For years it had been like this, and over the past few months it had been even worse. A damned torturous slog. Like the buildup of a dam about full to bursting.
Being in an enclosed truck cab with her for the next couple of hours did not sound good. It sounded like it might put a crack in the dam, and that was something he couldn’t afford.
The last thing he needed to do was breathe the same air that Chloe was breathing, before he had gotten his libido under control. That was the real issue with why it had been getting so bad lately, he was sure.
He had not had any sex recently. It was tough. He was busy running the ranch, and he wasn’t particularly open to the idea of a long-term relationship. Hookups were what he thrived on, but with his brothers happily settled into marriage, arranging times when he could go out and fool around and they would hold down the fort for him had gotten fewer and farther between. That was the issue. Not so much Chloe herself, but the fact that he hadn’t been near enough to a willing woman in longer than he could remember.
Well, he could remember. It was just that it didn’t do anything for him. He had tried. He had tried in the dead of night to imagine his last partner, a woman named Alex who worked at the tattoo parlor down in Tolowa.
She had a lot of ink, and piercings in interesting places.
She was so different from Chloe. And as much as it pained him to admit it, that had been the primary attraction to most women he’d been with over the past few years.
Not Chloe.
Alex fit that bill, and nicely. And he’d had a good time with her when they’d been together. But now?
The memory did absolutely nothing for him. For some reason, imagining her thick eyeliner and pouty lips didn’t fire his blood at all. No, it was fresh-faced Chloe that kept imprinting herself on his mind. And he didn’t like it at all.
A man’s life had cornerstones. And his had a few. This ranch. His brothers.
Chloe.
Chloe had been the key to him deciding that the ranch mattered. Seeing it through her eyes had been a revelation, and it had stirred something in him he hadn’t imagined was there. Teaching her to ride, and how to perform chores around the property, had breathed new life into all of it.
Chloe wasn’t a sister to him, but she was something. Something definitive.
Something essential.
He’d never wanted to risk that. Ever. An attraction to her had seemed like the worst thing possible, though he’d figure out how to tamp it down.
He could never risk disrupting a cornerstone. Not just in his life, but in his family’s. All it would take was a crack, and all that he was, all they were, could come tumbling down.
Because Tanner couldn’t keep it in his pants.
And no, that wasn’t going to happen.
As if she had been conjured up from his imagination, Chloe came riding toward the barn, her hair flying behind her in the wind, her lithe, strong body guiding her horse exactly where she wanted her to go.
She pulled to a stop when she saw him, a slight frown on her lips.
“You’re still here,” she said.
“So are you.”
She frowned. “Yeah, I wanted to get in one last ride and make sure that all the instructions for Jacob Dalton were in place.”
“Well, now it’s too late for you to drive yourself. Calder called. The road is not going to be passable in your little two-wheel drive, so if you have anything packed up in that Civic of yours you better throw it in the back of my pickup truck.”
* * *
“OH I JUST... I thought it would be more convenient if I had a car...”
“Hey, no argument from me on convenience,” he said. “But it’s not going to be very convenient if you get stuck in a ditch.”
“I have chains,” she said.
“Calder said that wouldn’t cut it.”
“Right,” she said.
“It’ll be fine. It’ll be fun. We’ll sing,” he said, because if he couldn’t feel normal he’d try to trick himself into thinking it was normal.
She shot him a look. “We will not sing.”
He followed her into the barn while she untacked her horse.
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t sing. Actually, you’re pretty terrible at it.”
“You’re no Miranda Lambert.”
“Lucky for you,” she said. “I might get a little crazy and light something of yours on fire.”
He chuckled, ignoring the way that her hair moved when she brushed it back off her face. Ignoring the tightening low in his gut that accompanied it.
“I guess I’ll get ready then.”
She moved, and he caught her scent, and then she stopped dead, her luminous brown eyes connecting with his. It was like a band of tension had stretched tight between them, drawing them together.
“You better do that,” he said, taking a step back, breaking the tension. Because, oh, hell no. He did not need this. Not now. Not ever.
Most of all, Chloe didn’t need him lusting after her.
He couldn’t offer her anything. He had watched his own father go through marriage after marriage, making a hash of it.
The only real reason his marriage to Chloe’s mother had lasted was her sheer grit and stubbornness.
And...
Chloe’s mother was about the best thing that had ever happened to his family. He couldn’t imagine taking a risk like that. Detonating a bomb in the middle of what they had.
No.
Just about every way of getting laid was a hell of a lot cheaper. He was not going to go there.
No matter how beautiful his stepsister was, he was never going to touch her. No matter that he’d spent seven years wanting her.
If he had to spend the next seven wanting her, he’d do just that. But he wasn’t going to have her.
And that was his final word on that to himself.
BY THE TIME they were on the road, Chloe was feeling antsy. And by the time the stretch of road in front of them began to grow thick with snow, she was feeling even more antsy. And it wasn’t even the proximity to Tanner.
“This is looking ugly,” she commented as they went around the corner and the tires on Tanner’s four-wheel-drive clung fast to the ground. Much to her relief.
“Yeah, but we should be fine,” Tanner said. Normally she found his confidence...well, pretty sexy, sadly for her. Right about now she was dubious about it.
“I’m glad that you have so much confidence,” she said. “I’m not sure that I do.”
“I know how to drive in all weather,” he said. “Need I remind you, I’m a very experienced driver.”
“Is that a euphemism for old?”
He looked over at her. “Maybe.”
“Well, you are certainly old.”