Two Nights with His Bride (7 page)

She stayed quiet for several long moments. When she finally spoke, he had to strain
to hear her. “He said I talk about you too much.”

His nostrils flared as disgust ripped through him. How dare that pathetic little criminal use him as an excuse?

“He said he needed to remind me who loves me most, and that you would never give me the time of day because you only go out with…”

He waited, trying and utterly failing to control his seething breath. “I only go out with what?”

Her
voice was so hushed he almost didn’t hear her. “With sweet, innocent girls. Not dirty girls like me.”

He steered to the side of the road and flipped his hazard lights on. Squeezing his eyes closed, he tried to wait until the murderous rage ebbed from his body—but then he realized it never would. Not until he’d strung the kid up and hurt him badly. “You are not dirty.”

Her hands twisted in her
lap, and she stared out her window at the trees so he couldn’t read her face.

“Listen to me, Nancylynn.
He’s
the dirty one, not you.”

“You don’t know everything.”

“I know enough.”

“I’m not a virgin, Wyatt.”

He’d strongly suspected that when she’d told him how Brady had demeaned her, but hearing the words out loud still filled him with sadness. He knew all too well the consequences girls sometimes
suffered when they got involved with the wrong kind of guy. His half sister, Camila, had been just a little older than Nancylynn when she’d gone to Barcelona and come home pregnant. Her life had derailed, and Wyatt would have been thrilled with twenty minutes alone in a room with the British rugby player who’d left her to face a horrible decision on her own.

“Your sex life is your choice to make,
sweetheart. Yours and yours alone.” He didn’t want to have a stake in it. Didn’t even want to
think
about it. But right now, she needed a friend—and he was the closest thing she had. “Has he…been rough with you before?”

She shook her head. “No. It was always…okay. Painful the first time but…kinda good after that.”

“Not exactly a ringing endorsement.”

“I don’t think women are actually supposed
to like it.”

His brows shot up, and he stared at her. “No?”

“No. If we were, it wouldn’t be so messy.”

He squeezed the steering wheel, and all he could think was
You’re too damn young.

They were still parked on the side of the road, and he tipped his head back as silence filled the truck.

“Can you take me to the big house?”

Surprised, he finally looked at her. “You want to go home?”

“To
your home, not mine. My lip hurts and I can taste the blood. I think I need to clean myself up before my parents see me. I don’t want to worry them too much.”

Jesus, she’d just had to fight her boyfriend off, and she was worried about her parents? Part of him wanted to reach across the cab, pull her into his arms and hug her. Fortunately, the rational side of him shot that idea down fast. He
put the truck in gear and released the brake. “Yeah, I’ll take you home.”

He’d driven her to his grandparents’ house and got her ice for her lip. When she’d been ready to face her parents, he’d walked her home. She hadn’t wanted him to stay, so he’d stood outside the trailer with his hands in his pockets as she’d talked to her parents. For the last two weeks of her school year, he’d not only
picked her up but gone into the school and waited near her locker as she’d collected her books and said goodbye to her friends. She stopped giving him the teenage attitude she’d always greeted him with before. He’d thought it was because his presence made her feel safe. That was what he’d intended, anyway.

He’d been so damn clueless, and he’d ended up hurting her just as much as her asshole boyfriend
had. But instead of using his fists, he’d broken her heart.

‡

“Marriage requires a special talent, like acting.”

—Warren Beatty

E
arly birds chirped
as Nancy built a teepee out of the small logs left over from last night’s fire and filled in the gaps with kindling. Swiping a match across its box, she lit the fire and blew gently to help it catch. When it crackled to life, she sat
back against a mossy, fallen tree and watched the fire burn.

The sun had barely risen over the mountains, bathing the clearing in a soft light. Everyone else was still asleep. Polly’s thunderous snores had woken her an hour ago, and she’d finally given up on falling back to sleep. Her muscles ached from yesterday’s activities but in such a sweetly memorable way that she couldn’t wait for more
of the same today.

She’d nearly forgotten telling Polly and Ruby about her childhood wilderness adventures, and she’d always wondered whether they realized how many of those stories were made up. She’d read a lot as a kid, stories of girls her age who’d been just as poor but had infinitely more gumption than she did. Girls who’d been orphaned and decided to live in boxcars or ride the rails in
search of family. Nancy hadn’t worked up the courage to leave her own boxcar-like trailer and set off in search of a better life until she’d graduated from high school. She sure hadn’t found that better life quickly, either. She’d found Polly and Ruby, and together the three of them had worked their asses off to afford a meager lifestyle until their fortunes started changing.

The fire’s flames
grew higher and warmed her cheeks, so she got up and hung a metal bucket full of water over it. Wyatt had rigged up a pretty ingenious system the night before, with two forked sticks sunk deep on either side of the fire pit and a strong stick lying across them, perfect for hooking the water bucket onto.

It didn’t take long for the water to start bubbling, and she carefully picked up the stick
it hung on and lifted it away from the fire. She poured the water into a container of coffee grounds and let the first whiff of caffeinated goodness wake her up. Wyatt had supplied the good stuff.

A rustle from the woods drew her attention just in time for her to see him crawling out of his tent. He wore jeans and a dark thermal shirt that showed off the musculature of his chest and abs. Memories
of last night’s game and the unsettling dreams that had followed came back to her. He’d touched her twice in her life—the time he’d held her hand after Brady’s attack, and the time he’d pushed her away, horror etched in his face and vibrating his voice as he’d said, “What the
hell
are you doing?”

“Kissing you.” She’d thought it was obvious, given that her hands were on his shoulders and her lips
had briefly touched his.

