Finally Forever, page 9
That made two of us.
But maybe it was the way we fit together. Her body was so much smaller than mine. I’d worried that maybe I’d be too much for her. And she was tighter than I’d expected, but that hadn’t mattered either. She’d molded to me, and me to her. As if we were one.
Just remembering it was making me hard all over again, and considering my sister was still glaring at me, I probably shouldn’t continue down that particular train of thought at the moment. Especially because she was obviously waiting for the answer to a question I hadn’t heard her ask.
“Sorry.” I shrugged. “Is there some reason you’re badgering me before I’ve had lunch?” I winked so she knew I wasn’t purposely being an asshole.
Just as I hoped she would, my little sister smiled. It was nice to see my charms still worked on her, at least a little bit.
She sighed audibly and shook her head. “I was asking you if your guest and her friends had scheduled any spa services for their stay.” Sophie glanced at her clipboard. “There was nothing specific ordered, just a note that says, and I quote, ‘anything and everything they want.’” Sophie looked up. “What the hell am I supposed to do with that? I need to schedule technicians and work around the other guests and—”
“Don’t worry about the other guests.”
“Excuse me?” My sister’s eyebrow raised to a dangerous height. “I get that you…” She waved her hand. “You have a thing or something for her. But we do have other guests.”
She wasn’t wrong. But still, that was a detail that was more than a little bit annoying. I felt a sudden surge of protectiveness for Sandy. I wanted her stay at Rock Creek Ranch to be the trip of a lifetime. Or at least, one she’d remember forever. And if that meant having any and all spa treatments whenever she wanted them, I’d make it happen.
“Seriously,” Sophie said. “What treatments do they want? Are they complimentary, or are we billing them to Shane Grant?”
“Oh, we’re billing them to Grant, all right.” I laughed. “But I see your point about the treatments. I’ll sort it out. Maybe Shane had something specific in mind. He usually does. I’ll get back to you ASAP. Is that fast enough?”
She rolled her eyes and turned to leave, but stopped herself. “One more thing, Dylan.”
I didn’t like the shift in her tone, because I knew exactly what she was going to say.
I held up a hand and shook my head. I did not want to hear it.
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“I do. And it’s none of your business, Soph. Really. Stay out of my love life.”
“Your love life, Dylan? That’s rich. Since when does love have anything to do with it?” She scoffed and tucked her clipboard under her arm. “I know you’re going to do whatever you want, but don’t come crying to me when we get sued again and you lose this place. Because you will, Dylan. Even if the lawsuits aren’t enough to do it…I know you don’t like to think about it, but reputation is everything. And yours can only take so many hits before there’s no coming back. Think about it. For all of us. Please.”
Her speech finished, she left me to think. Which was exactly what I was doing. But not about my reputation. I didn’t give a fuck about that, or what some uptight city folk thought they knew about me. Instead, I was fixated on something I’d said.
Love life.
Love.
The idea that I’d meant anything by saying the L-word was ridiculous on more than one level. Not the least of which was that I barely knew Sandy.
Still, unlike every other time in my life, I didn’t run screaming at the idea.
“Oh, this feels so good.” I stretched out in my seat and let the bubbles hit my lower back. An afternoon in the hot tub with my friends was exactly what I needed. Not only to soothe my aching muscles but more importantly to keep me out of my head so I didn’t continually relive every single moment of the morning.
Not that I didn’t want to. Some of it—okay, most of it—I wanted to. I very badly wanted to relive quite a bit of it, actually. But when I thought about how I reacted immediately afterward, I wanted to crawl up into a ball and die from embarrassment.
What had that been all about?
Hopefully, Dylan didn’t think I was a total psycho.
So what if he does?
That little voice in my brain was starting to get very annoying. But it wasn’t entirely wrong.
So what if he did think I was crazy? After all, it wasn’t as if I was going to see him again after we left here in a few days. And if I did happen to run into him in town, what did it matter? It was sex. That was it. That’s all it was ever going to be. He’d made it very clear, and I’d agreed.
