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  “Eleven years,” she said. Interesting how quickly she knew the answer to the question.

  “Right. And still you have to come up with a million excuses for why having lunch with me is okay.” He opened the door to the bistro and held it for her, the little bit of chivalry his mother had imparted on him before she’d left him and his dad.

  Carly walked in past him and went straight through to a table in the front corner. “My spot,” she said, taking a seat.

  “A regular, are you?”

  “Well, I don’t go to the bar for lunch.”

  “Neither do I. I’d run the risk of running into my dad.”

  “Or mine,” she said.

  “True enough.”

  “My dad and a companion even,” she said, her tone brittle.

  “We have awesome parents, don’t we?”

  “If nothing else, we’ve all proven that you can have success regardless of where you start out in life.”

  “You sure have, Ms. City Councilwoman.”

  She toyed with the edge of the menu that was already sitting on the table. “You like my title, don’t you?”

  “I’m impressed with it,” he said, the honest truth.

  “Well, thank you.”

  “You got yourself into college, and through it. You got yourself elected, when your family’s reputation was pretty damned abysmal. I’d say I’m very impressed with you and what you’ve done.”

  Her brow wrinkled. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve never seen anyone look so distressed over a compliment.”

  “I’ve never gotten a compliment quite like that from you.”

  “Well, I’ve never gotten a compliment from you,” he said, badgering her because everything had been too sincere there for a second.

  “Fine. I’m impressed with you too. You’ve done well for yourself. You did great in the rodeo, obviously, considering the size of your ranching operation, and you helped Mac too.”

  “Mac helped himself. He had a great idea, I just helped him start up. And I’m a better investor than I was a bronc buster. I’m practically an accountant, actually, you just wouldn’t know it.”

  “Are you serious?”

  He shrugged. “Turns out I’m better at investing than riding.”

  “I just thought . . .”

  “That I was a dumbass who did a good job of holding on to a horse?”

  “No. I never thought that.”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  “I have total respect for riders,” she said. “It’s a skill. I can’t tell you the last time I was on a horse.”

  “I can’t imagine you riding in one of your prissy little suits.”

  “It’s just not really my thing.”

  “What’s not?”

  She shrugged. “The whole . . . physical thing. I’m not big on sweating.”

  A very clear, dirty picture flashed through his mind of just what it might take to make her sweat and like it. He blinked, trying to will it away. “You used to like it. I have a very clear image in my head of the first time I saw you. You had mud up to your elbows, and the skin on your face was peeling from a sunburn. You’d been out catching frogs, I believe.”

  Her cheeks turned a delicate shade of pink. “Well . . . I’ve changed.”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “Hi, Carly,” a smiling waitress said as she approached the table. “The usual?”

  Carly smiled. “Yes, thank you.”

  “And, uh . . . for your friend?”

  “Just a burger is fine,” he said.

  “I’ll have it up in a second,” she said, casting Carly a long, questioning look that Carly very purposefully ignored.

  “Now the rumor mill will get going,” she muttered.

  “Why? Because we’re having lunch together? Almost everyone knows who I am. They know we’re family friends.”

  “Is that what we are?” she asked. “Family friends?”

  “I suppose so. But friends might be a strong word for it.” He studied her face, the hard lines, the exhaustion. She tried so hard to be perfect he was afraid one of these days it would break her. “It didn’t used to be though.”

  “Things change, Lucas.”

  “What changed, Carly?”

  She let out an exasperated breath. “Does it matter?”

  “I think you’re the only one who knows that.”

  “Just leave it.” She pulled her computer out of her bag and opened it, typing for a moment and then looking back up at him, her composure so firmly in place it was laughable. He had to wonder if she ever lost control. “All right, let’s talk charity. I think we can do that without bickering.”

  And they managed, keeping the topic to the Ride for Hope events, until their food arrived.

  “Grilled chicken salad with dressing on the side,” the waitress said, putting a plate in front of Carly. “And a burger,” she finished, setting Lucas’s lunch in front of him. “Holler if you need anything.”

  “Thank you,” Carly said. She dipped her fork into the dressing and started flicking it over the lettuce leaves. She was so meticulous in everything she did. Every movement a practiced routine. She was tied up so tightly inside that even eating a salad was a ritual. He’d never seen anything like it.

  He picked his burger up, in defiance of her restraint, and took a bite. He noticed that while she ate her salad, she kept her eyes pinned to his french fries.

  “Do you want one?” he asked. She looked at him like he’d just asked her to come to the Dark Side.

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “Do you ever do anything you shouldn’t do?”

  She frowned. “No.” Her denial was followed by another bite of salad.

  “Doesn’t that get boring?”

  “It’s not boring. It’s stable. I had all the unstable I could get growing up. There’s a reason for restraint, you know. A reason for . . . behaving a certain way.”

  “So you always behave?” he asked.

