Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
It took a moment for Cody to register what she’d said.
It was hard to think when your mind had been completely blown.
At least he knew now why she had obsessed him like this.
Because he liked sex. He’d had a lot of it.
He’d had long, endless nights in hotel rooms, dirty weekends, and still, they had done nothing to match the intensity of that last twenty-five minutes.
It had been hot, fast, and filthy. And the intensity of his release had been far beyond anything he’d ever experienced before.
Regret.
Fuck, they should both regret it. But him most of all.
He was the one who was the boss. He was the one who was supposed to have a cool head. He was the one who was in charge. He was the one who could… Twist this, turn it into something that could hurt her.
No. He would never do that. He wasn’t his father.
And they had used a condom, they were adults, he wasn’t an asshole. It didn’t have to be something they regretted. It just had to be something he stayed in control of.
“I won’t,” he said, his voice sounding rusty, even to his own ears.
“Good,” she said. “Because I don’t. And I don’t want to.”
“Yeah. I think…” He got up and began hunting for his clothes.
“It was inevitable.” He went into the bathroom and disposed of the condom, but then he stared at the wastebasket, which was going to get cleaned up by staff…
Oh, this cabin had already been ready for guests.
He was going to have to clean it. He would come back later, he would take out the trash, he would collect the bedding.
He didn’t want to make a big deal out of it in front of Marlowe.
Not sure why he wanted to protect her from the consequences of their actions, but he felt like he did.
“Inevitable?” She was staring at him when he popped out of the bathroom.
“Yeah. You felt it. When we met.”
“Yes,” she said. “But nothing like this has ever been inevitable for me before.”
That brought him closer to regret. She was vulnerable. Not just because she was his employee, but because her husband had just broken up with her. Her husband.
And they had been together since high school, which…
There was a very good possibility he was the only man she had ever been with. But then, maybe that was actually a good thing.
“You kind of… broke the seal,” he said.
Her facial expression contorted, and she looked at him, appalled. “Excuse me?”
“I’m just saying. There had to be a first, right? After… Your marriage.”
“I guess,” she sounded ruffled. Offended, even. But he wasn’t wrong.
“I’m not going to take advantage of you, I am not going to mess around with you. Anyhow, it’s done. It doesn’t have any impact on your job. Plus, we got it out of our systems.”
“Out of our systems,” she said, nodding. “Okay. I mean, you’re the expert, I assume?”
He wasn’t an expert on this. There was nothing about this that was… Normal. Nothing about it that resembled anything he had ever experienced before.
He wasn’t the expert.
Not by a long shot.
He wasn’t going to let her know, though.
“Sure,” he said. “The expert.”
But there was absolutely no reason for him to get into all of that. This was best left as something that was one and done. It was just a really bad idea.
He pulled his jeans on and looked at her.
“It’s just really important to me that you understand that this has no bearing on your job.
My dad… my sperm donor, I really hate thinking of him as my dad, but it just…
It’s too easy to say… He took advantage of the people who worked for him.
He took advantage of people. That’s how he ended up with my mom, that’s how they ended up having probably three children.
Over the course of years, while he kept her living in poverty, while he didn’t acknowledge us. I would never do that.”
He wondered now if he was trying to convince her, or if he was trying to convince himself. He wondered if, actually, whatever his intentions were, this brought him into some kind of alignment with his dad.
Because maybe this would be his story. That he had just met a woman that he had an undeniable desire for.
That he couldn’t control himself. That when it all came right down to it, he didn’t have the self-control, and it was all just passion.
Yeah. Maybe that was exactly the kind of thing his dad would’ve told himself.
The really frightening thing was he didn’t suppose his dad imagined that he was a villain.
He was a villain to the other people in the story. A villain to every person that he’d hurt, but never to himself.
For the first time, he really wondered what his dad had thought about leaving the ranch to him and his siblings.
Did he think he made up for it by doing that? Did he think it erased all of his sins? Did he think he was a good person?
And if he thought he was a good person, then hell. Who actually knew?
