Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(63)

“I don’t sleep with women.”

The way he said that. The way he closed the door on the conversation, it stung. And she wished... Right then, she wished things could be different. But she couldn’t go back and remake his life, any more than she could go back and remake herself. They just were the kind of people that were going to have something else. They were the kind of people who were never going to have conventional, or normal. Those weren’t her dreams. And his pain... It had been cemented inside of him a long time ago.

“Someday, you have to let me do something for you,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“Well, you’re doing this for me. You’ve done a lot for me.” She looked around at all the trees. “I let you be my mentor. And that’s how our friendship has gone. But it shouldn’t be that way. I can’t just take from you.”

“Callie, I care about you almost more than anyone in the world. I don’t care about a hell of a lot. So for someone like me, that’s a gift. Remember that.”

She nodded, swallowed hard.

“Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve,” she said. “You’re almost liberated from this.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“And then we just have to stay married another month. And it will be over. Like it didn’t happen.” She laughed. “Except...” But she wasn’t going to say anything about sex. Her being a virgin, or anything like that. “Except I’ll be rich. And I can do whatever I want.”

“Yeah. But hey, holiday or not, I say tomorrow we have you go for a bronc ride.”

“Here?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Here. Because I want your dad to see it. I want him to know how good you are. And we need to keep that end of the bargain up.”

“I just told you, you need to quit doing me favors.”

“I don’t need you doing me favors. I’m the one that said I wanted to train you. Because I want to make sure you’re safe.”

“Yeah.” And she understood, in a new way, how he felt like he needed to keep her safe. How this man who said he didn’t believe in much of anything struggled with whether or not anything was truly good.

Jake had given her so much, and he had no hope. He didn’t believe things would be okay. And that felt wrong. She wanted to fix it. To give him more.

That was another thing about them sleeping together. He felt like destiny in a way she could hardly explain now. In a way she didn’t want them to be. And right now she felt closer to him and farther away from him than she ever had. Because now, she wanted something from him that she didn’t think she could ask him for. Because now, she was just so sorry about her own behavior. And she didn’t...

Maybe this was growing up. And the very idea made her frown deeply. Because she had felt grown up. She was twenty-four, after all. But over the past few weeks, she had come to know Jake in a way that she hadn’t before. She’d met his family. She’d gotten an inside look at his pain.

And her father’s.

She had come to understand people in a different way than she ever had before. And it was harder and harder to keep her focus narrowed on her goals in the rodeo. Not that they didn’t matter. But they felt a little bit less like life and death. And she felt like a little bit more than a cowgirl. She didn’t know why that felt sad. Somehow more dangerous than riding bucking broncos ever could.

“Are you ready to head back?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m ready.”





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


IT HAD TO be done. He’d had to put an end to the thing between him and Callie, but it had been difficult when they’d gone back to the cabin that night. He’d gone straight to his room and shut the door, locked it for good measure. Not against her, but against him. And now it was Christmas Eve, and he had it on good authority that they would be spending the day on various family pursuits. And Jake had decided it was time for Callie’s family to see her ride. She had fallen at his place, but she hadn’t fallen badly. She did know what she was doing. And maybe this was more for him than it was for her. To prove to himself that she could be safe, because since he’d given her the path to doing this, he had to make sure she could do it safely.

He didn’t know why the hell he’d told her about the plane ticket. Nobody knew about that. Not even his brother. What had been the point of sharing that? That their dad wasn’t who they thought?

Colt had his own guilt and issues surrounding the situation and Jake hadn’t wanted to make it worse.

But he’d done the right thing, pulling away from her. There was nothing else to do. He could give her this, though. He could give her this.

She emerged from her room, looking freshly scrubbed and young, a long-sleeved white top and tight jeans her uniform for the ride.

A kick of lust burned through him.

He still wanted her. He thought back to what she said to him yesterday. About how she couldn’t unsee him naked. He was familiar with the problem. Because every time he looked at her, he saw those gorgeous breasts, totally bare. Her pink nipples. Before, that had been theoretical. The color of her nipples. Now it was a reality, and it was one that he couldn’t stop imagining.

“You ready?”

“I was born ready,” she said, taking her black hat off the peg and pushing it down hard on her head. He fought the urge to tug on one of her braids. He couldn’t just touch her like that. Not anymore. Not for a while. Because he lost all the control that he had around her. And he might be able to talk some kind of big game and say that they were done, but his body was having a tough time recognizing it.