Page 23 of Wild and Wanted

But, as if he’d already said too much, he changed the subject. ‘Did you enjoy tonight?’

It was a perfectly appropriate question to ask someone at the end of an evening of fun and frivolity, but also innocuous. A nothing kind of question. A time waster. Like he wasn’t particularly interested in the answer, and she wanted him to be interested.

In it – in her.

‘Sure.’

He chuckled and Stevie startled at the low, rich sound pouring liquid heat over her skin. ‘Doesn’t sound like it.’

‘Oh, no… sorry. I didn’t mean…’ She’d merely given him the inane disinterested reply she’d figured he was expecting, but she didn’t want him to think that she hadn’t had a good time because she had – despite her hyperawareness of him preventing her from being able to fully sink into the conversations. ‘It’s the first time in a few years I’ve hung out with people who haven’t quizzed me about my music career. It was nice not to have to be on my guard the whole time.’

Up ahead, the headlights flashed across the side of the cabin Stevie and her mom were occupying. There were no lights on inside, which wasn’t surprising. Her mother was rarely awake after nine.

‘We tend to mind our own business out here.’

It was Stevie’s turn to laugh. ‘And I thank you for it.’

‘You don’t like to talk about your music?’

‘Not with people I don’t really know. Even talking to journalists feels like… I don’t know.’ She shrugged. ‘An invasion of my privacy.’

‘Yeah, that can be pretty intense.’

His tone led Stevie to believe that he’d been through something similar. Her Google search had definitely turned up clips from post-ride interviews he’d done as well as podcasts and a couple of big late-night shows.

‘You don’t have generic answers for their questions ready to go? In my experience they all ask the same damn things.’

Stevie nodded as Clay slowed right down then rolled to a stop near the gravelled path that led to the front porch of the cabin. ‘I do. But…’

He cut the engine, the sudden silence loud in its intensity. ‘But?’ he prompted when she didn’t continue.

‘It feels like all the questions are a conduit to talking about Yolly.’ Stevie didn’t talk about her sister to anyone – certainly not journalists. Apparently, though, it was easy to tell Clay. Who she’d known for less than a week.

Maybe because he hadn’t asked?

‘And it doesn’t seem to matter,’ she continued, staring out the window at the deep night beyond the hood, ‘how I try to divert and lead them away, they inevitably move on to her with sympathetic smiles and understanding tones, not realising that they might as well be stabbing me in the chest with a blunt knife.’

If the silence had been loud before, it was deafening now. Good one, Stevie; freak the man out by getting all deep and meaningful. As if that kiss hadn’t been bad enough.

Giving herself a mental shake, she absently smoothed her palms down her legs. ‘I’m sorry, ignore me.’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry.’

Surprised by his apology, Stevie glanced in his direction to find his amber gaze intensified in the dark of the cab and his hand reaching across the space between them. His fingers inched closer, as if in slow-mo, her breath catching in her throat as they slid onto her jaw and his palm cupped her cheek.

Every hair on Stevie’s body prickled to attention.

‘I’m truly sorry your sister died.’ His voice was a low murmur, barely disturbing the air currents around them. ‘I’m sorry you had to go through something so awful only for some people to treat it as entertainment. The world can be a seriously fucked-up place sometimes.’

Stevie swallowed at the sincerity in his tone, her eyes shutting involuntarily at the slow drugging stroke of his thumb and, before she could stop herself, she was leaning into the caress, rubbing her cheek against his hand.

When her eyes fluttered open, it was to find him still looking at her, radiating the kind of empathy and understanding she wouldn’t have expected from a cowboy whose palms were this rough. He was so close, his presence almost overwhelming, and yet somehow so far away, and she wished he would come nearer.

Or that she was brave enough to make that move herself.

But… she was giving too much of herself away here. To a guy she barely knew. She shouldn’t mistake his compassion for something else. It would be too easy to romanticise this moment and while her heart was inexperienced in this kind of intimacy – she was no dummy.

She knew they didn’t make sense on paper. City v country. Dreamer v rancher. Virgin v Casanova.