Page 5 of Merry with a Ranger

BONNIE

Nash Mercer hadn’t changed at all. I mean, he’d grown a bit bulkier, added on about three tons of muscle, and there were more tattoos peeking out from his rolled up shirt sleeves and from his collar than when I left him more unmarked back in high school in our senior year. But other than that? He was still the same Texas boy with the sharp eyes who missed nothing and saw enough to land me in a whole lot of trouble.

Which was probably why it was a really good idea to turn tail and run as far away from him as I could right now.

I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t running, like I did back on the beach. But right now, I didn’t want to run. The last time I left Nash Mercer, I regretted it for the next few years until that, like all my other memories, numbed with time.

Or maybe I lied to myself, and nothing really numbed at all.

Not missing prom with the boy I hoped I might marry one day, have the whole picket fence, and all. Except in our world it was more likely a mansion than a picket fence. Or it was supposed to be. Two rich kids, neither of us from the wrongside of the track, who fell in love one summer and never got our happily ever after.

Maybe that’s why it didn’t work. Back then we had everything going for us. Before the world knew who his family was, and before my life…disintegrated.

One night, and everything changed. A simple dream of attending college together, getting married and living a stress-free life. What a joke. Nothing was stress free, but then kids think that way. At least, some do, for a short time. My over-entitled childhood was stripped away alongside my happy dreams that left me as cold and lifeless as the dim, ground floor resort corridor I traversed before Nash caught me up.

He walked along behind me for two floors, neither of us speaking. Ten years of non-history stood between us. I didn’t know who he’d become in that time, and I couldn’t tell him anything about myself. Whatever I said tonight would be a lie on top of more lies.

My eyes closed briefly as his fingers grazed my elbow, the flat of his blade still slightly sticky with the dragon fruit’s pale pips from the sweet slice he offered me before.

And I took it straight from the knife that he slid between my lips, eating it with my eyes locked on him.This boy makes me as mad for him as I was back then.Before everything shattered. Our dreams, my sanity. My…everything.

But Nash Mercer wasn’t a boy anymore. Hadn’t been one for a long time, by the looks of him.

He flashed me a sideways glance without a smile, eyes dark, his face cast in sharp relief beneath the resort’s bright overhead lighting that left him half brightly lit, the other half of him lost in shadows of his own making.

I was wrong. He had changed. I didn’t know him anymore than I knew myself.

“What’s Little Bonnie drinking tonight?”

He held the door to the bar for me, taking us from the bright white and blue downstairs halls to the darker lit, wooden based interior of the dining and bar area. I studied the giant Christmas tree—a real one, not plastic—trimmed within an inch of its life with crystalline snowflakes, hand painted, glittery baubles and perfectly tied burgundy velvet bows, lit from within with tiny, muted lights.

They glow on a strange frequency, not quite on and off, more a three on, one off, two on…it was an odd pattern. I stood beside him in the doorway, transfixed as I try to figure it out.

“I can see your brain working, love,” Nash’s low voice brushed my ear as he tucked my hair back. Rough knuckles grazed my skin, eliciting a shiver I wanted to hide from him.Dangerous. My mind screamed at me, but it was too late. I tried to twist away, but my feet rooted to the spot as his heat enveloped me, the door closing gently at our backs. “It’s always been one of my favorite parts of you.”

I forgot what he was talking about, and took a moment too long to catch up as he folded his body around mine like he was always supposed to be there. “Not that I ever got to use it.” I clamped my mouth shut. “Sorry, that was stupid.”

“Nothing about you is stupid.” The hand that touched me glided lower to settle at the small of my back. “Drink?” That he ignored my faux pas and didn’t ask questions was a relief. Like we’d fallen back into old patterns.

I closed my eyes and let him propel me gently to the bar.This is Nash. I can trust him.But also, this wasNash.I couldn’t trust him because of who he was. Where he comes from.

Home.

I never got over leaving Texas. I’d also never been back. My last request that night was to push the driver to go back past the school, past the kids all gathered out the front for prom. My first mistake. My last, there. Because Nash stood apart fromeveryone, his brow furrowed, phone in his hand. Mine would have been pinging, back at home, but I wasn’t that girl anymore, and she couldn’t answer him.

His face raised, worry written all over the youth in him that died that day.

And some other part of me that I managed to salvage, that I held on to tight…that part died that night with him, too.

“What are you having, ma’am?” the bartender asked politely in that sort of tone that said it wasn’t the first time he’d asked.

Nash’s fingers flexed my back, and his sharp, indrawn breath said he was about to rescue me with an order he pulled out of his ass, as always. But I had my big girl panties on tonight, and I could save myself.

“Um, that one. Please.” I poked blindly at a drink name I didn’t recognize, and pasted a fake smile on my face.

My big girl panties were a silky white thong that matched the dress, and they were slipping.

“Doing good,” Nash muttered under his breath, rubbing my lower back in a way that drew shocks along my spine. Literally no one had touched me that way, not since…

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