Well. This was the moment of truth. I’d spoken her name now. I’d labeled her as barrier between us. He had to decide what she meant to him. And I had to decide too.
“Yes, Amber’s here,” he acknowledged. “You were looking for her. She’s been found. Why does that change what’s going on with us?”
“How can you ask that? You loved her —”
“— and she left —”
“And she came back.”
He let a beat pass. “She didn’t come back for me.”
“How do you know that? Did you ask her?”
“Emily, I don’t have to ask her. I know the circumstances that we parted under. I know how she felt when she left, and, trust me – I deserved it. She’s only here now because I’m the one person who can assure her safety when it comes to Michelis.”
I let his words digest. They made sense, but did that automatically mean she hadn’t come back to salvage what she had with Reeve, too?
From everything I’d learned about him and everything I’d known about Amber, the two were not a perfect match. She liked to be adored and catered to, and, though I’d known many men who’d loved me one way while loving her another, I couldn’t imagine Reeve as one of them. He would never pander. He would never bend.
Still – there was no guessing what someone might do, might become, in the name of love.
Reeve tapped a finger on my chin. “You’re overthinking this, Em. She came back for protection. She’s not looking to pick up where we left off.”
Then I realized what his assurance was missing – what he wanted. “Would it make a difference if she did?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but there was a knock on the door followed by it being swung open.
“The group from Callahans is here,” Brent declared without invitation. “I got them set up near the fire so we can start the branding, but there’s a new guy in charge, and he won’t do shit without you.” It seemed it was only then that Brent saw me. “Ah, sorry. Didn’t realize I might be interrupting.”
Reeve threw a glare at his ranch manager. Then he let out a huff of air. “I’ll go down there then.”
I slid off his lap to let him stand. His brow was furrowed as he donned the jacket that had been on the back of his chair. “A new guy? First I’ve heard about it. What’s his name?”
“Grabrian, I think,” Brent said.
Reeve nodded then turned to me. Threading one hand in my hair, he placed the other at my neck. “We’ll talk more later,” he said, his fingers stroking firmly and possessively up and down the length of my throat. “Just know that I won’t be lenient about this for long.”
It should have been a statement that struck fear in me, and it did – terror and excitement twined together and ran up my body, lighting every nerve along the way. He pulled me to him for a rough kiss, causing the thousand little fires inside to spit and flare.
When he broke from me, he took off with Brent, leaving me feeling as branded as his calves, and I was sure the iron he’d used on me was twice as hot.
I let a smile linger on my just-kissed lips for several minutes before I shook the daze from my head and tried to focus on the task I’d been given. Reeve expected me to resolve the issues that were keeping me from being with him. In other words, I had to talk to Amber. While he was likely right about her motivations and intentions, I needed to be clear with her about mine. I owed her that.
CHAPTER 7
The chance to talk to Amber wouldn’t come if I didn’t make an effort. So after leaving Reeve’s office, I went up to her room only to find her bed empty. It was the first time I’d seen her out of it since she’d returned.
The room wasn’t unoccupied, though. There was a guy I didn’t know dozing on the love seat, likely the person assigned to this four-hour rotation of watching over her. I nudged him awake, irritation clear in my voice. “Where’s Amber?”
He startled, then sat up immediately to scan the room. “Uh…”
Groaning from the bathroom interrupted his guilty stutter. I scowled at the man. “You can go. I’ll take over.”
I didn’t wait for him to leave before going to the door and knocking. “Are you okay in there, Am?”
Her answer came in the form of retching. I tried the handle, and when I found it unlocked, I went in to crouch with her on the hard tile floor. With my hands wrapped in her blond hair, a dozen memories flooded back. Other occasions where one of us – usually Amber, who liked to overindulge – ended the evening leaning over a toilet. There was a certain melancholy to the scenario now. I could still easily slip in next to her to help her out as if not a day had passed since those days, and that was enormously satisfying to me, but, how sad at the same time, that this many years later I’d still have to.
After she’d finished, she rested her cheek on the porcelain. “Thanks, babe.”
“You’re not hooked to the IV,” I noted as I perched on the side of the tub.
“Jeb took me off this morning,” she explained. “Then I had my first attempt at food. It didn’t go too well.”
Her skin, I noticed, had a gray undertone, and she was sweating. “Do you have a fever?” I put the back of my hand up to her forehead and found her to be cool and clammy.
“I doubt it. Just part of the process of getting this out of my system.”
“Is the methadone not helping?” I’d been familiar with the aftereffects of too much coke – the depression, the irritation. It dawned on me now that I didn’t know the first thing about opiate withdrawal.