  “Yes. Always. I’m a representative of the people of Silver Creek. I can do nothing less.”

  “You’re twenty-four years old, Carly. This much self-control can’t be healthy.”

  “The lack of it certainly isn’t healthy, I don’t care what age you are,” she said. “Look at our parents for your example.”

  “Granted”—he picked up one of his french fries—“but eating a little fried food is hardly equivalent to being an alcoholic.”

  “Slippery slope,” she said, eyeing the offered treat.

  “Come on, Carly,” he said. “Eat a fry. Live dangerously.”

  “You’re such a pain,” she said, taking the french fry from him and making quick work of it.

  “Do you regret it?” he asked.

  “No,” she said around a mouthful of potato.

  “See? The world didn’t even cave in. Living dangerously didn’t hurt you at all.”

  “One french fry isn’t going to entice me to change the way I live.”

  “That would be pretty ambitious for a french fry.” She snort-laughed again, turning her focus back to her salad. “Is that why I bother you, Carly?”

  Her head snapped up, blue eyes meeting his. “What?”

  “That I don’t play by the rules of what’s safe to you?”

  Her forehead crinkled, eyebrows drawing together. “You think I’m jealous of you, is that it?”

  “Well, is it?”

  “Am I jealous of you, Lucas Miller, who changes women like most people change their socks? I am in no way jealous of that kind of behavior.”

  “And where are you getting this impression of me?” Lucas had been celibate for eight damn months. Casual hook-ups had been fine for him a few years ago, but these days he liked to be in a relationship with a woman before he too
k things to the bedroom. Maturity or something like it, he assumed. The kind of behavior she was talking about was a thing so long in his past he could hardly remember ever doing it, so he was hardly going to sit there and listen to Carly Denton call him a player.

  “Where did I . . . are you kidding me? Do you forget about them all too?”

  “All who?”

  “The brunette against the barn, who was getting a bit more than a kiss. The woman you were making out with at Christmas the same year. Then there was your little spring fling. Every time I saw you that year it was someone new.”

  A rash of heat broke out over his skin. Embarrassment. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt embarrassed, but he sure as hell did now. The thought of eighteen-year-old Carly catching him . . . Well, he knew exactly what she was talking about now. There had been a lot of someones, but not so many that he couldn’t remember an encounter that was that specific.

  Things had gotten a little hot and heavy in a public place, but it had ended at second base. Still, he wasn’t thrilled that Carly had seen it. He couldn’t even really explain why it bothered him so much.

  “Carly . . . I’m sorry you saw that. That’s . . . well”—the embarrassment was just starting to piss him off now—“look, it was on my property, I can do what I want on my own property. It wasn’t intended for your . . . viewing pleasure.”

  Her lip curled. “It wasn’t a pleasure, trust me. And I get that men have relationships, but there’s a difference between relationships and constant flings. Men who get involved in that . . . It doesn’t stop, Lucas, I know that for a fact.”

  There was something in her voice—anger, disgust, but that was easily identified. It was the other emotion, vibrating beneath her words, that’s what was pulling him up.

  Hurt. It had hurt her.

  The realization hit him hard in the gut. “I’m sorry it hurt you.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “Hurt me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, that’s funny. Why would it hurt me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, then . . . why would you say that?”

  “Why would you still be so bothered by it?”

  “Why aren’t you? I can’t be the only person who thinks you’re . . . you’re a . . . a man-whore.”

  He shrugged. “Why would I care about that?”

  “Because. Because it should matter what people think.”

  “News flash, Carly, I don’t care what people think.” Maybe that’s why she was so mad. Because he didn’t care. And she did. So much she was crippled by it. “You should try it sometime. Let your hair down. Get your back up against a barn wall.”

  She stood up quickly, slamming her laptop shut. “This has been lovely,” she said. “But I’m going to go and do something more enjoyable. Like maybe stick barbed wire under my fingernails. I’ve got lunch.” She stuck a twenty on the table and turned and walked out of the diner.

  Lucas took the twenty and crumpled it in his hand. Then he pulled his wallet out and replaced her cash with his. He’d return hers to her later. Maybe by mail. Or he could always deliver it in person. Picturing the look on her face, the one of pure annoyance, that she would get if he did it, did a little something to reduce the knot in his gut.

  But only a little.

  Chapter Four

  Carly settled into the couch, her legs tucked up underneath her. She tightened her hold on her cereal bowl and took a bite. It wasn’t grown-up cereal. It was the sugary kind, with marshmallows.

  They’d never had it growing up. Not because her mom liked to feed them healthy food, but because she often forgot to go grocery shopping. They’d always had eggs from the chickens though, so there had been breakfast.

  But keeping a variety of cereals stocked was one of Carly’s indulgences. One she’d started the minute she’d gotten her own place. And one of her other private indulgences was eating that cereal for dinner, which she was doing now.

  And it had nothing to do with Lucas’s parting shot at the restaurant. No, it did not.

