Burn for Cowboy (Stampede Sizzlers) (6 page)

She opened her mouth to do just that but nothing came out.

Her fingers gripped the front of her shirt.Her other hand found the scar on her leg.

She abandoned the couch and the silent, mocking television and walked into the bedroom. She turned on the lights and shut the door to see the full length mirror hanging on the back. Memories flicking at her.

The past.

Last night.

Adam.

Mike.

Her fingers brushed down the front of her shirt, easing the buttons open.

The scar on her abdomen was not as ugly as the one on her thigh. But it was just as devastating. She had miscarried that night, her traumatized body unable to hold onto that tiny beat of life. She had begun to hemorrhage from wounds sustained in the car accident. Her spleen, her gall bladder, her uterus: all removed. It had been, the doctors had said, a damn miracle she had lived.

Blood loss alone should’ve killed her when her femur had broken, ripping through a seventeen year old figure skater’s thigh. She had lost her coach, Holly Prentiss, and her grandfather that night. Black ice on a highway that neither a car nor the semi-truck coming toward them saw. A shriek of metal and everything was gone.

Her fingers traced the neat scar below her belly button and then lower. Her dreams of ice had been ended by ice. Those damn Fates.

How they loved spilling irony into her life and fucking it up. She had lost the baby that had scared her so much. Terrified her.

Adam’s baby.

The baby he had thrown away when he had thrown her away.

She went to get one of Mike’s shirts. She needed the comfort of his scent around her. She lifted the sleeve up to smell the faint sandalwood cologne he wore

Why? Why now? Where had Adam been for the past eight years?

Living his dreams of ice, while she had forged new dreams. Coaching.

Michael.

She lifted the sleeve to her nose as she sat on the corner of the bed, staring at the faded ghosts who hours earlier had writhed in want and need.
Michael.

The man she craved.

Adam.

The boy she loved…

Just thinking of seeing Adam, had her jumping off the bed.

Her hand shook as she pressed the sleeve against her lips. She thought she felt alone... until the hospital. Alone was waking up in the hospital to find her loved ones gone: Holly, her grandfather, Adam. They left her alone with the pain, with the fear that she’d never walk, let alone skate. The nurses had gossiped about her father who demanded to know if she’d skate while the doctors had just been concerned that she’d live through the night.

Once it had been determined there was no gold medal in her future, her father had given up on her.

Alone and struggling to survive, at seventeen, with no one to make it stop hurting.

What hurts you is
not
allowed.

Mike opened the door, the beat up jeans he relaxed in riding low on his hips. His gaze moved over her, not even seeing the scars that taunted her with memories. “Those sad eyes.” A graceful push of his shoulder had him standing up and walking toward her. “What is going on behind these sad eyes?”

When his fingers caressed her cheek, she shut her eyes. Lips pressed against her forehead and the gentle kiss caused a tear to escape. “I don’t know.”

“Liar,” he whispered against her ear. He backed her toward their ruined bed and when the mattress bumped her knees, he pushed her backwards. She bounced against the sheets that smelled of him, of her, of them. “You’re remembering that he broke you heart, because he did. Didn’t he?” He straddled her hips and braced his hands on the mattress so he hovered above her.

“Tell me what happened? Tell me why…” A frustrated sigh escaped from him as he stared down at her.

“Why?” She whispered, reaching up to wipe the tears from her cheek.

His gaze was steady. “I want
all
of you, Meredith. I don’t want two separate lives anymore clearly defined by my house and yours. I want
one
life. One.” His weight shifted as he lifted up his left hand and held up one finger. “Yours and mine blended together. I know that scares you. But I want to know why. Why does the thought of a future with me scare you? I will not,” he said as he tapped that finger gently over the fast beat of her heart to match the rhythm of his words, “walk away from you, Meredith.”

She searched his eyes and wanted him to wrap her up in his arms to make it all go away. Put a blindfold on her so she couldn’t see anyone but him. His finger rested over her heart.

“Know that here.” Another tap over her heart. “Know it here.” His finger gently pressed against her forehead. “You trust me with your body, but I want it all, little love. Trust me here and here.” Once again he motioned to her head and heart. “That’s why.”

