Chapter Twelve

Sarah slowly opened her eyes and blinked a few times. It was dark, and it took a moment for her to figure out that she was still in the motel room. She turned to find Cade sitting in a chair with his feet propped up on the bed, his eyes closed. The light on the alarm clock read eight o’clock. Panic filled her. She’d been asleep for almost ten hours?

She scrambled off the bed to use the bathroom. A few minutes later, she splashed cold water across her face and finger-combed her hair. At least the migraine was gone. She took a deep breath and tried to squash the embarrassment as she remembered what had happened this morning.

Slowly opening the door a few minutes later, she was surprised to see that Cade was now standing, the curtains open as he brewed coffee. “Feeling better?” he asked, looking rumpled, his voice slightly raspy.

“Much. Sorry. I feel horrible that this happened and you were stuck here, sleeping in a chair.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll just use the bathroom, and then we can get going,” he said, walking by her.

When the door shut, Sarah looked around the room. This had been her attempt at a real life, and look what had happened. Why couldn’t she just be like a normal person and do what normal people did when alone in a hotel room with the hottest person in the world?

She flop-sat on the edge of the bed. What had she done? Oh, she’d become helpless and had to be tucked into bed. She didn’t even have any friends to talk to about this. She groaned thinking about what Mrs. Casey would say when she returned. Well, at least she wouldn’t have to lie. Nothing had happened. Nothing ever happened to Sarah.

“Ready to go?” Cade said, walking out of the bathroom.

She bolted off the bed. “Yup. I feel great. Like nothing ever happened.”

He grimaced. “You don’t have to lie. You were practically comatose for ten hours, and you don’t exactly look great.”

She crossed her arms. “Okay, I’m totally fine now.”

He gave her a slow nod and then proceeded to rumple her hair, like one would do to a dog, when passing by. Humiliation stung deep, and she kept her back turned to him as he opened the door. She should just turn around, follow him back to the truck, and pretend like nothing was wrong, that it was normal to have a weekend like they just did.

“You look like you’re ready to bash your fist through a wall,” he said with a slight smile when she didn’t budge.

Great. So now he thought she had anger management issues, too. “No, no. Everything’s fine. I’m fine. You’re fine. It was a great weekend.”

She didn’t know if it was the slightly shrill tinge to her tone that made even her cringe or maybe the panic, but he stopped, shut the door, and turned around. She wasn’t going to lie to herself, but the man standing in front of her was probably the best thing she’d ever seen in her life; he was the best thing she’d ever experienced, and he was also the best listener and was funny and—

Disgruntled.

“What’s wrong?” he asked flatly.

She tucked a few pieces of hair behind her ear and tried to look nonchalant. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Let’s go.” She took her purse from the chair and walked by him, angry with herself for not being able to articulate her frustration.

He grabbed her wrist, gently but firmly holding on. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

His voice had softened slightly, but she stared straight ahead, reading the fire emergency plan on the back of the door because it was easier than facing him and telling him what she was feeling.

“Are you still sick?”

She shook her head and met his gaze. “No, I’m fine. I’m sorry, Cade. This was all so stupid. Thank you for putting up with this disaster of a weekend and basically sitting in the dark for the day. That was above and beyond, truly.”

He dropped her hand and took a step so that he was standing directly in front of her. “Hey, it’s not a big deal. It’s not like I had wild plans this weekend anyway.”

Wild plans. She wondered what kind of wild plans he had on other weekends. Her wild plans consisted of staying up until midnight. “Do you, um, normally have wild plans?”

He grinned, his shoulders relaxing and the sparkle in his eyes returning. “Sometimes.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Do you?”

“Yep. I have access to the outside world via social media, you know.” The minute she said that, she regretted it. It made her sound even sadder than her questioning him about his wild plans. Who says they have access to the outside world via social media? She needed to leave this room and never see him again…until Monday morning. There was no escaping him.

“Sarah, what’s going on?”

“I didn’t expect our night to go like this.”

“How did you expect our night to go?”

Heat burned up her neck and flooded her face. “Well, I mean— I just… Not like this.”

“I don’t think we can ever have more than this,” he said, his voice thick.

Her gaze went to his mouth, and she wanted to kiss him again. Desperately. And then she wondered how many people he’d kissed, how many nights in motels he’d spent, how many women there had been. He hadn’t answered her last night, and she didn’t push because, really, it wasn’t her business.

“Then why did you agree to come?” she asked.

“Because you needed a friend. You needed to go somewhere other than that damn ranch. You haven’t lived a life, so as a friend, I thought I’d help.”

Couldn’t be any clearer than that. But he’d said he wanted her, he’d acted like he wanted her. Everything about last night had been so real. She hadn’t been living in reality for so long. She’d been stuck in this place that avoided the harsh truth, and she never wanted to go back there. “What if no one knew? What if this was just our thing?”

His jaw clenched for a moment. “I’m not going to hide. So that leaves us with no options.”

“You can just…shut off your feelings? That easily?”

