Chapter Sixteen

Zero changed his shirt three times before landing on a blue one that had been washed enough times to be so soft it clung to every inch of his torso, which meant it showed off his arms particularly well.

He turned sideways in the mirror. Not bad. Wait. Did this shirt make it look like he was trying too hard?

Maybe the green one was better. But that one scratched his neck, which he didn’t think he could stand for more than about five minutes, let alone the couple of hours he planned to spend with Delilah.

What if the date didn’t last more than three minutes, because she suddenly remembered she didn’t like neurotic has-been Army captains turned ranchers? Blue shirt, then. If nothing else, she’d told him several times how much she liked his form. Maybe she’d be dazzled enough to forget that Zero didn’t have pretty words on the tip of his tongue and smooth moves designed to romance a woman.

Blasted air conditioning must be on the fritz again. It was hotter than asphalt in August in his bedroom. And something was wrong with the buttons on the shirt, because they wouldn’t fit through the holes that had clearly shrunk since the last time he’d worn it. Which, come to think of it, he couldn’t recall when that was.

Shirt half buttoned, he sank onto the bed, dragging air into his lungs because yeah, he was nervous, and pretending it was business as usual wasn’t helping.

Winging it here, he reminded himself. Which might be the problem. The whole concept sat under his skin like a cocklebur. If people were supposed to wing it, they’d have feathers. But putting a wait-and-see parameter around whatever was happening with Delilah was the only way he could force himself to take these steps. The only way he could pretend any of this was okay.

Because it wasn’t. He was selfish for taking even a few hours out to have dinner with Delilah.

It couldn’t go anywhere. He had to focus on his family first. But he also couldn’t keep ignoring the spark between them. The wing-it plan gave him an excuse to indulge himself without a commitment he couldn’t keep.

“It’ll be great,” he muttered to himself and concentrated hard enough that he finally ended up with his shirt buttoned.

Showtime. He opened the door to find Delilah standing on the landing about to descend the stairs.

“Fancy meeting you here,” she said, her voice low and throaty, like she might be affected as much as he was by the fact that they were about to have an official date.

It did a number on his insides. “Hard to avoid it when we live in the same house.”

Boy. He could lay on the charm when called for, couldn’t he? If he could roll his eyes at himself, he would.

Instead, he settled for drinking in his dining companion, who’d managed to find a dress the color of bluebonnets that did amazing things to her eyes. Her feet were bare, a touch that picked up where her sexy voice had left off, riffling through his gut to stir things up to impossible levels.

How far gone was he that a woman’s bare feet set him on simmer? Maybe he should have suggested a date activity far away from the house, instead of telling everyone else to get lost for the night while he cooked a special dinner for two.

But then she reached out and pulled him closer, ratcheting up the intimacy by a thousand, and he couldn’t find a thing wrong with that.

“Hey,” she murmured as her arms came around him.

He could do nothing else except copy her gesture, and the feel of her in his embrace—so right, so perfect—nearly sent him over the edge. “Hey.”

“Figured we should take the edge off, or this will be a very long night.”

And then she pulled him into a kiss that scorched the skin off his bones. If this was how she’d expected to take the edge off, he couldn’t wait to find out what she planned for an encore when the edge returned with a vengeance.

In the spirit of the proposed goal, he backed her up against the wall and shoved his hands through her hair, desperate to get all of that silk under his fingers. The kiss deepened, and he had just enough brain cells left to recognize this was the opposite of the date he’d worked out in his head, where they spent hours talking and learning exciting things about each other.

Except she’d opened under his mouth, drawing him in, her hands roving over his shoulders as if she couldn’t get enough of him, and he stopped thinking. His fingers molded to her neck, grazed up the column of her satin skin, nestled in the hollow of her jaw. He levered her head higher, experimenting with the angles, and this type of education worked for him, too.

Abruptly, she broke off the kiss. “Okay, that didn’t work.”

Her hair wafted around her flushed face, her kiss-roughened lips begging for a repeat, and she was so beautiful his heart nearly exploded with the effort required to take it all in. “I disagree. That was the very definition of working.”

The smile she flashed him had a hint of wickedness. “I meant it didn’t work to get our date off on the right foot.”

