keep her mouth shut, so I trudged on.

“So you’re little hugging and shaking hands shit isn’t gonna get me what I want.

” I pressed a hand against the wall next to her head, leaning in.

“Not when I want a hell of a lot more than that.”

My chest heaved, each breath scraping in sharp and fast. Something spicy and sweet, seductive, hit my nose—Delilah’s perfume.

Before I even realized it, I leaned in to smell it better, and my mouth watered.

Her eyes widened. They were green and brown and gold with flecks of blue.

Like looking up at the early fall sky surrounded by woods—forest eyes.

I’d never noticed the mix of colors in them before, but I’d never been this close to her either.

Great. I was officially so sex deprived that I was losing it and finding something about Delilah, the biggest pain in my ass in all my life, pleasant.

But I didn’t step back. Couldn’t. Delilah was the only woman I wasn’t related to that I could tolerate being this close to. And I missed it—missed tracing the soft curves of a woman’s features with my eyes, feeling her breath against my skin, smelling her perfume…

“Touch me then,” she said, breathless, her gaze lingering on my mouth.

I froze, momentarily stupefied. I pulled away, not entirely, but enough to notice just how close I had actually gotten to her. It had been too close. Way too close.

“What did you just say?” The words came out deathly quiet. Stunned. Is this actually happening?

“If you want to get fucked so bad, then fuck me.” She licked her lips, and God fucking strike me down, I watched.

“You’re—” I forced myself away completely this time. Did she hear herself? “I can’t fuck you.” I started pacing, my hands in my hair.

She looked genuinely confused. “Why? I’m hot. I’m discreet—”

I stopped in front of her, my hands falling to my sides. Was she insane? I couldn’t believe I was even having this conversation with her. “You’re my sisters’ best friend for starters.”

She arched a brow, smirking. “You didn’t deny that I’m hot.”

I’d never even considered her as more than my sisters’ friend. But yes, after she planted the idea in my head, Delilah was…probably one of the sexiest women I’d ever seen. And realizing it felt like how I imagined discovering the Earth was round felt.

Delilah was tall. Taller than any of my sisters. And she was broad, strong with toned muscles, but soft and curvy in all the places that mattered. She had a beautiful face, too. Soft, rounded cheeks, pouty lips, a button nose. And her hair, that wildfire hair…

I wanted to wrap it around my fist.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I could not be thinking about her like this. She was practically family. Savannah, in particular, would never forgive me. I staggered away from her, nearly tripping over a bucket of nails.

“Think about it and let me know what you decide,” she said casually. And there was the classic Delilah ‘nothing matters’ attitude. Tipping my world off its fucking axis like it was just another Thursday. Because to her, it was. She was a wrecking ball.

Came. Destroyed everything. Left.

I gripped the doorframe and threw myself down the stairs. My feet almost slipped beneath me, I went down them so fast. I rounded the corner of the barn, resting my hands on my knees, panting.

What the hell just happened? Touch her? She wanted me to touch her? Wanted to be what? Fuck buddies? Absolutely fucking not.

I’d barely managed to put myself back together when gravel crunched beneath footsteps. I peered around the corner and saw Delilah walking to her Jeep, her hips swaying in a way that made my dick throb.

I was screwed. Absolutely screwed.