Diamonds and Dust (Lonesome Point, Texas) (8 page)

“There is no me and you, right?” Chad’s footsteps moved closer to the open door. “But if you change your mind before tonight and decide you want that loan, give me a call. Dinner’s off the table, but we can get a drink at my place and you can show me if you can do something more entertaining with that mouth than beg for my money.”

Later, Pike wouldn’t remember making a decision to move. He was simply standing outside the office one minute and the next he had Chad bent over a massive desk with his fist inches from the other man’s face. The only thing that stopped him from laying into the prick was the feel of Tulsi’s fingers wrapping around his elbow.

“Don’t. He’s not worth it,” she begged, tugging on his arm. “Come on, Pike. Please. Don’t make this worse than it already is.”

“Stay away from her,” Pike growled into Chad’s ashen face. “If you so much as look at her sideways, I’ll personally pull your head through your ass. Do you understand me?”

Chad’s breath rushed out. “Listen, man, I didn’t know you were here, I—”

“You’re a piece of shit, Cutter.” Pike released his grip on the other man’s suit coat with a rough shove. “You’re not worthy to lick her feet.”

Pike looped his arm around Tulsi’s waist. “Let’s go, Tulsi.”

He hustled her out of the office and across the waiting room to the door, fighting the urge to throw her over his shoulder and carry her out of the building. He ignored the primal voice in his head that insisted Chad should suffer the beating of his life for daring to talk to his woman that way. It didn’t matter that Tulsi hadn’t been
hi
s for years.

All he could think was—
mine
.

Tulsi was under his protection and no one was going to hurt her, not as long as he had breath left in his body.

CHAPTER FIVE

Tulsi

Under normal circumstances, Tulsi would have still been reeling from the nightmarish meeting with Chad. But with Pike’s arm around her, gluing her to his muscled body as he practically carried her across the street, all she could think about was how incredible it felt to be close to him. It was almost too much to wrap her head around.

Pike was touching her,
holding
her. Her body was pressed tight to his for the first time since he’d kissed her behind the barn at his parents’ house seven years ago, the afternoon everything had gone to hell, and her body was on the verge of a spontaneous meltdown. She tried to tell herself this didn’t mean anything and Pike would have responded the same way if it had been any of Mia’s friends being harassed by a creep. But she’d never heard him sound so angry and the possessive way he’d swept her out of the office had her stomach fluttering and her body aching to get even closer to him.

By the time he charged up the stairs into the Blue Saloon, pushed open the swinging doors, and lifted her onto a stool with an ease that made her viscerally aware of the powerful man he’d become, Tulsi had to sit on her hands to keep from wrapping her arms around him and holding on tight. She wasn’t ready to let him go. She needed more time, just a few more minutes to memorize the way they fit together, to give her something to replay over and over in her mind while lying alone in the dark for another seven years.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Pike braced his palms on the bar on either side of her, leaning in until he was so close his Pike smell—still familiar after all these years—rushed through her head, making her racing heart beat even faster. “There’s no point in trying to reason with a prick like that. You should have been out of there five minutes ago, the second things starting going south.”

“I know…I just…” Tulsi swallowed as she forced her gaze from Pike’s lips, knowing she’d never be able to form a sentence if she kept thinking about kissing him. Unfortunately, looking into his eyes only made things worse.

Their gazes connected and Tulsi’s breath rushed out even as a fire whooshed to life inside her.

God, she wanted him. She wanted him as much as she had when she was eighteen and every nerve in her body ignited with desire when they touched. She wanted to be skin to skin with Pike, to breathe his breath, to feel his pulse echoing in her chest and feel as safe and treasured as she’d always felt in his arms. She wanted to make love to him until all the walls were down and all the hurt had been healed because she had never stopped loving this man, no matter how much she’d wanted to, no matter how hard she’d tried.

The charged silence thickened the air between them, broken only by the tinny notes of a country song playing on the jukebox in the corner. Slowly, Pike’s gaze slid from her eyes down to her mouth, and for a heart-stopping moment Tulsi thought he was going to kiss her.

Instead, he whispered, “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?” she asked, just as Clint, the bartender, materialized behind her.

