Uncommon Passion (25 page)

She shook her head. “Not yet. They’re all just really, really pregnant.”

He nodded in agreement and reached for the backpack. “I’m glad you’re here. I needed your help with

the does, but with the Truck Garden off the ground I really needed your help with everything.”

“I needed the farm, too,” she said. Uncertainty about Ben made her restless, an emotion she recognized

from her early weeks after leaving Elysian Fields. Silent Circle Farm provided a familiar life without the

restrictions. A home base for her explorations, but only making a choice and moving forward eased the

inner turmoil.

He didn’t say anything about the incident in the parking lot, just smiled. “Let’s walk.”

They followed the path through the fields and into the cottonwoods lining the river. George prowled

through the tall grass to their left, weaving back and forth, black nose to the ground, always checking in

with Rob. After a while Rob stopped at a spot where the path sloped down to a sandbank. Rachel slid down

sideways after him. A bleached-out log made a nice spot to rest their backs against while Rachel spread

honey on thick slices of homemade bread and Rob opened the yogurt tub.

“What do you think of it?” Rob asked as he bit into bread and honey. He’d added beehives to the farm

this year in the hopes of selling honey and wax next season.

She thought it reminded her of sex. “It’s really good,” she said.

Rob wore silence like most people wore the armor of iPods and cell phones, sitting easily in the dappled

shade, watching the river trickle by, as restless as the emotions jostling inside her.

“It’s all so confusing,” she finally said.

Rob accepted this non sequitur as a vocalized component of a continuing, silent conversation. “It sure

is,” he replied easily. “Everything’s confusing, but what are we talking about in particular?”

“Sex.”

He didn’t flinch or blink or look at her, just finished a handful of grapes. “You’re sleeping with Ben.”

“I am,” she said.

“Your first?” he asked, meeting her gaze.

She nodded. Something flickered behind his eyes, something she couldn’t identify. Instead he turned

back to the river and tossed the grape stems into the sluggish current.

“And it’s confusing,” he said.

“Sex is thrilling and amazing and astonishing and exhausting,” she said. “I’m confused about how I feel

about it. About him.”

“What happened today?”

“He wasn’t there. I think . . . last week I think I made him do something he didn’t want to do.”

Rob’s laugh held the slightest hint of disbelief. “A man like that? A big symbol of power and authority,

and you? Not possible.”

Why was Ben the only person who saw her as dangerous? “So what is possible?”

He dug in the backpack and withdrew the bag of cookies. “For him . . . I don’t know. For you . . . it’s

possible to have really amazing sex with someone you don’t like or respect, and to love someone with all

your heart and have lukewarm sex at best,” he said. “Getting the heart and body aligned isn’t easy.”

“And you’re speaking from experience?”

He zipped up the backpack and resumed watching the river flow past. “I am.”

She returned the courtesy of not pestering him about his past. “What happens if your body wants

someone who isn’t good for you?”

He shrugged. “Eventually you have to choose. One thing will bring you alive, and the other won’t. I’m

not saying sex without love is the thing that deadens you. For some people that’s all they need, or want.” He

paused for a second. “Or are able to take from someone else. Others choose love without great sex, because

an hour or two a week doesn’t outweigh the rest of their lives together. Most people muck around in the

middle, trying for both. Only you know what’s right for you.”

They sat for a length of time, Rob lost in memory, George sprawled beside him on the sandbar, Rachel

mulling over her time with Ben Harris. Getting to know Ben depended on studying body language, not what

he said, and he was really good at not giving much away.

“You have anywhere to be anytime soon?” Rob asked.

“No,” she said, and looked around. The water flowed by, the surface of the river nearly smooth,

revealing the current when a stick or a log or piece of debris drifted along. “It’s nice here.”

Rob shifted lower on the sandbar, so only his shoulders and head were supported by the bleached log.

He folded his arms across his chest and closed his eyes. George rested his head on Rob’s hip and gave a

grunt and sigh before closing his eyes. Rachel stretched out on the blanket and stared up into the irregular

edge where the green cottonwoods met the cloudless sky. Shade and a breeze held back the heat of the day,

but she still found herself drifting languidly, her brain meandering through her current life.

This was nice. A picnic, a slow Sunday afternoon. A friend, and a really great dog. It should be enough.

It wasn’t.

Beside her, Rob jerked in his sleep, hard enough to startle Rachel out of her thoughts and make George

raise his head and study his master. When he didn’t awaken, George settled again, leaving Rachel alone

with one man, and longing for a completely different one. Ben had taught her body well, but Rob was mere

inches away. His mouth was soft and full, and so very tempting surrounded by glinting blond stubble.

Under the denim lay a work-hardened body, long legs stretched out nearly to the water.

Heat blended with the taste of honey in her mouth and dreamy drifting. In that dream she picked up his

hand and kissed the palm, then kissed her way up the tendons running along his forearm to the soft skin

inside his elbow. In that dream she pushed up his shirt and licked his abdomen, then unzipped his jeans—

“We can do that, Rachel,” Rob said without opening his eyes. “Anytime.”

She froze. “Do what?”

He turned his head, opened his eyes, and called her bluff without saying a word. All of the restraint he

normally showed was gone. He wanted her, and if she said yes, he would take her.

An entire universe of longing opened up before her. It was possible to evaluate a new lover before

leaving your old one. It was possible for your body to respond to chemistry your brain tried to counteract.

It was possible to feel desire and not be able to assuage it. No wonder the leadership at Elysian Fields spoke

out so shrilly about the dangers of sex. That way lay madness.

As nice as he was, as good and honest and giving, Rob wasn’t Ben. That truth settled into her

awareness. So far there was everyone else, and then there was Ben.

