Chapter Seven #2
“So I moved here to Cowboy Point as a single woman,” she told Sierra.
“And while I might have gotten myself into some trouble, I also—”
“She doesn’t mean Boone,” Cat chimed in.
A little quickly, to Sierra’s ear.
“To be clear. Ramona did not date or touch Boone. Boone is not a factor in Ramona’s romantic life.”
Sierra frowned at her.
“Thank you? Are you okay?”
Cat waved her beer in the air and the Sierra got the impression that she was not drunk, but more something like…
baffled. It was clearly going around.
“Not Boone,” Ramona agreed, shooting a quelling look Cat’s way.
“But I did witness Boone as he went about his romantic life.”
Sierra was stunned.
“Boone has a romantic life?”
“Oh my God ,” Cat murmured to her beer.
Ramona fixed her cool blue gaze on Sierra.
“I think romantic might be a euphemism. Here’s what I know. He’s not available. He doesn’t do relationships. For all intents and purposes, he’s off the market, so the women who end up with him first have to chase him to make it clear they’re interested. When they do, and they always do, he lays out his laws.”
“He has laws ?”
“Sierra,” Cat said then.
“This was news to me too, but the fact is, Boone will only sleep with women who are crystal clear that nothing will ever come of it. He doesn’t do repeats. And he is…” She trailed off.
“He was once described to me as a nuclear bomb,” Ramona said, almost kindly.
“By a shellshocked survivor of the night with him. That’s all I’ll say. I don’t doubt that he can be sweet and kind and gentle, but he’s no monk .”
“He’s deafly not celibate,” Cat threw in there, in case Sierra wasn’t getting this message.
“And even if you wanted to believe that every woman around here is lying about him, I assure you that Wilder is not. Remember, all those brothers were single, together, and in the same pool for a long time. According to Wilder, Boone was a wrecking ball.”
Sierra shook her head and found herself laughing a little bit.
“I feel like you’re talking about a complete stranger. This is the wildest conversation I’ve ever had.”
“Listen,” Cat said, “he’s not the one to date either way. But if you feel like you haven’t blown your life up enough, who knows? Maybe a patented nuclear experience will blow it back up—but in the right direction.”
A topic she did not veer from much when Sierra drove her home.
She pulled down Wilder’s private drive a bit farther up the hill from Boone’s.
And when she pulled up in front of his house, he was already waiting there on the porch, his mouth in an indulgent curve and a gleaming light in his eyes.
“I’m not drunk,” Cat told him.
“I conducted myself as befits a lady, I assure you.”
“That’s a pity,” Wilder drawled.
“I’ll have to do something about that immediately.”
He nodded Sierra.
She waved back. And she saw them wrapped up in each other’s arms, kissing on the front porch like teenagers, as she drove away.
She really should have headed straight back to her farmhouse.
There was too much bubbling around inside of her, and she felt…
It took a minute, but she realized that what she really felt was angry .
Had Boone really had a secret life all this time?
Her life and always been wide open to him.
She was an open book.
There was nothing he didn’t know about her, up to and including the sad state of her marriage.
Sure, maybe he didn’t know the details of every single mean thing Matty had ever said, but he knew the general shape of it all.
And meanwhile he was wandering around Montana behaving like a nuclear bomb ?
Whatever the hell that meant?
She couldn’t reconcile it in her head.
It was like that thundering voice he’d used down at the base of Copper Mountain was shaking her apart from the inside out and she couldn’t understand why her reaction to this news was so…
physical .
She felt shaky everywhere.
It was like her own limbs were trying to peel themselves off their own bones, and it was like she hurt , except she also couldn’t breathe right—
Sierra didn’t feel that she had any choice but to pull up to Boone’s house instead of hers.
She walked up to the porch and put her hand on his door, and for the first time ever she actually wondered if it would be open to her.
But she had other questions, too, and they were coming at her fast, now.
Like how and where was he performing all these wrecking ball acts when he had always been so available to her?
Night and day?
And why was he so dead set against relationships anyway?
She opened the door, was more relieved than she wanted to admit that it wasn’t locked, and walked inside.
Boone was where he always was, sitting there reading one of his books.
There was nothing the least bit out of the ordinary here.
There was nothing that suggested he was so sexually intense that the women who’d been with him considered themselves survivors of wrecking ball nuclear attacks .
Once again, she felt something like dizzy.
All these glimpses she’d seen a different Boone, and then everything that she heard tonight on top of it—it was impossible to find any solid ground.
“Everyone thinks I should date,” she told him.
