16

Amanda woke up Halloween morning to find Brady still sprawled out in her bed.

That had never happened before.

She’d seen him almost every night this month, except when he’d been out camping, and he never, ever stayed over. That hadn’t surprised her. She assured herself it was because he needed to get back home for that four thirty start of the typical ranch morning.

And maybe for other reasons, but that was the one she clung to.

Amanda sat up, her toes curling a little as the movement reminded her of the things they’d done in this bed last night. The things they’d done all over this apartment.

The things she would have done in the back hall of the Broken Wheel Saloon, even though her feelings had been hurt. And despite the fact her brothers and friends could easily have caught them.

Kat had asked her what had taken her so long, and Amanda had still been all riled up and reckless. She’d almost answered the question honestly. Almost.

But Amanda knew perfectly well that what happened between Brady and her had to stay a secret. Or anyway, she’d agreed that it would.

What she knew and what she felt didn’t necessarily match.

She’d accepted that.

Because she was in love with him, and she didn’t know how to change that. She didn’t want to change it.

Surely love made the wild pleasure that he could wring out of her, over and over again, that much better—whether she told him how she felt or not.

He made her blush. He made her sob. He made her wanton and wicked, and she loved it. She loved him.

But she still wasn’t foolish enough to say it out loud.

This morning he was still here, so Amanda took the opportunity to study him as he lay there beside her, one arm tossed up over his head and his eyes shut tight. This never happened either. She didn’t get the opportunity to stare at Brady as much as she liked, without him witnessing it. He’d kicked off the covers on his side of the bed, which suited her fine.

Because he was perfect.

She tried to resist, but gave in almost before the thought was fully formed in her head. Amanda reached over and carefully traced that mouth of his, stern and soft at once as he slept. His jaw was rough, darkened overnight, and it amazed her how much she liked the contrast.

Amanda trailed her fingers down his chest, liking the roughness mixed with the smooth. Liking everything about him. She wanted to shout her love for him to the whole world. She wanted to claim all this as hers.

She loved him so much, it actually hurt, and maybe she liked the hurt too, because here she was. Still. And when he’d showed up at her door after that painful little scene in the saloon hallway, it hadn’t occurred to her to do anything but let him in.

You can start yelling about how much you love him, she told herself, or you can find another way to entertain yourself.

Amanda chose the second option. Especially when looking at him already made her feel overheated and melty. She crawled over him, exulting in the heat he gave off and the small sound he made. Then she let her mouth follow the same trail her fingers had made, tasting him as she went.

Salt. Man.

Brady.

By the time she got to that fascinating V cut into his low abdomen that she liked to trace with her fingers—and now got to taste—she was shivering with her own excitement.

Especially when she saw that at least one part of him was already awake, and just as interested in what she was doing as she was.

He’d let her taste him there, but only a little. Only on the way to other things. And all those other things had made her dizzy with delight, so she had been happily distracted.

But there was light coming in her windows and he was still here. There was nothing to distract her now.

Amanda arranged herself there between his legs, her gaze on the most fascinating, most unapologetically male part of him. She flicked a glance up, and with a jolt, found him watching her.

His dark green eyes were at a lazy half-mast. He didn’t tell her to stop. Instead, he grew harder as she watched.

So she did what she’d wanted to do since the first night. She tilted herself forward and took him deep in her mouth.

This was better. This was perfect. Because she could hardly cry out that she loved him when her mouth was full of him, could she?

Instead, she told him with her tongue.

Again and again, until she was shuddering, she liked the taste of him so much.

Slowly, with a deep groan she could feel as well as hear, he began to move with her. Lifting his hips, then dropping them at her pace, until she found it hard to tell the difference between them. What she was doing, what he was.

Only that it was all still so perfect.

His fingers sunk deep into the morning mess of her hair, and she liked that too. Even when he got more and more tense, and she thought he might try to pull her off of him. She didn’t want that, so she wrapped her arms around his hips and held on.

And she felt it when Brady let go.

Then everything was the thrust, the heat. Her hands and her mouth. And when he surrendered completely, flooding her mouth with salt, she found herself shuddering straight over the edge too.

It felt like a magic trick.

“You’re killing me,” Brady growled.

The way he often did. Though he always lived.

