Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(37)

She sputtered. “Well nothing else explains it.”

“Except that maybe I want you.” His gaze was unflinching. His mouth set in a flat line.

Nothing about him looked like a man who was telling a joke.

But she laughed.

Because there was no other response to that.

He didn’t want her. He was...he was like a whole other species. A... A god of that kind of masculine beauty that all sorts of women wanted to worship, and she was...she was just Callie.

The only sin she’d ever enticed a man to was anger.

She was not a...a...fantasy object of any kind. And that was just for a start.

She was younger than him, and she didn’t know how to kiss. She didn’t understand any of that stuff. He could have any woman he wanted, and as far as she could see he had. So it didn’t make any sense that he wanted her and he just...

No. He couldn’t. He didn’t. “Stop it,” she said.

“Stop what?”

She took a step toward him, planted her hands on that hard chest—which she was more familiar with now than she had been a minute ago—and shoved him.

“Don’t make fun of me on top of everything else.”

“Fuck,” he said. “I just kissed you, and you’re not an idiot. You’re the one that was telling me all about penises, so it’s not like you don’t know mine was hard. And now you’re trying to tell me that I’m lying to you?”

“Well, it’s not true,” she said. “I’m not special. I’m not... I’m not like that. And anyway, we’re friends.”

“Yeah,” he said. “We are. So maybe you should think about that. Maybe you should think about what that means. Do you think I’m lying to you? Or do you think maybe I just decided to use a little restraint with you because I do care about you?”

He shook his head, dragged his hand over his face, then looked at her, straight on. “Here’s a couple things that are true, Callie Carson, and you can go ahead and sit with them ahead of our big long trip over to Lone Rock. It’ll give us something to have an awkward silence over in the cab of the truck tomorrow. I want you. And you know, I made it clear these past few days that was the case. Do you think I touch my other friends on the face? Do you think I look at them the way I look at you? Hell. I want you. But I care about you. And the bottom line is those two things do not go together in my life. Because I’m not gonna fall in love with a woman, and I’m not going to give her a home in a house. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the first step on the road to death. Domesticity might as well be dying. That’s how I feel about it.

“You want to know why Christmas is so hard for me?” he continued. “Because it’s like suffocating to death in that house. On family. On this bullshit bond of grief that we all share but can never really talk about. Because we have to pretend like everything’s fine when actually everything sucks. Yeah, we had each other, and I’m grateful for that. But I couldn’t stay in it. I couldn’t stay in that monument to death. That’s what it is to me. It will never be a celebration of the life that we all share, because that life came out of something that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

“So yeah.” He breathed out hard. “Caring and wanting are two things that just don’t mix for me. So I chose my path with you. But you’re the one that came here and made it like this. You’re the one that kissed me. You’re the one that had me marry you, so dial your outrage back a little bit, and quit accusing me of things when you’re the one that put us in the situation. And recognize that on the person that understands this.”

Her teeth were chattering. His every word had shaken loose something inside her and now it was all rattling around in there, rocking her from the inside.

He wanted her.

Jake wanted her.

Callie Carson, who didn’t fit in any costume she’d ever put on, not really. Because to be the kind of cowgirl she thought she had to be she could never be anything else, couldn’t feel half of what she felt. To be the kind of daughter her mother wished she was she’d have to leave behind the rodeo.

And Jake wanted that Callie, who didn’t know how to want anything other than rodeo dreams.

Don’t you?

“You don’t know what I know,” she said, the words a shiver.

“You’re a virgin, right?”

She had never, ever once been ashamed of that. She’d never given it a lot of thought. As far as she was concerned, if she’d ever wanted to not be one, she wouldn’t be. It just wasn’t something that bothered her right now. Wasn’t something that concerned her. But the way that he said it...the way that he said it burned. The way that he said it made her feel like she was small and silly. And somehow something less than him. And it made her angry.

“It’s none of your business.”

“So you are.”

Some sort of unholy noise came out of her mouth and she knew she sounded like a wet cat. And she couldn’t stop it. “What does that have to do with anything? It’s just a choice not to do something. I could if I felt like it.” Her tongue was moving faster than her brain now. “You cowboys are such unholy sluts. I could have had...well, apparently, I could have you if I wanted. What’s to say I couldn’t push you into it?”