He hung his head back for a moment. “No, I’m not shutting anything off, believe me. It takes a hell of a lot of self-control.”

She clasped her hands together. “Really?”

“Obviously.”

“Not so obvious. Like, um, yesterday? When you were crying about the pillow that I might throw at you—”

His lips twitched, but he stayed right where he was. “Yes?”

“It looked like you had no problem lying on top of me and being really close to me and then rolling away. Is that what normally happens in motel rooms with you? You just…stop?”

This time, he did close the distance between them, and her back was to the wall, and the wall of Cade was in front of her. His lips were still slightly curled into a smile but his eyes glittered with the same heat she’d seen yesterday, the one that made her limbs feel heavy, that made her heart race. “What do you think?”

She quickly averted her gaze because, judging by the gleam in his eyes, he was torn between laughing at her and doing some kind of demo, which she wasn’t entirely opposed to at the moment. Who was she kidding? She’d welcome the demo with everything she had. How had she gotten herself into this mess? Her big mouth, her inability to have normal, adult conversations with the opposite sex. Maybe it wasn’t even the opposite sex; maybe it was just conversations with people in general.

She shifted her gaze back to Cade’s and frantically tried to buy herself some time. “Did you, um, ask me something?”

This time, he gave her a slow, lazy grin, one that she was pretty sure must be illegal. “I believe you were asking me what I do in motel rooms, and then I asked you to tell me what you thought I did in motel rooms. Then your face went red, with a couple of white blotches here and here,” he said, lightly touching two spots on her face.

She tried to swat him away, but he caught her hand, laughing, and kissed the inside of her palm. Her breath caught, words caught somewhere between her heart and her mouth. “So that’s, um, what you do?” she managed.

“I don’t have a set of rehearsed moves.”

She pursed her lips. “I see.”

“I don’t think you do,” he said, his voice husky, the teasing tone slowly leaving, being replaced by one that made her desperate to learn more about him. “If you had reached out for me, I wouldn’t have been able to pull back. I wouldn’t have been able to resist you even though we can never happen.”

Her heart raced uncontrollably in her chest, and she was torn between clinging to her pride and laying it all out there. She wanted him in every possible way, and she didn’t want to think about what that would mean for them tomorrow. She was tired of tomorrow. Tomorrow hadn’t served her in more than ten years. Every single tomorrow was the same—a lonely, sad place that was filled with the past. “Just tonight.”

His face went still. “What are you talking about? Be clear.”

She frowned at him, because she wasn’t thrilled with that tone or the demand. “I mean…I know you don’t want to hide anything long-term, but maybe we can be more than friends just once and no one would ever have to know?”

He didn’t say anything for a long while, and her heart was racing. “Tell me exactly what you want,” he finally said.

“I want you. I want you here, in this dingy motel room, on the questionable sheets, to make love to me.”

He ran both hands down his face, and when he looked at her again, it seemed as though he was being ripped in two. “Have you ever slept with anyone before?”

That wasn’t exactly the response she was looking for. If this had been one of her romance novels, the hero would have closed the final step between them and proceeded to kiss her while declaring his undying need for her, and then they would have had sex and faced the repercussions later.

This…this was just humiliating.

She lifted her chin. “No.”

He nodded. “That’s what I thought. So no way in hell.”

A jolt of searing heat blasted through her body. She wasn’t going to beg. She just needed to get out of there and not see him again until she absolutely had to. Too bad they had a two-hour drive home. How was this even happening to her? Could there be a more humiliating way to be turned down?

“You have a wonderful way with words, Cade,” she snapped. “You could have used a little more tact and less ‘no way in hell.’ Thanks so much.” She stomped past him and whipped open the door. A part of her expected he might reach out to hold her back, to let her down gently. The other part of her wished that he’d lose all sense of propriety and kiss her, and then sweetly—in that deep voice—tell her how much he wanted to be with her but just couldn’t.

“It’s a ‘no way in hell’ because there are always strings,” he said. “Two people who work together can’t have strings. Think about this. You and I get involved, then things come to their natural end. You marry some rancher. He finds out we were together. Do you think he’d want me as foreman? Do you think I’d still have a job?”

His tone was harsh, and his words were so brutally honest and bleak. She didn’t know how to respond. They were obviously thinking of two very different futures—because they were two very different people. She was silly and following her emotions. He was worried about job security.

She clutched her purse to her, like it was a shield of armor. “Okay. You’re right. I don’t know why I brought all this up. Well, because I felt silly and…I don’t know. But now I feel even worse, so let’s just pretend this conversation never happened. Better yet, let’s pretend this entire weekend never happened.”

“It happened. I won’t forget it,” he said, opening the door.

They walked out to the truck in silence, and she wondered if this was the end, before anything ever happened between them. She stared at her reflection in the window as Cade appeared behind her. He opened her door, and she mumbled out a thank-you before climbing into the truck.

