“Um, yeah. She thought I’d be back by now, I guess. She never did much like this place.” Or believe he could handle anything. Because you haven’t.
That tension in her shoulders drew tighter, till she looked like a stick that had taken too many slap shots and was about to break. “Your mother lived here?”
“Well, yeah. She got out as soon as she could, from my understanding, but she grew up right here.” He gestured toward the house, not quite sure why they were talking about his mother’s past.
She still didn’t turn to look at him, didn’t stop fiddling with the toolbox. Acting like she was supremely busy when it was obvious she was anything but.
“How, um, how old is she?”
“Mom? Um, fifty…eight. Why?”
Mel shook her head. “I don’t know. Let’s—”
“Oh, you think maybe she knew your family? Like, your dad?” Funny, he hadn’t really considered his family knowing Mel’s, though it would make sense if hers had been around forever and so had the Paulle side of his.
“No, I, my dad is only fifty-two, they wouldn’t have—”
“Your mom?” Shit, he was an idiot. There was a reason she was all tense now, and it started and ended with a mother’s phone call. Something she’d probably never had.
“No.” Mel was staring hard at the mountains, and Dan wanted nothing more than to reverse time and never tell her who had called. “My mother wasn’t from here.”
“I bet your dad knew my—”
She turned abruptly. “It doesn’t matter. I think we should get to work on the stables. The sooner we get all this done, the sooner you can actually grow your herd…or whatever groups of llamas are called.”
“You need to eat something first.”
“I’ve done a lot of work without breakfast, Sharpe.”
“Okay, fine, I need breakfast.” Her calling him by his last name made a matching tension creep into his shoulders. But he didn’t have Mel’s control, and he’d be damned if he wanted to. “If you want to piss me off some more, keep calling me Sharpe.” His irritation, anger, whatever it was—it was a lot more familiar than the feeling of her underneath him, looking at him like he had some kind of answer. He might not understand what it stemmed from, the way she blocked him out, walked away, erected this maze he didn’t understand. He might not understand how she—or anyone—could just lock those feelings down and away. But…
Hell, he didn’t know. He didn’t know a damn thing, and since she was supposed to be the one teaching him what to do, maybe he’d just follow her lead.
Chapter 14
Mel was still staring at the hammer in her toolbox when Dan’s front door slammed. She wanted to feel angry, but how could she? She’d been…
Hot and cold. Curt for no reason. Unnecessarily bitchy. She didn’t mind being bitchy as a rule, but it was the unnecessary part that had guilt lurching in her stomach along with…
Pain. A pain she thought had been buried deep enough it wouldn’t get churned up against her will. Listening to Dan talk to his mother, her obvious worry over him, that was painful.
She didn’t want that ache, and she refused to accept that it was about her mother. It wasn’t just that. It was anyone caring about anyone. She was human for wanting someone to care about her, even if she knew the care was a big old pile of horse crap.
Something hot and painful lodged in her throat as she remembered the feel of Dan’s finger wrapping around a strand of her hair. She’d had her back to him, but she’d felt the touch, felt the words as if they were a touch. I thought I was going to make you breakfast.
Like he wanted to. Like he wanted to do something for her.
But there were other words that had dug in, and not just his mother, a staticky female voice in his ear.
I told you it was for the summer.
She didn’t like the way him saying being here was temporary had hit her hard. Like a horse kicking her right in the chest. Even though she knew he wasn’t sticking around; she’d told him he wasn’t sticking around.
He could build this llama ranch or whatever crazy scheme, but he was still going back to hockey, and if he ever came back here on some permanent basis, well, it’d be years and years from now, when he had nothing else in his life to give.
But she’d felt a little pang, and that was not good at all. Completely not his fault though, so she should probably stop being a jerk to him about it.
She forced herself onto the porch, tried to find apologetic words to say to him, except fear kept her rooted in front of the door, not walking inside.
While she could recognize the feeling of fear, identify it, she was having a harder time figuring out the reason for it. What was she afraid of? All she could work out was that she was afraid of the way he made her feel.
Which was so stupid it actually irritated her. What did it matter how he made her feel? She wasn’t under any illusion he was going to stay, so she wouldn’t be brokenhearted when he left. She didn’t want or need anything more from him than some super-great sex and the occasional not-suffocating company.