Christmastime Cowboy Read online

  “Because it is,” he said. “Thirteen years, Sabrina. Thirteen years we both waited for this. I think we deserve it, don’t you?”

  “That’s an interesting choice of words. I’m not sure I deserve any of this, and it’s not because I think I’m bad. It’s because I’m not sure... I’m not sure what any of this has to do with deserving anything. It just is. I certainly didn’t set out to earn it. But maybe that’s okay?”

  “If I kiss you again how long is it going to take to get you talked out of those clothes?”

  Her cheeks went pink, as pink as the little shoes she was wearing, and he was surprised when she didn’t get angry, when she didn’t slap him.

  But she didn’t.

  “Honest question,” he said.

  “I don’t know,” she said, sounding woeful. “You ruined my life, you know.”

  “So I’ve heard. At length.”

  “No. I mean recently. Because every time I think about sex I think about you. And I have a feeling it’s going to be like that for the rest of my damned life.”

  “Right. So, damage done. Hell, I would posit that the damage was done thirteen years ago.”

  “And you think that the two of us sleeping together until we’re done with this project is going to fix something?”

  “I don’t know. I just know that it’s already broken.”

  He didn’t know if it was good logic, but to his mind it was logic that was difficult to argue with.

  “This feels like penis logic to me.”

  “It probably is. But that doesn’t make it bad. It just makes it of one particular slant.”

  She let out a long, slow sigh. “Lindy already knows. I mean, she knows that we slept together once.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  He had a feeling Lindy was the type of woman who wouldn’t think twice about eviscerating a man who crossed her, or crossed someone she loved, and he was currently in a working relationship with her that required him to see her on occasion.

  “Don’t worry,” Sabrina said. “She won’t kill you if I tell her not to.”

  “Well,” Liam said, “that’s appreciated.”

  “It’s just that...Lindy knows, and Clara I’m sure assumes, but if we could otherwise not advertise it, that would be good.”

  “Is that a yes to my proposition?”

  Her shoulders sagged. “You’re right,” she said, sounding a little bit distraught. “You’re right, whatever I think we’re going to do, whatever I want to have happen... It’s not going to. I’m going to try to resist, and then what? I’m going to try to resist you and I’m not going to be able to, and I’m going to get angry at myself for not resisting, and then I’m going to shout at you. Exactly like you said. If there was any way I could see this going differently, trust me, I would take it. But I can’t. I can’t imagine it. So...why not? Why not just give in? You’re right, if I already associate you with sex and attraction, and I have all this time, how is it going to get worse?” Her gaze turned sly, her blue eyes narrowing. “And, after all, you already have me tattooed on your back.”

  “Touché,” he said.

  “Not going to let that go for a while.”

  “I have a request,” he said.

  “I’m not going to guarantee it will be granted.”

  “That’s fine,” he said, moving closer to her, bracing his hand on the back of her neck. “I want to see you with your hair down again. You wear it up every day, and you even kept it up when I had you the other night. I want to run my fingers through it. I want to see it loose around your shoulders. I want it like I remember you.”

  “Like your tattoo girl, you mean?”

  “Hell, if I loved it so much I put it on my skin, it seems like I’ve earned it.”

  “I don’t think you’ve earned a damn thing, Liam Donnelly. But you sure feel entitled to a lot.”

  “Maybe so. And maybe that’s a failing of mine. But I feel entitled to you.” He wrapped his arm around her waist, drew her lush body up against his chest.

  He hadn’t been lying to her when he said he liked the way she looked now even better. Those fuller hips and breasts. He liked the maturity in her face. He liked the evidence that she was a woman.

  “Maybe that’s the problem,” he repeated. “That I felt entitled to you from the very beginning. That I have felt like you should be mine. As I got to know you, as you got under my skin. It felt right, even when I knew it would be wrong. Even when I knew it was impossible, and I shoved it down deep. Figured it was harmless to let our friendship be what it was. Because I didn’t actually understand that I could build a connection with a woman if I wasn’t sleeping with her. But there’s never been anything harmless about you, and every little thing I’ve ever told myself was just another lie. Something to let me excuse my behavior. To let me get close to you.”

  “Liam,” she said, her blue eyes darting to the window, “people will see.”

  “Then they’ll see,” he said.

  “I just told you I need things to stay...”

  “Why?” he asked, pressing his thumb against the corner of her mouth. “Because people will know you have a lover? And that bothers you?”

  She shifted uncomfortably. “No... I mean, if it isn’t going to last, then what’s the point?”

  “I’m not going to sneak around,” he said. “I have earned the right to not be hidden away.”

  Her eyes rounded, wide, and he could tell that she was reading the deeper implication in the words. An implication he hadn’t really meant to place there, but there it was, nonetheless.

  He had spent a childhood being locked away, hidden away at another person’s will, and he would be damned if he endured it again.

  Even for her.

  “Fine,” she relented. “No sneaking. But no announcing either.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Oh, except I really don’t want my sister, Beatrix, to know.”