****

Mike stared at his hand and dragged his fingers over his palm. Well, at least he knew the ghost in Meri’s heart. Exhaling, he sagged back in the couch. He just didn’t expect it to be someone he knew. Someone he liked, for the most part.

Now he wanted to hunt his hockey player down and slam his fist into that pretty boy face. His fingers curled inwards and he ran his thumb over his knuckles. One hit was all it would take to release what was broiling in his stomach.

Anger that someone had hurt Meri years ago. Envy that she had loved the stupid asshole. Frustration because even now, even after everything she was in that bedroom crying over the jerk.

Oh yeah, he wanted to bash the crap out of Adam.

There was movement and he watched Meri slip out of the bedroom wearing his shirt. She looked hesitant, staring at him as she twisted a button at the cuff around and around. What had he ever done to make her look at him with uncertainty? To jerk away from him?

She rubbed her thigh, tugging on the bottom of his shirt as if to hide her scars. Shit. They were back to that?

A frustrated sound strangled in his throat. He crocked his finger at her. When she stood between his knees, he eased the shirt away from her hand so she wasn’t trying to hide.

“I do trust you, Mike.”

His eyebrows rose as he parted the shirt. “Says the woman who is all buttoned up.” He flattened his hand on her stomach and met her gaze. “Tell me about Adam.”

His thumb caressed over the surgical scar on her stomach beneath the shirt. He knew her body, knew every mark on her pale skin. Even the ones he had laid upon her with a crop, he remembered the faded stripes.

“I don’t want to talk about Adam.”

He did. Mike turned her so her back was to him. He tugged on the sleeve until it covered her hand. “How long did you date?”

“Not long,” she said softly. Mike waited as he eased the buttons of the left sleeve into the cuff of the right.

“How old were you?” Getting answers from her was like trying to whip running water.

“Seventeen.”

His hands paused in his task of connecting the two sleeves together. Seventeen was when she had been in the accident. “How long did you date again?”

Open wound meet the salt of my questions.
He ran his hands up her trapped arms and she shivered beneath his shirt. “Does it matter?”

His hands fell. Bracing his elbows on his knees, he stared at her back. Mike rose behind her and lowered his head until his lips brushed against her ear. “This is you not trusting me, Meredith,” he whispered.

Through their clothes he felt the tensing of her body. “Please,” she said softly, her voice breaking as if she was trying not to cry.

Mike kissed the top of her head. “I’m not sure how I feel about Adam Payne having this much power over you. Okay, I do know. I want to haul him onto the ice then embed his ass in the boards so hard he’ll be picking out splinters for five years. I assume he was your first lover because I can’t see you as a promiscuous teenager. I can’t deny that I wasn’t the first man to make love to you nor even the second, but by God I plan on being the last.” He caressed his fingers down her neck to where her pulse raced beneath the open collar of his shirt. “Oh how that terrifies you. I’m not denying you your past. That’s ridiculous. But when I ask a simple question like how long you dated, I’d like an answer. Five minutes ago you stood in front of me and told me that you trust me. That’s bullshit. If you trusted me, we’d have ended this conversation before it began and we’d be naked in bed. But here we are, little love. You keeping yourself locked down to me.”

A tear shimmered down her cheek as she closed her eyes. Mike studied her profile. “I want all of you, Meredith. Body, heart and soul. It’s not just the dominant in me that craves that but the man. Does he have the elusive heart and soul?”

“No,” she whispered, her arm moving as if she was going to wipe at her cheek. Too bad he had buttoned her arms behind her. She was just going to have to shed the tears that had been haunting her since he had laid all his cards on the table.

“Did you just lie to me, Meri?”

She liked her lower lip and shook her head. “No.”

When she went face him, he held his finger against her cheek. “One final time, Meredith–”

“Four months,” she whispered.

The time frame made him blink slowly. Four months? He was competing with an eight year four month old ghost? “Was that so hard?”

What the hell had Adam Payne done to make such an impression on her? What had he done to make her so guarded?

