Page 50 of My Cowboy Temptation

I look up. “Thank you for being there. I-I was so scared—” Whatever else I was going to say gets cut off by a sob that tries to rip from my throat. Instead, I swallow it and try to get control of myself and the tears threatening to fall.

He settles his hand on my arm and tilts his head down to mine. “Hey. You’re okay. You’re going to be okay. I promise.”

“How did you even know?”

“I just reached the door and was going to call up when I heard voices.” He shakes his head. “When I saw that bastard holding you like that, I saw red and…charged. Did he say anything to you?”

“Just that he was using me to send a message to you and my dad. That you’d know who it was from.”

He studies me, and I can feel his anger and worry, probably thinking about what could have happened. Breaking eye contact, I look at his stomach again and inspect the cut that’s a little over an inch long. “The bleeding has stopped. It looks clean. I’m going to bandage it, but you should check it frequently to make sure there’s no infection,” I say, grabbing the box of gauze from the first aid kit and some tape.

My fingers smooth the tape over his skin, and for a moment, I let them linger, enjoying the feeling of his warmth against me. I look up and see that he’s barely breathing as he watches.

“Sorry,” I say abruptly and pull my hand away.

“Cal. Tell me,” he says softly. “Why did you come back? Pregnant or not, you could have stayed in London. Could have stayed with your mom and kept working. Why come back to Montana?”

I turn away and focus on cleaning up. “Because this is home. This is where I belong.”

“If you hadn’t been pregnant, would you have returned?”

I consider this. Even before I discovered I was pregnant, I was pretty miserable. And not just because my new boss was an ogre. I missed Montana, I missed my dad and my friend, but mostly, I missed Brody.

Brody is, and has always been, home to me.

But there’s no way I can admit that I returned to Montana for him. Instead, I say, “Yeah. I would have returned home, although I might have tried to stick it out a little longer, just out of principle. But finding out I was pregnant made me see things a bit more clearly. Made me see what I really want. And what I want is to be here. This is home.”

His eyes are dark with emotion as he continues to stare at me, and when he speaks, it’s barely above a whisper. “But what about your dreams? You always wanted to travel and be this big internationally renowned artist.”

I smile sadly. “I also used to dream about being a Dallas Cowgirl Cheerleader and marrying Harry Styles. Those were just childhood dreams, Brody. They’re not my dreams anymore.”

“And now? What are your dreams?”

“Being in a place I love. Doing the things I love. Surrounded by the people I love. Pretty much everything I have right now.” Except for having the love of the person I love most, of course.

He swallows as he drops his gaze momentarily from mine. “All this time, I thought you wanted bigger and better things, things you could never have here in Montana. I figured that you would wake up one day trapped and wishing you’d made another choice. Like your mom did.”

A sudden fury overtakes me as I shove him. “I’m nothing like my mother, Brody. Nothing. I would never abandon my child or that man that I claimed to love. Ever.”

Yes, I’ve made some strides in my relationship with my mom in the past few years. I don’t hate her with the passion I once did. I’ve accepted her limitations and created a different relationship with her, one that’s more surface-level affection and friendship, something she seems okay with. For me, the wound from her abandonment is too deep for me to be fully over.

So to have Brody compare me to her wounds me more than I would expect.

For his part, he seems uncomfortable, contrite even, as his brown eyes search mine. “Of course you’d never leave your kid. I didn’t mean it like that. I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.” He sighs, and his voice gets low and soft. “I guess it’s just that-that I have nothing to offer you, Cal. Nothing close to what you deserve.”

How could he ever think that he doesn’t deserve me? That he has nothing to offer me? It both infuriates and hurts my heart, and I push against him, ignoring the fact that he barely budges. “I love you, you asshole. You have always been enough for me.” I shove him again when he doesn’t respond. “You’re the only thing I’ve ever truly wanted. I would give anything to live in that beautiful farmhouse with you, raise a family with you, spend my days painting masterpieces and my nights making love to you. Maybe that wasn’t always my dream, but it’s the only dream I have now.”

He takes a step closer, but I’m not ready for him to be so close as I hold my hands in fists at my side. “But if I’m really as much a spoiled brat as you think I am, you probably shouldn’t want to be with me. I’m awful, terrible, and—”

This time when I try to shove him, he grabs my hands and holds them firmly. “Cal. You’re right. I was an asshole. But look at us. I’m an old man compared to you, and it’s sometimes hard to wrap my head around the possibility that someone as beautiful and wonderful as you could be happy with someone like me.”

He’s quiet as I try to control my breathing, somewhat soothed by his admission, but still sad that he doesn’t see how wonderful he is. He slips a hand from mine and raises it to my face where he brushes back some hair that’s fallen forward. “I only have one dream these days, Cal,” he says, almost in a whisper. “And it begins and ends with you.”

And now I’m pissed off again. Because with one sentence, he’s eliminated my previous much-deserved fury, leaving me only to blink back tears at the beauty of his words.

Before I can say as much, he pulls me hard against him, his mouth coming down to crush mine. And despite the array of emotions that I’ve experienced the past few minutes, I can’t deny how fucking turned on I am too and how I need this, need the feeling of his body pressed against mine, his heart so close I can feel it beating.

And that I’m still as much in love with him now as I was before.

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