“Hey, Tulsi, can I get you two something to drink?”

“Two whiskey shots and a draft beer chaser, a pale ale if you’ve got it,” Pike said, not breaking eye contact with Tulsi. He waited until Clint moved away down the bar to fix the drinks before he continued. “You know like what. Don’t play games with me.”

She swallowed hard. “I’m not playing games. I’m… I just…”

“Just what?” He leaned closer, until she could feel his breath warming her lips, sending a tremor of need rocking through her from head to toe.

She didn’t want to talk; she wanted to taste him. She wanted her tongue stroking against his and his big hands roaming over her body so much that it felt like she’d die if she didn’t get to be that close to him. Just one more time. Just once before he went away and left her behind all over again.

“Just what,” Pike repeated softly.

“I can’t help it,” she said, her longing so thick it felt like she was choking on it. “I’m sorry, but I j-just c-can’t.”

Pike’s gaze softened as he lifted one hand, brushing his knuckles lightly from her cheekbone to the point of her chin, stealing her breath away. “Relax, okay? It’s just me. You know I would never hurt you.”

Her lips parted to say that he’d already hurt her, hurt her so badly that she’d done something unforgivable, but before she could speak, Clint set the drinks down on the bar beside her with a loud
thunk thunk thunk
.

“Two whiskey shots and a pale ale,” he said, an edge in his usually friendly voice. “You want me to start a tab, Mr. Sherman?”

“No, I’ll pay now.” Pike shifted to pull his wallet from his jeans pocket, putting some much-needed distance between them and giving Tulsi a chance to pull herself together.

She couldn’t afford the luxury of easing her conscience. She couldn’t let her mouth run without thinking or give Pike any reason to suspect the truth.

“That’ll be fifteen dollars even,” Clint said, but he didn’t reach for the credit card when Pike laid it on the bar. “You okay, Tulsi? You seem a little shook up.”

“Oh no, I’m fine.” Tulsi turned on her stool, forcing a smile for the forty-something bartender who had always gone out of his way to look after her and her girlfriends when they came into the saloon.

“Are you sure?” Clint smiled, but the warmth in his eyes faded as his gaze shifted to Pike. “I can call someone for you if you need me to.”

Tulsi shook her head. “Everything is fine, but thank you, Clint. You’re one of the good ones.”

“You too, sweetheart,” he said gruffly, his skin flushing beneath his whiskered cheeks. “Just let me know if you need anything else. Anything at all.”

Tulsi nodded but kept her gaze on the bar, as he moved away, and Pike claimed the stool beside hers. She had to get a grip. She couldn’t give away her secrets or make a scene with Pike in a bar in the middle of the day. Someone would see and go tattling to her dad the way they had the night she went line dancing with Bubba’s fiancée, Marisol. Daddy was still making jabs at dinner about the spectacle Tulsi had made of herself, his attitude making it clear he equated dancing in public with working a pole down at the seedy strip club near the border.

She knew he was being ridiculous, but she hated the way he’d looked at her the day he found out about the dancing. She didn’t know if her heart could take another bruising like that one, at least not until her mom got back into town to counter Daddy’s disapproval with a hug and a whisper to “ignore it, honey,” in the kitchen after supper.

“Looks like you’ve got no shortage of protectors,” Pike said, lifting his whiskey shot and downing it with a twist of his wrist. “You’re good at the damsel in distress routine.”

“What do you mean by that?” she asked, frowning up at him.

Pike pushed the second shot her way with two long, slender fingers. “The quiver in your voice and those big, sad eyes. I mean, how could a man resist doing whatever it takes to make you feel better?”

Tulsi sat up straighter, anger cooling her lust. “You make it sound like I’m manipulating people. I’m not. I’m upset, that’s all.”

Pike seemed to chew on that, his jaw working back and forth as he fought to keep from saying something awful. But she knew Pike and his faces too well for him to hide behind a clenched jaw.

“What?” she prodded after a moment. “Go ahead, speak your mind.”

“I don’t think you’d like it,” he said, taking a long swig of the pale ale sweating on the bar. “Might hurt your feelings.”

