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“I might have been.” He lifts his gaze off my legs, and it sears right through me. “If it hadn’t ended with that kiss.”
“Oh.” I laugh lightly, lower my eyes, thinking he’s going to bring up thesecondthing about tonight I need to justify. And he’s making light of something that, even though it was reckless, will remain in my memory as my sweetest rebellion ever. He’s joking about it. It’s probably a good thing. He’s going easy on me…
But to my surprise, when I dare face him again, he’s not playing.
My voice comes out quietly, so muted I might as well not be talking. “It was the shock, I guess.”
He finishes tending to my wound and he rests his hand casually on my thigh. “I guess.”
His job is done, but he sits next to me like we’re staying here all evening, me in my cotton panties just having a relaxing late-night conversation with my hot boss. Yeah, completely normal.
We sit in silence for a while, both pretending to stare at Memphis falling asleep in his bed on the other end of the room. I really don’t know what else to say. It’s rare for me to be at a loss for words, but I am, because my mind reels with what could have happened. I nearly risked everything tonight. If I lose this job, Lily and I won’t have a place to live, not rent-free anyway, when she graduates in December. I’ll never be able to give Mom her second chance, a place to start fresh with better health.
Lily’s spunky eyes glimmer in my mind. I guided her here. I told her we’d change our story here. I told her a small town was where we could find the extended family we always wished for. I sold her this vision that Mom could heal here. And I nearly threw it away.
Maybe I have. Dash hasn’t said much. I dart my eyes to his face briefly, and it’s obvious he’s still thinking. He’s always thinking, and I really hope he isn’t thinking about how he can’t trust me anymore. I love it on this ranch. I love this job, the horses, the people I work with. I actually even love living with him even though I know I still have to figure out a way to give his room to Lily.
But there really is something about this man. If his thoughts are working toward firing me, it sure doesn’t feel like it. His fingers still caress my thigh in floaty movements, putting me at ease. How does he do it? Moments ago, I was hiding behind a sofa worried about showing him my legs, and now, the way he touches me, it’s just so affectionate, and everything about it says:I’m not going to hurt you. It’s not hard to understand why he’s so good with animals. He’s damn good with this one.
I still want to ask him what he was doing at Mustang Valley.
But before I can, he taps my leg gently and says, “We better get you to bed.”
I slide my legs off him and sit up. “I only have to get up in an hour or two anyway.”
He stands. “No. You rest up today. Take the day off. I don’t want you walking around on that leg.”
“It’s totally fine…”
“No, it isn’t.” He suddenly seems disheveled. “You go on and get in bed, and we’ll see if those strips hold before I have you on your feet all day. I can handle the hooligans for today.”
I smile and stand but I’m not grateful, even though I should be, just bummed I won’t see him much today and sit around here worrying if things are going to be weird now. Or if he’ll decide working at Starlight Canyon isn’t my future. “Yes, sir.”
He rolls his lips into a thin line and nods, more to himself than to me, because his eyes stare off in the distance. “Come on then, let’s get you to bed.”
I try to walk normally and not favor my leg so he knows it’s foolish to have put me on box rest, confining me to my stable. But in truth, my knee is swollen, and at the moment I can’t bend it very well. He wraps his arm around my waist, like he did walking me to the car.
I can’t tell what’s going on inside me. It’s like I have a kaleidoscope in my belly and it’s turning colors and shapes so often I can’t make sense of a single one. It’s definitely complicated. Do I like him touching me like this because I yearned for it all my life? Do I like it because itshim,the single most attractive man I’ve ever been next to in real life, including Stephen James who my sister and I swear we saw in Chicago once while window shopping on the Mag Mile?
Now that we’re indoors and the owls aren’t hooting, and Memphis isn’t rustling through brush, and the wind isn’t in my ears, and the crispness of fresh air isn’t in my nose, my senses are being taken over by Dash. His smell of leather and clean. The memory of the way he hums and how his voice fills every space like a mellow cello. His hand, calloused yet gentle, scratching sweet relief over my skin.
I’m about to go in my bedroom, shut the door, and leave all these sensations behind.
We reach my doorway, and he pauses next to me against it.
“Thanks for your help tonight.” I pull my lips into a thin line. “I really didn’t deserve it.”
“You better stop saying that…”
“Well…” I lower my eyes.
He tips up my chin, and his gaze burns right through me. “You deserve the world, Sunshine. Seems to me, you paid enough forward.”
His voice is so rich and warm I can practically feel it on my skin. He stares at me, and I’ve never felt so seen before. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it is my turn to be cared for. And God do I wish it was by him.
I guess tonight, it was. I offer a small, grateful smile.
He keeps my chin tipped up as if he might say more but he doesn’t. His gaze is so intense it’s blazing a trail right through me, wrapping its fingers around my heart and tying a string around my lungs. I can’t breathe with him staring at me like this. And then… he smooths his thumb in small circles on my chin, caressing me gently, while staring at me under his magnifying glass.
