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7
CHEYENNE
Slade lived down a long, winding road in a gigantic cabin. It was gigantic compared to the others, anyway.
“Thanks,” I said to Gage as he pulled into Slade’s driveway. “I was worried about driving when there are still slick spots.”
“No problem,” Gage said. “And if he doesn’t answer the door, go around back. Dude likes to hang out in that hot tub of his.”
I was grateful for that advice when I knocked and got no answer. But I wasn’t about to try to wander around his yard in my heels. So when the doorknob twisted under my hand, I marched right in.
“Hello?” I called out. I closed the front door behind me and looked around. “Slade?”
No answer. I could see straight through the cabin to the back deck, though. There was clearly a mountain man in the hot tub out there.
“I hope you let me join you,” I mumbled as I crossed to the backdoor. “Otherwise, I’m going to freeze my ass out off out there.”
Once I was at the back door, I reached for the knob, but something stopped me. Yeah, it was bad enough that I’d barged into his house. I’d probably scare the bejeebers out of him if I thrust this door open suddenly. So I lifted a hand and knocked gently on the glass.
Gentle or not, I still scared the bejeebers out of him. He jumped and turned to the left, his shoulders immediately tensing. He was ready to take on a…knocking burglar?
But then his features relaxed. He still didn’t smile, though.
I doubted I’d get an invitation to come on out, so I invited myself. I twisted the knob and prepared to confront him.
I stopped several feet from the hot tub, crossing my arms over my chest and staring him down. Crap, it was cold out here.
“You didn’t even give me a chance to explain,” I said.
I took a long look at him. He held a beer in his right hand. The water came up to just below his chest, giving me a tantalizing view of the skin above that.
I sure hoped we could work this out. I wanted to do things to him right now that I was pretty sure he’d be up to.
“No need to explain.” He faced front again, effectively shutting me out. He took a swig from his beer as I waited, suppressing a full-body shiver. “I’ve been there too many times to count. Let me guess. You had my poster in your locker in middle school.”
“My bedroom wall,” I said. “But that’s not why I?—”
He interrupted me. “I spent my early twenties trying to make a relationship work. A woman would say she wasn’t using me for who I was. And they were right. It wasn’t really that they were using me. It was just that they were in love with the fantasy of me, not the real me.”
“That’s not it.” I shook my head. “You aren’t even Slade Shepherd to me anymore.”
He looked over at me. “But you knew who I was.”
“I did when I first saw you, but a lot of time has passed since my childhood crush on you. The guy you were in my head is nothing like the guy I fell in love with last night.
The words slipped out, but they were the truth. No point hiding it, right? If I was going to scare him off, so be it. At least I’d scare him off for the right reasons—because I was in love with him too soon. Not the wrong reasons—because he thought I cared about his celebrity status.
“You’re in love with me,” he said. “Me or Slade Shepherd?”
“I don’t care if you’re Slade Shepherd or Slade Reynolds or Bob Smith. I’m in love with the man I spent time with last night and the one I made love to today. Yeah, maybe I saw something in you when I was a teen, but that went beyond the fact that you were famous. You were my first crush. Just because I didn’t know you personally doesn’t make that crush any less valid. When I looked into your eyes yesterday, I felt it again. That connection, that feeling that you were a man with a generous soul. The very kind of person I could spend the rest of my life with.”
“But you lied,” he said.
That was when I saw something new in his face. Pain. I’d put that pain there.
“I never lied,” I said. “Even if you’d introduced yourself as Slade Shepherd, I would have played it cool. I would have treated you like a person, not someone on a poster. I’m not fourteen anymore. And, like I said, once we started talking, I easily separated you from the guy I’d crushed on.”
His pained expression was lessening. I was making progress. I could see that.
