The Hero of Hope Springs Read online

  Your type doesn’t turn you on.

  That wasn’t true. Of course her type turned her on. It was why they were her type. They were interesting to her in ways that went beyond the physical.

  She could have orgasms. Just not with a partner. And she had decided a long time ago that worrying about that only stressed her out to a degree that made it all not very much fun, and therefore, she didn’t want to do it. Therefore, she would just go ahead and focus on the sweet physical touch that she liked, and the conversations that she had with them before and after, and she would go off to her own space, her own bed and have orgasms when she wanted to.

  None of that had to do with what she was doing here now. None of that had to do with any of this, and she was furious at Ryder for what he had done. For kissing her.

  Kissing her.

  Him.

  It hadn’t been like a kiss. Not the way she knew them. There had been no tentative question, no testing things at all.

  He had pulled her up against his body—which had been hot like an inferno and hard as a brick wall—and he had claimed her mouth like he had every right to it. Like he knew what she would like. Like he knew full well how much tongue she wanted sliding against her own and how much pressure she wanted against her lips. Like he would know how fast or slow to touch her between her legs, how hard or soft, and when to ease up and when to go on.

  She had never been with a man who had grabbed her quite so confidently, and he was the last man on earth who should have, since she hadn’t indicated at all that she wanted to kiss him.

  Maybe, just maybe, at the last moment she had dared him rather than retreated. Maybe she had seen in his eyes that she could have stopped him, and had chosen not to.

  But that was only a maybe.

  And the next thing she’d known he’d been kissing her.

  And really, it wasn’t like she should have reasonably been able to guess that was what he was about to do, even though he was holding her like that. Because they’d had seventeen years of not kissing, so the fact that they had suddenly started kissing was a whole weird thing.

  She stood by the fact that he was the one who was wrong and not her. That he was the one who had changed things somewhat irrevocably and she could only feel annoyance about it.

  She suddenly felt utterly and completely alone standing in the middle of the bar. She hated that feeling. It reminded her of being a child. Helpless. Standing in the corner while there was screaming going on around her.

  Of when she would retreat deep inside herself and force that feeling because she hadn’t wanted to be where she was.

  She had even learned to do it when her father had turned his rage on her.

  To just go to another place and detach.

  This moment was oddly reminiscent of that and she didn’t like it at all.

  It wasn’t long before the door to the bar swung open, and in walked Ryder.

  She was getting really tired of this.

  Really tired of him deciding that he was going to go ahead and be shocking when that was supposed to be her job.

  He was supposed to be predictable and easy. He was supposed to be safe. But nothing that he was doing right now was safe at all. And she didn’t know what to make of it. Not even a little bit, not even at all.

  She started to back away from the door, but his eyes caught hers and managed to glue her in place to the floor.

  And then the sensation inside her flipped, and it was like a whole other different kind of being alone. This was an isolation. It was as if the bar around her was falling away piece by piece. As if it were transforming into something else entirely. All of the insignificant bits were crumbling and dropping out of the sky like so many fallen stars, scattered around the floor at their feet. And it left her. It left Ryder. And this growing intensity between them that was thick and black like a night sky.

  “You don’t want them,” he said.

  And the unspoken words there were that she wanted him.

  And she didn’t know what to do with that. Didn’t know what to make of it.

  Didn’t know what to make of this intense stranger who was in the place of the man she had called her best friend for so many years.

  Except, was he a stranger? Or was this just the guardian unleashed? What happened to the man when he was pushed? And she’d pushed him. On purpose. Maybe this was her consequence. That he was here now. The warrior that she had always known existed beneath that protective exterior.

  He had never even tried to rearrange the boundaries between them before. But he had always been capable of it, and she saw that now.

  That everything he had ever done all these years had been him being controlling. Had been him protecting her. And suddenly, he wasn’t protecting her from him.

  Suddenly, he was everything that she had sensed he might be in all of its terrifying glory.

  The kind of man that she had avoided all this time. She had favored those concave chests and smooth faces he had accused her of liking earlier.

  Men who didn’t just assume that she might want a certain kind of kiss, but who couldn’t seem to figure out which one she did want even when she told them outright.

  Almost as if Ryder knew something that she didn’t.

  None of this is about that.

  She had to wonder if her body was doing some kind of weird female hormone thing.

  And maybe that was true. Maybe it was more of a weird hormone thing. Suddenly, her body had identified that he would make a spectacular protector for a baby.

  And why not? He had been the protector for her for all this time; of course he would make a great father.

  Biologically.

  But he was demanding all of these other things, and she didn’t know how you were supposed to compromise with a brick wall.

  They couldn’t bend; you could only break them down.

  And she had a feeling that she could grab hold of this one white-knuckled and still not come out the winner. Only come away with bleeding hands and destroyed fingernails, and he would remain as he had always been.

