Slow Burn Cowboy Read online

  “Yes. A mouse. It was horrifying. I’m emotionally scarred.” It had startled her, enough to call him feeling vaguely hysterical, because what the hell was she going to do about a mouse? But she was feeling calmer now, her heart rate returning to normal.

  “Dammit, Lane,” he said. “You said that everything wasn’t okay. I thought maybe there was a knife-wielding maniac in your store.”

  “You did not. Or you would have called the police.”

  “I thought the odds were you were probably okay, but it doesn’t take much to imagine the worst, Lane. I came as quickly as I could. And it’s a mouse. It is not a knife-wielding intruder.” He was actually mad at her about this. And she didn’t know what to do with that. Didn’t know what to do with how off-kilter their every interaction had been for the past few days.

  “Okay, yes, but it is a razor-toothed pest. Which is also alarming.” She did her best to try and lighten the mood with humor. He didn’t take the bait.

  “You aren’t in danger,” he said, clipped. “You let me think you were.”

  “I did not.”

  “I was worried about you, Lane. And you’re brushing that off.”

  “I am not! But it wasn’t nothing, and you’re being ridiculous,” she said, some of the initial surprise from her earlier mouse shock beginning to burn away, the quivering in her stomach taking on an entirely different quality. She had to look away from him. From his blue eyes, which were burning with anger and intensity. She ground her teeth together, deciding then and there that she was going to dig in on this. He had been so surly with her lately. He had been treating her like she was one of his invading family members, and she wasn’t.

  She had made him food. She was taking care of him. And he was treating her like... Like this. Well, she wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

  “What were you going to do?” she continued. “You burst in here with no weapon. If I was being held at knifepoint you wouldn’t have been able to help.”

  The intensity in his eyes took on a dangerous glint. “Is that what you think?”

  “You’re bare-handed, Donnelly. There would be no saving me.”

  He took another step toward her, and for some reason, she shrank back. “Lane, trust me. If you were in any kind of danger, if there had been somebody in here trying to hurt you, I would have torn him limb from limb. I don’t need a weapon to protect you.”

  She realized then that he was...not shaking, but vibrating. With unspent energy. Unused rage. And probably, she really had scared him a little bit.

  “Finn,” she said, reaching out and putting her hand on his shoulder before she could stop herself.

  Whatever she had been about to say burned right out of her head like water on a hot surface. Just sizzled and floated right up into the atmosphere. Away from her. She had no hope of reclaiming it. No hope of doing much of anything but just standing there, her fingertips burning against his hard body.

  She knew better than to touch him. They didn’t do that. And she had done it twice in the space of just a few days. And here she was, doing it again. Persistently. She was still touching him.

  She jerked her hand back down to her side.

  “This has to stop,” he said, his voice rough.

  “What?” Was he talking about her touching him? Because she agreed. She just wished he hadn’t said it like that. In a way that acknowledged there was something loaded in the touching. That there was something nonplatonic there. She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want it to be an acknowledged thing.

  “This,” he said, gesturing around the room. “It’s seven o’clock at night. You have a crisis, you call me. From wherever I might be, I come running.”

  So. Not the touching. Because that was all her, apparently.

  “You’re my friend,” she said. “Of course I called you.”

  “Yes. But you don’t call Cassie, do you? You didn’t call Alison, or Rebecca. You called me.”

  She scoffed. “Right, it would have done me so much good to call them about a mouse. We would have all ended up standing on chairs screaming.” She frowned. “Okay. Rebecca wouldn’t have. But the rest of us would be useless.”

  “So you see my point.”

  “No,” she said, even though she was pretty sure it was obvious and she was missing it on purpose, just because she wanted to push back at him. Even without knowing his bottom line, she wanted to push back.

  “You called me because I’m a man.”

  “Well, yes. Obviously. If I have drama with my electricity, and pest issues, I kind of need a man to handle that. I’m proficient at a lot of things, but I can’t be proficient at everything. Nobody is. That’s why I cook for you. That’s what I’m good at.” He continued to glare at her, so she swallowed hard and pressed on. “I guess when you put it like that, it feels a little like I’m labeling certain jobs man jobs and woman jobs, and I get that that’s a problem for some people, but it works for us. It’s playing to our strengths. That’s all I mean.”

  He still didn’t say anything, and she was starting to feel nervous, that hollowed-out feeling in her stomach returning.

  “Don’t tell me you find that offensive,” she said finally, hearing herself start to sound annoyed. He was letting her twist in the wind, and he didn’t seem at all bothered by that. “But if you do, if you really want to, I can come look at your fuse box and you can cook me dinner, but I have a feeling we would both be unsatisfied by that arrangement.”

  “Stop it, Lane,” he said, the words weary. “You know that’s not the problem. The problem is we do have an arrangement. Or, it’s fallen into one. I’m not your husband.”

  The words hit her like a slap, and her cheeks stung. “I know. That’s a stupid thing to say. Of course I know that.”

