The Cowboy Who Saved Christmas - Jodi Thomas Page 0,58

setting to work on King, the regal, nine-year-old stallion that had adopted me when I first got to the Mason Ranch.

Her hands slowed, pausing for a couple of beats before they jumped back to the task. A telltale sign that I’d struck a nerve. Or perhaps a vein of truth.

We worked like that in silence, listening to the rustle of the rough blankets and the howl of the wind around the old stable. Only when the animals were dried and draped with fresh blankets and had been given some oats did she speak again, not looking up.

“You destroyed me, Ben,” she said softly.

It didn’t escape me that she’d called me Ben, but the pain still evident in her tone cut me to the core.

“I know,” I said. “You destroyed me, too.”

She turned to look at me then, and I could tell she’d never considered that. I watched the thoughts play over her face.

“You assumed the worst of me and left. Forever.”

A shaky breath left her chest. “I did,” she breathed. “I’m sorry.”

I nodded. “Me too.”

Chapter 10

1904

Josie

We were sitting on the big stone hearth, stripped down to our underthings and wrapped in blankets, fire almost licking at our backs, as Lila fussed around Ben and me, and Malcolm came in with two steaming mugs of his spiced tea concoction.

Yes, I called him Ben. After what we’d just done out there . . . it seemed frighteningly fitting. My God, I couldn’t believe I’d done such a thing. Out in the wide open, humping a man’s crotch while he sucked my nipple until I came apart? Against a tree. In a rainstorm. Let’s forget for two seconds that the man was Benjamin Mason, the man who’d shattered me into a million pieces five years ago.

Who does that?

Me evidently.

You destroyed me, too. You assumed the worst of me and left.

His words stabbed into me like a hot poker.

Lila’s eyes kept meeting mine knowingly, and I couldn’t quite read her thoughts. I’m sure I looked a mess, but we were out in a storm, after all. Maybe it wasn’t my physical appearance. Maybe I just reeked of animalistic orgasm.

God, I wanted to jump into that fire.

I hadn’t been able to stop myself. Every bit of logic that poked at me when it came to Benjamin Mason went zipping off into the raindrops and the driving wind when he got that close, and when he kissed me—I was done for.

Maybe I need you.

Yes. Truly done for. Nothing on this earth tasted as good as him on my tongue. His mouth. His skin. His smell. The feel of his hands on my body as he touched me. Rough and tender. Sweet and scorching. Two people so desperate to memorize every inch of the other that we couldn’t get enough. Because yes, I was just as needy.

I couldn’t look him in the eye now, and maybe that was what Lila was picking up on. What he’d said in the stable—about things feeling right for the first time in so long—it was exactly what I’d been thinking.

And what I couldn’t afford.

But more than that, my heart hurt. What he’d also said—that I’d hurt him, too—my God, I’d never even thought about that. That I’d never given him the benefit of the doubt, I’d just taken it all at the hideous face value in front of me and bolted. Left him to deal with all that landed on him, without even a friend to lean on. Granted, I thought Winifred was that friend at the time, in my haze of anger, but still.

My anger was gone now. Talking to him the last couple of days, meeting his daughter—it helped. Either I was just older and less dramatic, or possibly just more open to listening after all this time, but I understood him better now. I could finally see past my own pain and wrap my head around the choices he’d had to make.

The sacrifices.

But could I chance risking my heart again with him? And with my family’s legacy? I didn’t know. I didn’t think so. I couldn’t afford to trust in that. In anything. But at what cost? Losing it all?

I chanced a sideways glance at him, taking in his messy, slightly damp hair that my fingers had twisted in. At the lines next to his eyes and the rough calluses on his hands where they wrapped around his mug. He wasn’t cut out to be the big boss. He was a worker at heart. Clearly more than just