Page 50 of Montana Freedom

The man had put a gun to Noah’s head and promised vengeance on all of us and the ranch. That threat wasn’t something we could ignore.

But was the whole situation enough to stop me from being happy? When I reframed the question in my mind, it sounded a lot simpler than I’d been making it. Jude didn’t think my objections held weight, and when I allowed myself to see the whole picture, I didn’t either.

It was true that Emma was younger than me. That fact wasn’t something I could ignore. But she’d also gone through more shit in her life than people double her age. For me to negate her ability to make choices about what she wanted wasn’t okay.

We both wanted each other, and it was clear everyone at family dinner had seen the tension that always seemed to float in the air between us. Fuck.

I stood and retrieved my shirt before jogging back through the lodge to my truck. The shift in me was clear. I wasn’t completely sold, but I saw where the path was heading, and working myself to death in the gym wasn’t going to help.

But I hoped a shower would, so I drove back to my house.

* * *

The shower helped, and yet it didn’t. Now I was pacing back and forth in my house. A house I’d made smaller than those of the others who lived on the property on purpose. Because I knew I was always going to be alone here. I never intended to have anyone else live in it, and looking around, that was brutally apparent.

Jude’s words and my own resolved thoughts were banging around in my head. I knew if I didn’t take the advice he’d given, I would regret it. Furthermore, itwashypocritical of me to dole out advice and then not listen when it was aimed in my direction.

All the worries I had were still there, but being in my house alone was slowly eating away at me. Everything I’d been avoiding for years was now starkly visible. The biggest truth being that family dinners took the edge off the loneliness I felt, but they weren’t enough.

The one final hurdle was Emma’s place here. If I went to her now, was I taking advantage of her? She didn’t have anywhere else to go. If I did this—

I stopped my pacing just as I halted the negative line of thinking in my head. If I did this with Emma and she changed her mind, I would help her go anywhere she wanted. I would step back and make sure she was happy and protected.

But the truth was, she’d been on my mind a lot longer than my catching her in the parking lot. Maybe this was always meant to happen, and maybe it wasn’t. But something had to change, and it looked like that thing had to be me.

Would the world end if I allowed myself some happiness?

No.

No, it wouldn’t.

I blew out a breath and grabbed my keys.

Who was I kidding? This decision had been made a long time ago, and I’d been holding back out of some misplaced sense of martyrdom and out of protection for Emma. I would protect her from the people who wanted to hurt her. But I would also protect her ability to choose what she wanted. She’d made it abundantly clear she wanted me.

I didn’t know how to do this anymore, and I needed to tell her before we fell into bed together. But I was done resisting. At this point, the only person I was hurting was myself.

The lights in her cabin were on.

I climbed the steps, and I didn’t even knock on the door before she opened it. She was standing in front of me, dressed in what looked like pajamas. Clothes that were small, exposing skin, and something I would have tried to look away from before. I didn’t now.

It was a relief to let myself look at her as the woman she was and not merely someone I was trying to protect. Every perfect inch of her, and the desire I’d been pressing into the deepest parts of myself came racing forward.

And when I met her gaze, I didn’t see a woman looking at a broken man. All I saw was desire.

She knew.

Reaching out, she grabbed my shirt and pulled me inside.

Chapter17

Emma

Daniel’s mouth came down on mine before the door was even closed behind him, and ohgod, it was like those moments in Seattle before he’d pulled away. He was entirely focused on me, arms coming hard around me and holding me to him like I was the only thing on earth that mattered.

Now that he’d made the decision, it was final. I felt it in the way his hands moved and the way he traced my lips with his tongue. My body was on fire, stomach all aflutter with nerves.

“You thought about it.” It wasn’t a question.

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