He’d brushed aside her hands and jumped out of the truck, still parked in front of her school. “Jesus Christ. Whatever made you do that, just forget about it. It’s not going to happen, Nancylynn. It’ll
never
happen—not in a million years.”

All the clichés about hearts breaking were baloney. Hers hadn’t broken. It had disintegrated.

Yesterday, she’d been shocked he brought
that shared humiliation up and even more shocked at how frankly he’d spoken about it. She’d appreciated him getting it out in the open, but the conversation had dredged up memories that fueled some horribly erotic dreams, similar to the ones she’d had of him as a teenager but with a lot more experience to color in the details.

All of which made it damn near impossible to look at him now.

“Morning.”
She gave him a tight smile and avoided his gaze as she gestured toward the brew. “Coffee?”

“Yeah.” He strode over and sat next to her but took the container from her. “Let me.”

“I can pour coffee.”

“I know. But I’m here to make this weekend luxurious for you. That includes serving you coffee.” He nudged her shoulder with his, and her belly did a funny little somersault. “How’d you sleep?”

“Like the drunken dead,” she lied.

He chuckled. “You girls seemed to enjoy yourselves.”

“We did. You didn’t have to leave, though.”

His lips twisted, and he kept his gaze firmly focused on the coffee as he strained and poured it into two cups. “I was kinda scared I’d get roped into a dare.”

That clearly wasn’t why he’d gone to bed early, but she appreciated the lie. “Well, you missed some really
hot stuff.”

His attention caught, he turned her way. “Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Like, so hot I think my lips blistered.”

His gaze dropped to her lips, and she immediately regretted teasing him. “I thought you weren’t going to do anything like that.”

“I…I didn’t. I was joking. Sorry, I don’t know why.” Yes, she did. Seeing him transported her back to the needy teenager desperately searching for acceptance.
And how badly did she hate admitting that to herself?

Really freaking badly.

He gave her a slow, sexy grin. “Actually, I find it way hotter that you refused to do it.”

“Really?” She couldn’t hide the shock from her voice.

“Really. Nothing sexy about infidelity.”

His eyes clouded over, and all the gossip she’d heard growing up came back to her. When he’d been two or three, his mom had cheated
on his dad and gotten pregnant with twins, Gabriel and Camila. His brother Austin must’ve been little more than a baby himself. It had torn his family apart. He’d split his time between the ranch—where he had a beautiful house, loving grandparents and dad, and acres to play on—and a series of crappy apartments in town, which must’ve been terribly cramped with his mom and three siblings.

“Do you—”
Do you still date homemakers?
She cut herself off. “Um, do you take sugar in your coffee?”

“No. You?”

“Not usually, but since we don’t have milk—”

“Yeah, we do. Hang on.” He got up and opened the ice chest. “The ice melted, but the water’s cold so the milk will still be good. Irish cream, hazelnut or plain milk?”

“Oh, man, I’d kill for the hazelnut, but you’d better give me plain.”

He gave
her an odd look. “Why can’t you have the hazelnut one?”

“Empty calories.”

“You’re kidding me.” He pulled out the container of hazelnut creamer and dropped the lid of the ice chest. “You have any idea how many calories you burned yesterday? Believe me, you can afford these.”

“Not after the twenty-three s’mores and two bottles of wine I had last night. Anyway, I’d rather have plain milk. Honestly.”

He gave her a look that told her what he thought of that, but he didn’t push. Swapping the creamer with a small carton of low-fat milk, he came back and served her the coffee. For several minutes, they sat next to each other in silence as the woods woke up, the fire crackled, and the caffeine worked its way through her sleepy system.

“So…how’d you two meet?”

“What two?” she asked.

One of his
brows cocked in disbelief. “You and the love of your life.”

It took her a second. “Oh! Jared.”

His other brow joined the first in reaching for his hairline.

“We met on set. He produces
Sultry Suburbs
and came on the show as a guest star one day, and we just sort of—”
Had sex in a closet ten minutes after meeting.
“—hit it off.”

“Sounds…sultry.”

She laughed. “I guess so.”

“And he treats you
well?”

Her laughter died. She’d wondered when they’d get around to this topic, or whether they would skirt around it the whole trip. She’d hoped they could ignore it but suspected it would always be there, an ugly beast of an experience sitting between them. “He treats me great.”

He really did. He was constantly showing her how much he adored her, sending her sweet messages throughout the day
asking what she was up to, wanting to spend every free minute with her. They’d only spent a handful of nights apart from each other since the day they’d met. Strange…she would’ve expected last night’s separation to be more difficult, but it was oddly liberating. Maybe because she’d been so exhausted after all the exercise, fresh air, and alcohol.

“That’s good.” He took a sip of coffee. “I’m happy
for you, Nancy. You’ve accomplished more than most people do in a lifetime, and I admire the hell out of you for it.”

Pride and shame mingled low in her gut. She
had
accomplished a lot, but she’d also found ways to get what she wanted, ways she was too ashamed to admit to herself, much less anyone else. Polly and Ruby probably suspected, but they’d never said anything. They’d most likely been
on the same casting couch she had. And she prayed Jared never found out. He’d told her once how he loved that her life was scandal-free.
No chance of skeletons leaping out of the closet when I run for governor
, he’d said.

He’d hate her if he knew.

She wrapped her suddenly cold fingers around the coffee mug and let its heat seep in. “Thank you for not…you know…telling the girls about how my childhood
really was.”

“They don’t know?”

“They know some things. I told them I didn’t grow up with much money. Ruby comes from money, and Polly’s family is pretty comfortable, too, so I don’t think they can imagine what that really means.”

He lifted his cup for another sip. They were sitting so close his arm brushed hers. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”