  “I’m not your boyfriend. I’m not even your dial-a-dick. But you treat me like one. In every way except for the benefits.”

  His words punched straight through her chest, grabbing her heart and twisting it. “That’s not fair.” She couldn’t quite articulate why it wasn’t, just that it wasn’t.

  “Isn’t it? You don’t treat me like you treat your other friends.”

  “I know. Because you are a man. Do you honestly think I’m blind to that?” It was poorly phrased, because in many ways, until recently, she had been blind to it. She had known, in an abstract sense, but she hadn’t spent a lot of time dwelling on it. On purpose.

  That time he and Rebecca had almost hooked up, it had forced her mind to go there and she had found it completely unsettling. She’d been angry, nearly sick over it, and she hated herself for it. To want to keep her single friends—who had no obligation to her—from being with each other if they wanted to be seemed churlish and petty.

  But she hadn’t wanted Finn’s time occupied by another woman.

  That realization made her mouth drop open. She didn’t want him occupied by another woman, because she wanted him on hand for her. And that made what he was saying sound a lot like their whole arrangement wasn’t fair. A lot like she was, in fact, using him as a boyfriend without giving him any of the benefits of being one.

  It was uncomfortable, and she didn’t like it. It made her feel like she was the one being hunted, not the mouse. Like she had been backed into a corner and had no other choice but to fight back.

  So, she did.

  She shoved at his shoulder. The equal and opposite reaction to the ill-advised placating touch, she supposed. “This is a stupid fight,” she said.

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes. It is a stupid fight because you want me to cook you dinner. You like it. You want me to ask about how you’re doing, how you’re feeling, because none of the guys that you hang out with will. You get something out of that. And yes, I want you to come trap my pests and change my lightbulbs, but you like doi
ng it. And you’ve never given any indication that you didn’t. That it wasn’t what you wanted. Don’t come in here and complain to me now and say it’s not fair just because you’re mad about your family. Just because you want to punch something.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “It’s what I know. You’re mad, and you don’t know who to lash out at, so you’re lashing out at me. You’re using our friendship as a punching bag. Complaining about stuff that doesn’t even bother you so that you can deal with...all of this,” she said, sweeping her hand in an up-and-down motion. “Complaining about not getting something you don’t even want.”

  Those words hit hard between them, and settled there. And Finn just looked at her for a moment, all rage and hard glitter in his blue eyes.

  Before she knew it, he moved, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her up against his chest. She was on fire. Everywhere. From breast to toe. He had never touched her like this before. Had never held her in his arms. Hugs were different. Quick greetings. Goodbyes. She hadn’t been held by him then. Hadn’t been pressed against him. Soft against hard.

  Her first instinct was to struggle, like a cat that was being forced into a bath. Except she wasn’t struggling. She was frozen. She couldn’t move. And she didn’t. Not even when he lowered his head.

  When his lips touched hers, the world ignited. A bright white light that was something like an explosion. But whether it was happening in the store, or just in her, she didn’t know.

  It was destructive. Ripping through her and breaking down walls that were essential to her life. To her very survival.

  He raised one hand, cupping the back of her head, holding her up against him as he changed the angle of the kiss, taking it deeper.

  In spite of herself, she shivered. Arched more deeply into him and just let him kiss her. Let him slide his tongue over hers, let him devour her mouth like he was a starving man and she was the only thing that would give him sustenance to go on.

  Her heart was raging in her chest like a trapped bird in a cage, fighting to get out, and her knees were gone. Just completely gone. And if not for his strong arm locked around her waist, she would have fallen to the ground in an undignified heap.

  Her eyes were closed, but her lids trembled, fighting against the urge to look. To see what it was like to watch Finn Donnelly kiss. Of course, the other half of her, fighting just as hard, wanted to close out the reality that she was being kissed by him. Wanted to pretend the kiss wasn’t happening. Or if it was, that it wasn’t him doing the kissing.

  Her hands were trapped against his chest, and she found herself curling her fingers around his T-shirt, holding great handfuls of it as she looked for something else to brace her.

  There was a storm raging. All around. Inside. The nuclear fallout of the strike that had just been detonated in the center of the two of them. But she didn’t know what else to do but hold on to him. Even as her brain was screaming for her to make it stop, her body wanted more. Beyond that, it was natural to hold on to Finn. When things felt like they’d been upended, he was always the one she went to. Her support. Her everything.

  That made her feel like she was being torn in two. The need to stop the madness, to put things back to rights, to start reclaiming the debris that had fallen all around them, warred with those other desires. Deeper, darker and long suppressed.

  It wasn’t a gentle kiss. It was rough. It was destructive. And certainly not by accident.

  And when she returned it, she injected her own anger into it, as well. For all of this confusion. Not just the confusion he had caused. With his anger, with his kiss. But the confusion caused by the demons in her past that were tearing at her, taking chunks off her, piece by piece, one shred of sanity at a time.

  Then he growled. A deep, feral sound that rumbled in his chest, echoed through her. And it was unmistakably, undeniably Finn.

