Page 96 of Tate
He pulled up the horse, then held his arm stiff as she swung down. He landed beside her and dropped the reins.
“Will he stay?”
“She, and yes.” The mare turned toward them and nudged her with her soft muzzle. Scarlett lifted her hand, a little unnerved by the teeth, but drawn in by the giant, doe eyes.
Ford took her hand and pressed it on the horse’s nose.
“It’s so soft.”
“Mmmhmm. Their mouths are actually very tender, which is why you don’t need much to give them direction. A good horse will respond with just your legs and the slightest movement of the reins.” He ran his hand down the mare’s face. “You remember me, don’t you, Georgia?”
Oh, why did this man have to be a teammate?
He glanced at Scarlett, and she spied something in his eyes that might have been the same question. As if asking the question, he reached out for her hand.
Despite her better sense, she took it.
He walked her out to the edge of a glistening, silver river, maybe twenty feet wide, the moonlight cutting through it like a ribbon. Rocks jutted out from dark depths, and a ledge careened out over a section of froth and gentle rapids. He climbed up the ledge, pulling her up behind him, then let her hand go as he walked out to the edge.
“Farther down the river there are a number of caves. I got lost in one, once.”
She came to stand by him. “Scary.”
He nodded, quiet. Took a breath. “I didn’t know how to get out. Eventually, I found a ledge above water and sort of climbed out and stayed there, terrified to get back in, pretty sure I was going to drown.”
She tried to imagine him, a skinny kid, shivering in the darkness. With Ford standing next to her, bold and strong, she struggled to wrap her brain around the image. “The worst part was that my sister was with me. We were trapped together, and you’d think it might be easier, but it was actually worse because I kept thinking…if I left her behind to get help and couldn’t find her again, she’d die in that cave.”
He turned to her then. “That’s a little how I felt at your mother’s place, Red. I feel like I brought you into this mess—itwas my idea for you to go home, and I practically dragged you there, and now…I don’t want to leave you alone with it.”
“No man left behind.”
He didn’t smirk, nothing on his face. Just silence as his chest rose and fell.
Finally, “The worst part is—I’m insanely angry. At Axel, at the idea of you leaving the team, and I know that makes me a total jerk, but…” He looked away, into the distance where the town glittered in the valley below. His voice emerged a little pained. “I like you in my ear, what can I say?”
She drew in a breath. Swallowed. But his gaze turned back, and he must have read her face because he shook his head.
“And I like you in mine,” she whispered. She met his eyes and drew in a breath.
His breath shuddered out. “Aw, Red, I’m in a dangerous place here?—”
“Kiss me, Navy.”
He blinked at her, as if, for the first time, he didn’t know what to do with her information.
She’d surprised herself, actually, but it felt honest and right and…finally.
“What—”
“You heard me. Kiss me. Right now.”
He drew in a breath. Made a chest-deep noise of surprise, or maybe satisfaction.
And then he smiled and became the man she knew. All in. A hundred ten percent bringing it to the mission. He wrapped his hand around her neck, pulled her to himself, and dove in. Not needing her voice in his ear to tell him what she wanted.
Him. Closer. Holding her. Because for some reason when he was with her, the world didn’t feel quite so out of control.
Maybe for him, too, because he was practically inhaling her, as if he had also been telling himself a thousand different ways why this shouldn’t work and no longer cared.
