Branded: You Own Me & The Virgin's Night Out (25 page)

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “He came by. He wanted to make sure…” Her breathing hitched, almost painfully. “He asked if there was a
problem
.”

Now, all but pleading with him to understand, she said, “Tyler, Dani wasn’t a
problem
, not even then. So I just told him there wasn’t any problem…and he left.”

Boone leaned against the wall, his face buried in his hands.

Words and images and thoughts churned in his head, an ugly storm that threatened to pummel him down into the very earth.

He asked if there was a
problem
.

Images flashed in front of his eyes.

Sloane, wearing a skirt and skinny boots and a skinny black top, staring at him from across a gleaming kitchen. There was a faint smile on her lips as she said,
No problem
.

That spun away into another flash—one he’d thought was a fantasy, but now he had to wonder. Was it
memory
? The surreal images of him stretching Sloane out on a bed, the room dark and quiet, up until he brought her to a moaning climax.

My name
—

That single thought, like he pulled on a vital thread, sent it all unraveling and he
remembered
. He remembered the hotel, how she’d punched some guy—it would have been her ex-fiancé, he knew that now. How they’d danced and he’d kissed her and taken her back to his hotel—taken
her
.

The rubber, how he’d discovered it broken, and then her—how she’d disappeared on him.

The blur of weeks between that time together and when he approached her at her home.

No problem
.

“Fuck,” he whispered.

The voices in the room just beyond him stilled.

Shoving off the wall, he moved to stand in the doorway, his eyes immediately cutting to Sloane.

Her face was pale.

Her eyes were dark and haunted.

And she held her daughter—no,
their
daughter—in her arms protectively.

“Boone,” Tyler said, his voice tight. “Now isn’t…”

The other man’s words trailed off as he glanced at Boone, then took another longer look.

Boone barely noticed. He was too busy staring at

Sloane—at his child.

“Boone,” Sloane said, her voice shaking.

He just backed away, still watching her.

“Boone.” She stood up, a plea on her face.

Tyler looked between the two of them and then quietly, he

whispered, “Son of a bitch.”

Boone turned on his heel and strode away.

After months of nothing, one might think Boone would welcome the onslaught of memories.

One would be wrong.

He’d taken one of the horses from the stable and mounted up. He knew how to ride—and yeah, he could even remember that now. He hadn’t even bothered with a saddle, because he wanted to be
gone
.

Now, nearly an hour after he’d figured it out and a hard, sweaty ride later, he stood at the edge of the lake.

Oh, he didn’t want the empty slate his mind had been, but damn if he wanted this knowledge.

Dani—
Danielle
—was his.

He’d helped Sloane bring that tiny little bit of perfection into being and the thought leveled him, terrified him.

The horse whickered from a few feet away and he turned. It wasn’t a surprise, he guessed, when he caught sight of the slim form mounted atop a large bay.

Turning away, he stared back out over the water as Sloane closed the distance between them.

In the few minutes it took for her to dismount and move to stand next to him, he wrapped a steely fist around his emotions, shoving them deep, deep inside.

“You shouldn’t be riding until your hand heals up,” he said. And his voice was flat, neutral. He was impressed with how cool he sounded. Especially since he felt like he was dying inside.

“Sure.” She negligently flapped her injured hand in the air and he thought of how much blood she’d lost. Oh, logically, he knew it wasn’t that bad of an injury—he’d taken worse. Tyler had. They’d had worse and just shrugged it off.

But this was Sloane.

“I’ll just let you carry me back to the house and I’ll sit around and eat bonbons until I’m all better. Sound good,” she said, her voice wry.

He closed his eyes.

She sighed softly. A moment later, she whispered, “Boone…I’m

sorry.”

Boone snorted. Keeping his voice caustic and dry, he said, “Why? Because you made the
wise
decision to keep a no-account bum out of your baby’s life?”

Our baby
…

Sloane touched his arm. “You’re hardly a no account bum, Boone. I know too much about you, about what you do—”

“For a paycheck.” He caught her wrist and gently nudged her hand away before he turned to face her. “I do it for a paycheck. I joined the army because I didn’t have any other options and I went to work for DDX because the two men I called friend—the
only
two—asked me to. I was tired of the killing and tired of the military and they offered me an out. A job. A paycheck.”