She almost took the coward’s way out and closed her eyes on the fire in Rob’s. Almost. “I can’t,” she

said quietly.

“Because of Ben?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know that he’d care, or even say we’re together in any meaningful way,”

she said honestly. “I meant me. I hardly know who I am now. I don’t know who I’ll be if I sleep with two

men at the same time.”

His eyelids drifted down, the lashes brushed with gold by the sun. “You know who you are, Rachel.

Whatever else you choose to do, you know who you are.”

This time when Rachel closed her eyes, her brain mercifully shut down entirely. The sun poured

through the cottonwood trunks, not the leaves, by the time she awoke to find Rob a few feet away, pitching

bits of bark and leaves into the river. Uncertain of her footing with him, she watched him until he became

aware of her gaze on him. The smile he gave her was slow and sweet, patient, without a hint of the human

male desire she’d seen in his eyes earlier. Relief called an answering smile from her. He walked over and

extended his hand to pull her to her feet. They shook out the blanket and packed up the leftovers and trash,

then Rob shouldered the backpack. As they made their way back to the farm, Rachel felt rested, as if the

nap in nature reset everything inside her.

She detoured through the goat yard, where all appeared well, then hurried up the path to the

bunkhouse. Jess and the A&M boys sat on the sofa together, watching something on a laptop.

“Where were you?” one of the interchangeable A&M boys asked.

“Down by the river,” Rachel said, purposefully not meeting Jess’s eyes as she carried the backpack into

the kitchen. A white envelope propped against the red silo salt and pepper shakers on the farmhouse table

stopped her. She set the backpack on the counter and cleaned it out, sorting recycling, stacking containers

by the sink for the person assigned to dish duty tonight. She wiped out the bag and returned it to the closet

by the fridge.

Only then did she pick up the envelope and study it, holding it braced between thumbs and pinky

fingers. PLEASE RETURN, SENDER UNKNOWN, written in her father’s neat hand. Tears stung her eyes.

She wiped the back of her hand along her forehead and tried to get her breathing under control.

“Were you alone?”

Jess stood on the opposite side of the table, her arms folded across her chest. Rachel slid the envelope

into her back pocket and gave the other woman a smile. “I was with Rob,” she said.

Jess followed her into their shared room. “For four hours?”

“We fell asleep,” Rachel said, trying to make it sound like nothing more than two friends spending the

afternoon together.

“Liar.” She tossed the word at Rachel, her gaze skimming over Rachel’s hair.

Rachel blinked, her hand automatically reached up to check the braid. Her fingers found bits of dried

leaf. “I’m not lying,” she said evenly. “I came home early. Rob was in the barn. He asked me if I wanted to

take a picnic down to the river. We ate. We fell asleep. We came home.”

“How could you do that to me?”

“Do what?” Rachel demanded. “Have a picnic with a friend?”

“Distract him. He can’t stop watching you. When you’re around, you’re the only person he pays any

attention to.”

The back of her neck prickled hot and then cold, same as it had when she realized Ben was nowhere to

be found. Hard on its heels came anger, searing her veins hot and clean.

“If you want him so badly, why don’t you go after him?”

Jess’s gaze flickered to the chambray curtains covering the window, then back. “Because unlike you,

I’ve done this before,” she snapped. “It’s not always sunshine and roses. It’s great in the beginning, but

then you get hurt. They
always
hurt you.” Her eyes narrowed. Rachel could see her processing what she

knew about Ben, what she now knew about Rachel. “Did the cop stand you up? Did you think he wouldn’t

hurt you?”

It was Rachel’s turn to look away.

Jess mistook her silence for assent, and hooted. “Did you think he’d fall in love with you, that your

purity would somehow reform him?”

“Shut up.”

Never in her life had she told another person to shut up. The words lashed out like a whip, and to her

utter shock, Jess’s mouth snapped closed.

“Not one more word,” she added. “Take responsibility for your own life. If you want Rob, ask him out.

He doesn’t play games. He’ll say yes, or he’ll say no. Either way, stop blaming me for your situation.”

She hauled the door open and stormed through the front room, where the Texas A&M boys were

studiously pretending they’d heard none of this. With the heel of her hand she slammed open the screen

door, heading somewhere, anywhere, away from Jess. She was wrong about what was going on between

Rachel and Rob, but she was right about one thing.

Ben would hurt her. He already had, and whatever happened between them later on, it would hurt when

it ended for good. She hadn’t confused what she and Ben were doing with love. She knew love. Perhaps

not all the nuances, the dark, passionate, dangerous ones, but she knew it, and knew it well. She didn’t love

Ben Harris, but she was falling for him, for the man who absorbed everyone else’s emotions like a black

hole, seemingly untouched by them. Falling for the vulnerability inside he wouldn’t acknowledge. Falling

hard.

“You wanted to feel,” she said to herself as she paced in the parking lot, circling in her own dust,

smoothing back her hair from her temples into the perfect French braid. “You wanted to feel everything.

Here you go.”

They weren’t done. If he was going to end things with her because of last week, he’d have to tell her

what she’d done wrong, then end things in person. She took the steps to the bunkhouse in one leap, hauled

open the door, grabbed her purse from the row of hooks hanging beside it, and hurried to her car.

This was not over.

• • •

Whether out of a solid sense of self-protection or a genuine “family obligation” Steve was missing from

the No Limits off-duty crew after the Juliette incident. A cop Ben knew only by reputation filled in for him,

and between them they said less than ten words not related to work both Friday and Saturday nights. He’d

been torn between finding Steve the second he got back to Galveston and beating the ever-loving fuck out