  She waited. She waited for him to do something to make her comfortable. Waited for him to do something to defuse all of this between them. Because surely at some point he would crack a smile and revert back to being her friend.

  Wind back the clock so that he was the man she had known for the past seventeen years, and not the stranger who had pulled her into his arms and scalded her with his heat. But he didn’t. Instead, all of that intensity only seemed to grow as he moved closer. And she didn’t have the heart to back away.

  “Don’t do it,” he said, his voice rough. “I couldn’t stand it.”

  She tried to breathe around the tightness in her chest. “You couldn’t stand it?”

  “No. Don’t let another man touch you. Not after that.”

  “It was just a kiss.”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t.”

  Those words, simple and flat, terrified her under her soul.

  “Ryder, I don’t...”

  “You know it’s right. You know it is.”

  And she didn’t know if he meant the kiss or him being the father of her baby or what. She didn’t know at all.

  And she wasn’t sure she wanted to ask. Because she wasn’t sure she could stand there and talk to him for a moment longer.

  It was strange, because she couldn’t hear the chatter of the people in the bar anymore. Couldn’t hear the music.

  She could hear the thunder beginning to roll outside, and she could hear the beating of her own heart. She could hear a warning sounding in her mind, pounding against her temples. She couldn’t even see any of the other men in the bar; how would she leave with them?

  And how would she kiss them with that brand of Ryder’s still impossibly hot against her mouth. It was impossible. And she kn
ew it. Pressure built behind her eyes, and she wanted to squeeze them shut, turn away. She wanted to be anywhere but here.

  But she couldn’t close this off, and she couldn’t seem to make him or herself disappear. None of the tricks that she had used as a scared little girl seemed to be on hand to bail her out of this. She couldn’t hide and make it go away, and she couldn’t seem to brazen it out, either. And there was no rescue, no one coming. Not for her. Because the one who did all the rescuing was the one making her want to run and hide. But she only knew how to run into Ryder’s arms, so that was making the moment decidedly more complicated than she would want it to be.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  In the past when she had taken Ryder’s hand, she had known exactly where he was going to lead her. She had trusted it.

  Like Peter taking Wendy out the window into Never Never Land. Except, she would climb into his, and she would find safety there.

  In that place full of lost children who had found each other.

  But this time, he was leading her outside, and she didn’t know where they were going to go.

  Didn’t know what was going to happen.

  But somehow, she must still trust him, because she was going. She was going, even though it terrified her.

  When they went outside, the air was hot and heavy, and the first raindrops from the summer storm were falling fat and heavy on the sidewalk, on her arms, her hair, and she knew that the blond mass was going to grow exponentially in the damp and humidity.

  A silly thing to think about right now, but a safe thing. A certain thing.

  And everything else seemed not quite so.

  Thunder cracked through the sky, lightning splitting the air behind it and lighting up the street. And she could see his face, all hard and intense, and she hoped there wouldn’t be more lightning, because she liked it better when she couldn’t see him.

  When she could imagine that it was still a familiar face, and not this one that seemed so different now.

  He had kissed her first. And the grand tapestry of their friendship felt altered.

  And she found that irritated her a bit, because why hadn’t she ever thought of it? She had teased him when they were younger. That time she’d shown him her bra. And he hadn’t done anything. Hadn’t made a move to touch her, hadn’t even let his gaze flicker down to her breasts. He had been like stone, but tonight he wasn’t stone. He was a man, and she realized that she had taken comfort in the fact that she thought him a mountain. And now he had revealed himself to be flesh and blood, and she didn’t know what that meant.

  But if only she had kissed him once. Just to taunt him. Just to tease him. Just to prove to herself what it could be, maybe she wouldn’t be so surprised now.

  It was why she went through life ripping Band-Aids off all potential wounds. So that she could never, ever be surprised. Ever. The rain was falling in earnest now, and her hair was sticking to her face, her tank top sticking to her body. He bundled her up into the truck, and didn’t say another word. And she didn’t dare speak.

  The rain on the roof of the truck, on the windshield, the sound of the wipers moving back and forth. The motor. The occasional rumble of thunder. A familiar soundtrack, but one that seemed as different as Ryder’s face looked. Like all the world around her was foreign and new and she had no idea what she might do with it.

  No idea what would happen when he finished driving. Or where they were even going.

  Just home, she realized. And she didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. A breath escaped and she couldn’t tell if it was a sigh of relief or sadness.

  Because something inside her had felt momentous; really, it had for a few days. It had led up to the whole pregnancy thing, and then somehow had brought her here.

  And now maybe nothing was going to change, which should be a profound and great thing. Except...

  He parked the truck in front of the house.

  He didn’t say anything.

  She got out before he killed the engine, and she started to walk back toward the camper.

