"I'm telling you what's between us and what comes next. Because I'm not doing this halfway, and I'm not doing this on a rock on a ridge in twenty minutes before I have to be a father again."
My lungs squeezed together. He was talking about what comes next. Somewhere between last night and just now, the walls he’d put up between us had come down.
"Okay," I said.
"Okay you understand, or okay you agree?"
"Both."
He let out a breath. Then he stood and reached down to pull me up after him in one motion that was probably not as effortless as he made it look. I picked up the camera. He picked up Rosalee's reins. He held my hand on the walk back to the horses.
That, more than the kiss, was what focused on as we retraced our steps on the trail. He didn't let go of my hand.
The ride back was quieter. The light got cleaner as the sun climbed and I shot through it without really paying attention to what I was getting. I was thinking about the post. About the story that had been told for eighty years. About what kind of man kisses a woman on a ridge and then says I'm not doing this halfway and means it.
When we got back to the barn it was nine fifteen. He helped me down off Rosalee but didn't kiss me again. If he had, I wasn’t sure either one of us would stop.
"I have to leave for the lodge by twelve forty-five whether she calls or not," he said.
"I'll be ready."
"Ready for what?"
"To go with you."
He looked at me for a long second. I’d said it without thinking and I was about to walk it back. "Okay," he said.
He led the horses into the barn. I stood in the gravel with the camera against my hip and watched him go, and I knew with a clarity I had absolutely no business having that I had just put myself in the middle of something I knew nothing about. Hopefully it wouldn’t come back to bite me in the ass.
CHAPTER 7
JACE
We were back in the barn by nine fifteen, working the horses down on opposite sides of the aisle, and I was replaying the trail in my head instead of paying attention to the buckle in my hands.
The ride down had been quiet in a way that meant too much. Bella had ridden a length ahead the whole way, her camera bag settled across her hip, her hair loose. The early sun had come through the pines at a low angle and caught the gold in it, and I'd made myself look at the trail instead.
That hadn't helped much either. Cutter knew the path home and didn't need any of my attention, which had left me with too much to spend on the woman in front of me. I had a problem. I liked the way she sat a saddle better than I’d let on at the barn, and I craved more of the way she'd looked at me up there. Like I was a man worth wanting.
I'd had enough sense going up the trail to tell myself it was just physical. She'd been in my personal space for weeks, and I'd managed worse. It had been a long damn time since anyone had looked at me the way she had. I could live with want. I'd managed want before.
What I hadn't prepared for was the part after she'd pulled back. The way she'd put one hand flat against my chest and left it there long enough for me to feel her own pulse through her palm. We'd both been breathing too hard, and neither of us had said a word. She hadn't tried to define what had stopped us. She'd just rested her hand there, then she'd lowered it, and I'd kept my arm around her like it hadn't been four years since I'd let a woman stand close enough to kiss.
That was the part I couldn't fit into the category of simple.
I unbuckled the cinch and lifted Cutter's saddle off. Across the aisle, Bella was rubbing Rosalee down with an old blanket I kept on a hook. She hung the saddle pad over the rail to dry without being shown. I watched her do it, and something in my chest gave way that I wasn't going to be able to lock back into place anytime soon.
Then my phone buzzed in my back pocket.
Dana: Already on the road. I'll have her back by ten. Saves you the drive.
I read it twice.
Dana had never run early. Not once, in four years. Not for a court date, not for a custody window, not for the one Christmas she'd flown in with the idea of staying the weekend and gone back to her boyfriend two days into it. Early was not a Dana category.
"Is everything okay?" Bella had come around the post. She wasn't close, but she was looking at me the way she looked at things she was trying to understand without the help of a camera.
"She's bringing Rory back at ten."