“Well, I suppose that depends on what foot you expected to be on,” he said and stepped back because he didn’t fully trust himself not to dive in for round two and she needed to be in the driver’s seat for that. “But I’ll confess that you knocked me off mine, so right now, I’m not on any feet.”

She laughed, and he regretted releasing her—he’d like her to do that while he had her in his arms, so he could fully experience it. He’d be game to immerse himself in Delilah fully, drowning in her until he couldn’t surface.

“Same,” she said and drew his hand into hers. “Which is why we need to go downstairs this instant and put a kitchen island between us so we can have some hope of eating dinner before the sun rises.”

“You must have a poor opinion of my imagination, if you assume putting yourself on the other side of a large, flat piece of granite is a good way to get me thinking about cooking,” he told her with raised brows. “But okay. We’ll try it your way.”

Pink bled into her cheeks as she caught his meaning, but she let him lead her down the stairs. Maybe she even hoped to test out his imagination, but for the moment, he needed to focus on food instead of how empty the house was and how so very nice it was to be alone. At least until he got a better idea of why she’d stopped that kiss.

“What can I do?” she asked and held up her hand with a laugh as she caught the expression on his face—which must have conveyed his thoughts quite vividly. “Besides that. Sheesh, give a man an inch.”

“You started it,” he reminded her with a grin and turned to pull the ingredients for chicken marsala and roasted vegetables from the refrigerator.

That’s when he realized his nerves had vanished. He and Delilah were easy with each other in the kitchen as they worked together to make dinner, so much so he had to take a hard look at why. It was because he’d relaxed. She relaxed him. Especially since he had no expectations and no worries about any on her side.

This was working.

Chicken plated and vegetables laid out artistically on the side, Zero set dinner on the table in the breakfast nook that had always felt cozier to him than the formal dining room. It helped he could angle Delilah’s chair close to his, which meant their knees nested against each other as they settled into their seats.

She didn’t move hers. He had a feeling he’d be more focused on the warm currents her touch generated across his skin instead of a blessed thing on his plate.

“This is really good,” Delilah told him as she sampled her first forkful and gave him a sunny smile. “Thanks for cooking.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, more pleased with the compliment than should really be warranted for such a simple sentiment.

But he’d tried hard to think of something she’d like that would be easy to make together. He had driven to town earlier to pick up the ingredients, despite a mile long to-do list. Then had spent an hour getting ready. This mattered. And it was gratifying to hear her recognize his efforts.

“Tell me about school,” he asked her impulsively, curious to hear more about this large, important piece of her life that had been hidden from him thus far.

He shoved that thought away. Not hidden, like she’d done it deliberately. It had just never come up.

With a shrug, she pursed her lips as if trying to sort out how to answer. “I’m a PhD candidate. There’s not a lot more to it than that. I spend a lot of time reading other people’s opinions about things, and eventually, I’ll get to tell people mine.”

That was a surprisingly vague answer if he’d ever heard one. “What are you studying?”

She eyed him and swallowed. “Art history.”

“Really? Not dog training?”

Could you even get a PhD in dog training? Maybe you couldn’t. But for some odd reason, it knocked him off-kilter to hear her say she was earning her doctorate in something so far removed from anything remotely resembling dogs or even animal behavior.

The look on her face unsettled him all at once. She turned an odd color, like she’d eaten bad shrimp, except there was no seafood on her plate.

“Not dog training,” she repeated faintly and shoved another forkful of chicken in her mouth, chewing intensely.

“That just seems so…weird,” he said before sounding it out in his head. Which he should have, so he could at least rephrase it to not come across so negatively. “I mean, it’s totally fine with me if you like art and want to study it. I guess I thought you’d be doing something with training, since that’s your job.”

“It’s, um…not my job,” she said and put her fork down, then took a deep breath. “I guess we’re going to do this now. I’m not a dog trainer. I mean, yeah, I trained yours. I just mean it’s not how I earn my living or anything, like you must be thinking. Art is what I’ve done for the last ten years.”

“But you’ve trained dogs before,” he prompted. “Lots of times, right? Maybe not for money—”

“I’ve never trained dogs before.” She stared at him, not blinking, and that’s when he realized this was a Big Thing she was confessing to. “Not for money, not ever.”

