Cowboy Up (Coming Home #3)

“I’m not havin’ this argument with you, and there isn’t anything in the world that would get me to chase after that man.”

I mean it, too. There isn’t a damn thing the universe could throw at me that’d make me brave enough to go after a man like Clayton Davis. He’s the epitome of perfection. Pair his good looks with just how well I know he can use everything he was blessed with, and you have the whole package—the whole package that a woman like me just doesn’t know how to handle without looking like a fool.

He’s been inside of me, for Pete’s sake! I don’t even think I could look him in the eye now. I can just see it, me staring up into those dark green eyes with drool dripping down my chin. There’s no way I could hold a conversation with him in the light of day after I’ve had the part of him that makes my heart skip a beat just thinking about it touching the deepest parts of me.

I shift, my thoughts conjuring a throbbing between my legs. Lucy tries to get my attention again, but I ignore her, fighting the urge to grab my phone and google “how to move to the moon.”

She pokes me in the ribs for the second time, and I finally pull my attention off the floor to look at her, ready to tell her to shut up if she starts on me again, but the words die on my lips when I see the expression on her face as she looks at something just over my right shoulder.

I pray my gut is wrong. That she just saw a spider or something. But I know there isn’t anything my cheerful friend would look at like that except for the very person I feared would jump at the chance to confront me if she recognized me here today.

“Caroline?”

Well, damn. So much for Lucy’s theory that luck was on my side today.

I close my eyes and try to prepare myself for seeing my mama for the first time since I was eighteen years old and running away. I haven’t heard that voice in almost five years either. Not since the last time I called the same telephone number that I learned in kindergarten and begged for the woman who should’ve loved me enough to save me, to help. She hadn’t called me Caroline then though, no, she had a new name for me by the time I had been broken enough to make that call. A whore. That’s what I became to her.

My chin wobbles and my watery eyes shift away from Lucy’s shocked face toward the open barn door, which taunts me with the promise of a quick exit. There’s no question of staying or running now. Staying in here, away from the chance of running into Clay, means facing the woman who played a huge part in the nightmare I lived for years. Seeing her would bring back all the pain I had been healing from. Staying would be painful and I’m just not strong enough to deal with it. But going . . . going would bring me to the person that I’ve been dreaming of for weeks.

I would take Clayton Davis and door number one any day—even though that option scares me in a whole different way than the confrontation I’m escaping does. I never want to go back down the road the woman behind me represents again.

“Go,” Lucy mouths, reading my mind. I nod and see her face soften with love before I run out of the barn. My legs pump furiously as I sprint toward the huge house in the distance and the safety I feel with each measured step away from the party calms me.

I keep churning my legs, my heart thundering as I cry silently for the girl who needed that woman so badly, blinking as the tears threaten to spill over.

When I come to the end of the rows of trucks and cars parked between the barn and the house, I suck in a painful burst of air when I realize I somehow completely missed a huge animal, which seems to have come out of nowhere. I slam into the horse with a painful jolt, my butt hitting the ground a moment later and my elbows digging painfully into the gravel a beat after that. The tears finally come and I make an embarrassing sound between a gasp and a wheeze as a sob bubbles free.

Some gravel hits my bare legs when the man atop the horse that almost killed me jumps down. The water blurring my vision makes the sun look even brighter as he reaches my side. I look to my lap and push up to my elbows with a grunt of pain, avoiding looking at the man who witnessed my humiliation, but I don’t need a visual to confirm just who is cursing low under his breath. I know from the awareness zipping across my skin alone who it is. How is it possible that, after only one night, my body is desperate for more of his touch?

Could this day be any more humiliating?

Probably not.

“You okay, sweetness?”

I squeeze my eyes closed at the endearment, curl my legs up, and press my forehead against my knees. I can’t handle that word coming from him right now. Not when I’m vulnerably raw. Not when I’ve been hearing it in my head for weeks and weeks accompanied by the memory of his harsh breaths against my skin as he emptied himself inside of me.

“Please, just go,” I beg, my tears coming even faster now.

“Caroline!”

At the sound of my mama’s shrill voice in the distance, I whimper and try to make myself disappear by tightening my arms around my legs.

“What the hell?” he mutters.

The fear of ghosts past clawing closer, I look up and hiccup a sob before opening my mouth. “Get me out of here.” I hold his worried eyes and beg him with everything in me to take me far away from here. Everything else that happened from the moment I slept with him up until the embarrassment I felt at coming face-to-face with him again vanishes.

It makes no sense logically, but once those frantic words leave my lips, I know he is the one person who can banish this feeling of uncontrollable desperation. I could rush back to Lucy and have her take me away from my mother instantly, but just looking into his worried eyes, I can feel the balm of calm that his nearness brings within me. I felt it during that night in the dark, and I feel it now—something inside me begging for him. He should be the last person I plead with to save me right now, but the second the words left my mouth, I felt with no doubt that he was the only one.