“Selfish people doing selfish things,” she repeated. “I don’t know. The older I get the more I think...something must’ve been broken inside of my mother.”
“Yeah?” he asked.
“I can’t imagine leaving my child.”
Her words sent a strange sharp spike through his chest. “I can’t imagine having a child.”
“Really?”
Once upon a time he’d thought maybe. But then he’d been reminded who he was. “I told you. Family, commitment, not really my thing.”
“But your brother did it.”
“My brother had a baby. And...like you, he couldn’t imagine doing anything but stepping up.”
“Well, good for him.”
“Yep. Good for him. I’ve always thought so.” Silence lapsed between them. “You shouldn’t hate your accent, though.”
“I shouldn’t?”
“I like that drawl. Sounds like a slow lick to me, and I can imagine where I’d like that.”
She shifted against him. “You can’t get sexy with me on the back of a horse.”
“Oh, honey, I can get sexy just about anywhere.”
She went stiff for a moment, then pliant, and leaned back against him. “Well, I guess that does fall under the header of teaching me everything there is to know.”
He moved his hands to her waist, then let them hitch up slightly, until his fingers were skimming the undersides of her breasts. “I think so.”
She made a deep, satisfied noise. “Is this part of my lesson?”
“Hell yeah.”
He started to kiss her neck again. “I’m supposed to be taking in the view,” she said.
“Hell,” he said. “I’m the tourist. But I think you’re the only view I’m interested in.”
She turned and looked at him, her eyes wide. And he realized his words did sound a little bit more serious than he’d intended. A little less like a fling, a little more like something else. And he rationalized it. Because back at home he’d been...unsettled. Things were different. And he was damn grateful for Evelyn. He was. His niece deserved a mother. Sawyer deserved to be happy, and if this was what made them happy, then more power to him. Wolf could be as cynical about things as possible, but he did believe in love. He believed in its power to change, transform and destroy things beyond reparation.
He would be the last person on earth to ever doubt that his brother was truly, deeply in love.
But believing in it and wanting it for himself were two different things. Also, knowing he didn’t want it for himself, and being all right with being around it, were also two different things.
And he had a feeling that... The way that left him unsettled, to be around his brother, all settled and happy and having things that at one time Wolf had thought would be his... Well, it was messing with him. So a little affair at a time, something different. Something that may indulge that part of him that was living in the past in a way that was more bittersweet than usual...
Well, he was leaving. That was the thing. It was temporary, and it was only going to be temporary.
They rode on in silence, and he continued to stroke her body, keeping it light, not taking it too X-rated in the outdoors, not that he was opposed. He wasn’t at all. But he didn’t know his cousins’ ranch well enough to know where all the boundaries were, and who he might run into. He knew exactly where he would take her at Four Corners. Exactly the place he could lay her down in the grass and...
He shook his head. She would never see Four Corners, so it didn’t matter.
But when they finished the ride they went straight back to the bed-and-breakfast. And there were no guests around, so he dragged her right up to his room, stripped them both of their clothes and had her the way he’d been fantasizing about all day. They lay there spent and breathless, until she looked at the clock. “I need to... I need to put out cookies and coffee. And I have someone checking in.” She rolled out of bed.
“You look like you’ve just been had,” he said. “Thoroughly, I might add.”
She scrambled over to the mirror, and began to smooth her hair. “Well, I need to look less...that.”