isn’t true. That guy I pulled you away from on the dance floor the other night would have had you a thousand times by now.”
“Maybe. But, mostly because he feels sorry for me. Or because he wants to protect me from other guys, because he thinks I’m delicate. That’s not the same. It’s not the same as what we have. Tell me...” She blinked, trying to keep back the stream of tears that was threatening to come. “Are you with me because you feel sorry for me? Or is it because you want me?”
“I told myself it was because I felt sorry for you. Because you told me you were a virgin and that it was because of me. And that it was my responsibility to put it to rights.” It was his turn to laugh. “Any kind of lofty justification a man can apply to getting laid, I guess. But the fact is, I want you. I would never have come over here last night if that weren’t the case. If I were stronger than I was. I don’t see a future for us. And I don’t want to hurt you. But I’m still here. That has nothing to do with pity.”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe this isn’t hurting me? That maybe this is exactly what I need?”
“I’m not staying. I can’t give you anything other than this.”
“I don’t want anything other than this. But for someone who’s never had it before, you have to understand that it’s a pretty big thing. That it’s something that makes me feel new. Different. Something that makes me feel like maybe I’m not so damaged after all.”
He kissed her then, deep and long. “Rebecca,” he said, “of the two of us, you’re definitely the least damaged.”
“Tell me everything else,” she said, sliding her fingers through his hair, studying the hard lines on his face. “After Texas, then what?”
She didn’t know what she was doing, building stronger bonds between herself and this man. All she knew was that she was starving for these details, to build a complete image of who he was, of who that night had made him. Of all that had transpired in the ensuing years.
And so, he told her. About leaving Texas and the rodeo behind, about driving a truck for a little while before he decided he hated it. About taking odd jobs on various ranches, and working construction. He had even done logging up in Alaska for a time. Basically, if the work was punishing, Gage West had done it. He was something entirely different than she had imagined him being.
But then, she was something entirely different than he imagined she was too.
* * *
IF GAGE HAD had his way he would have spent the entire day in bed with Rebecca. Sadly, there was work to do. Less sadly, since Rebecca was still holding on to the idea that she was working off her perceived debt, she accompanied him back to his barn.
He walked on ahead of her, listening to the sound of her uneven footsteps in the gravel behind him. Then he turned, and she stopped, shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket, her cheeks turning pink. She was holding back a smile as best she could, and the fact that she had to fight a smile instead of a scowl in his presence did something to his chest.
“What?” she asked.
He lifted a shoulder. “Nothing.”
“Then why are you looking at me?” The smile tugged even harder at her lips, the motion pulling at the scar tissue at the corner of her eye. He frowned. And that immediately extinguished her grin.
Dammit.
“Because you’re beautiful,” he answered, a beat too late.
“Right. That’s why your expression contorted with horror for a second there.”
“It didn’t.”
“Yes it did. I know when I smile it makes the scars look worse.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “You know that has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with how they make you look. But how am I supposed to feel about them? It’s kind of a helluva thing. They don’t bother me in an aesthetic sense. But it bothers me that I did this to you.”
“You see the accident when you look at me.”
He nodded, pressing his palm against the side of the barn. “Can you honestly say you don’t see it when you look at me?”
“It’s getting a little bit more complicated than that. Yes, I think of the accident. I think of everything