The Cowboy Who Saved Christmas - Jodi Thomas Page 0,56
it borders on my property and your three cows might wander over, it does become my problem,” he bit back. “I’ll have my men over here in an hour.”
I curled my nails into my palms, relishing the burn.
“It’s more than three,” I muttered. “Did you miss the part about not being an insulting cad?”
“Yes, well, sometimes I fall short,” he growled, loosely tying both horses to low branches. Walking back to me, he grabbed my arm and pulled me under the tree before I could register that my feet were moving. “You’re soaked. Get out of the damn rain.”
I yanked my arm free, glaring up at him. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“You—” He blew out a breath and ran a hand over his face again. “God, you are so infuriating.” He stepped closer and I backed up the same distance. “You should have said something. To someone. Anyone. Let people help you.”
“I don’t have people, Benjamin,” I said, hating the hurt that worked its way into my voice at the admission. “I have Lila and Malcolm. That’s it. I had my father, and—” I swallowed hard. “And I had you. Both of you are gone now.”
I watched that land on him like a punch to the gut.
“I know what I did was horrid, Josie,” he said, his voice low, his words slow and measured, as if I might fly off and away at the wrong one. “I can’t say that any of my reactions that night five years ago were smart. I was floored.”
I scoffed. “You were floored?”
“Yes,” he said emphatically. “I was spinning out. Uncle Travis dying in front of me. Winifred appearing out of—nowhere. Pregnant.” He shook his head, looking off past me somewhere in the distance. “I thought I’d left that chapter of my life far behind me. Like in another state.”
“She had your ring on her finger, Benjamin,” I said, reminding him. “That’s not leaving things behind.”
“A ring I let her keep to ease the breakup—I thought,” he said. “She loved fancy things. I told you then that she wasn’t for me.” He stepped forward again, and I backed up, feeling the bark of the tree against my back. My breathing increased, and I cursed in my head. Not out of fear. Out of another response that I had no business having. “That never changed, Josie, not then and not later, but once she was carrying my child, I had no choice. Everything I wanted . . .” His eyes seared me, the gold flecks in them burning like little fires. “It had to wait,” he finished softly.
I closed my eyes. “You’re a good father, Benjamin.”
“Please stop calling me those things,” he said, the hoarseness in his voice and the proximity making my eyes flutter back open. My stomach flipped at the rawness in his. “I’m Ben to you.”
I shook my head, or it felt like I did. Maybe I didn’t move at all. I wasn’t even sure I was breathing.
“That was another lifetime.”
“Josie.”
“And you know damn well that it wasn’t just about Winifred,” I said hurriedly, my voice pitched oddly. Anything to break the gravity, the draw, the heavy pull that was sucking us down into that place where we used to get lost together. He was right there. Almost touching me as the wind ripped around us. I was on a precipice, about to fall. “That was just the icing on a very sour cake.”
“Because I didn’t tell you—”
“Because you lied,” I said. “There’s no pretty way to color that. And nothing has been pretty since.”
His brow furrowed. “Let me help you.”
I laughed, and his eyes dropped to my mouth, making every one of my nerve endings stand at attention and all things south begin to tingle. Stay focused.
“So selling myself to you is better than all the others?”
His eyes narrowed. “Now who is insulting who?”
“And yet—”
“I didn’t offer to buy you, Josie,” he said, so close I could feel the breath from his words. His chest met mine, and my body instantly arced to meet him, betraying me with the need for a man’s touch. It had been so long. “I’m saying let me help you.”
“I don’t need you,” I whispered, lying. Blatantly, flagrantly lying.
“Oh, I know,” he said, removing my hat and dropping it to the ground. “You’ve made that clear.”
I was tumbling down into an all-consuming fire as his mouth got closer, his eyes unblinking as they demanded I not look away.