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He knew she tensed because he saw the ripple in the surface of the coffee. “Welcome to…she knows I…”
“Did I forget to warn you she’s a mind-reader?” he said lightly. Then, almost wryly, he added, “Or in my case, apparently my smugly satisfied expression was enough.”
He saw her swallow. Then, hesitantly, she asked, “Are you?”
He stared at her for a moment. Satisfied? Is that what she meant? How could she doubt it, after the night they’d spent? She’d driven him crazy, then sent him flying so many times. How could she—
Kaitlyn. This was Kaitlyn. With her past, her history, her casually cruel, in his book murderer mother.
He leaned down and took the mug from her. Set it and his down on the upended crate that served as a nightstand. Shed his clothes as fast as he could and rejoined her.
And proceeded to show her what he couldn’t find the words for.
*
The next daywas the happiest Ry had had in longer than he could remember. They went back to the inn so Kaitlyn could pick up some things, then he took her to his favorite places in Last Stand. First stop was Kolaches, which she confessed she’d succumbed to that first day. Which got them talking about that encounter and had them both laughing at what she’d naturally thought and how he’d felt when he’d realized it.
And he nearly backed out of the parking space into a passing delivery truck when it occurred to him that someday being in that obstetrician’s office for real might not be so bad if he was waiting on Kaitlyn.
He clamped down hard on that thought. A kid, with Kaitlyn? He was already thinking…like that? That was crazy. He was crazy.
He shoved the thought back into a mental cave, but he had the feeling it wouldn’t stay there. He made himself focus on driving. They went by the police station, and he gave her more Highwater history, then took her by the Outlaw Tequila building, and told her about the contentious history between the Highwaters and the once literal outlaw Delaneys. They stopped at Java Time for more coffee—they hadn’t, delightfully, gotten much sleep at all—and then at Yippee Ki Yay because Kaitlyn wanted to look at the belts again. And as he watched her looking at them, touching them with her delicate fingers, he got to thinking what else those fingers had done, and he had to take a walk around the store. Which seemed insane after the night they’d spent, but his body wasn’t listening to logic today.
He didn’t know how long he’d been standing there, staring unseeingly at the display of boots on the wall, when her soft voice beside him startled him out of a reverie.
“Need new boots?”
“I…no. I was just thinking.”
And the answer had come to him—what was needed to finish the design that had burst into his mind last night. The design he planned to put on the belt that would be her official welcome to the Rafferty clan. And that he was thinking this about a woman he’d first laid eyes on nine days ago didn’t seem at all odd to him. When you’d been looking for something all your life, wasn’t it logical that you’d know it when you finally saw it?
He thought of the burn scar he’d seen, and it underlined the answer in his mind.
Especially when it was someone who, even as a child, risked her life trying to save the one person she loved?
It was after that that all the doubts, the uncertainty had been layered on by that pitiful excuse for a mother. But underneath all that he knew the core was still there, the brave, determined person she’d been even at nine years old. She just need to shed all the crap that had been dumped on her. And he was filled with a determination of his own, to help her do just that.
Because when Kaitlyn Miller finally broke free, it was going to be an utterly amazing thing. And he wanted to be the one who reaped that harvest.
That determination held even after Kaitlyn told him the next day, after another spectacular night where they’d learned even more about each other, and he’d discovered the particular pleasure of expanding her riding lessons in a much more personal way, that Jillian had texted she was on her way back from Austin, and wanted a final, long deep-digging session with him.
“Is that what she calls it?” he said with a grimace.
“Among other things. She said she’ll be here in half an hour. She—” She broke off with a small gasp. And suddenly she was looking at him wide-eyed.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“She can’t know,” Kaitlyn said, a trace of something a little too akin to horror in her eyes.
“Can’t know what?”
She looked up toward the loft, as if she could see the bed they’d turned into a tangled mass of sheets and blankets. “Us. This.”
He felt a sudden chill. The nosy reporter couldn’t know that they were sleeping together? “Why,” he said carefully, “would she even care?” Kaitlyn didn’t answer. Or look up. Something occurred to him, a memory from when Ms. Jacobs had first appeared. “If she thought I’d ever sleep with her, she was extremely wrong.”
Her gaze snapped back to his face at that, and he didn’t think he was wrong thinking there’d been some pleasure in that look.
“I…she knew that, early on.” She looked down again, this time fiddling with a flap on her ever-present backpack. “She said you might have a thing for…the needy ones.”
