Cowboy SEAL Redemption by Nicole Helm

Author:Nicole Helm [Helm, Nicole]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2018-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

They drove in silence to Rose’s house. He didn’t know why she’d suggested coming here, but he knew it was exactly where he wanted to be. Clear, starry night. Abandoned, falling-down house. Beautiful, complicated Rose Rogers. It felt like everything he needed after this day.

It hadn’t been the explosive, angry tragedy he’d expected. It hadn’t been the easy, oh this doesn’t actually hurt so much gathering he’d hoped for. It had been all those things and a million other things on top of them, to the point where he’d gone completely numb.

Numb to Vivian’s happy recounting of her strange customers. Numb to Madison and Mike feeding Croy at the dinner table, a clear partnership. Numb to Mom’s good-night hugs.

He felt nothing.

He supposed it was some natural, biological function—shutting down completely so he didn’t have to actually deal with the pain.

Rose pulled her car all the way up to the steps of the house. Without a word, she got out and so did he. He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the pond glittering in the distance.

“Want to go for another swim?” Rose asked from somewhere that sounded a million miles away. He felt a million miles away. When he turned to face her, she was a lot closer than that, still in that overly feminine dress, her hair in that ridiculously demure braid, simply standing at the top of the steps and looking like the sweet, accommodating queen of the dilapidated manor.

Something swept through him then, a tide of emotions he couldn’t have named if he’d tried. They weren’t sweet or nice or easy. It was fire, and it was pain, and it was some edgy need with teeth.

He stalked over to her, taking each step with no thought to the ache in his right leg, and he noticed and yet didn’t mind the wariness that crept into her expression.

Maybe someone should be wary. Maybe someone should have a goddamn care.

He reached out and tugged the band out of her hair. She didn’t move. She stood there like a disapproving statue. So he unwound the braid until her hair hung loose over her shoulders, all bent in the places it had been twirled together.

“I hate that dress,” he all but spat, that edgy, needy thing building in him more and more the longer she looked at him with nothing but detachment.

Her eyebrows raised a fraction. “Do you now?” she murmured, all cool, collected, in charge Rose.

Thank Christ she was back. He couldn’t take another second of fake her.

“I hate the syrupy-sweet way you said my name all day,” he continued.

She crossed her arms over her chest, icy, regal, and cool. “Well, I just live for the critique of my performance. Maybe you’d like to do a review in the Valley County Gazette.”

He had no reason to be mad at Rose. Hell, maybe he didn’t have any reason to be mad period, but it roared through him like fire, and he wanted to get under her facade. The dress, the hair, that distant way she spoke.

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