  That was what did it.

  Finn. Finn was kissing her. She was kissing him back.

  She released her hold on his shirt, planting both palms on his chest and pushing backward, nearly sending them both down to the ground as she separated their mouths. Harshly, roughly.

  “What,” she said, her voice low and shaking, “are you doing?”

  “You said I didn’t want it. I figured I would show you differently.”

  Something inside of her crumbled. Fell. “How... How dare you?” She took a step back toward him. “How could you do that? You’re my friend. We just talked about this. Why it’s important. Why would you do that?” She felt tears stinging her eyes. She was disgusted with herself. For being so weak, for being so affected. If she had been able to just go on like nothing had happened, maybe the kiss wouldn’t feel so important. Maybe things really could just go back to normal.

  But she couldn’t. She couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened. And she couldn’t pretend to be okay. Not when she had been shaken to her core. Not when that big, promised Pacific Northwest earthquake had just happened. Inside of her own body.

  “We don’t do this,” she said. “For a reason.”

  “Is that your story?”

  “Yes,” she hissed. “I can kiss any guy, Finn. But you are you. You’re you and our friendship is important to me. And I can’t deal with this right now.”

  “I can’t deal with not doing it,” he said, his voice like gravel. “I have too much going on to practice self-control with you.”

  She couldn’t process what he was saying, and more than that, she didn’t want to. She needed all of this turmoil to just go away. She needed to be able to open her eyes and find herself at home, in bed, alone. The events of the past few minutes having been some kind of weird twist of her subconscious, a response to all of the stress that was happening inside her.

  “I don’t need this right now,” she said. “My life is complicated enough.”

  “Oh, why? Because the idea of subscription boxes is just so daunting? My grandfather is dead, and my brothers have taken over my home and my life like they have a right. So don’t talk to me about your boutique angst.”

  He had no idea. And she didn’t want him to have an idea. Didn’t want to spill her guts to him about her tragic past and how it was being shoved in her face.

  But she couldn’t handle him being condescending either. Not when she felt so raw.

  “Get out,” she said, her voice shaking. “I mean it.”

  He took a step back. “Don’t you need me to kill the mouse?”

  “I feel safer with that mouse than I feel with you right now. I’m going to name the mouse. The mouse is my new best friend. Until such time as you get your head out of your ass.” She extended a shaking finger, feeling overly dramatic and ridiculous, but unable to stop herself. “Get. Out.”

  He nodded once, his mouth pressed into a flat line, his jaw set, and then he turned away from her, leaving before she had a chance to ask again. And for all her rage and bluster, she had kind of hoped she would have to ask again. That he would insist they talk. That he would stay. That he would try to help her clean up this mess, this debris that had been left behind by the kiss that she had never wanted to consider might happen.

  Instead, the door closed behind him, the bell above it jingling slightly. She took officious action, grabbing hold of the dead bolt and latching it with more force than was strictly necessary.

  Then she turned, leaning up against the door and burying her face in her hands. She needed him. She needed him to be there for her. She needed him to be her rock. She needed him to keep her from falling apart; she didn’t need him to do the demolition.

  She took a deep breath. Then another. Then she closed her eyes, and when she opened them, she half expected to see her store in ruins. But everything looked in its place. Everything looked the same.

  Maddeningly so. It made her want to mess things up. To th
row a couple jars of jam on the floor, because why not, she had already cleaned up spilled jam once today. What was another disaster?

  She didn’t, though. Instead, she stood there, letting the normalcy soak into her skin. It was easy to believe that she had hallucinated the last half hour. That it hadn’t happened at all.

  And as she went to collect her things, she decided that that was exactly what she would do. Pretend it hadn’t happened at all.

  For her, there was no other option.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IF HIS GOAL was to blow up his life, Finn was doing a damn good job of it. Not that the presence of his brothers was his fault, or anything he could have prevented, but the way he’d behaved with Lane last night certainly didn’t match up with the actions of a man who was desperate for the status quo.

  She was pissed.

  He paused for a moment to ponder that.

  He didn’t care. Yeah. He didn’t.

  He maneuvered his horse down toward the fence, riding along the line, making sure everything was shored up. Mostly, it was just an excuse to get out and clear his head. To get away from Cain, Alex and Liam.

  To do a little work by himself. To clear his head, even though he had a feeling a brace and bit and a strong breeze wouldn’t clear his head.

  He was angry. Still. So the fact that Lane was angry too didn’t hold all that much weight. It did, in that he didn’t exactly want to blow their friendship all to hell, but it didn’t because there was no way her rage could take precedence over his.

  That was the problem. The damned problem in a nutshell.

  Her comfort always took precedence. And forget his.

  He gritted his teeth, battling against that part of himself that was saying he was being unfair. Considering he had never, ever made a move on her until yesterday. That the righteous indignation had gone a little bit over-the-top, even if there was no one around to hear it. He wanted to cling to his righteous indignation. To his well-cultivated anger over the fact that he wanted a woman he should never have.