Page 78 of Wild and Wanted

Those words had cracked open a door. They’d made her feel seen. Not just as the good daughter or the quieter sister or the introverted half of a duo, but as herself. Clay’s acceptance of her and what she needed had made her feel wanted. More wanted than she’d ever felt before. Wanted in the way a man wants a woman.

And the fact that was perfectly okay? Well… that felt wild.

‘What are you humming?’

Stevie startled. Glancing over her shoulder, she found Clay watching her from the doorway in a pair of boxer briefs, his body tanned and honed beneath the dusting of body hair.

Lordy, but the man was beautiful.

‘You’re awake,’ she said with a smile.

He returned the smile as he pushed off the door frame. ‘You should have woken me.’

‘You looked too peaceful.’

Crossing to her side, he dropped a kiss on her mouth. It was just one of those casual hey, there kisses they’d shared a lot this past week but it squeezed at her heart because it wasn’t about sex, it was about caring.

‘Watching the sun set?’ he asked as he chose to lower his ass to the deck in front of her rather than take the chair next to hers.

Stevie’s legs unfolded and she slid one either side of his body, her toes touching the boards as she stood her guitar between the two chairs. Her hands skimmed onto his wide shoulders, his skin warm and supple beneath her palms.

‘It is so beautiful here,’ she murmured, her hands smoothing along his traps, to his nape, pushing into his hair, luxuriating in the soft fall of it against her fingers.

‘Mmm.’ His voice was warm and low, his neck angling as her fingers delved and sifted. ‘It’s special, isn’t it?’

Yes. It was. Really special. She drew in a breath of pure, sweet air, holding it in her lungs for a moment before slowly letting it out. ‘If I lived here I would never leave.’

How could he have stayed away from all this for ten years?

Suddenly, though, she realised that her statement could be misconstrued. Like she was looking for an invitation. ‘Oh God, sorry,’ she said quickly, her hands falling to his shoulders. ‘I didn’t mean… That wasn’t some kind of⁠—’

His laughter cut her off. ‘Relax, Stevie, it’s fine. I know what you mean.’

She sagged a little – thank God. She might not know much about relationships but she knew guys tended to freak out when women started dropping hints about a future after just one week. And she certainly hadn’t been doing that.

‘So…’ He half turned, looking over his shoulder at her, his expression pensive. ‘You can… picture yourself in a place like this?’

Stevie blinked. Was he kidding? ‘Of course.’ Her eyes met his. ‘This place is… incredible. Even if everyone does get up at the crack of dawn.’

Clay gave a wry chuckle. ‘Wouldn’t you miss the city? Airports and Ubers and a hundred different places to eat?’

It took Stevie about ten seconds to realise that she wouldn’t miss any of that. But being in a big city was the most advantageous for her music career. There were so many things between her and a place like this it was almost laughable.

‘I guess I’d miss some things,’ she murmured. ‘There’s this great café that serves the best Boston cream pie. And the studio where I do my recording is not far from where we live.’

‘Right,’ he said, before he turned back to face the view.

‘What about you? Could you see yourself in a city?’ She didn’t know why she was asking but it seemed like the next most logical question after his.

He shook his head. ‘Too damn loud. A lot of the circuit stops are in big cities and while that was fun for a while for a kid from Redemption, Wyoming, it wasn’t till I came back that I realised how loud cities were. And how much of a hurry everyone always seemed to be in. I’d grown used to all of it – the traffic, the crowds, the hustle and bustle – but once I was home I didn’t miss it for a second.’

Looking out at the pastures below, the evening hush cloaking everything, Stevie understood that profoundly. She wasn’t thinking about Boston now. She hadn’t thought about Boston since she’d been on the ranch.

Her fingers slid from his hair to stroke his nape, massaging lightly, and he sighed deeply, as they worked down the notches of his neck bones. Bending his legs up, Clay leaned onto his knees, angling forward to give her better access to the broad expanse of his back.

Stevie’s fingers followed, rubbing and stroking, running over the bumps of his spine, tracing several raised white railway track scars beneath which lay the metal fixations that now scaffolded his spine in several places.

Yeah, she’d googled X-ray images of spinal surgery, curious to see how they might have fixed Clay’s back.