“Oh, Boone.” Her eyes softened. She went to touch him, but he backed away.

The slice of hurt that appeared in her eyes sent an echoing pain through his chest.

But she didn’t back down. “Boone, you don’t do the kind of job you do for a
paycheck
. You risk your life, your sanity…your freedom and you do it because you believed you could help.”

“Don’t go making me into some sort of altruistic hero. That was Pierce. That’s Tyler. It’s
not
me.”

Her eyes flickered at the sound of her dead brother’s name.

Taking a step toward her, he said, “He died because of me. He saw the sniper and he shoved me out of the way.
I
should have been the one to bleed out in the dirt and muck that night. Not him.”

Those ragged words split her heart right open.

Reaching up, she cupped his face in her hand. He froze and she prepared herself for him to back away. But he just stood there, as if he was unable to move.

“If life was fair, then both of my brothers would still be alive,” she said quietly.

He reached up, his movements jerky. When he closed his fingers

around her wrist, he felt her pulse jump up. All from his touch.

His lids drooped, shielding his gaze, but not in time. She saw his the way his pupils flared and his mouth parted on a harsh intake of breath.

“
Fair
is a fairy tale, Sloane.” He tugged her hand away and let go, gently. He raked her with a look and it left her feeling like he’d scraped away layers of skin.

She wrapped her arms around herself as he moved in and murmured against her ear. “If life was
fair
,” he murmured. “Then you wouldn’t have gotten knocked up by a bastard like me. You wouldn’t have had to sidestep my questions when I asked if you were pregnant.”

“
Sidestep
?” She turned to gape at him as he strode away.

He shot her a look over his shoulder, “Yeah.
Sidestep
. You dodged me when I asked you—and don’t think I don’t know why. I wouldn’t want to raise a baby with me, either.”

Insult held her rigid and kept her silent as he looked away and once more continued forward.

To the horse.

He was leaving—

“Oh, no, you’re not,” she muttered under her breath.

It took no time for her to cross the distance between them, her long legs eating up the feet in less time than it took him to mount the horse.

She caught the reins, murmured soothingly to the gelding as he balked at her sudden appearance and the weight of the man who’d just slung a leg over his back. “It’s okay, Cocoa,” she said, stroking the horse from his forehead down to his muzzle. “It’s okay.”

“Give me the reins,” Boone said in a monotone.

“No.” She kept her voice low and gentle as she continued to stroke the horse. He sighed and leaned into her touch while the man astride his back glared at her. “You don’t ride much. You should have grabbed the reins
before
you mounted.”

He narrowed his eyes.

She smiled sweetly up at him. “Get off the horse.”

“We’re done here.”

“Oh, no, we’re not.” She studied him while Cocoa started to shift

nervously. Boone was a bigger guy than Cocoa was used to carrying and the skittish beast was picking up on the tension in the air. “Get down.”

When he just stared at her, she gave him a long, thorough study.

“You ever been thrown by a horse?” she asked as Cocoa continued his anxious little dance.

The abrupt change in topic confused him enough that he actually answered. “Almost every damn time I get on one,” he said, reaching out to stroke a hand down the horse’s neck.

Cocoa rolled his eyes backyard.

She murmured to him again.

“Well, you can get off or take your chances,” she said.

“Give me the damn reins.”

She did just that and stepped back. “Get ready.”

Boone’s reply was cut off by a nervous whicker from the horse and the agitated sound of it had Boone stiffen up.

The worst thing he could have done.

Cocoa reared.

When Boone came flying off, she winced in sympathy.

“You’re too big a rider for him,” she said as he lay on the ground.

He didn’t say anything, just closed his eyes.

She called to Cocoa, clicking under tongue.

The horse was pacing around nervously and if she wasn’t mistaken, he gave her an embarrassed look. But he didn’t come to her right away.

Sighing, she looked at Boone. “You made him feel bad!”

