Chapter Three

Eight minutes later, Ryder broke through the forest canopy on a sharp turn. It was pitch black. The only source of light were his headlights and a few electric candles in the windows of a cabin ahead on his left. The house on his right, Peyton’s house, was still and dark. He pulled into her driveway behind a sensible little Subaru and shut off the engine.

He climbed out and shut the door as quietly as he could, but even that echoed across the dead of night. The river gurgled across the street as sounds of early autumn frogs made their presence known. Ryder took in the wide porch and two small dormers and went up the steps, his boots not nearly as quiet as he’d hoped. His light knock received no response, and he shifted to his right to peer through the window, only to encounter curtains.

Should he knock again? Or maybe call? Or had he been the biggest fool, flying out here like some knight in shining armor? A knight whose damsel had thrown whiskey in his face hours earlier. He took off his hat and ran a hand down the back of his neck. Well, he was here, and he wouldn’t rest until he at least knew she wasn’t passed out somewhere.

Deciding a call would be best, he swiped her recently saved number and waited. Several seconds later he heard music. It seemed to be coming from nearby. Following it around the side of the house, he stepped into the backyard and there, sitting in an Adirondack chair in front of a dying fire, was Peyton. She stared at her phone with that glassy-eyed look of someone who had done a little too much drinking. Or crying. Or in her case, maybe both. Her brow furrowed as her phone continued to ring and Ryder swiped end. Peyton’s phone quieted a moment later.

“Peyton?”

She looked up, the movement slow, her eyes catching up a second later than the rest of her head.

“Why?” she asked and let her head roll back to be supported by the chair.

The question could have been in reference to any number of things, but he took the most immediate and likely, and threw in a little bit of a lie. She didn’t need to know he had been on the other end of the phone.

“Mom was worried after your call, and I said I would swing by to make sure you were okay.”

Peyton shook her head but it came out as more of rolling side to side. Ryder looked at the table beside her and saw a half-empty bottle of schnapps, the glass tumbler picking up the dying flames. He stepped onto the flagstone and took the remaining chair next to her, ignoring the bench across the stone.

“Why did you come home?” She sounded weary, lost. Like she’d been battling for days and just couldn’t do it anymore.

He could tell her he came home because he missed Sky Lake and his parents. He could tell her he finally felt he deserved to be happy. That he’d made himself into the man his father never thought he would become. He could tell her about his company and how he now owned part of Sky Lake. He could tell her about his plans to build cabins around the lake. He could tell her that a part of him had never stopped thinking about her, wondering how she was. How her life was.

Instead, he shrugged and said, “It was time.”

Peyton snorted and attempted to stand, resembling a foal trying to get up on all fours for the first time. Ryder caught her as she swayed toward the fire pit, his hands gently gripping her arms and pulling her against his more stable body. Nerves from top to bottom came alive, each chomping at the bit to feel more, get closer, even as his brain attempted to calm the randy boys down. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that he was still attracted to her. Time didn’t dampen connections like they had. But what was shocking was the strength of the attraction. How it was overriding any blip of common sense and self-preservation he’d acquired over the past ten years.

Peyton blinked up at him. Her green eyes nearly evergreen with the night surrounding them but no less potent, even in their dazed state. “I was fine. We were fine and now…”

“And now?” Why was she no longer fine? What was he missing in the Peyton Brooks puzzle? What didn’t he know that apparently she and his mother did?

She let her head fall back in an attempt to look at him better. Licking her lips, she asked, “Are you going to kiss me?”

Whoa, baby. Danger territory.

He knew it was the alcohol impairing her judgment. After all, three hours earlier he’d worn her welcome wagon, so somehow touching lips didn’t seem like the next step on that journey. And yet he couldn’t help but ask, “Do you want me to kiss you?”

She shook her head and patted his chest. His muscles jumped to attention. “No. You’re you and better now and…” She swayed to the left. “I just want you to leave before…”

“Before?”

