and on into the evening. He didn’t know why he couldn’t let the thing with Sammy go. She seemed to be ready to do just that, and that meant that he needed to do it, as well. But he found the whole thing difficult.
You’re not her parent, though.
He was well aware of that. Nothing he felt for her was parental or brotherly or anything of the kind. It was something he’d never particularly liked. Something that he knew would be a violation of her trust in him. And so he’d done a really good job of keeping it pushed down all this time, but he was failing now more and more.
He gritted his teeth and returned to the task at hand—which was mucking stalls, an evening chore that he never minded.
It had been a long day moving the cows from one pasture to another, and in general dealing with cantankerous animals. It was nice to be back at the barn dealing only with the horses.
He pitched out the last of the foul shavings and took his wheelbarrow out of the stall, heading toward the back of the barn where he would find fresh bedding for the animals. And that was when he saw Sammy, lingering in the doorway, staring at him curiously.
In one of her typical Sammy outfits, she had on a long skirt that the backlight from the barn door lit up, letting him see the exact shape of her legs beneath the diaphanous fabric. Her blond hair was down around her shoulders, a pale cloud, and the golden glow cast around her hair could easily be confused for a halo if he didn’t know her quite so well.
She was his sunshine, yes, but his angel, never.
Because she was something a lot more grounded than that. A wood nymph or an equally ridiculous creature that he would never normally think of, except Sammy put his mind in places that he would never choose for it to go. She made him think of things, want things that were crazy and impossible, and she seemed to put a whole new vocabulary inside his head on top of that.
“Hi,” she said, clasping her hands in front of her and twisting them, the bangles on her wrists jingling slightly.
She looked...demure, and he didn’t trust it, because that wasn’t her. Not at all.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting ready to go out,” she said.
And there was something in that that he didn’t trust at all.
“You’re getting ready to go out?”
“Yes.”
“All right. And what aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing.”
“Sammy...”
“I told you I wasn’t going to involve you in this anymore, and I’m not.”
She whirled around and he reached out and caught her arm, drawing her back toward him. Where he made contact with her skin felt like it was fire, and he couldn’t tell if that was because he had finally touched the sun, or if it was because he was next to the door of hell.
“Be straight with me,” he said.
“I think we decided that wasn’t the best idea.”
She was going to go out and find a man. She was going to do that. After everything. After she had asked him to be the father of her baby. After he had fired back with his ultimatum. After all that. He couldn’t believe the gall of her. The nerve. And suddenly he didn’t much care if it was wrong to grab hold of the sun. Because it felt like an invisible barrier had come down between them over the past few days. She had brought him into this.
Yes, he’d offered to help her find someone, and yes, it had been self-serving in some ways. But then she had asked him. She had asked him, and it had thrown his mind down a path he had done his very best to keep it away from for all these years. She had admitted to him that no man had ever given her an orgasm and that had put something else right underneath his skin. And she had taken those two things and she had...
He hadn’t wanted it. He hadn’t asked for it. But she’d done it all the same.
Sammy.
His reckless, brilliant Sammy, who was going out to give all that light to someone else. To get pregnant with their baby. To have sex that wouldn’t even make her feel a damn thing.
What kind of protector would he be if he allowed that?
All the rules that he made for himself, all the rules he made for her, starting when he was