Page 93 of A Rancher's Bride
Certain parts of his anatomy were fully on board with that suggestion, tightening and hardening as she undulated her hips over him. “If you’re tired—”
Kelli raised one brow. “You’re not seriously turning down sex, are you? That’s not the Luke I’ve gotten to know over the past weeks.”
He didn’t like her relegating their time together to simply sex. “You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to,” he admitted. “It’s been a difficult day.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “It has been, and I was definitely thrown for a loop earlier. But something about coming back here helped center me. I appreciate that. I appreciateyou.”
Kelli pressed her lips to his, the front of her body making contact with his naked chest. There was no denying what she wanted. It was clear in her kiss, in her touch, and the motion of her body.
Luke couldn’t say no. And he wasn’t missing a moment of now, since he didn’t know what would come tomorrow. Maybe he was going to have to say goodbye to her temporarily while she headed out to experience new things.
But as he sat up to join her, body and spirit, he committed again that if she did go, it would only be for a short while. While she branched out, he was going to build them roots. He’d make a place for her to come back to, and he was going to do his damnedest to convince her Silver Stone was where she belonged.
He would have to give her room so she’d feel she could leave.
But now? He was going to love her with everything in him. The way he’d always been meant to.
22
Kelli wandered the barn on Sunday, still puzzling through the right thing to do with Timothy Carlyn’s astonishing proposition.
It wasn’t as if she was going to up and leave Silver Stone. That option was out, but there had to be a way for her to be able to get to know the man more. Not for anything he could give her, but because it was the right thing to do.
Yet just the thought of her grandfather brought back so many memories of time with her mom and everything she’d escaped.
Yeah, her head was a bit of a mess right now, and there was no clear path to follow.
Normally when she felt like this Kelli would’ve found Luke and spent the morning trailing after him. It was a bit of a shock to realize that in spite of her hard work to hide her attraction all those years, she’d built a lot of habits into her life that revolved around the man.
Talking to him when she was working through a puzzle had been one of them. The noted exception had been her dealing with the abused-women situation, because that had been too close to a part of her world she didn’t want to talk about withanyone.
She would’ve talked with him now, only the stubborn man had been mysteriously missing from bed when she woke. There’d been a plate of food in the fridge and the coffee maker set to go at the touch of a button, so he had cared for her before vanishing.
Damn the man. As sweet as that was, what she needed was a lengthy discussion, and he was nowhere to be seen.
She didn’t want to talk to Tamara, nor Ashton, and yet the thoughts inside were near to bursting with the urgency to figure this out.
As the day passed, and the next, Luke went from being annoyingly MIA to super-annoyingly out of reach. He came home late and left early, avoiding all conversation because he had “this thing he really needed to get done” at that moment.
He “trusted her judgement” and “was there when she needed him” but then would vanish for hours without anyone knowing where he’d gone.
She was no dummy. Kelli had figured out what was going on—Luke was avoiding her, although she didn’t know why.
Unless it was to piss her off, in which case, he was succeeding. In spades.
Kelli marched into the barn on Wednesday afternoon. She’d had another breakfast alone, and the sweet note he’d left had just made her angrier because she wanted him, not a note.
A door slammed in the distance. A moment late Josiah Ryder burst into view, his cheeks flushed and a furrow between his brows. He jerked to a stop when he saw her.
A second later he was smiling and completely in control. “Kelli. Good to see you.”
She snorted. “Dude. You are the best liar I’ve ever met. Oh wait—it’s not called lying, right? It’sacting.”
Josiah pressed a finger to his lips. “You’re one of the only people in this town I told about my theatre days, so don’t blow my cover.”
So that’s the way he wanted to play it? Kelli decided to let him off the hook this time. Mostly. “Okay, Superman. Only I thought the mild-mannered hero was a reporter by day, not a vet.” She peered behind him. “Who pissed you off?”
“No one.” He edged past her. “Got to run. Tell Ashton I’ll be back tomorrow for a follow-up check on Thunderbolt.”
