Love, Chocolate, and Beer (Cactus Creek #1)(56)

“I just want to talk to her,” he said quietly.

Walking into Ocotillos, Luke didn’t know what he was going to say or what he thought would happen when he saw Dani. One thing was for sure—he hadn’t expected to see Dani and Rylan up in her office, heads low, voices hushed in deep conversation, arms wrapped tight around each other. Luke’s feet cemented in place. Hands fisting, he watched as Rylan gently smoothed back Dani’s hair to comfort her while she continued to spill her heart out. What they were discussing, he couldn’t hear. But it didn’t matter. The harsh reality of what he was seeing delivered a blow to his solar plexus sharp enough that the details would’ve just been overkill.

She was confiding in him. That was why the current expression on Dani’s face was one Luke had never seen. Until this precise moment, Luke hadn’t realized how very little he knew about Dani or how surface level their time together had really been. She’d never once let him in the way she was doing now...with another man.

Honestly, Luke thought it would’ve been better if he’d caught her making out with Rylan instead; at least that wouldn’t have been as personal, or cut so deep. The twisting pain he was feeling in his belly was worse than betrayal. It was raw doubt of the loneliest form that came from looking in a window at everything he couldn’t have, just inside.

What was it she’d told that reporter dick in the interview? ‘No love story here…All in fun.’

Yeah, that’s all their relationship thus far had been. Seeing her with Rylan, a man who clearly had a significant and permanent place in her life, made that fact painstakingly obvious.

Blind frustration soon turned into numb hurt. He felt like the ground around him was cracking, like everything he’d recently started believing in again was slipping away. But why? It wasn’t as if he’d expected Dani to feel the same way he was starting to, right?

Vaguely, it registered that Quinn was now standing beside him, seeing what he saw.

Without a word, Luke turned away from them all and left the building.

Where he was heading, he had no idea.





CHAPTER NINE


RYLAN REACHED OUT and snagged Quinn’s elbow on the sidewalk outside of Ocotillos, narrowly preventing her escape. “Leaving so soon, sugar?”

She stiffly averted her eyes and kept her lips pinched silent.

He eyed her mutinous expression. “What evil is that busy li’l head of yours convincing you I’ve done?” he asked with forced calm. “Because whatever it is, you’ve got it all wrong.”

“Get your hands off me.” She tried in vain to pull herself out of his grip.

“Not until you tell me why you’re giving me the cold shoulder.”

“Why don’t you go back to Dani’s office? It looked pretty warm in there,” she bit out.

Rylan swiftly tugged her against his chest and effectively vaporized the distance she was trying to put between them. “Warm, huh?” He tilted her stubborn face up to his. “Well then I guess I’d better show you what hot looks like instead.”

His mouth seized hers in an unyielding kiss that didn’t just burn, it scorched. Igniting new levels of heat he never knew existed, he didn’t relent until he felt her anger finally dissolve. “I’d never hurt you like that,” he whispered roughly. “What you saw was comfort for a friend, nothing more.” He shook his head with gruff tenderness. “You make me crazy, you know that? From now on, don’t stomp off without checking if your baseless ideas about me aren’t in fact insane.”

Steadying his gaze on her liquid blue eyes, he brought his forehead down to rest on hers. “I’ll be here tomorrow night for the concert but I’m bringing a Valentine’s Day dessert to your house afterward.” His voice brooked no refusal, throbbed with undeclared emotions now tattered round the edges. “We can watch a DVD, play cards, whatever. So long as we’re together, I don’t care what we do. And if you and Coop are free this weekend, I thought the three of us could camp out in your yard like he’d gone on about last week. I got us a big tent so we—”

Quinn grabbed him and halted the rest of his words with her lips.

Surprise immobilized Rylan for all of one heartbeat before he pitched his arms around her and crushed her to him. He never wanted to let go, couldn’t if he’d tried. The pent-up passion she was unleashing slayed his ability to do anything but hang on for the wildest ride of his life. She kissed them both into a side alley and he nearly swallowed his tongue when she mindlessly slid one knee up his leg. Knowing what her movements were doing to her prim little business skirt was unmitigated torture. Quinn had amazing legs. And she never wore hose or stockings, a fact he knew from looking but not touching per the old ‘nothing below the waist in back and absolutely nothing in front’ rule he’d been tormenting himself with on each of their pseudo dates. He knew she’d been hurt by a lot of jerks in her life and he hadn’t wanted to rush her or make her feel like she had to do anything she wasn’t ready to do again.

But now here she was, ready and offering, and damn it all but he wanted to accept.

Unable to stop himself, he smoothed his hand over her hip until he came in contact with the warm, bare skin of her thigh. Even better than his fantasies. She shifted forward and his knees almost gave out when his fingers slipped under the edge of her skirt completely, dangerously close to curves he really shouldn’t be touching out here in plain view of the world.