“I should head back to the ranch.” I stood up, resting my hands on my hips as I worried my bottom lip. “I just wanted to come out and get that off my chest.”
Rebecca floated toward me, arms wide open, and wrapped me up in the kind of loving embrace I hardly deserved; the kind that flooded me in head to toe warmth and made my eyes wet with happiness.
“Love you,” she said, burying her head on my shoulder the way an older sister might. “I’m always here for you. Know that. And please come around more. We want you in our lives – in her life.”
“I will.” And that time, I meant it.
I soared through the canopy of magnolia trees that led up the Mason Ranch driveway, coming to a slow stop when I reached the top. Beau’s truck rested up on ramps with the hood popped, and the second I climbed out of the car, he emerged from beneath.
Shirtless and wearing the kind of smile that made me think Oh Shit, he sauntered up to me. His body glistened as his muscles subtly shifted beneath his tight, smooth skin.
“Enjoy your time in town?”
“I did.”
He grabbed a dirty rag from the side of the engine and wiped his greasy hands. “About done here. I’ll head inside to clean up. I’ve got a little something planned for this evening.”
My lips pulled into a closed-mouth smile. There he went again, trying to force another date upon me – not that I entirely minded. “What might that be?”
He squinted, showing off a hint of baby wrinkles flanking the corner of his gorgeous blue eyes. His teenage baby face had long since faded, and while Beau had been a head-turning homecoming king type in his younger years, it was safe to say he’d morphed into a panty-melting, won’t-take-no-for-an-answer grown ass man with a swagger in his step that meant business.
“I’ll meet you back out here about dusk,” Beau said, grabbing a silver wrench that lay in the nearby grass and heading back toward his truck. He flashed me a dimpled grin that flooded my chest with thunderous heartbeats.
Each step I took toward the house was like walking into a web of sticky emotions. I felt them. Everywhere. In me and outside of me. In my hair. On my skin. Tangled and caught, it was only a matter of time before they’d have their way with me. My head was already filling with frilly little thoughts and my heart was already galloping as I formed a schoolgirl crush on Beau all over again.
Beau Mason – the boy who’d obliterated my tender heart. The boy who’d sent me into a tailspin of hasty decisions, desperate for an escape from anything and everything that remotely reminded me our time together.
I laughed at the fact that after everything I’d done to rid myself of his affliction, I’d ended up right back where it all began. Climbing the stairs in the house and running my hands along the rustic railing, I shook my head.
Fool me once, Beau…
Fool me twice…
Chapter Twenty-Three
I slammed the hood down on the truck and backed off the ramps before heading inside to wash up. The faint trail of Dakota’s voice echoed from upstairs, though it sounded like she was on a work call.
Always working, that girl.
She’d been that way since we were young, getting a job as a printing assistant at the local newspaper at fifteen. By the time she was a junior in high school, she’d moved up to some position where they let her assemble the want ad section.
I stepped into the shower, my head filled with all kinds of naughty thoughts as I replayed the night before with a big old stupid grin on my face. Loving Dakota was the easiest thing I’d ever done, and making love to her was the most natural thing in the world.
With my name in lights and a new city to sleep in night after night, there was never a shortage of pretty girls offering to keep me warm at night. In the earlier days, the attention was nice. But it all got old quick. And then I met Daisy.
“No one’s ever going to love you the way I do, Beau,” Daisy’d said with tears in her eyes the night I ended our engagement. “I don’t know who you’re all caught up with, but no one on God’s green earth’s dumb enough to love a man with a heart as black as yours. No one except me.” I sat back like some jerk, watching silently as she stuffed clothes into a suitcase and berated herself out loud for ever falling for me in the first place.
I spent the first half of my twenties keeping my options open and trying to fuck Dakota out of my system. I’d figured leaving her hurt me more than it hurt her. She was a resilient little spitfire who’d be snatched up by some pretty little college boy soon enough, I told myself.
The first time I fucked a woman who wasn’t Dakota, the promises we’d made to each other that summer under the stars played so loud in my head I’d almost lost my hard on. I’d never forget the raven-haired girl that bounced on my cock and screamed my name with tears streaming down her face as I made her little dreams come true. To have that kind of power over someone at such a young age was a pivotal moment for me, and just being a simple farm boy from small town Kentucky, I wasn’t equipped to deal with that kind of influence in the most mature of ways.
Still, as the black-haired beauty rode me to oblivion, I died a little on the inside. And when it was all over with, I took a shot of fine Kentucky bourbon to numb the guilt and passed out cold.
It got easier the second time.
And the third.
All the fame and money in the world had been dumped into my lap the second Dakota left for school. I never planned for any of it, and I certainly never planned for the way it ended up turning me into a self-seeking, twenty-year-old bastard who crushed those promises he made to a sweet-faced girl like bones to dust.
The prick I’d become had never stopped loving her, but he sure as fuck didn’t deserve her. And for that reason, I stayed the hell away from her.
By the time I got all cleaned up and headed back outside, Dakota was waiting for me, leaning against New Old Blue with one knee bent and her foot resting against the white-walled tire.
“Hop in, pretty lady,” I drawled, pulling out the keys from my jeans pocket.
“Going to tell me where you’re taking me?” she asked, batting her lashes as she buckled her seatbelt a minute later.
“You’ll see soon enough.” I shifted the truck as we rounded the corner and pulled down a paved road that led to The Overlook.
A quaint cul-de-sac filled with McMansions, it wasn’t nearly as picturesque as it was when it was a secluded mess of timber and privacy, but it still had our stamp all over it.
“The Overlook,” Dakota said, the corner of her mouth pulling up as if she were replaying the many nights we’d slow danced in front of the headlights of my truck. “Look at all these houses. It’s too bad.”