Rebel Cowboy (16 page)

He inhaled, the cold air in his nose, the smell of ice, wet and crisp. Everything he loved in one smell. Everything he loved in the give of the ice under his blade, the way it cut through. He took a few strides, slowly gaining speed as he rounded the curve of the rink.

Everything inside him lightened, floated away. All his problems, all his worries, everything. That whisper he always felt, always remembered. Dad putting him on the ice after Mom had handed him off, needing a “break.”

Your troubles don’t matter here.

And they hadn’t, for nearly thirty years. On the ice, his troubles melted. He gave himself a second in the straightaway to close his eyes, breathe deep, and when he opened them…

Mel was standing there in the opening, holding on to the plexiglass, watching with those wide, serious eyes. He didn’t feel like serious, not in his peace. So he came to a sharp stop in front of her, spraying her with ice.

She scowled. “Not cool. I thought you were going to run into me!”

“Not going to run into you.” Instead, he grabbed her by the waist and plopped her onto the ice. She bobbled and held on to him for dear life.

Which was possibly a little bit of what he was going for.

“I can’t…”

“Did Mel Shaw, the famous hard-ass rancher, just say she can’t?”

“Don’t third person me, Sharpe.”

“Don’t Sharpe me, Shaw.” He took her by the hands, possibly getting a little entertainment out of the grave concern on her face. Once an asshole, always an asshole. He placed them on his hips. “Hold on,” he instructed, turning around so he could pull her. “Just keep your feet under you and stay balanced. And whatever you do, don’t lean too far forward on the blade.”

“Why not?”

He started to skate slowly, pulling her behind him. “Toe pick.”

She snorted. “Oh my God, you even did it in her voice. Why do you know lines from
The Cutting Edge
? Were you a teenage girl in the nineties?”

“No, I was a hockey player in the nineties, thank you very much.”

“Did you secretly want to be a figure skater?”

“I’m going to let you go to fall flat on your ass, or that pretty face of yours.”

Her hands gripped his hips tighter. “I’m not going to fall.” But she said it through gritted teeth, all determination, no bravado.

“Hold on now, I’m going to turn around.”

“But—”

He didn’t let her argue, just turned around carefully so she always had a hand on him for balance, and he could see and critique her form. He skated backwards, giving her a few pointers until she was able to take some slow but steady strides of her own.

She was so focused, brows drawn together. Slow as hell as he all but skated laps around her, but it was amazing. Fun.
Peaceful.

“How do I stop?” she asked as he was about to pass her again. He swiveled so he was skating parallel to her, but backwards.

“Show-off,” she muttered. “How do I stop though?”

She’d built herself up to a steady pace, but every time she didn’t stride, she started to wobble.

“You just stop.”

“That is not an instruction!”

He chuckled and then positioned himself in front of her and stopped, planting himself in her way so she ended up running into him. But he was braced for it, and wrapped his arms around her, bringing them both to a stop.

She looked up at him, something unrecognizable glinting in her eyes. Something like…mischief or fun. Something he wondered how often she’d had. Something that,
Christ
, it filled him with awe and wonder and just enough damn satisfaction that he wanted to be done skating. Take her home right now.

Home? Really?

“Can you make me go backwards?” she asked, interrupting the weird trajectory of his thoughts.

She was trying so hard not to smile, and it was another moment. He was starting to collect them. Pretty soon they’d be so common they’d turn into breathing. Then what would happen come August?

But he started skating, still holding her close, arms wrapped around her, making her go backwards.

“It makes you happy,” she said softly, searching his face for something.

Since he didn’t want her to find it, he didn’t turn them when he reached the curve—he just skated her right into the boards and covered her mouth with his.

Mel watched Dan skate around with three teenagers and two of their fathers. The five had shuffled in all but shaking with excitement and nerves. She’d never seen people react to a person that way.

But about half an hour into it, the boys were laughing on the ice, and the dads seemed winded but happy.

And Dan, well, he shone, and he was grinning from ear to ear. He’d raced some of the kids from one end of the ice to the other, looked to be coaching them on their technique, and so far the only thing he’d turned down was an offer to go get some sticks and pucks and goals to pretend to play a game.

He’d declined nicely. In fact, she didn’t think the group had even had a chance to be disappointed before they were bringing out all and sundry to have Dan sign, the whole group still in their skates, apparently
not
wobbly even when they were just standing still.

When Dan finally disentangled himself from the group and headed for where he’d left his shoes, the remaining men stood on the ice oohing and aahing over everything Dan had signed.

She met him at the bench, her skates long discarded. He didn’t look up even when she moved to stand in front of him.

“You signed a lot of stuff,” she offered into the awkward silence, the weird energy pouring off him.

He still didn’t look up. “Yeah, Kevin’s dad owns the place, so he wanted to put some stuff up on the walls.”

“So, Dan Sharpe, you’re kind of a big deal.”

His lips quirked, but his gaze remained on his shoes as he laced them. “I kind of am.”

“Though I did not get to see your stick skills.”

Finally,
finally
he glanced at her, but that cocky, “no emotion behind the grin” smile was on his face. “I’ll show you plenty of stick skills later, honey.”

