As he dropped the towel and slid under the thin cover, cool sheets greeted his hot body, hot for reasons unexplained by the mild temperature in the room. He was flying at half-mast even knowing tonight wasn’t going to be that kind of night. Damn.
He’d left the light on for Mandy and was just contemplating getting up and going to find her, when the door pushed open. She stood there dressed in nothing but a pink oversized T-shirt. Those long, shapely, tanned legs made his mouth dry and his shaft harden. An image of her wrapping those legs around his waist as he took her up against the door flitted across his overactive mind.
Mandy stilled in the doorway and stared at a bare chest displaying abs that looked like they’d been fashioned from corrugated steel. He had the kind of chest seen in fitness magazines and women drooled over. Tight skin, brown nipples, and a thin line of dark hair trailing toward the blanket bunched at his waist. Staring back, he propped up on his elbow to rest his head on his hand. The movement caused well-defined muscles to ripple and the blanket to slide down to his hips. Dangerously low. Below his belly button low. He was totally nude under that threadbare blanket.
That was knowledge she could have done without, knowledge that formed a pool of moisture between her legs.
She felt light headed, no doubt the residual effect from the poor decision of too much champagne, though she’d sobered up fast enough after stepping into her grandfather’s house. Too many memories.
“Make yourself at home, Ty.”
The words snapped in the air with more crackle than she’d intended. Partially to dispel her physical reaction. Partially because she’d just been down the hall in her grandfather’s room—remembering.
She flicked the wall switch off, killing the light. In the gray darkness, she picked her way past their two suitcases and the foot of his bed, toward her own.
“You okay?” he asked.
She flipped back the chenille bedspread and backed onto the mattress so she faced the window, not Ty. The cool sheets sent a chill through her as a slightly stuffy smell greeted her nose, probably from bedding that hadn’t been used for a number of years. She’d found them in the linen closet after she’d won the battle of the beds. Now here she was spending the night in the room she’d shared with her brother when they had stayed over at their grandparents’ in her younger years, when their grandmother had still been alive.
“Yes,” she mumbled. Could he tell she’d been crying?
She hadn’t planned on stepping into JM’s bedroom, the place she had last seen her grandfather alive. But being in the house, she’d felt an almost morbid need to confront the emptiness of that room. So much had happened since his death, she hadn’t had much time to grieve. The will was part of the reason, the rodeo, Mitch and Ty, the other parts, and somehow all interconnected. Regardless, she hadn’t had space to be alone, to process JM’s death.
The ache in her heart started the moment she’d set foot inside JM’s room. It looked the same, like it was waiting for his return. The comb on the dresser, that special book on the bed stand, the corduroy slippers tucked beside his chair. Only the empty hospital-like bed suggested the truth.
During the last days of his life, she’d read to him from the pages of Anne of Green Gables. When she’d been young, he’d bought her the book and insisted she read it aloud to him in the evening so she could practice her reading. They’d laugh over Anne’s stubborn, feisty ways. JM had said he’d chosen the novel for her because Mandy had reminded him of Anne.
She’d kept the book, and as his condition deteriorated, she’d sit and read to him as he listened with his eyes closed, a smile on his frail face. She’d just reached the part where Matthew had died…and the next day, so had JM.
Tears burned the back of her eyes. Her throat constricted. Her chest labored to breathe. She scrunched her body in a tighter curl.
She’d never hear JM say her name again, never feel his warm hand on her shoulder, never see that twinkle in his eye. She’d never again talk with him or ask him the thousand questions she’d yet to think of about running PRC. She’d never again be able to tell him she loved him.
Or ask him why he had done this to her.
To hurt her? Her grandfather had never been cruel in his life.
To teach her a lesson? For the life of her she couldn’t understand what he wanted her to learn.
To break her spirit? Because that’s what it was doing.
This was her wedding night. And circumstances had made it one of the saddest nights among several in her young life.
She hadn’t meant to cry again. She hadn’t meant to sob. She hadn’t meant to feel sorry for herself. But she no longer had the fortitude to fight the loneliness and stubborn ache that continued to dog her since the funeral. She turned her face into the softness of the musty pillow and, with the escape of one muffled sob, she lost the struggle.
Ty heard the first garbled choke and prayed it wasn’t what he thought. But stifled as the sound was, he knew his prayer wasn’t going to be answered.
Mandy was crying.