Page 33 of Wild Rivals

Reassured, I sigh with relief when Mom calls, “It’s time for dinner.”

I head to the sink to wash up before we eat.

Gracie comes to stand beside me. “So.” She drags out the word as she stares out of the window into the dimly lit yard. “You wanna tell me what Maddie Hart was doing leaving your place this afternoon? Especially considering you then turn up tonight with that.” She points to my neck.

Fucking hell. I was wrong. She does know.

Okay, time to do some damage control.

“I’m not sure what you think you know, but you’re wrong, Gracie. There’s nothing going on between me and Maddie.” Liar.

She twists her mouth, tilting her head as she bores her gaze into the side of my head. “Okay.” She pauses. “Then who gave you the hickey?”

Rinsing my hands, I shake them off before turning toward her. “Nobody. It’s not even a hickey.” Denial. That’s my best course of action here.

She narrows her eyes. “Then what is it?”

I lift a shoulder. “I don’t know, a bruise or something, I guess.”

“A hickey is a bruise, Wyatt. Maybe I should ask everyone else what they think about what I saw.”

Tension fills my body and I’m not sure why. I remind myself again that I haven’t done anything wrong. “What did you see?”

Gracie smirks, crossing her arms over her chest. “Just what I said, Maddie leaving your place and she looked a little… disheveled.”

Fuck.

How do I save this? There’s no way that I’ll ever hear the end of it if Gracie tells the others what she saw. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

“You didn’t see shit, Gracie.” My pulse kicks up.

She looks so fucking smug. Can I get away with murder in the middle of Sunday dinner? Panic has my pulse racing and nausea rising in my gut.

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.” My body relaxes. “Yet, but this was bound to happen, Wy. You two are at each other’s throats enough that some hate sex was always going to be on the table.”

Something clicks and I rock back on my heels, puffing out my chest, pleased with myself, as I reply, “Well, you’re wrong. Like I said, nothing happened. She was just pissed that I got us the Evergreen land.”

We stare at each other, neither willing to back down.

“Come on, you two, dinner’s getting cold,” Mom calls.

Gracie turns toward the sink, and I amble my way back to the table, a pressure sitting on my chest that I have no clue how to get rid of. What happened with Maddie was a one-off. A never-to-be-repeated kind of thing. Even if I can’t get the taste of her off my tongue or the image of her coming out of my mind.

I hate that she’s wormed her way under my skin, leaving behind a mountain of uncertainty. I’m not the type of guy that brags about the people he sleeps with, but I’ve also never denied having sex with a woman. Normally, I wouldn’t give two shits about what people think of me, but as I sit here, with my pulse hammering so hard that it’s all I can hear, I feel nothing but a cocktail of guilt, shame, and disappointment.

Not for having had sex with Maddie, but for having told her I’d had better—that was self-preservation—and for denying what we did. Hell, while I’m at it, I might as well add in the fact she ran away because of me or that I stole her burgundy lace G-string because it’s covered in her juices and I wanted a memento.

All of that’s to say, I think I’ve been a jerk, and that maybe, Maddie didn’t deserve it.

And that’s a problem.

21

WYATT

Pressing my foot down on the gas, I push the ATV to its limits as I speed through the fields. I’ve had an alert for movement in one of our pastures that edges the Harts’ land. It’s nothing new to us, but I’m the right kind of pissed off today after yet another sleepless night that if I catch some tourists causing damage to our property, there will be hell to pay.

I barely got four hours’ sleep. The scent of Maddie somehow seeped its way into my mattress, and despite changing the sheets, it was a teasing reminder of her. It didn’t help that she kept showing up in my dreams. When it was time to drag my ass out of bed this morning, my dick was rock-hard. I jerked off three times in the shower and every time I came, she was there.