Confusion and wariness replaced the buoyant bliss that had been swimming through his gut. “I don’t understand. How can you not be a dog trainer? The dogs follow your commands and Hunter isn’t scared of them anymore—”

“They knew how to do a lot of that stuff before I got here,” she muttered as his heart plunged to the ground as if tied to an anchor. “I think your grandpa must have worked with them. I did teach them some things, though.”

Zero stared at her, desperate to arrange the puzzle pieces she was handing him, but they didn’t fit into any of the blank holes in his head. “Like what?”

“How to lie still when Hunter pets them,” she returned and shook her head miserably. “I learned how to train dogs from my dad, but I left home when I was seventeen and never looked back. My dad and I had a…falling out, I guess you’d say, and I picked something the opposite of dog training to do. Art history. It was the only program they had with a guaranteed scholarship at the university.”

“I’m just…” Zero pinched the bridge of his nose. His brain hurt from trying to make sense of everything she was telling him. “So you’re an art history student, and you’ve never trained dogs before. Is this the part where you tell me how great everything turned out anyway?”

“Not exactly.” She laughed without a shred of amusement. “I’ve been trying to train the dogs to work the cattle, but I don’t know if I really and truly can. I’m working on it. It’s just not going as well as I’d like. Or you would like. I feel like I’m taking your money under false pretenses.”

Everything tilted and slid toward a precarious edge he hadn’t even realized was there. A few minutes ago, he’d been thrilled with how easy everything with Delilah flowed, and now he didn’t feel like he knew her at all. Or what state his goals with the ranch might be in.

One thing he knew for sure—he’d screwed up. Taken his eyes off the prize, forgotten what was really important, and it was not indulging his burning need to fan the flames between Delilah and him.

He’d let his family down. Hugely.

“This is a lot to process,” he huffed out hoarsely. “When exactly were you going to tell me all of this?”

“Well, now, I guess. I tried to tell you this at Miller’s, but you cut me off. You said we could talk about it later. It’s later.”

Something broke open inside him, spilling out his reservations about her from the beginning, the niggle in his gut that said something was off. Which he’d ignored. Just like he’d ignored what she’d been trying to tell him when he’d poured out his heart at that picnic table.

Instead, he’d kissed her and thrown all of his responsibility to his family out the window. This was what he got for forgetting he didn’t have the right to be happy.

He could own his role in this quickly unwinding scene. It was the only thing he could control. “So this is my fault.”

…

The dead calm in his tone, the absolute lack of emotion, frightened Delilah all at once. This was how he’d earned the name Zero. This man commanded the very atmosphere because the temperature dropped in an instant, giving her frostbite.

“No! That’s not what I’m saying,” she cried.

Everything wonderful between them had disintegrated so fast.

Twin icepicks stabbed at her skull through each temple as she tried to navigate both her confession and his reaction. This was not what she’d anticipated when she told him this stuff, this shutting off of the energy that had always been between them. She’d had no idea how much she’d miss it, now that he’d thrown up a frozen wall between them.

No less than she deserved. She should have insisted on telling him everything at Miller’s, but she’d let herself be lulled into a false sense of security. Let the voices in her head convince her it would be fine when, clearly, it was not fine.

“Zero, please.” She dragged air into her burning lungs. “This is my fault. One hundred percent. What I’m trying to say is that I never meant for things to go this far. I really thought I could do what you asked me to. I still think I can, but I needed you to know the truth about where I’m starting from. And then there’s Hunter…”

Oh, man, she hadn’t even told him the worst part yet. She groaned and put her head in her hands.

“What about Hunter?” he returned immediately.

“You don’t have to say it like that, like I’ve done something to hurt him.”

“Haven’t you?” She could hear the undertone of censure, but only because she’d really strained to sense something from him other than pure nothingness. “He really likes you and looks up to you. He told me the other day he wants to become a dog trainer like you. Little does he know.”

Yeah, that was some irony. Pieces of glass raked across her heart as she internalized Hunter wanted to work with dogs. She’d given him that confidence. But it didn’t seem like that would count enough to make what she’d done right. Not in her tally book anyway, and certainly not in Zero’s, either, given the blankness of his expression.

Scrambling now, she blurted out, “I care about Hunter and helping him deal with his father’s death. That’s why I started training Elizabeth Swann to be an emotional support dog.”

Okay, that could have been presented better, maybe by leading up to it instead of blathering it out in one big clump.

“You…trained Elizabeth Swann to be a…what? An emotional support dog? What are you telling me?”

