“You see, somehow I was sure that you’d say that.” His expression got deadly serious. “Violet is a sweet girl.”
“I know,” Wolf said. “I can see that.”
“And you don’t do sweet.”
“Are you warning me off of her?”
“Consider yourself lucky that it’s me. Her dad and her uncles don’t have a reputation for being the nicest guys. And they’re no older than I am. They could kick your ass.”
“Her dad is no older than you?” He was mildly horrified by that.
“Well. Her dad might be. A little bit. But her uncles are young. And can kick your ass.”
“I don’t want my ass kicked.”
He said that because Connor would think he’d listened.
But he wasn’t deterred in his pursuit of Violet. And as he left the house that night, he stopped his truck in the middle of the road and asked himself why. Not because he cared about getting his ass kicked. That didn’t scare him. But because what Connor had said was true. Violet was sweet. The kind of sweet that men like him shouldn’t mess with. And he knew better than that. He didn’t do sweet. He really didn’t. He liked a good-time girl, and it was clear enough that Violet wasn’t that. The way she had blushed when he touched her cheek...
Yeah, she was not the kind of girl whom he should be messing with. But he was absolutely and completely drawn to her. Confounded by the attraction that existed between them. Normally, his attraction wasn’t specific. He liked beautiful women. And there were a lot of them. So one was pretty much like the next as far as all that went. Didn’t much matter. But she was weighing heavy on his mind, looming large in his consciousness all the time. And he didn’t feel guilty about it.
He had to wonder if this was rock bottom. And then he wondered if he even cared.
If Breanna were still alive, she wouldn’t love him now. Of course, he might not have become this if she were still alive. He certainly wouldn’t have been thinking about seducing another woman.
His veins felt like they were full of ice by the time he pulled back into the bed-and-breakfast, because the thought of Breanna’s disappointment in him wasn’t even enough to make him feel deterred from the path that he was set on.
When he walked into the bed-and-breakfast, it was warm. Enough to thaw out his veins. And even though he’d just eaten at his cousin’s house, his stomach growled when he saw the goodies that Violet had set out on the table by the door. There was warm apple cider. And he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had something like that. Evelyn would probably make it. Evelyn had brought all that kind of softness into their house. All kinds of things that had never been there before.
But he didn’t wanthers. He wanted Violet’s.
He stopped and grabbed a little white paper cup, and began to fill it up with cider. And then he heard footsteps. He looked up and saw Violet looming in the doorway of the hall. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he said. “Sorry. I had dinner with my cousins tonight. And it was late by the time I got back here. Didn’t realize that I’d...” He lifted his cup. Didn’t finish his sentence. Why was he apologizing to her? Why was he explaining himself?
“It’s fine,” she said. “You don’t... You don’t owe me anything.” Music to his ears. His favorite thing to hear a woman say. And yet...
“I haven’t had cider since I was a kid,” he said, taking a sip of it, unprepared for the nostalgia that hit him. Wolf was not one who was given to nostalgia. He didn’t like to think about the past. There were too many people in the past that weren’t in the present, and everything about it felt thorny. But there he was. A little kid, out on the hayride after going to the pumpkin patch. And his mom was there. His dad, too. Along with a smile, which he hadn’t seen on the man all that often.
She smiled. The smile lit up her face, and he focused on her smile, which was uncomplicated, and not tangled around thorny memories.
“I love it,” she said. “I didn’t for a while. I mean, I mentioned that my mom left. I was really angry after that. And I... I pulled away from my dad. I pulled away from everybody. My friends. I didn’t want to do things like have holidays. It seemed...sad. And empty. I couldn’t understand why she left. Why she would leave me. I guess you know something about that.”
Damn. Why had he told her any of that? This was the problem with talking to women. And earlier it had seemed like a good idea because it gave them something to relate to each other on.
Seemed like less of a good idea now.
“Sure,” he said. “But I was only six.”
“I was thirteen. I remember it. And I was... I was very angry. And I really noticed the difference.”
He sure as hell noticed the difference. But his brother had been right. He’d told him then that there was no use in crying. There wasn’t. It didn’t change anything. It didn’t bring people back. Ever.
“Well. I’m glad you found your way back to holidays.”
“Me, too,” she said.
And he was done talking just then. But she was an interesting thing, Violet Donnelly; she wasn’t his typical woman. Not his usual type. He couldn’t approach her exactly the same way he would have a woman in a bar, and he knew that. But he couldn’t just stand here doing nothing, either. If it was a woman in a bar, he’d say something shocking, something dirty. Make her giggle. Make her come to him.