Her eyes widened, and she lurched out of his grip. He let her go but hovered as she made her way up the back patio deck to a set of sliders. She tried to yank open the door but missed and stumbled. Ryder steadied her and reached around, pulling the door open and guiding her into her house. They entered her kitchen, lit only by the oven hood light. A quick glance showed everything clean, neat, and tidy, if slightly dated. But Ryder didn’t get a chance to examine further, nor was he going to wonder why he wanted to.

Peyton wobbled her way through an arched doorway, using the wall as a crutch. He followed, close enough to catch her but not so close as to risk touching her again.

She took a sharp right and they headed down a short hallway. They passed a bathroom on the left and, directly across from it, a bedroom. Ryder slowed and did a quick inventory. Small twin bed, stuffed animals scattered about, frilly lampshade. It looked like a little girl’s room.

Shock and jealousy roared through his veins. Did Peyton have a kid? Was she married? Was there a husband due to arrive home any moment to find him in a pretty compromising position?

Ryder shook his head. Kid, maybe, but he didn’t think a husband. No ring that he’d noticed, and nothing in his thirty second walk through her house hinted at a male presence. Had some guy left her high and dry and pregnant?

He caught up with her just as she walked through the doorway at the end of the hall.

“Peyton, do you have a kid?”

She stopped short, waving from side to side with the abrupt motion. Ryder halted just centimeters from her. Her heat weaved through his clothes, begging him to pull her back the last little bit. He should step away. Too many memories came to the surface by being so close to her.

They didn’t know each other. Not anymore. Clearly the attraction hadn’t disappeared through the years, but tonight, in her bedroom, was not the time to examine or explore it. Especially when she was stone-cold drunk and might possibly have a kid that needed taking care of.

Peyton turned to face him. “What did you say?”

“The room back there looked like a kid’s room. I was wondering if you had one, and if they needed to be picked up or—”

She reached up and grabbed his head, hauling it to hers. Lips met, firmed and open, allowing instant gratification and intoxicating sensations. She tasted like peaches, her mouth warm and inviting. He snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her against him, her body fitting as perfectly as it had ten years ago, even with the obvious changes brought on by age and maturity. He angled his head and delved deeper into her mouth as she set her tongue to tracing and teasing every groan it could from him.

He should stop. She was drunk and clearly didn’t know her left from her right, and he had never taken advantage of a woman. Ever.

Ryder eased Peyton from him step by step, their lips the last part of their bodies to separate. She blinked up at him and her face transformed from lazy sensuality to outright mortification. Her hand rose to her lips. Her fingers tracing them even as she took another step back.

“That… I… We.”

“Shhh. It’s fine. You don’t need to say anything. Let’s just get you in bed so you can sleep everything off.”

She glanced between him and the bed and hallway behind him. “Bed sounds good.”

Ryder pulled Peyton’s door shut and leaned back against it. What the hell had happened in there? One minute he’s asking about her kid and the next her tongue’s creating a tidal wave of sensations all headed south. Would she remember it in the morning? Would she want to remember it? Somehow he imagined the answer to that would be a resounding no.

Quite a conundrum of emotions and responses from Ms. Brooks tonight.

He pushed off the door and headed down the short hallway to the living area, glancing briefly again at the frilly room. He could see his truck parked in the driveway through the thin white curtains. Should he leave? What if Peyton got sick or stumbled somewhere and fell? He didn’t have anywhere to be tonight, and they really should talk and clear the air. His eyes canvassed the large overstuffed sofa and determined it would do. He might be scrunched a bit, but it definitely looked like the type of furniture meant for comfort and not necessarily style. Besides, his first few years in Alaska had seen him sleeping in far more cramped and uncomfortable corners than a slightly too-small couch.

He made his way over to it, sat, and removed his hat and took off his boots, sliding them underneath the coffee table. Stretching out as much as possible, he tucked his hands behind his head and let memories filter through him. He thought of the first time he truly saw Peyton.