Zero’s voice dripped icicles. She wouldn’t have believed in the possibility of such a thing if she hadn’t heard it for herself. Now she got it. This was the side of himself he usually presented to people, the one that made people think of him as cold. The fact he’d never been like this with her—until this moment—struck at a place deep inside.

“I’m telling you that she’s really good at it.” His face was hard stone as she explained what she’d done. “Hunter adores her now. He tolerates it when the others lay on him and beg to be petted, but I can tell Elizabeth Swann is his favorite.”

“The others are learning to be emotional support dogs, too?” he asked with terrifying calm. “Do tell.”

“Just Will Turner, mostly, but the Captains, too, sometimes. It was an accident,” she blurted out before figuring out how best to frame it. “They all wanted to get in on it. Probably for the treats, yes. But they love laying around and getting lots of tummy scratches from Hunter. He’s really blossomed lately, don’t you think?”

The look on his face gutted her. He wasn’t mad. He wasn’t disappointed. He wasn’t…anything. Just eerily calm and expressionless as if she’d broken him completely.

Hadn’t she, though? She’d known his goal was to start up the ranch with dogs working the cattle in the place of personnel he couldn’t afford, and she’d ruined that plan.

This was her fault. Her mess. She had to fix it.

“I’ll buy you some new dogs,” she suggested, her voice cracking as she laid out Plan B. “I’ll train them to work the cattle. It’ll be fine.”

“You just said a minute ago that you weren’t sure you could.”

Ugh, yeah, she’d said that because it was true. “Well, I didn’t know if I could train emotional support animals, either, but I did that. So I think we’re okay.”

Possibly, anyway. She’d worked with the Captains a lot, but they were such a handful she’d never gotten them quite to the point they needed to be.

“You’re asking me to trust you, to give you another chance to do the job I’ve already paid you to do. To continue to place my family’s well-being and future happiness on the premise that an art history student can magically transform into a professional dog trainer because you think you can.”

Delivered with absolutely no inflection, as if he’d read the words off of a prepared statement. Worse, it sounded ridiculous when he put it like that, even though it was pretty close to what she’d said.

She heard it through the megaphone of what she’d always known. Her father was right. She could never be a dog trainer.

“You’re right, it’s not enough,” she croaked as the enormity of the situation crashed down on her, what she’d done and how cavalierly she’d treated his plans. “I’m not enough. I knew what you wanted out of a dog trainer, and I put your ranch business in jeopardy by not being upfront about my credentials.”

His mouth tightened. “That’s how I see it, too. I have no choice but to start over with new dogs apparently, which pushes out my timeline for having a working ranch. For having a place where my family can recover and heal from the blows life has dealt us.”

“I know,” she whispered, her heart aching for him, for Hunter and Sheridan, who’d trusted Zero to take care of them, and in turn, he’d trusted her. She’d let him down. “I’m sorry, Zero. For everything.”

There was only one way to fix this, and it wasn’t by buying him new dogs and pleading with him to trust her to figure it out.

She had to make it right.

“I’ll go,” she told him with a sharp nod. “I’ll find somewhere else to stay until I get my loan money.”

Part of her hoped he’d reach out then, tell her that he still cared about her and wanted to keep winging it with her, because it was okay and he forgave her for everything.

“That would probably be best,” he acknowledged without a hint of emotion in his gaze, like all of his feelings had already been shut off. “I need to focus on my family and my ranch without distractions. They’re my priority, and I lost sight of that. Besides, we were just having fun. That’s what happens when there are no expectations. We can end it easily.”

Her stomach hollowed out. He was going to let her go. As he should. That’s what was always going to happen when she went back to school. This brief period of bliss had been an illusion, where she’d started to believe it might turn out differently.

And maybe it might have, if she’d trained the dogs like he’d expected her to.

Instead, she’d lost him. And the dogs. The ranch, Hunter, her view of the pond. Everything she’d counted as a blessing—gone. The money, yes, but it felt secondary to everything else. Ironic, since the dollar signs had been her primary motivator at the beginning.

There was nothing easy about this on her side. And it rubbed her heart raw to realize he didn’t seem to be affected by losing her at all.

She fled the kitchen and escaped to the room she’d come to think of as hers. Adrift—again—she blindly started throwing things into her suitcase.