Play It Safe(108)

I rolled back to the soles of my feet and watched as he closed his eyes then he opened them and turned to me.

His hand came up, he cupped my jaw and his eyes moved over my face.

Then he said, “I love you, Ivey.”

I grinned a small, sad grin.

He gave me the same.

Then he bent and touched his mouth to mine, dropped his hand and I turned and went into the house to make coffee for firefighters.

* * * * *

Three hours later…

Dawn was hitting the sky, weak light beginning to glow through the window.

Gray and I had had showers but no sleep. We were in bed, Gray on his back, me pressed to his side, my head on his pectoral, hand flat and lightly trailing his chest and gut, his arm around me, hand in my panties cupping my ass.

We’d been there awhile, lying close, not speaking but also not sleeping.

Finally, I broke the silence by whispering, “You okay?”

“No.”

I pulled in a breath. Then I slid my hand up his chest, lifted and turned my head and rested my chin on my hand under me.

He had four pillows bunched haphazardly behind his head and shoulders (this was his way, my man liked pillows) and his eyes dipped to me.

“Please don’t kill Buddy,” I said quietly. “Just got you back after seven years. I don’t want to spend the next seven visiting you in the penitentiary.”

His face softened but he didn’t smile.

Still, he replied teasingly, “You’re in the mountain plains of Colorado, dollface. No jury from these parts would convict me for killin’ a man who killed seven horses.”

His joke fell flat, I knew he saw it on my face just as I saw it on his but I suspected his was worse. He was a cowboy, horses were kind of important to cowboys.

I lifted up, pushed up closer, sliding more onto his chest, my hand moving to curl around the side of his neck all as I whispered, “Baby, I don’t know what to do to help you.”

That was when he grinned. It wasn’t a big one and it didn’t warm his beautiful eyes the usual way but it still warmed his eyes.

His hand left my panties so his arm could close tight around the middle of my back and he told me, “You’re doin’ it, Ivey.”

I nodded and smiled.

Then I said gently, “I’m sorry, Gray.”

“Me too.”

“We’ll be okay.”

It was his turn to nod. “One thing I got is insurance. So, yeah, eventually, we’ll be okay.”

It was good to know he had insurance but that wasn’t what I was talking about.

“That isn’t what I meant, honey.”

“I know that, darlin’, and my response still stands. We’ll be okay in all ways. Just that right about now, when we need to crash so we can get at least a little sleep so we can face whatever the day’s gonna bring, you need to know that it’s all gonna be okay.”

He was right.

I tipped my face so I could kiss his chest. Then I repositioned and looked at him again.

“Do you get sleepless nights often?”

“Nope, work hard all day, sleep hard all night.”

“So, you waking up is unusual?”

“Can’t say it’s never happened, can say it’s so rare don’t remember when it happened last.”

“So what woke you?”

That got me a different kind of grin but he still wasn’t committed to it.

“Thought it was my subconscious reminding me you’d gone to sleep without your panties on.”

I grinned back then pressed gently, “But that wasn’t it?”

“If you’re askin’ if I heard somethin’, then no. I heard somethin’, I’d look. I wouldn’t start somethin’ with you. If you’re askin’ if I got a sense of somethin’, a vibe, who knows? What I do know is, awake or asleep, I’d hear that blast. I sleep hard but I don’t sleep so deep I’d sleep through that and I know since I didn’t the last time.”

“Mm…” I muttered, my eyes sliding away.

“Ivey,” he called and my eyes slid back. “We got a mess outside and a fight that was already pretty f**kin’ ugly that just got a whole lot uglier. We need to sleep so we can be prepared to face the day.”

He was right.

“Okay, honey,” I agreed and started to move to settle back into him but stopped when his arm gave me a squeeze and I focused back on him.

“I’m not used to sleepless nights but that don’t mean after what happened tonight, seein’ you run around a burnin’ barn, I won’t start to have them.”

I knew where this was going from my macho man rancher cowboy so I opened my mouth to cut him off.

He saw it and his arm gave me another squeeze.

“Let me finish, baby, yeah?”

I closed my mouth and nodded.

“You saved five horses,” he whispered.

I did. I did do that.

Gray wasn’t done.

“You runnin’ into that barn like that, workin’ to save those horses, this ranch, I didn’t like it and pray to God nothin’ like that’ll happen again. But I gotta say, wherever you were born and whatever you did, pool hustler, showgirl, tonight, you were a rancher’s woman and just like you, when you do somethin’, you’re the best there is.”