  But he was behind her. She could hear his footsteps, and goose bumps raised up on her arms, the rain rolling down her skin. And he was there. Still.

  Him.

  And then his hand was on her, warm on her slick skin, as he stopped her from taking another step. She could pull away. She knew he would release her. But instead she turned to face him, because she wanted to know what this unpredictable version of her friend might do.

  Because she was curious.

  And she knew what they said about curiosity, but at the moment it was difficult for her to care.

  But he didn’t move. He just looked at her. The thunder rolled over the mountaintop, through her body and seemed to fill up her chest in a way that words couldn’t right now. Propelling her heart on. Propelling them both further down some path she wasn’t sure they were ever going to be able to find their way back from.

  He took a step toward her. And she held fast.

  Then he lifted his hand, putting it on her cheek. He had done that before. He had touched her before like this, but it was different. As he moved his thumb slowly over her rain-dampened skin, it all felt new.

  The act of being touched. Ryder’s hands.

  The rain pounded down around them now, slid down her face, rolled off the brim of his cowboy hat, and as he tilted his head down, water poured from there. And she didn’t care. She just didn’t care, because she had to know.

  She had to know.

  And then he was pulling her close, bringing her under that brim and shielding her from the rain, angling his head and kissing her deeper than he had the first time.

  She felt weightless. Breathless. And she did like it.

  Those lips, firm and commanding and different than any man she had ever kissed. The stiff, scratchy feel of his whiskers against her face, the way he moved. Sure and certain.

  And most of all, there was just something indefinably him. Something that went beyond anything as simple as the shape of his mouth or the strength of his frame, his beard or the squareness of his jaw. Something that went beyond physical and rested somewhere deeper.

  Something like pixie dust.

  Something that might make her fly.

  There were other things you needed. She could vaguely remember how that line went.

  Faith. Trust.

  But then her mind was blank and she couldn’t think anymore. Because his hands were big and rough and cupping her face, and there was something hollow and aching expanding inside her. Like loneliness but better because the creator of it might also be the completion for it, and he was right there, kissing her like it was better than breathing.

  He moved his hands from her face, wrapping his arms around her, down her waist, her hips, to her thighs. Then he picked her up off the ground, wrapping her legs firmly around his waist. His stomach was firm, flat. And with every step he took toward her caravan she felt vibration between her thighs, and he was still devouring her mouth, making her feel things that no man ever had before.

  How was this possible? It was never like this.

  She didn’t even want it to be. She didn’t like it.

  She liked for people to think she was out of control.

  She even liked to pretend that she might be.

  But she never really was.

  The more outrageous she was the more she controlled the conversation. The more she controlled people around her. It made her feel safe.

  She never wanted to actually be out of control.

  She was close to it now, but it felt so good that even though her brain was screaming caution at her, she couldn’t really resist it. Didn’t even really want to, not totally. Because she was weak, and those hands holding her to his body were strong.

  With shocking ease he pulled the door open to her c
amper, bringing them both inside, and slamming it behind them again.

  As it always did, the rain pounded loudly on the roof, making it feel like the storm encompassed the tiny shelter. It was one of the things she loved about living out here. That she always felt enveloped by the rain, more than shielded from it.

  It was comforting even now, though comfort wasn’t the dominant emotion that she felt. Not even close. For so many years rain had been her lullaby, but tonight it was the insistent, pounding beat of her desire. Pulsing through her like a drum. It was crazy, she knew it. It was stupid, and she knew that, too, but Ryder was never crazy or stupid, and he was here. Touching her. Kissing her. So maybe it wasn’t quite as stupid as she thought. It couldn’t be.

  Because he was doing it.

  Him.

  He set her down on the edge of her mattress, his hands tangling in her wet hair, and then he sank down in front of her, on his knees. He cupped her cheek, kissed her neck, dragged hot, openmouthed kisses to her collarbone, and around the neckline of her tank top. Then he jerked her shirt down, exposing her breasts. They were wet from the rain, and the air felt cold, her nipples going unbearably tight. Stinging.

  Then he covered one with his mouth, and white heat exploded behind her eyelids.

  She was stone-cold sober, hadn’t gotten around to having any kind of drink in the bar, but she felt dizzy. Felt like she must be either drunk or hallucinating because her best friend’s dark head was bent over her bare breast, and that simply couldn’t be. It was an impossibility more than it was an improbability, and yet it was happening.

  Because while she might be able to hallucinate the sight of it, she wouldn’t be able to manufacture the feel of it. Because this was like nothing she had ever experienced before. And she wouldn’t have been able to make it up. Not ever. He moved his mouth to her other breast, teasing the first one with his hands as he did.

  His hands were so rough.

  She’d never been touched like this, by hands like this. She hadn’t known that she would like it. That she would want it. That she could crave it. That the scrape of a workingman’s callus against her bare skin could be the most erotic thing that she could imagine.