He jackknifed up from the bed, pulling her behind him. Then he took her into her shower, made everything steamy, and taught her a few new tricks to match.

That was why it wasn’t until she’d made them both coffee that she noticed there was a certain grim cast to his face when he looked at her. A kind of unnerving resolve.

“Are you okay?” she asked. Brady studied her for a moment, but didn’t say anything, so she blundered ahead. “I know it’s been a year since your father died. Today.”

It shocked her how much time she could spend writhing around with him naked, shameless and filled with light and heat and joy, only to plummet straight back into awkwardness at moments like this.

“Yes,” Brady said after a moment that seemed to drag on far too long, his face unreadable. “It’s been a year.”

“How did you hear that he was gone?”

He looked faintly startled. Then he frowned down at the coffee mug in his hands. And she didn’t think he was going to tell her.

“It was a weird time for Gray to be calling me,” Brady finally said, surprising her. “These days, he’s in touch all the time about ranch things, but back then, he didn’t really call me at all. The last time he had was when Ty got stomped by that bull. I guess I already knew something was wrong.”

He blinked, and Amanda didn’t think he’d keep going.

But he did. “It had been a normal morning. I’d gone to the gym for my usual five a.m. class. I’d checked in with one of my partners about a deal. I was looking forward to a few good hours alone in my office to work up a couple of proposals. And then everything changed.”

Amanda made a soft noise of commiseration.

Brady shook his head. “He was dead. He’d gone out to the barn, and he hadn’t come in. I got in my car and started driving. I don’t think I really believed it, though. Amos was always much larger and meaner than life. I’m not sure the reality hit me until I was actually driving down from the mountains into Cold River. Maybe not until his funeral.”

Amanda didn’t say anything. She reached across the counter and slid her hand over his.

“No one’s ever asked me that before,” he said.

She didn’t think she was imagining the way he looked at her, as if she was precious to him. As if all of this was precious.

As if it was much, much more than a little education between friends.

Then again, maybe that was wishful thinking.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” She toyed with each one of his fingers, tracing the lines between them, and ignoring the voices clamoring inside her. “I’m sorry you were alone.”

“I wasn’t alone. I came back as soon as I heard. Obviously Gray and Becca were already here, and Ty showed up not long after.”

Amanda caught his gaze and held it. “That’s not the kind of news you should get when you’re alone.”

Brady looked back at her, then, the way he had a thousand times now, but this time, everything changed.

They were still sitting at her counter. Her hands were still on his. But his gaze was dark green, and troubled, and something in her thudded.

Long. Low.

And she would have sworn the same thing drummed deep in him.

She couldn’t recognize the look on his face when he drew his hand away. She didn’t see the man she knew in the way he looked away briefly, swallowing hard.

Amanda suddenly felt cold, as if there were a draft in her walls and the frosty fall morning was getting in. Her bones ached, and a terrible sort of weight rolled through her—but she would not break down into sobs. Not here. Not now.

“Get dressed,” Brady said, in a low voice that gave nothing away. “I want to show you something.”

Amanda didn’t know if it was foreboding or something else that kept her quiet, only that she couldn’t seem to form the words to argue. Whatever it was, she went and dressed, then took a little extra time with her hair. She threw in a few extra curls, because she was never going to be Hannah, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make an effort. Or an entrance, however small.

When she came back out of the bathroom, Brady was waiting there at the counter, every inch of him the cowboy he’d always been to her.

Oh sure, he’d spent those years down in Denver, but that didn’t make him a city slicker. No matter how hard he tried.

He was too comfortable with that Stetson, and the look on his face was so familiar to her that it might as well be part of the view. A part of Cold River itself and the land that marked them all. It was there on his brow. In the line of his jaw.

She wondered if the world would always stop the way it did when he shifted that gaze to her.

“Ready?”

“As ready as I can be to go off on a secret excursion that doesn’t seem to making you very happy.”

“Have you always been this mouthy?” Brady asked, and she felt better, then. Because there was a hint of the heat she preferred in his gaze. And that curve to his lips. “Or is this a recent thing?”

“I’ve always been me, if that’s what you mean. It’s not my fault you’ve been walking around with blinders on for years.”

