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He pushed her against the brick side of the building, put his hands inside her jacket, and eased them under her sweater. He cupped each side of her waist and moved higher, until his hands rested under the curve of her breasts. When his thumbs brushed her nipples, she felt heat spread through the rest of her body. She pushed into him, kissing him harder.
Jace rested his forehead against hers but left his hands where they were. “I wanna be alone with you, Blythe, so bad. But…”
The sound of his voice broke through the haze of his kiss, and she pushed away from him. “I can’t do this, Jace. I’m sorry.”
“Who are you thinking about instead of me, Blythe? Is it Tucker, or are you still worried about—”
She put her fingers over his lips. She didn’t want to hear him say Renie’s name. “Take me home, Jace.”
Jace held her hand in his and ran his thumb back and forth over her knuckles, but Blythe was lost in thought on the drive home. She hummed along with the music on the radio, but he doubted she knew she was doing it.
She took a deep breath and rested her head against the window. He’d give anything to know what she was thinking about. Although he had a pretty good guess.
6
Dottie and Bill, Billy’s parents, were keeping Willow with them so Renie could go to the stock show with Blythe. Ben and Liv were going too, but driving separately.
“It’s been a long time since we went to the rodeo,” Renie said on the way there.
“A very long time. Guess we won’t be checkin’ out the cowboys, the way we used to.”
Blythe wondered if Renie had ever checked out other cowboys. From what she’d said in the last couple of months, she’d been in love with Billy Patterson long before she and Blythe went to their first rodeo.
“What about you? Are you and Jace…you know?”
“Are we what?”
“Seeing each other?”
“I’m not sure, to tell you the truth.” She still couldn’t stop thinking about Tucker, but she’d given the situation a lot of thought last night. Tucker was gone, and Blythe didn’t know if she’d ever see him again. Jace was here, and interested. Maybe she should give him the chance he was asking for.
“Billy wondered. He asked me this morning when Jace told him he’d decided to stay in Denver the rest of the week.”
“Interesting,” she grinned. “Well, it is a long ride home every night.”
Blythe started to giggle and Renie joined her.
Tucker knew he was being an asshole when he up and left the dinner table on Thanksgiving. He hadn’t intended to leave, necessarily. He went outside, hoping to shake off th
e ghosts, but they wouldn’t let loose. What started out as a drive to clear his head, ended up taking him back over the pass and home. He hadn’t even taken the time to thank Ben and Liv for inviting him to dinner.
More importantly, he hadn’t said goodbye to Blythe. Sitting on the beach in San Sebastian, he had little recollection of how he got back to Spain, but the memory of Blythe Cochran remained crystal clear.
He’d been in the seaside community for over a month, painting. He had few pieces to show for it in terms of the Basque landscape. Blythe, on the other hand, he could paint all day.
When he got the email from Jace, saying he was competing in the National Western, riding saddle broncs of all things, he figured the next thing he’d read would be that he was seeing Blythe. Sure enough, the next paragraph said he hadn’t seen or talked to her since the day after Thanksgiving, but he planned to while he was in Denver.
His gut twisted when he read it. Here he was, five thousand miles away, and he’d been the one who put himself here. Every night, he dreamed about her. When he was awake, all he had to do was close his eyes, and there she was. One ghost had been replaced by another, but this ghost he could talk to, wrap his arms around, and sink his body into. And yet, he wasn’t doing any of those things.
Blythe sent a text to Lyric when she and Renie got to the show complex.
“I can’t wait for you to meet her,” she told Renie. “She’s super fun to talk to. She and I hit it off right away.”
Renie was sullen, and then suddenly, she wasn’t anymore.
“What just happened?”
“I have to get used to sharing,” she answered. “I’m not very good at it.”