“Cody,” she said. “I’m thirty-two years old. I’ve been married. I’ve managed hotels. I’m not a young, na?ve girl. I’m not someone who can just be taken advantage of. I’m not trying to say anything negative about your mother –”
“I get it. She was young.”
“Yeah. And I’m not. I’ve also just been let down by somebody that I knew for half of my life.
If I can’t know the man that I was with for fifteen years, I’m never going to know anybody.
Not really. That’s how cynical I am now.
You’re right about that. And I wasn’t before.
Somehow, I didn’t learn that lesson when I was younger.
Somehow, I still believed that there was something better than what I grew up with.
But I think I’m getting where you’ve been for a long time.
Everything is ridiculous, people are selfish, they’re going to fail you.
You can never build your roots around another human being, because then they’re just going to get ripped up.
You don’t have to worry about me. That was great.
I really…” She nodded. “You know what, you’re right.
There had to be a first time. Thank you for making it so good. Because it was.”
He could see her putting herself back together, and it wasn’t so much her putting her clothes on, it was a feeling.
She was gathering herself, she was figuring out how to hold her posture, how to turn herself back into the hotel manager.
Rather than the woman who had just come apart in his arms moments before.
“It was amazing,” she said. And if she wasn’t still slightly flushed, and if her hair wasn’t a mess, he almost wouldn’t have thought that he had just fucked her three minutes ago.
He still felt it. His heart was racing.
He didn’t know how long it would take for his pulse to go back to normal.
“The cabins are great,” she said.
He couldn’t help it. He sputtered a laugh, and he’d never been one to laugh at inappropriate situations. Hell, he wasn’t one to laugh easy.
“Yeah. The beds are pretty good.”
“I’ll make sure that they’re cleaned,” she said.
“No,” he said. “I already decided I was going to do that.”
“Did you? I didn’t recall you making that decision.”
“I decided it in my heart. And I’ll just come back and clean it later. I don’t want you to do it.”
“It’s my job.”
“Yeah, but I’m going to go ahead and assume responsibility for this.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll let you. But only because it’s your ranch.”
“Appreciated.”
He didn’t quite know what to do with this. Because most of the time, when he slept with a woman, then it was done. And there was no more interaction that was going to occur, and there were no more meetings that would have to take place, and he wasn’t going to see her every single day.
But odds were, he was going to see Marlowe every single day.
And somehow, he was going to have to figure out how not to ache for her.
Oh shit. They had driven over here together.
“Well, I guess I need to take you back to the hotel.”
“Right,” she said.
It would be good practice. Great practice. They could get back in his truck like nothing had happened.
“For what it’s worth,” she said, pulling her shirt over her head, now completely pieced back together. “You’re a good boss.”
“Shit,” he said.
“No. I mean it. My last boss didn’t give me a single orgasm.”
“I think that actually makes me a bad boss.”
And they should be joking about it. This was one of his sacred cows, and he had only tipped it over, he had slaughtered it.
Sacrificed it on the altar of his libido, and that wasn’t really something he was proud of.
But she seemed okay. More than okay.
“No. Because I am trying to put my life back together. And you are right. You were a great choice. For a lot of reasons.”
“Glad that I could be of service.”
She walked out of the cabin, and left him standing there, looking at the wreckage.
“Motherfucker,” he said, rubbing his forehead before stepping out of the cabin and closing the door behind him, locking it.
He was going to have to remember to do the cleanup as soon as possible. No, there would be no remembering. He was going to take her back home, and then he was going straight back to the cabin.
He gave Walker a quick text, letting his brother know that he was going to have to be in charge of dinner tonight.
They did all share responsibility, but unless he made a plan, nothing got done, and usually that ended with his siblings browsing through his fridge at odd hours of the night.
Not his favorite.
She got into the truck before him, and he fought the urge to cross himself like the lapsed Catholic his mother was, needing something to fortify him for the journey.
He got into the truck and started the engine. “I called Aiden last night,” she said.
“Great,” he said, putting the truck in reverse and flooring it out of the gravel drive, a little bit too enthusiastically. Pieces of gravel bounced up and hit the underside of his truck, and he grimaced.