They’d gone to school together—he was one year ahead—but it had been at the ranch when he first fell head over heels. Almost literally. His parents had held an end of the year bonfire for the school, and while he’d seen Peyton throughout her time at Fly Creek High, it took seeing her sitting on the top of a split rail fence, her blond hair catching the light of the flames, for him to really notice her. And then he fell practically at her feet thanks to his eyes being glued to tan legs and not the rocky shoreline in front of him.

She’d looked down at him, smiled one of those smiles that would allow her to get away with murder, and promptly said, “You didn’t have to risk injury. I would’ve said yes anyway.”

They’d been together after that night. Instant sparks once they got their hands on each other, but it hadn’t been just physical. He’d discovered Peyton loved to listen and somewhere in the beginning he’d decided he wanted to talk. He told her things he’d never shared with another person. Dreams, fears, books he’d secretly read, because someone reading and lassoing a horse didn’t seem to be a matched pair. At least not in Fly Creek.

Ryder sighed, running his hand through his hair. And yet the one thing he should have talked to her about the most—the reason he chose to leave—he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do. His fear, that maybe his father was right, that he wasn’t worthy of anything, including Peyton, had held him back. He should have trusted her.

Now here he was years later, sleeping on her couch, with her drunk as a skunk in her room, wondering why he’d stayed away.

…

Peyton lay in her bed, willing the room to stop tilting from one side to the other. Perhaps then her heart would resume some form of normal rhythm and that tingling in the vicinity of her neglected female regions would cease its chant for Ryder Marks and his damn “I’ve gotten a million times better at kissing in the last ten years” lips. She had no one to blame but herself.

And maybe a half a bottle of peach schnapps.

And perhaps Ryder himself, and maybe Shelby for not giving her fair warning and for sending him over here.

But really it was her hand that had snaked around his neck, tangling with hair as silky as she remembered and bringing his lips to hers.

It was self-preservation, really. Well, maybe 95 percent that and 5 percent curiosity, but all she could hear was him asking about Mel’s room and she just couldn’t tell him. Not then. And she wasn’t sure she was compos mentis enough to evade effectively. She would tell him tomorrow. It definitely wasn’t the kind of revelation one made standing in their bedroom, piss-poor drunk with a lumberjack god standing before you.

She touched her lips, still warm and branded from their brief time attached to Ryder’s. Her cheeks stung thanks to his short scruffy beard. It would seem natural that living in Alaska might bring out the facial hair, and it worked on every level possible on Ryder Marks. She wondered, not for the first time over the years, why he chose Alaska and what had kept him there. Maybe that could be the opening she needed tomorrow? She could catch up with him over coffee at Potter’s or maybe even convince him to hit the teahouse, Garden Grows. She’d thank him for his help tonight and find out what he had been up to and then she could tell him about Mel.

In public.

Where he was less likely to cause a scene. Ten years was a long time to not know something like that, even if he’d chosen the isolation. He’d set the rules in leaving and she’d been forced to abide by them.

Had he built himself a new life? Did he have a wife? She lurched up, closing her eyes on a nausea-induced groan. Oh God, had she kissed a married man? Did he have a family? Did Mel have half siblings wandering around?

Each one of those scenarios sat about as well as the thought of eating on top of her peach-drenched stomach. Why anything to do with Ryder Marks should bother her really made no sense in her perfectly ordered and no surprises world. Just because his kiss lingered on, and he was all hard muscle and scruffy sex, didn’t mean squat to her.

She flopped back down. He was here in town for a reason and then he would leave. And she would be just the same as before except she would know that Ryder finally knew about Mel. And maybe she would finally know why he left her. Nowhere in any of that “knowing” did more kisses or sex or anything that fell in between figure into the equation. Short and sweet and in the past.

Peyton rolled onto her side and closed her eyes on a groan. The spinning decreased through deep breaths and eventually her body relaxed in its nauseous state. She hadn’t thrown up since she was pregnant with Mel. Fitting that the return of Ryder Marks might be the catalyst that broke her streak. At least he’d left, and if she did find herself bowing down to the porcelain gods, he wouldn’t be there to witness her in all her record snapping glory.