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“Crystal.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I just rode 1200 miles to see you, and that’s all you’ve got for me?”
Her eyes moved uncomfortably to Jameson, and she licked her lips, frowning. “You came to get work done? Here?”
“No. I came to see you.” His eyes moved to the men, who obviously weren’t going to give them any privacy, and then back to her. “Can we talk outside?”
Her eyes again dropped to the wolf on his chest. “Don’t you need a bandage first?”
Jameson was already reaching for one. He pressed a large gauze square over Wolf’s chest and taped it in place.
Wolf noticed Crystal’s eyes taking in the bandage he already had taped under his armpit against his ribs, but she didn’t ask. He shrugged his flannel shirt back on, but didn’t button it up. Then he put his cut back on and followed her down the back hall.
She stalked out the back door into the alley and stopped a few feet from the door. Wolf took in her rigid back. He looked up. Dusk had fallen, and a light rain had started up. She didn’t care. She stood in it, letting the tiny droplets form a sparkling net of crystals on her hair. Finally she turned to face him.
“Why did you come?”
“I told you why. You.”
“Me?”
He nodded.
She folded her arms and looked down the alley. “You drove 1200 miles for nothing then. I’ve got a great guy in there. One who won’t hurt me.”
“Then why are you standing out here in the rain with me?”
She kept her eyes averted, her arms folded and her jaw tight. But he took solace in the fact that she didn’t have an answer for that one. It meant he still had a shot. At least he hoped he did, she was still standing here listening.
But he could also see she was in full defensive mode, and he couldn’t really blame her. He’d hurt her too many times. Still, he couldn’t let that stop him. Not if any of this mattered. And it did matter. It mattered a hell of a lot. He’d come too far emotionally to give up now.
She huffed out an impatient breath. “What do you want, Wolf?”
“We’ll get to what I want in a minute. First, I need to know what you want.”
“What I want?”
“That future you had all planned out with the white picket fence and the four kids…”
“Six.”
“Four.”
“Whatever.”
“Were you serious about that?”
She shrugged.
“What if I told you I want that too?”
“I’m not sure I’d believe you. I’d think you were just saying that because you feel guilty about what happened in Sturgis. But that’s no way to start a life together…based on you trying to make up for something. It has to be what you want.”
“I do feel guilty about what happened in Sturgis. I probably always will, ‘til the day I die. But that’s not what this is about.”
“What is this about then?”