  Though she was starting to wonder if it was true. If part of her was so angry at him because he just didn’t care. He was impervious to what people thought. And she . . . she was crippled by it. Because in school, everyone had known, always, what was going on in her home, because her parents had made their fights so ugly. So public. Because their parents would gossip about the fact that Dan and Holly Denton had been screaming at each other outside the bar again.

  No one had ever let their kids come over. Not that she could blame them. But it had meant no sleepovers for her. Very few friends. The only outside presence in the house had been Lucas, and part of that was because he’d been just as much of a misfit.

  He hadn’t cared then. He didn’t care now.

  Why didn’t he care? She did. So much she felt frozen with it sometimes. She wanted to change the way people saw her. And it wasn’t enough to just move away and start over, because people back in Silver Creek would still think the things they did.

  But she’d gone to school, and she’d come back and proven that she’d succeeded. And then she’d gotten elected to the city council. She was the youngest person to serve on the council in the town’s history.

  She and Mac were making a new story for the Denton family and she was proud of that. She worked hard to protect that.

  There was a knock on her door and she set her cereal bowl on the table, her hand going straight to the ponytail she’d done haphazardly after her shower. She was in her sweats, she didn’t have makeup on, and she was a mess. So not the time for company.

  “Who is it?” she called, heading to the door.

  “Lucas.”

  She cursed fluidly under her breath and opened the door, pasting a smile to her face. She wasn’t going to act bothered. No. He would like that too much. “Lucas,” she said, far too brightly, blocking the doorway, “what brings you here?”

  Her held his hand up, a twenty dollar bill folded between his fingers. “You forgot this.”

  “I paid,” she said.

  “Nope. I did.”

  “Oh, of all the macho . . .” she started to say, then took the money. “Thank you. Thank you very much. I’ll see you . . . later.” Hopefully much later.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  The words stopped her cold. “You’re what?”

  “Sorry. For what I said earlier.”

  “I . . . thank you.” She dropped her hand from the door frame and took a step back. “It’s . . . it takes a lot to admit when you’re wrong.”

  Lucas seemed to take her movement as an invitation to enter the house. He walked past her and into the living room. “Oh, I wasn’t wrong. But I’m sorry I said what I said the way I said it.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re wound up tight, sugar, no mistake. I wasn’t wrong about that. But I shouldn’t have picked a fight with you, not over something so sensitive, and not in public.”

  “I’m not . . . sensitive. And I didn’t invite you in.”

  “Family friend, remember? I’m allowed to come in.”

  “Why are you so dead set on driving me crazy this week?”

  He paused. “A good question. And I could ask you the same thing.”

  “What? I thought you were going out with my brother tonight, anyway.”

  “Blew him off.”

  “Why? I thought you were going to go hook-up, or whatever you guys call it.”

  “Not interested.” His dark eyes clashed with hers and her stomach tightened. “At least, not with some random girl from the bar.”

  She swallowed hard, her stomach so tight it was painful. “I don’t . . . I . . . and what do you mean you could ask me the same thing?”

  “Why are you so dead set on driving me crazy this week?” he a
sked.

  “I’m . . . I’m not. I haven’t done anything to you. Everywhere I’ve been, work, my brother’s house, my house”—she made a sweeping gesture with her arm—“you are. That’s not me doing anything to you. That’s all you.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “What do you mean then?”

  “You don’t know what’s been going on in my head, sugar.”

  “No. No, I don’t. And I probably want to keep it that way, so maybe you should . . .” He took a step toward her and brushed his thumb over her bottom lip. “You keep doing that,” she said, his thumb still touching her skin.

  “I know,” he said, “and when I’m not doing about it, I’m thinking about doing it. I don’t think I ever should have touched you.”

  Her heart started pounding hard. “What do you . . .”

  He raised his other hand and placed it on her cheek, shifting so that both palms were cradling her face, his dark eyes intent on hers. “This was also a bad idea,” he said, his voice rough.

  “What was?” she asked.

  “Well, touching you more. That little bit was bad idea enough. This . . . this is even worse.”

  Carly couldn’t remember the last time a man had looked at her like Lucas was looking at her now. Like he was starving and she was the answer to the hunger inside of him.

  The reason she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been looked at like that was because she never had been. And she was very aware of it in this moment. Aware that she was on the verge of something that was well outside her experience.

  The strangest thing was that right now, she wanted it. She knew, somewhere in the dim, hazy corners of her mind, that she might regret it later. No, that she would. But right now, for some reason, she didn’t care. Not even a little bit.

  Because all she could focus on was Lucas. His eyes, his lips. Lord, but he had beautiful lips for a man. It had been years since she’d let herself notice them. She had before, though.

  There had been a time when this moment, the possibility of it, had been her dearest fantasy. And it was something she didn’t even let herself remember now. There had been a time when she’d dared to want.