“All jokes aside, why’d you say no to the…” It dawned on her in that second why he wouldn’t want to actually play hockey. She’d been blinded by his joy at skating, forgetting the whole reason he was here in the first place was, well, he’d messed things up with stick and puck.

He got to his feet. “Let’s head home, huh?”

Head home.
Now she was the one tightening up, feeling weird.
They
did not have a home together. Her home was Shaw. And she was currently shirking all her responsibilities in that department.

It is long past time you had a shirk. This will get you ready to face the next twenty-eight years of no shirking allowed.

She wanted to believe that, believe in it strongly enough the guilt settling in her gut would disappear completely. As it was, she just managed to ignore it now and again.

Dan stood, his skates in one hand, his other hand running through his hair. He looked lost for a second, before the easy, fake veneer clicked back into place. “So, what did you think of your first skating experience?”

“I think I’ll leave the skating to you.”

“Finally better at something than you, then?”

“Not a contest. Certainly not a fair one.”

“A man has his pride. At least there’s one thing.”

The night had been fun. Even though she really hated that he was better than her at something, even if that was silly. Still, his constant
this is the only thing I’m good at
was getting old. Trying to soothe over men’s delicate egos was getting old.

“Do you really, honestly think hockey is all you have? Because it was a pretty stupid move to come here and try to build something if you’re going to mope about hockey being the only thing you were ever good at when it’s over.”

He was silent as they walked to his car—not as if he was angry, but as if he was pondering.

“Do you think I’m going to stay?”

The question, asked in the quiet summer night held a million implications she didn’t know what to do with. But not knowing what to do had never stopped her before, and there had been an honesty in this evening. One she would remember anytime she got that stupid, hopeful feeling in her chest.

“I saw the smile on your face when you were on the ice. It would be stupid to stay, Dan. It would be robbing yourself of joy.”

He opened the door to the backseat of the truck, carefully placed the skates inside, and then he leaned against the door. He tilted his head back, his eyes on the stars.

She might have looked up too, except she knew exactly what she’d see up there. What was new, what was fascinating, were the hard lines of this man’s face, the pensive wrinkle in his forehead, the way his lips pressed together.

He was famous and rich. People had just fawned all over him. He was in magazines and on sports shows, and everything about his life made no sense to her, except that he seemed to be stuck in a very similar space she found herself in.

What do I do next? How do I keep going?

“A guy can’t play hockey forever, Mel,” he finally said, his gaze dropping to his feet. “No matter how much joy it gives him.”

A familiar pain wound its way around her heart, a familiar helplessness. This was not anything she could fix. Luckily, it wasn’t her business to fix it.

Unluckily, she found the words spilling out anyway.

“My dad used to ride his horse every day. No matter what. Whether he needed to or not. Boiling heat, freezing cold. At least for a little part of every day he was on that horse. It was a thing he did. He did it because he loved it, and it made him less sad when he was…upset about things. It was everything he had, and when he couldn’t have that anymore… Well, you saw. Without it, he has nothing. So, if skating makes you
that
happy, you can’t just…hang it up. Even if you can’t be a professional hockey player forever, the thing that brings you so much joy is the thing you should be focusing on.” Because he was one of the lucky few who had the money and the means to focus on their joy no matter what.

She was one of the unlucky few who had neither of those things, and an unwillingness to go after them at the expense of the people she loved.

“It’s not the same,” Dan said, shaking his head. For the first time since they walked out of the rink, he looked at her. “Firstly and most importantly because your father doesn’t have nothing. He has you. He has Caleb.”

For a moment, she couldn’t breathe. Not in, not out. It was as if her lungs were paralyzed—everything seized up inside her with a blinding pain she quite simply could not push away or bury or ignore.

She would very much love for her father to see it that way, but he’d lost his ability to walk, and in that he’d lost whatever pieces in him he’d manage to salvage after her mother left. The pieces she’d clung to so hard, coaxed out of him, begged for. All swept away by one accident…and she’d learned to stop begging.

“Mel?”

His voice sounded thin and cottony. Her vision was wavering with the pain…the memories of all the times she’d begged and succeeded. Begged and failed. Wanting a hug. Never getting it. Until Dan.

“Let’s go home, huh?” she said, echoing his words from earlier in a scratchy voice. It wasn’t her home, but she didn’t care. There were too many other cares clogging up in her chest. She just wanted to be somewhere she didn’t have to beg or work or try.

And so far, that was only with Dan.

* * *

Dan pulled the truck onto the gravel drive in front of his place.
His place
. And yet, he felt more comfortable back on that ice than he did in the pitch black of night surrounding the cabin, a slight drizzle starting to fall on the windshield.

He glanced at Mel, curled away from him, head resting on the glass of the window, though he didn’t think she was asleep.

He almost wished she was. Or that she’d want to go home, because he couldn’t get over or erase the image of her face twisted in a kind of horrified pain when he’d said her father had her.

Those kinds of hurts he couldn’t fix, couldn’t smooth away. The kind he could see, but she wouldn’t really trust him to ease—not that she should. They were things that would always be painful for her, and he didn’t know how to make them easier. Distract, that he could do, but actually fix?