Still.
“Whoa!” Darla sat up in the water so suddenly, waves splashed over the tub and almost into my drink. “What is going on with you, Sandy? Your—”
“Do not say my energy is off.”
Darla shut her mouth, and Brittany laughed. “That’s exactly what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”
I gave my hippy friend a look, and she pressed her lips together and did a weird mixture of a nod and a shake in Brittany’s direction.
“My energy is just fine.” I closed my eyes and sank deeper into the water. “It’s my body that’s off. How is it even possible for muscles I didn’t know existed to be sore?”
When no one responded, I opened my eyes to see every single one of my friends staring back at me. “What?”
Jessie spoke first. “I don’t think Abby and I are as sore as you, Sandy. Must have been quite a ride you went on.”
Brittany all but spat out her drink next to me.
I wanted to pinch her under the water but didn’t dare draw more attention to myself.
“Yes,” Abby chimed in. “How did you get a private riding lesson this morning anyway?”
“It was with Dylan?” Jessie asked, even though I was one hundred percent sure she already knew the answer. “I was under the impression he didn’t get involved with the guests much. You must have asked really nicely.” She exaggerated her wink, and the others all laughed.
“I just got lucky, I guess.” I lifted the glass of wine. I really was starting to prefer it to Irish cream.
“Oh, I bet you did,” Abby said before quickly lifting her drink to her lips.
“Now that makes sense.” Darla giggled. “You don’t have to talk about it, Sandy.”
“Good,” I said quickly. “’Cause there’s nothing to talk about.”
“Oh no.” Darla’s smile faded. “There is absolutely something to talk about. We can all see it. Even if it has nothing to do with a man, something is going on with you, sweetie.”
Dammit. Having good friends who knew you better than anyone else in the world was a blessing. Almost always. But it was also a giant pain in the ass if you didn’t feel like talking about certain life-changing events. And dammit if I didn’t now have two things I was keeping from my best friends. Shit.
“We’re only teasing,” Jessie chimed in. “But seriously, you don’t have to tell us anything you don’t want to.”
Abby winked, once more lightening the mood. “Even if there is something juicy to tell.”
I shook my head and leaned back into the bubbles again.
Next to me, as the only one of the group who actually knew anything about Dylan, which was what the rest of them really wanted to know, Brittany stayed quiet. Not that she knew any of the details. Not specifically, of course. But she did know that there was something with Dylan and me, and she had not only seen me leave with him that morning but encouraged it. Also, she wasn’t stupid. She knew. Still, she stayed silent.
A fact that didn’t go unnoticed.
“You’re awfully quiet, Britt,” Jessie said. “Do you maybe know something we don’t?”
To her credit, Brittany’s face still gave nothing away. Logically, I knew my friends had my best interest at heart. If I told them I wanted to be left alone with it, they would do just that and the conversation topic would shift.
“I had sex!” I blurted out my news so quickly—and loudly—that I barely even realized that I’d said it. That is, until I watched as every single one of my friends’ faces registered some level of complete and utter shock.
No one said anything right away, so I tipped my glass of wine to my lips and drank deeply. I swallowed it down hard with a gulp and set my glass on the side of the hot tub before daring to look at any of them again. I started with Brittany, who smiled and shook her head.
“I wasn’t going to say a word about Dylan.”
“I know.”
“Dylan?” Abby leaned forward, splashing water in my direction. “It was Dylan? I thought you said nothing happened the other day?”
“Nothing did…the other day.” I tried for innocence, but I didn’t quite pull it off.
“Of course it was Dylan.” Jessie smacked her lightly with the back of her hand. “And now something obviously has happened.” She looked at me. “This morning? While you were on your ride?” She used her fingers to make quotation marks, and I couldn’t help it; I burst out laughing.
“Is it ridiculous?”
