Untamed Cowboy

“Did he really not know about me?” Dallas asked, leveling that angry brown stare at her.

“Well, I didn’t know about you until five minutes ago,” Kaylee said. “And he told me he didn’t either. I’ve known him for a long time. He’s a terrible liar. On that you can trust me. He’s actually kind of a goody-goody. If he tells you something, I would be inclined to believe it.”

“Well, you’re his friend, so you’re biased.”

“It’s true,” Kaylee said, nodding. “But if I thought he was being a dumbass I wouldn’t protect him. Count on that. That’s real friends. Weak-ass friends just tell you what you want to hear. Real friends call you out when you need it. I’m a real friend.”

There was something about the vulnerability that flashed through Dallas’s eyes just then that hit Kaylee in a place she would rather not acknowledge. She didn’t want to relate to this kid, but suddenly she did. Yeah, she had both parents at home, but she knew all about uncertainty. She knew all about what it was like to spend your life walking on eggshells and hoping that you didn’t land on someone’s bad side.

She knew what it was like to live on a system of earning affection. Earning your place. Earning the right to get through the day without getting slapped upside the head.

Not even Bennett knew that about her. But she wondered in that moment if his son might have guessed just by looking at her. Like she had found common ground with him the moment their eyes had met. And suddenly, all that hurt she had felt a moment before over Marnie seemed ridiculous. The kid wasn’t a hypothetical anymore. He was real, and he was standing right in front of her.

A teenager who needed assurance. Who needed to know that he deserved to feel safe. That he deserved to have someone take care of him.

“He’s a good guy,” she said, tilting her head toward Bennett. “You can trust him.”

“Well, this random woman that I don’t know says I can trust you,” Dallas said, his eyes going flat as he looked up at Bennett.

But Kaylee didn’t care. Because he needed to hear it. She didn’t know anything about kids. But she knew about the kid she had been. She knew what she would have wanted to hear. Even if she wouldn’t have been able to believe it or receive it. But it would have sat there. If just one person would have told her that she deserved some kind of stability, it could have helped. Bennett had shown her that. As a friend, he had been constant and steady. And even though she had talked about the tumultuous nature of her home life, he had somehow seemed to know exactly what she needed.

He had given her focus. He had made her feel like she deserved to go for her dream of being a veterinarian. He and his father, Quinn, had helped her figure out how to get scholarship so that she could go to school.

Yes, having someone be interested, having someone be adamant that you could do something, that you could have something, mattered.

“If it’s all the same to you,” Dallas said, “I think I’ll head to bed.”

“I thought you already had,” Bennett said.

“Which is why you were talking about me.”

“Yeah,” Bennett said. “I’m going to talk about you sometimes.”

“Is this more of that honesty that you promised me?”

“Yes,” Bennett said. “I plan on being relentless with that until you start believing me when I tell you things.”

“Good luck. I have about fifteen years of people proving they’re useless liars. I would say that in about fifteen more you could maybe undo that. But I doubt we’ll be speaking by then.”

“If we aren’t,” Bennett said, “then it won’t be because of me. It won’t be because I stop talking. Guarantee it.”

Dallas reeled back, a deep crease between his brows. “Why?”

“Because you’re my son. And that’s how that works.”

The fire and intensity in Bennett’s eyes caught Kaylee by the heart and held her fast. She was useless and hopeless. Hopeless for him, and this only introduced a new way for her to be that.

Bennett was gorgeous to her, always. That was part of the problem. Maybe, if she had some kind of quiet, sweet love for him based only on feelings she could have redirected it. But it was more than that. It was a violent, intense visceral attraction that was physical on a deep and very sexual level.

So sexual it was impossible to pretend it was anything else. Feelings she might have been able to squish into another box. That deep, intense ache between her thighs was very difficult to pass off as anything but sexual attraction.

She’d tried.

And she would have never guessed that watching the man deal with fatherhood would have ratcheted that up a notch. She would have said that nothing could. But Lord Almighty, this did. Bennett full of righteous fury staring down his son. Fury at the world for what it had put him through. Uncompromising with a kind of deep intensity, a commitment that no one had ever offered to Kaylee.

It was more than her poor ovaries could bear.

Every little biological thing inside of her was screaming about the suitability of Bennett as a partner. A protector of offspring.

It was ingrained on a hormonal level. She was powerless against it.

That still didn’t make it less disconcerting.

Somewhere in the back of her brain she felt a little itch.

Michael.

Michael was the itch. She had a date with him next week. She had a date with him next week and she was standing here getting hot and bothered over Bennett.

But then, that was kind of the normal state of things. Exacerbated in the moment, but relatively normal nonetheless.

And again, she was mired in her own stuff and she felt like a tool.

Dallas shrugged, as if he was fully unaffected by the proclamation that Bennett had just made. But Kaylee knew otherwise. She just did. Because whether it hit him today or in five years, he was going to realize eventually what Bennett was saying to him. What Bennett was offering.

It would matter then. When he needed it to matter, it would. Someday when a little bit of that anger had subsided, or when he was feeling particularly angry and his body needed a break from it.

She was certain because sometimes having the friend that she’d had in Bennett, having the support she’d had in his family, had been the only thing keeping her grounded, rooted to the possibilities of the future, rather than those old, ugly feelings of inadequacy. Of not deserving.

And that—she knew—was what all that bluff and bluster was.

Feeling undeserving. Unwanted.

“I’m really scoring points all over the place,” Bennett said, when the bedroom door slammed shut.

“You are, actually,” Kaylee said softly. “You just might be saving them up for later. Want to go back outside?”

“Yes,” Bennett said.

They wandered out to the front porch, and Bennett leaned over the railing, lifting the beer bottle to his lips. “He’s real,” Bennett said. “You saw that too.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry I can’t tell you it’s some kind of hallucination.”

“I was actually almost afraid it might be,” Bennett said, his voice rough. “That I was going to take you in there and he was going to be gone.”

She didn’t say anything. She had the feeling that he didn’t want her to.

“I didn’t want him to be,” Bennett said. “As little sense as that makes... Now that he’s here...”