  “I haven’t seen Beatrix since she was a kid,” he commented.

  “Yeah, well, she’s not a kid anymore. Mostly. But Bea is...well, she’s Bea. And she’s very sweet, and I don’t...”

  “You don’t want her to know that you’re fucking for the sake of fucking?”

  Her cheeks turned bright pink. “Not especially.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Believe me, it won’t take a whole lot of subterfuge to keep it from Beatrix. She is a lot more interested in traipsing around finding rescue animals.”

  “Oh, please tell me she takes them back to your parents’ house,” he asked, grinning.

  “Actually, Beatrix lives in your old house on the winery property.”

  “Wow. Did anyone side with your brother?”

  “Just my parents. For a man so committed to doing the right thing, my father seems to have a lot of sympathy for people who commit adultery.”

  “Interesting.”

  “That’s one word for it,” Sabrina said.

  “Should I come over to your place tonight? I wouldn’t mind bringing you over to mine, but I live with my brothers.”

  “Yeah, that’s kind of what I mean by not announcing. I would rather you came to my place. Anyway, you left condoms there.”

  He chuckled. “Good. I would hate to have to go run the gauntlet of people we know to pick up more.” He had one on him now, but he intended to need more than one the next time they were together.

  Sabrina groaned. “I guess Clara probably more than suspects we’re together.”

  “Yes,” Liam said. “Which means that Alex knows about us too. And, if my brother Alex knows, then the rest of them almost certainly do.”

  “Which means that Alison knows,” Sabrina said. “And Lane.”

  “Which probably means that Cassie f
rom The Grind knows.”

  “And Rebecca West,” Sabrina said. “And her husband, Gage, which opens up an entire other vault of people who probably already know that we slept together.”

  “Small towns,” he said, shaking his head.

  “They are a pain in my butt,” she said.

  “But you haven’t left.”

  She looked out the picture window, at the illuminated street. The glow from the Christmas lights were reflecting off the picture window, glowing on her beautiful face. “No,” she said, her words half-filled with wonder. “I guess I haven’t.”

  “Why exactly is that?” he asked, looking at her profile, ignoring the strange ache in his chest.

  She turned to face him, her lips pressed into a flattened line. “I don’t know.”

  “I have a hard time believing you’ve ever done anything without knowing the reason why,” he said.

  “Then I guess you don’t know me all that well,” she said. “I feel like half the time I don’t know the reason why I do anything. It’s maddening. More than maddening, it’s...I don’t know.”

  “Why did you stay here? Because yes, I know that losing your father’s money made it difficult for you to go to college that wasn’t somewhat local, but not impossible, I would imagine, given your grades.”

  “It’s for all the reasons that you already guessed,” she responded, twisting her hands. “I was afraid to leave. More than that, I was afraid that if I left I would...somehow sever the ties between me and my family that were already so badly near broken. I just couldn’t face that. I don’t know. I guess I just...”

  “You wanted to stay and fix everything. You wanted to stay and fix everything because you feel like you’re the one who broke it. And if you’re the one who broke it, you’re the only one that can put it back together, right?”

  She tilted her head to the side. “Maybe. Maybe that’s it. Or, maybe that started being the reason. I don’t know. Now though, I do have a life here. I do. I want to stay and support Lindy. That was... That was not a unifying move on my part with the family.”

  “Sure. It was an easy decision for you to make because it was for someone else. Not for you. That’s your big struggle, isn’t it? Doing something for you.”

  He had a feeling she was about to tell him where to shove his concern. Instead she straightened and looked up at him with luminous blue eyes that touched him in places he wasn’t sure he wanted to be touched.

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “I suppose that’s true.”

  “Why? I know that you like to blame me. But we already broke down the fact that just isn’t the case. It’s not all me.”

  “I guess not. But like you mentioned, you certainly made a convenient whipping boy. I just... If I was never good enough for him... For my father, no matter what I did, it was hard for me to believe that I really deserved anything when I was so far outside his favor.”

  “But you didn’t apologize either?”

  “I did. Kind of. It’s complicated, he and I. Complicated and yet somehow not. He was never going to approve of me. No matter what I did. I know that, Liam. I know that as sure as I know that it isn’t even my fault. That somewhere in all of that I just somehow want to prove that what I’m doing is right. But I’m making good choices. I want to make him see. That I don’t have bad instincts when it comes to people. That I don’t have to be quiet to be good. I want him to tell me that. Even if that’s not reasonable. Even if it’s never going to happen, there’s a part of me that’s holding out for that. And if I leave, if I’m not performing my life in front of him then how am I going to prove my worth?”

