on his own horse, taking off after her. She went a different way, taking a wide-open field that led the roundabout way back toward his property.
By the time he made his way back to the barn, she had dismounted and was leading the horse to a trough. He got off his own, tethering her to the side of the barn before following Rebecca over to the end of the barn, near the fence.
He grabbed hold of her arm, and she spluttered, then he pressed her back up against the roughhewn wooden slats, curving his hands around the top rail on either side of her. “Don’t run away from me.”
“Gage,” she said, and he realized how long it had been since she had said his name.
She was begging him for something, with that one word, but he wasn’t sure what. To kiss her again, to leave her alone. So he figured he would take the option that he liked best.
He wrapped his arms around her waist, reversing their positions so that he was sitting down on top of the fence now, pulling her up against him, trapping her between his thighs.
He pressed his mouth to hers, keeping it simple, keeping it straightforward. He didn’t taste her the way that he wanted to, didn’t part her lips and invade her mouth. Instead, he kept it cool, dry, let her set the pace.
She turned her head, pulling away when he had hoped she would deepen it.
“Thank you,” she said, her words a rushed whisper.
“There,” he said, “that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“Nothing about you is. I keep hoping that you’ll confirm my fears at some point and reveal yourself to be a monster.” She lifted her hand, tracing the groove by his mouth. “Instead, you keep on being something else entirely. Something that keeps on surprising me.”
“What’s that?”
“A man. A man that I want.”
“Well, at least that’s not as scary as a monster.”
She shook her head. “Scarier.”
“Why is that?”
She lifted a shoulder, the sun breaking through the clouds, casting a halo around her hair. “Because, as long as you’re a monster then all of my hiding away was for a good reason.” She let her fingertips drift down to the center of his chest. “But I guess you were what I was hiding from all this time.”
He knew that she didn’t mean him. Not specifically. He hadn’t been around for her to hide from. But he suspected that she meant this. Attraction. Relationships. There was a reason that she hadn’t been with anyone, and he didn’t think it was really because of her scars. At least, not her outward scars.
“I’m pretty scary,” he said, to avoid taking the conversation into deeper territory. “I don’t blame you for hiding from me one bit.”
He rocked his hips forward, letting her feel the evidence of how much he wanted her.
“Gage,” she said, “I don’t have time. I have to go to work.”
“Fair enough. But are you going to come over after work?”
He didn’t know quite what he was doing. Quite what they were doing.
“Yes,” she said, ducking her head.
“Good,” he said, grabbing hold of her chin with his thumb and forefinger and tilting her face back up so he could steal another kiss. “I’ll make you dinner.”
She blinked rapidly. “You don’t have to do that.”
“You’ll be hungry. And I want to.”
She chewed her bottom lip, and he could see that it was giving her serious issues. That she couldn’t decide whether or not it was okay for him to cook for her, or if that would be unbalancing their scales even more, as she saw it.
“Stop keeping score,” he said, his tone stern.
“I don’t know how.”
“It’s easy. Stop keeping track.”
The edict was as much for himself as it was for her. Maybe, while he was here getting all of the stuff with his family sorted out, he could have this too. Maybe, he could leave town with everything fixed for Rebecca and in the meantime... There could be this.
“Dinner will be on at six. Don’t be late or I’ll eat it all.”
“I should help you with the horses.”
He shook his head. “You have to go. So go.”
He could see that she was relieved to get some distance between them, and that was the main reason she didn’t argue about getting out of taking care of the horses’ tack.
He watched her turn to leave, watched the gentle sway of her hips and the glossy shimmer of her hair as she shook her head. She was doing something