Page 61 of The Lies We Told Ourselves

My gaze kept moving to the woman sleeping at my side, and no matter how hard I tried not to creep on Reece, I couldn’t help it.

I’d never been as terrified as I was yesterday. Not in all my life. Knowing that there was someone at the ranch and she was in danger had my instincts going into overdrive. I owed Cole a drink, or a horse, or something because I had no idea what I would have done if he hadn’t been there with her.

After she fell asleep last night, I slipped out of bed and made some calls. Xander was packing his stuff up before I’d even finished explaining what had happened. I didn’t even have to ask him to come and stay for a few days. He offered without hesitation. It actually surprised me. After all those years of distance, he was still the brother I remembered him to be.

Willowbrook might have been the place where all his troubles began, but he looked good being back here. I could cut him in on the business plan for the ranch. Give him a reason to stay here with us. The practice in town would have been enough to keep him busy, but there was something about the idea of another practice that didn’t seem to excite him like it used to.There wasn’t that spark in his eyes that he usually got when he talked about his career. But Xander had listened to every word of my business plan for the ranch. He made some suggestions I hadn’t even considered, which was saying a lot as I’d been dreaming of this for years before I worked up the courage to actually make it happen.

I talked Xander down from jumping in his car and driving here late last night. It felt good to have someone who was so ready to do that for me, especially considering the rocky start he seemed to have with Reece. I hadn’t told her about his drinking. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing to talk about behind his back. But I didn’t want her to think that Xander hated her, and from the way he was acting at dinner, she couldn’t be blamed if she did.

Damn, it was nice to have family around me again, but it came with an annoying set of complications.

The call I had with Ethan hadn’t gone quite as well. The police chief had told me, realistically, there was little he could do. Resources in Willowbrook weren’t like the big cities, and even then, they wouldn’t do much either. He made some recommendations about security cameras though, and I already had emails out to get some installed. If we could catch this guy on tape, Ethan had said it would be a whole different story.

My gaze moved back to Reece, only this time she wasn’t asleep, and her sleepy brown eyes were looking back at me.

She rolled and snuggled into my chest as I tried to ignore how my heart started pounding at her touch.

We’d known each other for such a relatively short amount of time, and I had no idea how she’d become this important to me. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for this woman.

“Good morning,” she said, holding a hand over her mouth and making me smile.

I worked on a ranch with sweaty ranch hands. There was no way her morning breath could compete with that.

I pulled her hand away from her face and kissed her. Reece hummed happily, her leg hitching over my hip as she did. It took no effort at all to roll onto my back and pull her on top of me as I did.

“Didn’t you have enough fun last night?” she whispered against my lips and kissed me again before I could respond.

I could spend a year in bed with Reece, and it still wouldn’t be enough.

I trailed my fingertips up the outside of her silky thighs, bunching up the shirt of mine that she’d slept in as I went. There was something primal about seeing a beautiful woman sleeping in your clothes, but it was nothing compared to the feeling of her?—

“Booker!” Xander shouted up the stairs. “Are you up there?”

Reece yipped in surprise and darted out of my lap, pulling the covers up to her chest as she stared at the door with wide eyes.

“What are you doing?” I laughed, reaching out for her.

“I don’t want him to walk in and see us…you know!”

“Why would he walk in here? Come back here, and let me do all the filthy things I’ve been thinking about for the past hour while I watched you sleep.”

“Awww. You watched me sleep like a cute little stalker.”

“First things first, there’s nothing little about me, woman,” I said, reaching out to pull her closer to me again. “And second, let’s not crack any stalker jokes until I can get over what happened yesterday. Otherwise, I’ll have you tied to my side and never let you out of my sight for the next five years, minimum.”

Reece tipped her head to the side and smiled. I could see the sympathy in her eyes, and strangely, it didn’t bother me. There was a time when I would have hated that look. But it didn’t comeacross as mocking when it came from her. This was a woman who cared about me and was concerned about my feelings.

“I’m sorry,” she started, and when I went to object how none of it was her fault, Reece laid her fingers over my lips to stop me. “I’m sorry that I didn’t check in with you last night about how you were feeling about this whole thing.”

Reece slowly moved her fingers away, and I grabbed her wrist, pulling her hand back and kissing those beautiful, concerned fingers before I let her go.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been through something like this. I’ve never cared enough about someone to invite something like this into my life before.”

My head was all over the place right now. All I could think was protect, protect, protect. I knew it was the worst thing I could ever do for Reece. She’d just escaped some douche who had tried to take her freedom. The last thing she needed was for me to do the same even if it was for entirely different reasons.

But I couldn’t donothing. I couldn’t sit by when there were people out there that could hurt her.

“I care about you too,” she whispered, her fingers coming to my jaw as she brushed her thumb across my cheek. “We’ll figure this out, Booker.”

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