He’d never learned how to fix. She needed someone stronger, someone who had any clue what it was to stitch together all the emotional hurts into some kind of healing. How to ask what was wrong and get an answer. He already knew he couldn’t do that.

It had been stupid to think otherwise.

“Do you ever get tired of feeling like life keeps beating you over the head?” she asked into the silence of the car.

“Lately, yes.”

“Do you want to go have sex and pretend it’s not hard?”

God, he wanted to do that. So he went with a joke. “Well, something will be hard.”

She snorted. “You’re a classy guy, Sharpe.”

He grabbed her braid, and while he usually just gave it a tug, this time he didn’t let it go. He pulled until she had to look at him, and he was not surprised in the least to be met with a scowl.

“No more Sharpe.”

“It’s a pet name.”

“It’s bullshit. I’m not a last name to you.” He gave her braid his normal tug, but still didn’t let go, keeping it wrapped around his hand. Because he didn’t want her to look away or bullshit him again.

Something in her expression changed. Not just a softening, though there was that. The way her lips parted, her gaze drifted to his mouth.

Okay, yeah, something was definitely hard, and he’d kind of forgotten about that whole “wanting her to go home” thing as he leaned across the console and tugged her mouth to his. Pretend life’s not hard? Yeah, he liked when they did that.

Because as sharp as her words could be, her mouth was soft, sweet. As much as every cell of her screamed capable and strong, she
melted
into him, and it made
him
feel capable and strong.

Her hand curled around his bicep, but the other one clutched the front of his shirt. He never knew what to do when she did that. When she held on to him for dear life. He wanted to tell her to run at the same time he wanted to not let her go for a second. He wanted to assure her he could be whatever it was she wanted or needed.

You will disappoint her.
But she didn’t believe he’d stay. She believed so little about him—what could he possibly disappoint?

“D-don’t let go.”

He didn’t know if she was talking about her hair or in general, and he didn’t really care. Because he had no intention of letting go. This thing she filled him with, this feeling she gave him, nothing, not hockey, not being here,
nothing
else made him feel that way.

Luckily, her hand moved from his arm to his abdomen, and then trailed over his erection, and he didn’t have to linger on the discomfort that realization caused.

He kept one hand curled in her hair and used his other to slide up her shirt, pull one of the bra cups far enough down that he could touch her nipple, circle it until it was hard, until she groaned, her grip on his cock going tight.

“We have to go inside to get condoms,” she said against his mouth, against his lips, not letting him go, not putting any space between them. Those seemed like foreign words. All he could think about was the heated air around them, her grip on him, her breath shallow against his neck.

His eyes met hers, and he refused to get lost in that overwhelming feeling. This was about sex, which was its own kind of escape and distraction. “Well, then let’s go.”

It took her a minute to release him, and only then did he realize the drizzle had turned to a full-on downpour. He glanced at her, and she flashed him a grin, a grin he’d never seen. Dark, dangerous, like she could light the world on fire. Him on fire. And nothing would survive.

“Better run,” was all she said before she pushed her door open and stepped into the night.

He stepped out too, the lash of a cool rain immediately hitting him, soaking him. He thought it might ease the incessant heat in his veins, the tight ache in his groin, but it did nothing. He was all set to jog, but Mel was just standing there in the dimmest of porch lights, head up, eyes closed, the rain surely drenching her.

For a moment, he just watched. The shadow of her in the middle of a storm. Lightning sizzled across the sky, thunder boomed, and he needed to get inside. He needed to be inside her.

She screeched when he bent and managed to leverage her over his shoulder. “Dan!” She pounded a fist on his back, but then her laughter bubbled up, a sound he could not resist if he tried.

He carried her to the porch, water pouring over both of them as thunder rumbled again.

“Put me down.”

But there was nothing insistent about her voice in the least, so he carried her all the way inside, and didn’t put her on her feet until they were in his kitchen.

He flipped on the light, trying to catch his breath. But the look of her took it away again.

Water was dripping off the strands of hair that had fallen out of her braid. Her T-shirt was plastered to her breasts, her stomach, and she was smiling.
Smiling.
Yeah, that killed him.

It only took one step before she was stepping toward him too, meeting in the middle, and they were kissing each other as if it had been months instead of minutes since they’d had their hands on each other.

He could have sworn the water sizzled between them as their mouths found some kind of solace in each other. Every lick and nip was a desperate need to forget, to have, to
take.

She unbuckled his belt, undid the snap on his jeans, which were now tight from the rain, but it didn’t stop her. Her hands were greedy and determined, and his body strained in response. She pulled him free, her hand cool and wet against his erection.

Without letting go, she leaned in and traced his bottom lip with her tongue before pulling it between her teeth, not gentle. Not in the least. As she let his lip scrape through her teeth, she fisted her hand up the length of his cock.

A mixture of pleasure and delicious pain arced through him. “Mel. Christ.” He pulled her shirt off, which sadly took her hand off him, but gave him access to that beautiful body of hers. So strong, so wet and soft. He scraped his palms over her stomach, leaned in to lick a trail of raindrops from her neck.