“So?” she snapped. “It’s not like you could hurt me any more than you have already.”

Pike’s eyebrows lifted toward the brim of his hat. “Excuse me?”

Tulsi mentally cursed her inability to hold her tongue as she snatched her whiskey shot off the bar and tipped it back in one gulp, hoping Pike would let it go if she refused to answer. She hadn’t meant to start this conversation and there wasn’t enough liquid courage in the world to get her through it without falling apart.

“You’re the one who ended it,” Pike said, proving this wasn’t her day, not by a long shot. “You’re the one who was with someone else while we were supposed to be together. Or have you forgotten that inconvenient fact?”

Tulsi lifted her chin, fighting the urge to cry. “Yeah, well, you hadn’t returned my calls in three weeks. What else was I supposed to do?”

“Not fuck someone else!” Pike said, his voice loud enough to draw the attention of the older men at the other end of the bar and earn a glare from Clint.

“Keep your voice down,” she hissed, narrowing her eyes. “I thought it was over, okay? People who are in love don’t run off and ignore the person they say they’re in love with for three weeks. If I hadn’t been able to read your stats from your games, I would have been scared to death that you were dead. I have
never
felt more alone or miserable than I did those three weeks. Not in my entire life.”

“I needed some time to pull my shit together, for God’s sake,” Pike said, scowling, obviously still unable to see her side of things. “I was twenty-two years old and my father had disowned me right when I was starting my career. It messed me up pretty bad.”

“Yeah, well, I was eighteen and—” Tulsi trapped her bottom lip between her teeth, biting off the end of her sentence before she wrecked everything. “Forget it.” She slid off her chair, grabbed her purse, and made a beeline for the door, ignoring Pike’s call for her to wait.

She couldn’t tell him that she’d been eighteen, pregnant, and terrified. Terrified of raising a baby alone, but even more terrified of her child ending up with a father like hers. A father who cared more about his job than he did his kids, a man who would always be bitter about the things he’d been denied instead of happy with what he had.

“Tulsi, wait!” Pike called again as she started down the saloon’s front steps, but she only sped her pace toward her truck parked outside the drugstore.

Growing up, Tulsi and her sister, Reece, had worshiped their father—a retired pro rodeo rider who broke horses no other man could tame—but their love had never been good enough. Dale Hearst had wanted sons, and daughters could never measure up to the boys he’d been denied—no matter how much Tulsi loved horses or how fearless Reece was in the saddle. Tulsi grew up watching her sister fight to be loved and fail and knew it was only a matter of time before she, too, fell from grace. She would never be perfect enough to make up for not being the boy her father wanted, no matter how hard she tried.

Back when she was eighteen and Pike was suddenly gone, that was all she could think about. She couldn’t stand the thought of living the rest of her life tied to a man who craved his father’s approval so much he would shut her out of his heart while he licked his wounds. The fact that he’d cut her off the same day she’d planned to tell him the birth control pills had failed and that she was pregnant with his child had made it all that much worse.

Those three weeks without Pike had taught her that her love wasn’t enough for him, the same way it hadn’t been enough for her dad. That hard truth had shattered her, but she hadn’t been able to afford the luxury of falling apart. She’d had a baby on the way, a child she was determined would never know what it felt like to have a hole inside her heart where a parent’s love was supposed to be. So she’d made a choice, and she had never regretted it, not until now.

God, why did Pike have to come back? Why did she have to run into him today and remember what it felt like to be so close and only want to get closer?

She reached for her keys, but her hand was trembling so hard she dropped them on the sidewalk. By the time she snatched them off the concrete, Pike had closed the distance between them.

“Please wait. I’m sorry, okay?” His hand closed around her elbow, but she shook him off, unable to stand the confusion his touch inspired.

“Don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I don’t believe you.” Pike’s hand fell to her hip, his fingers curling into the fabric of her jeans, sending a tremor of awareness shivering through her. “You want to do more than talk to me. You want the same thing I do. You want to remember what it was like between us.”

“Don’t,” Tulsi whispered, but her voice was breathy and unconvincing, even to her own ears.