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She should have expected it. He always left before dawn.
“I need to get into the office early,” he told her. And he did, but it could have waited.
Mina Harlow was a generous, warm lover, but she wanted a relationship, and Zeke wasn’t ready to complicate his life to that extent. He hid enough of himself the way it was, he wasn’t interested in hiding it on a regular basis.
“Whatever.” She stretched beneath the blankets before eyeing him with a glimmer of amusement. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. That little school teacher that looks at you with stars in her eyes, Miss Walker. The school board fired her last week.”
He didn’t want to hear this particular piece of gossip again. He sure as hell didn’t want to hear the satisfaction in Mina’s tone at the fact that the little schoolteacher had been hurt. Mina was gloating over it, simply because Caitlyn hadn’t hid her interest in him.
This was bullshit. Catty, snide and hurtful. He’d thought better of Mina at one time.
“I don’t like gossip, Mina,” he reminded her.
She gave a soft little laugh. “Come on, Zeke, it’s all over town and now it’s hit the Internet. Pictures of her in the cutest little threesome with another couple. Who would have guessed she had it in her.”
Zeke wouldn’t have, and he still didn’t believe it. He’d heard about the pictures more than he wanted to. He refused to look at them.
“Miss Goody Two Shoes got caught having her fun,” Mina said smoothly. “I can’t believe she thought she could get away with playing like that here. She should have known better.”
Zeke’s lips thinned as he sat at the bottom of the bed and pulled his boots on. Dammit, he didn’t need to hear this again. He could feel that edge of burning anger in his gut, the one that warned him he was letting a woman get too close.
Caitlyn Rogue Walker was nothing to him, he told himself. He couldn’t let her become something to him either. She was too damned innocent, no matter what those photos might show. Not to mention too damned young.
“Too bad the camera person didn’t take a few more.” Mina yawned then. “Miss Walker wasn’t even fully undressed, but she was definitely getting ready to have a good time.”
His jaw bunched. The innocent Miss Walker had pissed off the wrong people, and Zeke felt responsible for that. Hell, this was just what he needed. He had steered clear of her for the express purpose of making certain she was never targeted for any reason, because of him, and she had ended up as a target because of his son instead.
She had caught the attention of two of the town’s worse inhabitants. A brother and sister who delighted in destroying anyone they could. She had caught their attention by defending his son at school.
He felt responsible. It was his son, and despite his knowledge that she had been set up, he still hadn’t managed to find a way to punish those who had hurt her or to tamp down his growing interest in a woman he had no business touching.
He could feel the curling knot of anger, a hint of territorial possessiveness where the teacher was concerned, and squelched it immediately. Miss Walker was too young, too innocent. She wasn’t a woman that would accept a sex only relationship, nor was she a woman Zeke would be able to hide the darker core of his sexuality with, as he did other women. Women such as Mina. Women who touched only his body, never his heart. Miss Walker had the potential to touch the inner man, and he refused to give her the chance.
He’d failed to protect one woman in his life already, he wouldn’t make that mistake again.
“She’s Calvin Walker’s daughter, you know,” Mina continued. “Hell, I thought he was dead. What’s he doing with a daughter? Damned Walkers have never been worth crap, so it shouldn’t be surprising.”
Zeke rose to his feet and turned back to her. “I’m heading out Mina. Take care.”
This relationship was over. He could barely manage civility now. Mina had always seemed like a kindhearted woman. She had a ready smile, compassionate hazel eyes, a gentle face. And a mean streak a mile wide. He’d learned that over the past few months. When it came to other women, younger women, anyone she considered a threat to what she might want at the time, then she turned viperous.
“And you’re not coming back.” Her expression lost its amusement now. “Did you think I didn’t know your attention was waning, Zeke?”
“We had an understanding, Mina.” He’d made certain of it before the relationship began.
She sat up in the bed, unashamedly naked, her short brown hair mussed attractively around her face.
“Your attention hasn’t been worth shit since you met that girl,” she accused him snidely. “You go through the motions but I don’t doubt you’re thinking of her when you’re fucking me.”
His brow lifted. “Jealousy doesn’t become you, Mina, and it’s not a part of what we had. In this case, you’re wrong. There’s nothing between me and Miss Walker.”
And there never could be. She was too young, too tender. Zeke didn’t mess with women whose innocence lit their eyes like stars in the sky. Caitlyn Walker was the forever kind, and Zeke simply didn’t have that to give her. Forever required the truth. It required parts of himself being revealed, and he’d learned at a young age that the truth wasn’t always acceptable.
“There’s nothing between the two of you because you’re a closed-mouthed bastard intent on making certain you never give so much as an ounce of yourself,” she snapped. “What’s wrong, Zeke, can’t anyone match the memory of that paragon you were married to? Or did you simply spend too much time in Los Angeles partying with all the gay boys?”
Zeke stared back at her silently. Prejudice in the mountains was still alive and thriving, he’d known that before he’d come home.
“Goodbye, Mina.”