  He reached out, brushed his fingertips against her cheekbone, against that soft, perfect skin. “I don’t know. I don’t even know where my father is. My mother... I wrote her a check for half a million dollars, Sabrina. I figured that it would show her. That she would know then that she had been wrong to treat me the way that she did. Because that son that she blamed for all of her poverty, and all of her sadness, I was the one that lifted her out of it. And I did it better than she ever could have done for herself. I wanted to show her that. I wanted her to believe it. But you know, somehow she never did. That moment when I handed her the check with all that money on it and her face was blank, I realized that I was never going to get what I want, not from her. I gave her the thing she’d said she wanted all that time and...it still didn’t matter.”

  “So what do you do? With all that. When you’ve done everything you possibly can to earn your parent being proud of you and they still aren’t? What the hell are we supposed to do with that?”

  “Are you happy?” he asked. “Your life, as it is right now. Does it make you happy?”

  She looked around the tasting room. “Right now I...I wouldn’t choose to do anything differently than what I’m doing.”

  “Then I suppose that has to be enough.”

  She nodded slowly. “Well, there is one thing that I would like to be doing that I’m not.”

  “And that is?”

  “You.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  He kissed her then, gently at first, but then deeper, harder, forcing her lips open with his tongue, delving deeply, tasting her. The slick glide, that heady friction making his stomach feel hollow and his body hard.

  “I want you,” she whispered. “I want this. I want to not be... To not be so afraid anymore.” She pressed her palm against his chest, let her fingertips drift over his muscles. It burned him, even through the fabric of his shirt. “I want to make some decisions for me. Rather than making decisions because of anyone else.”

  “Is that so?”

  “I want to be selfish.” She looked up at him, licked her lips, and he felt the impact of it all the way down to his toes. “Is that bad?”

  “You can be selfish with me if you want.”

  “Good. Good. I want to be selfish with you.”

  She stretched up on her toes again, curled her fingertips around the back of his neck, those delicate fingers in his hair sending a shock of something through him he couldn’t readily identify. But then she was kissing him again, and his thinking was greatly hindered. All he could do was feel. Feel her delicate hands roam over his body, touching him as if he was something singular and new.

  He supposed for her he was. That was a hell of a thing. Knowing that he was the only man she had ever touched like this. It had been the first time they were together, and it was now.

  “Still not the best idea to do it here,” he said, his voice rough, the words coming out of a tortured rasp.

  “Probably not.”

  “Your house. As discussed.”

  “My house,” she said softly. “Only, this time maybe I’m not going to leave my car parked here. You know. So I don’t get stranded again.”

  “Well, there’s no danger of that either way.”

  “There isn’t?”

  “No,” he said. “Because this time I’m not leaving.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  SABRINA WASN’T SO nervous this time. No, she was something much closer to excited than nervous as she got out of her car, and Liam got out of his, and they both walked toward her house. She paused in front of the front door.

  “I’m an old-fashioned girl,” she said, wanting to tease him for some reason, and not quite sure she could pinpoint why. Except that she enjoyed talking with him when they weren’t fighting. It was a strange and new experience. And pretty damned wonderful.

  “You’re an old-fashioned girl?” he asked, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “What does that mean? I’m going to have to take your petticoats off before I get to see those pretty breasts again?”

  His casual, easy way with that kind of talk left her breathless, a shock of heat skittering down her spine.

 
“I don’t mind working for it, I have to tell you,” he said. “I’m just wanting to make sure I understand the definition.”

  “No,” she said. “No petticoats. But, since we were out together, I expect to get a kiss good night at the door.”

  “You better not expect this to stop at the door.”

  She lifted a shoulder, enjoying the way his face grew tight, his eyes gleaming with a feral light. “Well, I don’t know.”

  “Honey, I will take you up against the door.”

  “It’s too cold!” she protested.

  “It won’t be. Not once I get going.”

  He advanced on her and she looked up at him from beneath her lashes, feeling like the minx she’d never ever been before. “Do I get my kiss?”

  “You don’t have to ask twice.”

  She moved away from him, pressing herself against the door, her palms flat against the cold, wooden surface. And he approached her like a predator, those blue eyes on hers with laser focus. Her heart began to flutter, her entire body on edge. He was so beautiful. Perfect. She wanted him. All of him. More.

  But for now, she was just going to take this kiss and enjoy it. If there was one thing that was true about herself and Liam Donnelly it was that they had skipped several steps on their way to the bedroom. They had gone somehow faster than most people, and a lot slower. There had been a kiss, and a thirteen-year gap, then an explosion that had been something beyond that.

  But no dates. No sweet, good-night kisses.

  Right now she would have her good-night kiss. And then she would have the rest.

  He planted his palms on either side of her head, staring at her intently. Her heart thundered gloriously, her entire body ready for whatever else might happen. For whatever he had planned.

  Slowly, he drew his fingertip along the edge of her jaw, to the center of her chin. He tilted her face upward, his eyes never leaving hers. Then he raised his thumb, tracing the lower edge of her lip, back around up to the top. It was slow, slow and torturous, delicate and ruinous all at once. She didn’t know what to make of it. But then, she wasn’t entirely sure she knew what to make of him. She never did.