“You mean when you were legitimately and legally underage? Those blinders?”

“I haven’t been underage in years.” She sniffed. “Though I do wonder why it is everybody is so afraid to get in a fight with my brothers when to my knowledge, they don’t get in fights at all. With anyone. They talk about it, sure, but any actual fighting? Never.”

“That’s called being a man,” Brady informed her, with great male arrogance. “If you run around getting in fights all the time, you’re a punk. If you don’t have to fight because you can intimidate other men into behaving themselves simply by standing there, you win.”

“You could also try not standing around, exuding violence.”

“You grew up on a ranch.” Brady shook his head at her, though his mouth was still curved in one corner. “You know how male animals act. Don’t be so surprised that humans are the same.”

“I like to think humans are little bit better than farm animals, what with their big brains and stuff. Don’t you?”

“I don’t know.” Brady’s voice was darker, then. And the light in his eyes faded. “I’d like to believe that too, but there’s not a lot of evidence for that, is there? Look around.”

“I’m looking.”

But she was staring straight at him, and she could tell he didn’t like that. He pushed away from the counter and nodded toward the door. “Let’s go.”

You have to stop assuming that everything is on the brink of disaster, Amanda lectured herself as she followed him down the stairs outside into the shock of a bright Halloween morning, so cold that breathing in made her nose hurt.

But she was more focused on her heart. It was going a little crazy in her chest, and she was definitely holding her breath more than she should. And as much as she tried to tell herself it was because they were outside, in the daylight, daring anyone to happen by and notice them together here behind the Coyote, she was pretty sure her reaction had to do with the way Brady was holding himself. Tense and unhappy.

He never parked his truck out back because that would be as obvious as taking out an ad in the Longhorn Valley Tribune, so they had to hike it. Amanda was glad she hadn’t gone with her first instinct and put on the heels she wore to tend bar. Because it was a steep walk. And when wearing appropriate shoes like the ones she had on now, Amanda loved hiking. She loved climbing up towering things and tough hills to see what she could see from on top. She liked the peaceful trails that wound through the woods, the comforting cover of the trees standing tall around her, and the long shadows that whispered secrets and solitude.

Even today.

She climbed into the passenger seat, belted herself in, and sat there in that charged silence as Brady navigated his way out of the woods, back down to the road.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t have to go back to the ranch this morning,” she said when she couldn’t take it any longer. “I thought that was the deal you made. Every morning, without fail. Or Gray wins.”

“I told him I wouldn’t be around this morning. It’s fine.”

“You say that like I don’t know your brothers. But I do.”

“They’ve backed off lately.” He flicked a look at her, then returned his attention to the road. “It won’t last, so I’m taking advantage of it while I can.”

Amanda puzzled over that as he drove across the bridge into town. That didn’t sound like the Everett brothers she knew. But she didn’t have time to really parse it through because Brady wasn’t heading toward any of the places she thought he might go. He didn’t take her to Mary Jo’s Diner. Or Cold River Coffee.

Instead, he turned down the street that led toward the courthouse. Then he kept going, winding around to a set of old barns and storage warehouses that had been used for a variety of different things over the past century or so, right there on the river. He pulled up in front of one and turned off his engine. It was a dark, weathered wood that looked inviting against the backdrop of trees that had been blazing gold earlier this fall.

Amanda had always loved these barns. They were a short walk from Main Street and had once been another bustling part of town. But she doubted very much that Brady would be so tense if he were taking her on a historic Cold River barn tour.

“This is beginning to feel like the opening of a horror movie,” she pointed out, trying to keep her voice light. “Deserted barns in a lonely part of town on Halloween … Can homicidal maniacs be far behind?”

“Come on,” Brady said, not responding to the horror movie crack. Which was worrisome. “I want to show you something.”

“That doesn’t make it better.”

He was already climbing out of the truck, so she followed. He walked over and opened the door, then ushered her inside. It took her a minute to get her bearings. Because she’d always thought of the buildings down here as falling apart, or at least historic in the sense of being untouched for decades. But the shadowed interior they walked into didn’t smell like dust or disuse.