She watched him closely, so she saw the way he swallowed.
She thought he took a breath, long and slow, before he turned his head to look at her.
“Seems like a normal thing to do after divorce,” he said, and he sounded…
exactly the way he always did.
Measured. Calm. Safe.
“Thing is, I don’t really see myself dating,” she said, still watching him closely.
“I spent so long with one man, I wouldn’t even know what to talk about. I think I need a jumping off point.”
“You should do whatever you feel you need to do,” Boone told her.
So steady. So patient.
So supportive.
She folded her arms and felt her eyes narrow she studied him.
“Dating feels like commitment. And I think I deserve to blow it all up. See what I’ve been missing.”
He said nothing to that, but that gaze of his was hinting at copper.
And she knew that meant there was something else going on with him.
Temper, apparently, if the last days since her divorce was finalized were any guide.
“I think, Sierra, that we both know you’ve been missing pretty much everything.”
For some reason that infuriated her.
Or maybe it emboldened her.
“What I want is something with no strings and no attachments. Something that comes with strict rules so that no one is tempted to make it into something it’s not.”
She was certain that he went even more still with every word.
But he didn’t reply.
So she kept going. “I’ve been told that you’re the man to talk to, Boone. That you’re a wrecking ball. A nuclear bomb. So I figure, since we’re best friends, I should try you first and see how all that wreckage treats me.”
She didn’t know what she expected.
The house to burn down around them, maybe.
But it wasn’t for a light she’d never seen before kindle in Boone’s dark hazel gaze.
Or the way he set his book aside, so carefully.
How he got to his feet, slowly.
Easily.
And yet, she could feel from across the room, with intent .
He walked across the living room in no particular hurry, and the strangest thing happened to her while he did.
Sierra had been looking at Boone Carey forever.
Maybe she’d stopped seeing him.
He was her Boone, her best friend, and she’d been happy with that.
Yet tonight it was like she could suddenly see all of him—and her mouth went dry.
How had she missed the fact that he was…
beautiful?
He was so big.
He was built like the linebacker he’d been in high school, big and tough and gorgeous.
He was muscled… everywhere.
The t-shirt clinging to his torso outlined all the planes and ridges that she’d seen a thousand times before—but tonight she felt them.
More, she wanted to reach out and touch them.
His face was that same wonderful face, but tonight she could see the intensity all over him.
The jaw he kept unshaven most of the time and how cut it was.
That mouth of his that she’d actually kissed, and the thought of kissing him tonight was not sweet or kind.
The thought of kissing him tonight set her alight .
He was still Boone, but he wasn’t entirely her Boone anymore.
She had the odd thought that all this time, he’d been a man and she just…
hadn’t seen it.
Maybe , something whispered, you couldn’t let yourself see it .
Now she couldn’t see anything else.
He never stopped walking toward her and as he came closer, she thought that he would stop.
And maybe put his hands on her arms again, but he didn’t.
He kept coming.
Until there was nothing for Sierra to do but either let him plow right into her, or back up.
She backed up. One step.
Another.
And then her back was flush against the closed front door and he was still coming, still moving toward her with all that slow intensity until he was slapping a hand on either side of her head—
Yet he was still coming, still moving in closer, until his face was directly in hers.
“I told you to stop pushing,” Boone said, but he was so close to her.
And he was hot .
How had she missed that he was this hot?
He was hot and beautiful and it was like he took up all the air in the room.
Sierra felt breathless.
She felt a strange kind of pulse that not only ricocheted in her veins, but seemed find its way deep between her legs.
“I thought you were a celibate monk,” she told him.
“I was sitting at a table in town, talking about how sweet you are. How kind and angelic.”
“Time’s up,” he told her.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to choose, baby. You can have your kind, sweet, gentle angel. If that’s what you need, that’s who I’ll be.”
But Sierra knew better now.
She could see him now.
“What if I want to see what’s on the other side of that?” she asked, tipping her chin up and too aware that his mouth was right there .
“The other side where everyone seems to know everything about you, but I don’t. The other side where you’re a completely different person.”
“Oh, you can have all the sides of me you want,” Boone told her, his hazel eyes darkening and turning into some kind of gold.
“But the usual rules don’t apply to you, Sierra. So I need you to listen carefully.”
“I don’t—” she began, and she couldn’t really breathe any longer, but for some reason, she didn’t view that as a catastrophe surely was.
“I don’t know—”
“Listen,” he said again.
This time it was an order.
And she knew him so well.
She knew this face of his, but she’d never really seen him, had she?
She’d never seen an expression like this on it.