Darla shook her head seriously. “Fuck no, it’s not ridiculous. It’s super, crazy hot. Seriously? On the horse?”
“Oh my goodness. No! Not on the horse.”
“Details, Sandy,” Abby said. “We need details. Now.”
Chapter Nine
“Everything,” Shane repeated. I had him on speakerphone so Sophie could be assured that I wasn’t completely full of shit when I’d told her to give Sandy and her friends whatever they wanted. “Make sure the ladies have whatever they want,” Shane said. I tipped my head to my sister, who simply shook hers and moved to leave when Shane added, “No! Wait.”
Sophie raised an eyebrow and waited.
“What’s the best package?” Shane asked. “Can you just book it? All of it. Don’t ask them what they want. I know how it’ll be. They’ll hem and haw, and they won’t spoil themselves.”
“Are you sure about that?” So far, the women seemed to be taking advantage of all the facilities just fine.
“Trust me,” Shane said. “Book them the works. Put it on my tab.”
I chuckled. “You heard the man.”
“I certainly did.” Sophie rolled her eyes and left me alone to my conversation.
It wasn’t a secret that she held a general disdain for my friends, but I was pretty sure it had more to do with her than with them. And the fact that they were men.
It didn’t seem to matter that they were all good men. After all, every single one of the guys I bothered to spend any time at all with were, for all intents and purposes, great guys. They had billions of dollars but weren’t jackasses about it. They all gave very generously to charity as well as spoiling the women in their lives silly whenever they could.
Truthfully, she’d never admit it, but I was pretty sure that was the crux of Sophie’s problem right there. She’d married an idiot when she got knocked up with Wyatt and only stayed with him after she discovered that not only was he addicted to gambling, but also women, because she got pregnant—again.
It took her another ten years after Tucker was born before she finally got sick of being treated like shit and having to dig through the couch cushions to scrape up enough change to buy milk for the boys and she finally left the moron and came knocking on my door. I, of course, wanted to kick the shit out of my brother-in-law, right after I got to the bottom of why Sophie had kept the truth from me for so long.
That was the easy part and the part that pissed me off the most. She was embarrassed to admit she’d failed.
Fuck.
I still got worked up thinking about the mind games that asshat must have played with her in order for Sophie, who was a strong, smart, beautiful woman, to believe even for a second that her husband’s shortcomings were her fault in any way.
I watched her walk away and shook my head. Maybe I should have set her up with one of my friends. But that seemed like the last fucking thing I needed to get involved with.
I waited for my sister to close the door behind her before taking a deep breath and refocusing on my conversation with Shane.
“So, they’re having a good time?” he asked me.
“It seems so,” I said carefully, not sure how much to tell him. “They haven’t been here long, Shane. But yes, they seem to be enjoying themselves.”
“Not too much, I hope.”
I chuckled. “Don’t tell me you’re worried about some cowboys hanging around, ready to sweep your woman off her feet?”
“Hardly,” he scoffed. “Jessie’s mine, and I’m hers.”
He said it so simply and confidently, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of…what? It wasn’t jealousy. The last fucking thing I’d ever wanted was to belong to anyone.
Fuck. No.
“I was talking about Darla,” Shane said, pulling me back to the conversation. “And Sandy.”
“Sandy?”
“Yes…Sandy. She’s the only other single lady.” There was a clear question in his voice. A question I chose to ignore. “I’m pretty sure Brittany and Abby are pretty happy with their men. They’re not likely to go off the rails with one of your ranch hands. Darla and—”
“Don’t say it,” I warned. I’d all but growled the words at my friend and tossed the phone on the coffee table in front of me to stalk across the room to the wet bar. I needed a whiskey. If he so much as implied that Sandy would—what? Fuck a cowboy in a meadow by the river?
Isn’t that just what she’d done?
No.
I warred with myself.
She’d fucked me.
It was different. Right?