Brady flicked on some lights, another surprise. It turned out the barn was spacious and clean, as someone had taken the trouble to convert it from whatever it had been before to a lovely open space. Those weren’t holes in the roof up above, letting the light in. They were skylights. There were windows with darling shutters closed tight. And the great big barn doors on rollers that looked as if they’d been recently restored and finished.

Amanda forgot about how oddly Brady was behaving and took a few more steps inside. Barns made her happy. She liked them full of clever, spirited horses, but barring that, a repurposed barn got her all daydreamy. And this one didn’t smell like hay or livestock. It didn’t look like a lot of grubby work. It could so easily be something else. Something more in line with all those half-formed dreams of hers.

She sighed happily. “What is this place?”

“I’ve spent years thinking about what I would do if I ever had the opportunity to truly diversify Cold River Ranch,” Brady said. She looked back over her shoulder, and he was still standing there by the door, but he wasn’t looking around the barn. He was looking straight at her. “A few years ago, after Amos was a shade less hideous during Christmas than usual, I bought this place. I don’t know what I thought I would do with it, but I liked the idea that I had an investment in the town. And over the past year, I’ve been very slowly refurbishing it.”

“How could you do that without anyone knowing?”

“I didn’t want anyone to know.”

“You mean you didn’t want Gray or Ty to know.” But she couldn’t get worked up about the level of subterfuge that must have required, or the fact he hadn’t told her either. The space was too pretty. She smiled at him. “I’ll be honest, I’m surprised you thought about Cold River or your ranch at all while you were in the city. I’m going to remember that in December when you go back again.”

It cost her something to say that at all, much less in that cheerful way. The very idea made her want to double over and wail. But she did it.

Brady stared back at her. He did not smile in return.

“Gray and Ty have finally agreed to let me run wild and do whatever I want with a piece of the ranch,” Brady said. Or really, threw down into the space between them. “I’m not leaving in December. If I’m going to make it work, I’ll be here a good, long while.”

There was too much noise in her head and her pulse was too fast and she didn’t believe it. She couldn’t have heard that right. It was too close to exactly what she wanted.

“You’re diversifying the ranch into a barn in town?” she asked. Very carefully, because that didn’t sound right and it was important she understand.

“It’s yours.”

That made even less sense. “Mine?”

Brady’s gaze was darker than usual. Much darker. “You should open your farm stand, Amanda. Here.”

“But…” She didn’t know what she was protesting, so she stopped.

“You’re wasting your time at the Coyote. And I don’t think you want to spend the rest of your life at Cold River Coffee.”

“I love Cold River Coffee.”

“You have great ideas, and better still, you didn’t come here from somewhere else to try to inflict them on people. You’re a hometown girl, and people like that. You’ll convince them to sell their things through you, and it will be everything you wanted it to be. A celebration of Cold River. Isn’t that what you called it?”

Her pulse was still going wild and this didn’t feel right, not when he was looking at her like they were at the scene of an accident. “Wait. You want to give me a barn? Because you don’t like that I bartend?”

Brady blew out a breath, but the intensity of his stare didn’t change at all.

“I’m giving you a barn because I want you to have the life you deserve. The life you dream about. You think you have to throw yourself into making mistakes for that happen. But you don’t.” And his voice got ragged, then. “You shouldn’t waste yourself, Amanda.”

There was sunlight beaming down from above, but it seemed far away. And all the sunshine in the world couldn’t change the look on Brady’s face. Or the way it ricocheted inside Amanda’s chest. And hurt where it hit.

Her mouth was too dry. “This is starting to seem less about my desire to sell artisan jams made by my friend’s mother and a little more about you.”

The panicked dryness in her mouth turned into a matching tightness in her throat when he looked away. And a hard knot in her belly when he returned that dark gaze of his to her.

“You’re the kind of woman a man dreams of marrying,” Brady said, and he sounded … desolate. “If a man dreams of marrying, that is.”

And she got it then.

Like a kick to the stomach.

“Let me guess.” Her own voice sounded fuzzy, and she couldn’t tell if she was hearing all that dryness or if the noise in her head was so loud, it was tricking her into thinking she sounded like that. Of course, none of that mattered. Not when her heart was breaking. “That’s not you.”

“That’s never going to be me, Amanda.” Brady didn’t look away. He didn’t relent. “I’m never going to be that man. I couldn’t if I tried.”