“He
should
feel bad!” Boone, now sitting up, glared at her. “The damn thing threw me! And you knew he would.”

“No.” She slid her hands into her pockets. “I told you to get down or take your chances.”

“You damn well knew he was going to throw me.” Boone went to stand and winced.

“No. I thought he
might
.” She lifted a shoulder. “And if you knew anything about horses, you would have realized he was nervous.”

The look he gave would have withered her where she stood—if

she had been the same woman he’d taken back to the hotel room. But the past year had changed her, and not just because she barely slept more than three or four hours at a stretch these days.

When she angled her chin up, she thought she saw a flicker of surprise in his eyes.

“Okay,” he said sourly as he shoved upright and started to dust off the seat of his pants. “You got me off the damn horse. Now say what you need to say.”

“I didn’t sidestep you,” she said.

“So what would you call it?”

Crossing her arms over her chest, she glared at him. “You were eavesdropping—you should know the answer.” Feeling more than a little defensive, she gave into the anger flickering inside her. “You stupid ass. You asked me if there was a
problem
. Dani
isn’t
a problem. She never was. It’s not my fault you asked the wrong damn question.”

He gaped at her.

On a roll now, she strode toward him. “You can’t stand there and tell me I sidestepped you because I didn’t want you to be a father. I don’t know what kind of father you’d be, so how the hell could I sidestep you?”

She stopped in front of him, a few bare inches away.

Fire seemed to burn in his eyes. “You want me to believe you lied to me just because you felt like it?” he demanded. Before she could answer, he caught her chin in his hands, bending down until their gazes were level. “You did the right thing. I don’t blame you—I don’t know shit-all about being a dad and even less about being a
good
dad.”

He let go of her abruptly, backing away as if she was contagious.

She didn’t follow. She heard something in his voice. And it broke her heart.

“What I know about
dads
would turn your stomach, sugar,” Boone said. His spine was a hard, rigid line, shoulders tense as he stared out over the smooth water of the lake. “My dad? The man had this thing for
instant
obedience. As in he said
get your ass out of bed
and if you weren’t out of bed by the time the words left his mouth, he’d haul you out. I saw him dragging my mother out of bed by the hair—she’d been sick with the flu and was all but unconscious, but he didn’t give a fuck about that.”

Sloane closed her eyes.

“My kid sister…”

His voice trailed off.

When he didn’t say anything, Sloane opened her eyes and forced herself to move. He didn’t look at her as she came to a stop by his side. “I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“She’s been dead for more than twenty years.”

Startled, she looked over at him.

When he turned his head to meet her gaze, his eyes were all but dead. Lifeless. “She was three years old and she’d fallen down, hit the back of her head. She was crying and didn’t shut up when the old man told her to.”

A hollow ache spread through her chest. Instinctively, she wanted to reach out for him, but she held herself still.

“We had these neighbors—nice folks,” Boone murmured, his voice thick. “They were in their sixties. The guy had served in the military—fought in the Korean War…he was a tough son-of-a-bitch. His name was Phillip—his wife was Marie. They’d called the cops on my dad more than a few times. Once, my dad went over there to get some of his own back. He’d waited until Phillip had left, thought the woman would be an easy target. Marie met him at the door with a gun in her hands.”

He looked down at his hands, flexed them. “They called the cops when they heard Ashley crying. She was screaming by the time the old guy got to our front door. Phillip kicked it in…but it was too late. She’d already stopped crying.”

Boone looked over at her. “My dad had slammed her into the wall. She was crying…I went to pull him away and he threw me across the room. He was a big mother-fucker.” He looked back down at his hands.

She suspected he wasn’t seeing his own hands, but his father’s.

“Ash…he’d slammed her into the wall so hard, her head split.

She went into a coma…never woke up.”

Sloane wanted to weep. For the little girl she’d never even known existed, and for the man standing before her now.

“Phillip knocked my father down. His wife was there—she grabbed me and pushed me into my mom’s arms, but my mom…she couldn’t do anything. Marie went to take me out of there and…she…she stopped. I saw Ashley.”