A little nod made Adam smile, his finger caressing the silky skin of her cheek. There was something amazing about her letting him do rather painful things to her soft skin. He had been with Meri almost three times as long as Adam had been. He couldn’t help but feel a little insulted since he knew Adam’s reputation with the ladies. Adam’s relationships were like his slap shot – short, fast and hard. He figured that as a punk ass kid just out of high school, he had been more of an arrogant jerk than he was now.

Mike may do painful things to Meri’s body, but he never hurt her to the point she couldn’t heal.

Apparently Adam had.

Mike caressed his fingertip over that fluttering pulse at the base of her neck. “I know you’ve been hurt, Meri. Everyone has at some point. But how long you hurt is up to you. When are you going to start believing me when I say that what hurts you cannot be?” Leaning down, he pressed a kiss over the evidence that her nerves and emotions were spinning out of control. “When, little love, are you going to start believing in me?”

Chapter Six

Nerves had her rubbing her thigh as she stared at the door marked with 412. Asking Mike what room Adam was in had been one of the hardest things she had ever done. No. This was.

She didn’t want to talk to Adam. She didn’t want to come face to face with her past.

The door opened and her stomach gave an anxious clutch. Adam Payne. His name whispered through her heart, scratching painfully at her memories. It had been one thing to be with him when Mike was with her. It was, she realized, a harsh difference to be with him alone.

“Hello, Meri-girl.”

The name hurt because she wasn’t his Meri-girl anymore. She hadn’t been since he had punted her out of his truck, telling her to deal with the problem of their baby. “Can we talk?”

His ocean eyes looked at her then he stepped aside. Stepping in, she rubbed her thigh. So this is what it felt like stepping into the lion’s den. The room was a typical hotel room, different from the suite Mike preferred. The king-sized bed was messed up from where Adam had been sleeping before she had knocked on his door.

He had cracked open the mini-bar. Tiny empty bottles were scattered across the desk.

Her heart gave a painful squeeze and she made herself face Adam. His blonde hair was messy, his jaw covered in stubble. He truly was a gorgeous piece of work. How had hockey not ruined his face?

They stared at each other, their past a writhing mess of memories between them.

He leaned against the dresser, the slouch a pose of careless seduction. Adam knew he was good-looking and he used that knowledge. He always had. “I always wondered what happened to you.”

“I was in a car crash. I miscarried. I could barely walk, let alone skate. None are huge secrets.”

His green-blue gaze flicked down to her thigh and she made herself stop running her hand over thigh. She couldn’t stop touching the area. Nerves. She wasn’t the same girl he remembered.

“Give me some credit,” Adam said in a low voice. “I was a kid then too, Meri. I was eighteen and I–,” he exhaled. “I didn’t want a kid. I wanted to leave, I wanted the ice. I wanted you, Meri, never doubt that. I wanted you for so long.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I wanted it all. I’m used to having it all. Spoiled, rich boy with the shiny new toys.”

“Was I a shiny new toy?”

“No.” The word was soft, his voice firm. “You were everything. I watched you for months. Watched you skate because you took my breath away, Meri. You were
everything
.”

Her heart pounded because there was a but and it was huge.  If there wasn’t, he wouldn’t have kicked her out of his truck that long ago day.

“But it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t have you and the ice. The ice is
all
.”

 “I once felt that you were with me because you thought I was golden like you. I used to have the ice and then I became pregnant. Can’t compete with a belly.”

“God damn it, that’s not what I’m saying.” He gave her a little shake. “I didn’t love you because you could skate. I loved you because you loved someone who doesn’t exist. Who will
never
exist. I am not golden, Meri, I’m a thug on skates who can hit a bullet slap shot. I was never golden. I shone because of you, god damn it. Because of you!”

“But you left!” She shouted back. “You still left.”

“I was eight-fucking-teen!” He bellowed. “And you deserved someone who wasn’t a shit-for-brains. Who saw his pregnant teenage girlfriend as a fucking trap because he wanted the world. I was a
kid
, Meredith. Same as you. Same as fucking you!”

She blinked as his shout echoed around the room and bounced around in her head. They stared at each other and he swore. He dragged her against him and claimed her mouth with his. It was anger and hurt.