“It’s not. I know that,” he told her.
“So maybe my family isn’t as different from yours as we thought.”
He scoffed at that.
Not because he thought it wasn’t true, but because he didn’t need to be sitting here finding common ground with her, finding reasons to like her. It was the last thing he needed to be doing.
And it didn’t help any that he was sitting on her bed, late at night, the two of them absolutely alone, with him having to keep reminding himself of exactly who she was, to keep from remembering what he’d planned to be doing with her in this cabin, in this bed tonight.
It didn’t help either that he’d put his hands on her, even in anger, for a moment. And it was even worse now, when it wasn’t anger that was driving him on, but the need to go to her again, this time to make sure she was okay, to comfort her, wishing he could forget everything that stood between them.
Get up, he told himself sternly. Get up and get out of here, before you make it any worse.
But he didn’t listen.
Chapter Six
He put his hands on her again, same place as before, this time as gentle as he could be, rubbing slowly with his thumbs at the soft flesh of her inner arms. She looked wary, but she let him.
“I’m truly sorry,” he said. “I don’t treat women that way. It’s just that…ever since I heard about Charlie, I couldn’t help but worry and wonder…what it was like for him, growing up a McCord.”
She gave him a look that just about had him on his knees. A look that said she understood completely and could forgive, not that he felt he deserved it.
“No one in my family wants to hurt him,” Travis promised her.
She hung her head. He saw tears falling down one perfect, pale cheek and a curtain of red-gold hair shielding the rest of her from view. She shivered a bit.
He had to remind himself he didn’t get to keep her warm tonight, that the time when he was welcome to do that was long over. “What is it, Red?”
“I don’t see how Charlie’s ever going to belong anywhere now. Not with the way things are between your family and mine.”
Honestly, Travis didn’t either.
Paige shivered, and Travis had to get up or he was going to take her in his arms, despite all the reasons he’d told himself he couldn’t.
He pulled the covers up around her and eased her back down onto the bed, while she looked up at him, her eyes sad and full of regrets. He let himself touch her in one small way, a hand to her cheek, wiping away those tears, and then she looked even sadder. All sad eyes and tears and that glorious hair spread out on a pillow in a bed in a cabin with him and no one else around for miles.
He wondered what she’d do if he kissed her right then, if she longed for the way it had been between them the night before. If she wished they hadn’t been careful or cautious. He could have done anything to her that night, and she would have let him. He knew it.
But it was cold and wet, and the ground was hard, and she was just so soft and feminine, her body yielding completely to his. Not the kind of woman a man had on a bed of solid rock.
He’d wanted something better for her for their first time together, time, a soft bed, a fire and roof over their heads.
But mostly…time.
He’d been sure they’d have it, couldn’t foresee anything that would keep them from having that time.
What a fool he’d been.
And now he’d always wonder what it would have been like, despite who she was and who her family was.
“I’m going to build up the fire. Just go to sleep. One of the ranch hands will likely come for us by midday, and we’ll go to the ranch house and…I don’t know, Paige. I don’t know what we’ll do from there. Get your Jeep for you and…I don’t know.”
Let her go? Just like that? No. He didn’t want to do that. But what choice did he have? Forget about her? He didn’t think he could.
“I just don’t know,” he said again, then turned back to the fire, made himself lie down and stare at it, not at her, until at some point he finally fell asleep.
Someone walked into the cabin at first light.
Travis got up, sore from a night spent on a floor that was just a tad more comfortable than the rock he’d slept on the first night, and there stood Calvin Waters, a man who’d been working the ranch since Travis was a kid.
“Sorry, Boss,” he said. “You said to take care of the animals first, and we did. Just took a little longer than we thought, and then—”
He broke off as Paige rose from the bed on the other side of the room, looking all rumpled and sleepy and gorgeous in the morning light, her hair like pure fire, a curly, sexy mess.
Travis thought he heard Cal swear in utter appreciation and could have done the same himself.
Cal turned to Travis and shot him a look that said, What the hell are you doing on the floor when you’ve got someone like her in the bed?
Travis shot back his own look that said, Don’t say a word.
Cal nodded. “I didn’t bring enough horses. Didn’t know you had company.”
“We got caught in the storm together,” Travis said. “Paige, this is Calvin Waters. He knows more about the history of the ranch than anyone, because he’s about a hundred years old and I don’t think he’s lived a day anywhere but here. Cal, this is Paige.”
He deliberately left off the last name, because that would cause a stir throughout the ranch, and he didn’t want to answer any questions about her, especially since he had no answers where she was concerned.
“Hello, Mr. Waters,” Paige said, giving him a polite smile.
“Oh, ma’am, it’s just Cal. Glad to see you two found some shelter. It’s a helluva storm out there. Let up a little this morning, but it’s still miserable.” Then he turned to Travis. “I only have my horse and yours. Want me to go back to the ranch and—”
“No.” He wouldn’t put Cal or the horses through the extra trip. “Paige and I will be fine on Murph.”
He told her to get her things together and put her coveralls on. That would keep some of the rain off of her. He took care of the fire and soon they were outside.
The rain had let up, but had by no means stopped. They stood under the narrow overhang, and the horse came up to Travis and nudged him in the shoulder.
“I think he missed you,” Paige said.
“No, he’s reminding me that he was smart enough to know that storm was coming and I wasn’t.”
Paige laughed and fussed over the horse, rubbing his nose. “Smart and beautiful, then. Good for you.”
“We’re going to have to ride double, and we’re going to get wet one more time,” Travis told her. “But at the end of this trip is a real bathtub with a huge hot water tank and it won’t matter if we did lose power. We’ve got a generator. So you’ll be warm, and you can have a hot meal, too.”
“Sounds heavenly,” she told him.
No, not quite, he thought, remembering that first night with her. But it was as good as things