Whiskey in hand, I returned to the phone and Shane, who was openly laughing. “Touch a nerve, did I, Scott?”
“I just don’t think you should be saying shit like that about Jessie’s friends, that’s all.”
Shane laughed so loud and hard I almost hung up on the cocksucker.
I tossed back half my glass of whiskey.
When he finally managed to pull himself together, his tone changed dramatically. “Seriously, though, Sandy’s great.”
I couldn’t disagree with that.
“But stay away from her, Dylan. Really.”
I drained the glass and went to refill it. “Why is that?” I asked when I returned to the other side of the room. “You know, hypothetically, why should I stay away from her?”
“Oh…fuck.”
I lifted the glass to my lips but reconsidered. I would drain the bottle at this rate. I put the glass on the table and shoved it away.
“What?”
“You slept with her, didn’t you? What the fuck, Dylan?”
“I…what…I…what the fuck do you care, Grant? You just finished saying Jessie was yours and you were hers or some bullshit like that.” I recognized clearly that I was being an asshole. I couldn’t seem to stop myself. And dammit if I didn’t need to know why Shane Grant was so concerned whether I slept with Sandy Clark.
“That’s not a no, Dylan.”
“Why do you give a fuck?” Screw it. I leaned forward and took a deep drink of my whiskey, letting the amber liquid warm my throat. “Really?”
“Because she’s…she’s Sandy,” Shane finally said. “She’s not like Darla. Hell, from what I’ve gotten to know since I’ve met her, she’s not like any of the others. She’s softer. Almost fragile.”
That word again.
There was nothing fragile about the woman I’d made come all over my hand in the barn or who had screamed out in tandem with me next to the river earlier.
No. Not fragile at all.
“She’s a widow,” Shane added, as if it were breaking news.
“I know.”
“You do?”
“Of course. She told me.”
I didn’t bother to add that she’d only told me after our session in the barn and had become oddly quiet afterward. Not that it mattered; we’d gone on to have mind-blowing sex and there was definitely nothing odd or quiet about that.
But what about afterward? Something had happened after.
Sandy tried hard to cover it up, and despite the post-coital euphoric cloud that hung over both of us, I hadn’t missed the way she’d turned away.
“So you know that she’s pretty much lived like a nun since her husband died?”
Nun?
“Jessie says that if it wasn’t for their ladies’ lunches and dates, Sandy wouldn’t go out at all,” he continued. “They’ve tried for years to get her to date, but she won’t. I don’t know if she’s still hung up on her husband, or what.”
All I could focus on was that last part of what he said. Still hung up on her husband.
“But then again,” Shane continued, “maybe she’s finally ready to find a new daddy for her kids.” He chuckled, but I didn’t find one damn thing funny about it.
“A new daddy?”
“I’m kidding,” he said. “Mostly.” His laughter dried up. “I mean, I’m not saying that’s what she’s doing with you. That would be a fool’s errand.”
He had no idea.
“But you have to admit,” Shane continued. “It makes sense. After all, she does have two little girls at home to think about.”
“That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t have casual sex.” I couldn’t be sure who I was trying to convince, but the more Shane spoke, the faster my post-coital euphoria drained away. “Women with children have flings all the time,” I said. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Of course,” he agreed. “But Sandy doesn’t really seem like the type, does she?”
She didn’t.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and breathed in. It was all starting to make sense. The way she’d come on so strong, almost uncharacteristically so before all but shutting down after we’d… fuck.
I’d slept with a lot of women in different circumstances and situations, and I never before cared what they were. After all, it wasn’t my business if they were cheating on their husbands or looking for a little cowboy sex. What did I care? I didn’t. But this felt different. If Sandy really hadn’t dated or gone out since her husband died, and I was her first since…shit. I didn’t like that one bit. There was way too much pressure and meaning on such an event. It was like sleeping with a virgin—something I refused to do for the same reason. You couldn’t have a no-strings arrangement when one party was clearly pulling them.