Especially not when he reached over and fit his hand over her mouth.
Every single part of her seemed to contract…
then explode —but she didn’t do a single thing but stare back at him, his hand like fire against her flesh and the funniest part was, she was pretty sure she liked it.
And that he knew she did.
Then he started talking in that dark, low way that was another fire all its own.
“There are rules for everybody else, but not for you. If you decide to do this, there’s no going back. If you decide you want to know what’s on the other side of that door, there’s no unknowing it. You’re probably going to hate it, think it’s too messy, and run from it, Sierra, because in the end, I think that’s what you do.”
She took exception to that, but he didn’t remove his hand.
And there was something about how easily he was holding it there, keeping her from talking but not hurting her.
She knew that if she made a sound of distress, he’d let her go immediately.
But because she knew he would, she didn’t.
“Everything you heard about me is true,” he told her matter-of-factly.
“I’ve never been available to anyone for more than a night and I made certain that those nights were memorable, but you don’t get one memorable night from me.”
He leaned in closer and his eyes were fierce and beautiful.
Sierra was filled with pulsing sensations, and her blood was too hot inside her body, and she was flushed and uncomfortable and she didn’t entirely understand any of this.
All she could think about was what it had felt like to kiss him on his mouth, even though she knew it had been the polar opposite of nuclear .
She could still feel his hands on her, as if he’d left marks.
As if they were inflamed, somehow.
And she couldn’t stop seeing how darkly gorgeous he was, so big and hot and tough and still, somehow, Boone .
“Here’s another secret you don’t know, but everybody else does,” he told her.
“This is the big one. I’ve been in love with you since the day we met.”
Sierra jerked, there against the door, but he was merciless.
He didn’t shift his hand.
If anything, he simply moved closer so that the way he held her mouth closed was like a caress.
She could feel it like a lick of flame, shooting everywhere, storming through her—
But had he really just said…
?
He clearly read her mind and he nodded, slowly.
His eyes never left hers.
His stern, beautiful mouth was a solemn line.
“I have always loved you. I have always been in love with you. That has never changed and it will never change. But now you know. I told you to leave those lines where they’ve always been, but you didn’t want to do that. I need you to remember that, going forward. This is a secret I was perfectly happy to keep.”
“But—” she said, muffled against his palm.
And she watched as a kind of shiver seem to work over him, too.
“So this is the choice you have before you,” he said in that voice that made her tremble, too.
“I’m not going to play games with you. If you keep pushing this, you should know, I’m already in it. Hundred and ten percent. If you cross this line all the way, I’m not coming back. So you need to decide if that’s what you want.” His intense gaze searched hers.
“But I’m not your ex, Sierra. This isn’t an ultimatum. Maybe you feel better getting on one of those apps and looking up ranch hands over in Livingston. Ease in. Go wading in the dating pool. Because if it’s me, it’s not going to be the shallow end, baby. It’s not going to be anything like that at all.”
Only then did he remove his hand, though he didn’t shift back away from her.
For a long moment, then, the whole world was the sound of her ragged breath there between them, his intent gaze, all the things he’d told her.
And the fact he kept calling her baby , like it fit.
Her body kept reacting like it did.
“Boone,” Sierra managed, softly, her voice so raw it hurt a little.
Then she whispered his name again, almost like a prayer.
“I won’t blame you if you want to turn around, walk back out of this door, and pretend this night never happened,” he told her.
“If that’s what you need to do, do it. I’m not going anywhere.”
Sierra knew that was exactly what she should do.
She had no idea what she’d thought she was doing, storming in here like this.
She was standing right on the edge of breaking the only thing that really meant anything to her in this world, and for what?
Because other women knew him in ways she didn’t?
Because there was a nuclear version of Boone and she didn’t know it?
She was being childish.
But even as she thought that, there was something else moving through her and there was nothing childish about it.
It felt like the kind of age-old feminine wisdom that she’d always heard some women had, but had never felt herself.
Yet tonight there was a voice inside that suggested, firmly, that she’d known exactly what she would find here.
That she’d come right over, as fast as possible after she’d dropped Cat off, because something that had long been dormant inside of her had finally woken up.
Because there had to be reason that she’d kept this man so close all this time.
And maybe he’d let her stay oblivious.
But now that she knew, there was already no going back.
Now that she knew this much, though she was afraid think too closely about the implications, she wanted to know everything .
So she blew out a long breath.
Then she closed the distance between them, slid her hand around the back Boone’s head, and tugged his head down so she could kiss him.
And this time, she did it right.