A moment later, he was pulling out of the parking lot. She stared at the Highwayman sign in the side mirror, watching as it grew smaller and smaller. Not wanting to deal with the awkwardness ahead, she shut her eyes and leaned her head back. She had just ruined the friendship they had established—for nothing. She was also going to have to face Mrs. Casey and her dramatic worry. If only it had been for good reason, she might’ve been able to keep her head.

A few minutes later, she heard Cade gruffly say her name, but she kept her eyes shut until she actually fell asleep.

…

Cade decided as they approached the ranch that he was probably the world’s biggest jerk. The gorgeous, smart, sweet woman beside him had made it very clear that she wanted him, and he’d turned her down. Not only had he turned her down, he’d humiliated her—and he regretted that deeply.

But he’d been so close to giving in that being nice hadn’t been an option. Because like he’d told her, if she’d reached out for him, he wouldn’t have been able to say no. Being blunt had been the only way because he knew her pride would prevent her from pressing further. But now this also caused a whole new set of problems for them—namely the fact that they worked together and he worked for her…which was exactly what he’d been trying to avoid by not giving in to his fascination with her.

Really, he was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.

Gravel crunched under the truck tires as he pulled into the ranch driveway. Sarah still slept soundly, and he was glad. Even though she looked better than this morning, she was still pale and not herself. He turned off the engine and softly called her name. Her silky hair had spilled around her face, and he wanted to reach out and tuck it behind her ear. No, he wanted to kiss the soft spot under her ear as he moved the hair away and slowly wake her up like that.

He knew she was strong and brave, but the image of her lying in a fetal position on that bed for hours wasn’t going to leave him anytime soon. When she’d started throwing up, he’d known this was what Edna had been referring to. It had scared the crap out of him when he’d had to help her to the bed because she’d seemingly lost her sight. He never wanted to be the cause of that, never wanted to be someone who triggered that kind of pain in someone else. A part of him agreed with Edna that maybe Sarah was doing too much; maybe she should be taking it easy.

He ran his hands down his face, exhaustion finally hitting him. He was in no position to tell Sarah he thought she shouldn’t pursue her dreams of running her family ranch. It wasn’t his business, wasn’t his call to make. But he could start with some changes. He could alter some of the things they did around the ranch. Maybe he could say he really needed more help with the office end of things. That would be less dangerous. Hell, if that had happened on a cattle drive or even just during the day, dealing with cattle, what would she do? It was way too dangerous.

He glanced over at the house. The front porch lights were on, and he knew it was only a matter of minutes before Edna realized Sarah was back. He said her name again, this time more loudly, and she finally stirred.

She rubbed her eyes and then sat up straight, looking at him. “Sorry. I hope you weren’t sitting here long,” she said, her voice stiff and not filled with the warmth he’d gotten used to, that he was starting to love.

He shook his head. “No, just a minute. Are you feeling okay?”

“Yup. Thanks. I’ll see you Monday.”

“If you need to take the morning off, that’s fine.”

She raised her chin. “No, I’ll be there at the usual time.”

“I was thinking that I need some extra days to catch up on all the office work. I haven’t put in any time over there. Maybe we can start there?”

She stared at him, and he could feel her evaluating him. After a long moment, she finally gave him a nod and unbuckled her seat belt. “I should probably start learning the business side of things as well.”

“Great.”

She picked up her purse, and he went to open his door. “Please. Don’t get out.”

“Sarah,” he said, wincing when his voice came out sounding harsh.

She paused, her hand on the door handle. “Yes?”

He searched for the right words, hating that no matter what he said, he’d be hurting her. But he knew who he was, and he had no illusions about who Sarah was. She was his boss; he was her employee. She was the heiress to a ranching fortune; he was an heir to predispositions toward drug and alcohol addiction. He would always be the guy without a family, without a past, and it was best that he remembered that at all times, for both of them.

“I have a really good thing going here. I love this ranch, love working alongside those men every day. I like our time together and the fact that we are going to be building this ranch back up to what it used to be. I can’t jeopardize any of that.”

She turned to him, her green eyes glittering. “I understand that. It’s very commendable and is exactly what I needed to hear. It was wrong of me to think or maybe make you feel like we had to be more. It’s best that we go back to the way we were.”

It took all his self-control to sit still and watch her leave. His teeth were clenched hard and his knuckles white in his lap. Sarah had no idea how much he’d wanted her, still wanted her. He knew he was doing her a favor by letting her go now before they got in too deep. And that’s what would happen to them. He knew it, because he’d never experienced this before. He knew that he had the potential of falling hard for her, and he also knew what that meant—it meant opening up about his past, his feelings. He’d never had the luxury until this job came along of walking away, moving from one job to another. Sure, he could always go back to Tyler’s, but it would be a pity job. He wasn’t a man who had anyone to fall back on. There was no safety net for him.

He pulled away when Sarah entered the house and shut the door.

He drove down the gravel driveway, to the home he’d worked for, the only home he’d ever lived in based on true merit, and hated that he had no choice.