Dammit. He didn’t want to.
He gritted his teeth against the rising tide of arousal. So intense it just hurt.
He took a breath through his nose and closed his eyes, lowering his head. If he just didn’t look at her for a second...he could get a handle on things. On himself.
He breathed in again, slowly, and let it out through his mouth. Then he opened his eyes and looked back up at her. “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he said, his voice almost unrecognizable.
“What?”
“We’re going to go back in the bar. And you’re going to go back and talk to Ace about local beer. And if he asks you on a date? I think you should go on it.”
“What?”
“Yep. I’m going to go back to my table and drink at least two more beers, eat something fried and play darts. And I’m not going to look at you. I’m not going to talk to you. I’m not going to kiss you. We’re going to start this night over, like I never walked over to you and opened my mouth.”
“Eli...”
“And when we interact on the ranch it’s going to be because we have tenant-landlord type business to deal with that Connor’s pawning off onto me.”
She bit her lip and nodded, a crease appearing between her eyebrows. “I’m even more confused now,” she said.
“This ends one of two ways,” he said, his throat getting tighter. “Either we keep this up,” he said, thinking the this in the statement was fairly obvious, “and it goes too far. Or we stop it now. But I have a feeling if we keep it all accidental, then...”
“Right. And what would...be so bad about that?” she asked.
Her simple, nonexplicit words sent a slug of lust through him that was so intense he could hardly breathe around it. “Let me tell you something about me, Sadie. I’m a good man. I pride myself on that. But I’m not a very nice man. And I’m not the kind of man who does relationships. This is my town and I care about the people in it. When I want sex, I go outside the city limits for it because I know before I ever get in a woman’s bed how it will end. Quickly. I don’t want to bring that here. I don’t want to run into old lovers while I’m crossing the street or when I’m making routine stops. And I sure as hell don’t want to run into an old lover every time I cross my driveway.” The very thought offended his sense of order in every way.
“I see,” she said. “But...what makes you think I want any more than a little harmless sex?”
“Because sex is never harmless when it’s this complicated. It’s like setting fire in a barn instead of a fireplace.”
She blinked and nodded. “Great. Fine. Whatever. I don’t even see the point of banging a guy who wouldn’t know fun if it got on its knees and sucked his...” She looked down, so pointedly that he felt it. “Well, you get the idea. Ace seems like he might be more the type I’m after. So I’ll go in before you. I’ll talk to him. Maybe I’ll leave with him. We’ll see.”
You will not. His inner he-man, as she’d called it, growled.
“Sounds like a plan,” he said instead. Because this was crazy. And it had to be stopped.
She forced a smile, her eyes meeting his quickly, a brief flash of electricity shooting straight through him before she turned away.
He watched Sadie walk back into the bar and waited for the tightness in his stomach to recede, for the ache to go away.
He had a feeling he was going to be waiting for a long time.
CHAPTER NINE
DRIVING INTO COPPER RIDGE the next day, Sadie decided to take a left instead of a right at the last minute. She’d been headed toward the main street of Old Town to visit Rona’s Diner and see about pie, and something had pulled her the other way.
A ghost, maybe. The same one she’d been afraid she might find in a clearing. Or maybe just what normal people would call memories. She obviously wasn’t normal.
But here she was, driving on the road that led away from the ocean. Away from the picturesque portion of the little town. This was where the other half lived. The poor half. The half who worked in the logging industry and at the mill, or didn’t work at all.
The half she came from.
And on this road was her childhood home. Her throat tightened as she shifted her suddenly slick hands on the steering wheel.
She’d never imagined, ever, that she would come back here. In fact, she’d actively intended not to. What the hell was all this? Why was she here?
Who knew why she did anything these days? Coming back here, kissing Eli, almost kissing Eli again last night...
There was no point in thinking about that right now.
She took a deep breath and eased her car to the side of the road as she stopped in front of a blue house with shingle siding.
She took her hands off the wheel and looked out the window. The knot in her stomach eased. It looked different.
It was cleaner. The grass was cut. There was grass. When she’d been there, it had been nothing but a carpet of dandelions punctuated by groups of star thistle.
It was smaller, too. Brighter. She was sure it wasn’t actually smaller, but it seemed that way.
A white minivan drove by her car and turned into the driveway of her old house. She watched as it parked and a woman got out. Gently taking her toddler from the backseat, along with a brown grocery bag.
They opened the front door and a small dog ran out to greet them. Sadie hadn’t been allowed to have a pet.
Maybe this was what they meant when they said you couldn’t go home again. The home that loomed large in her mind, her home, didn’t exist. It hadn’t since the Miller family moved out.
She thought of her patient Maryann, and how much she’d loved her home. How losing it had devastated her, because her memories had sunk into the wood. The love her family shared.
It wasn’t like that for Sadie. Not for her family. Nothing of them was still here.
