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“Can’t afford it,” she whispered to herself.

And the truth was, she still couldn’t.

Chapter Thirteen

Daughtry couldn’t pretend he didn’t know what had happened last night, no matter how much he wanted to.

He hadn’t invited Andrea back to his place because he’d been thinking about Bix.

And Bix thought he was a Captain America cardboard cutout.

Bix was a liar, though.

He knew that.

She resorted to lies when backed into corners, and relented only when she realized she couldn’t wriggle around the truth.

Evil little possum.

It was just that when he had seen Bix with that guy, he hadn’t been able to think about anything else. Everything he’d been trying to suppress had gone up to a boil and once his mind had been firmly fixed on that, there was no way he was going to...

“Lord Almighty,” he growled, grateful that he had a full shift of work to get to.

Of course, then work was boring. He waited for calls, parked on the side of the road and pulled over a few idiots who were driving too fast, and then it was all over before he was ready to head back to the ranch.

The sun was still shining, even though it was getting late. And somehow, it stood in stark contrast to his mood and it annoyed him.

He decided to take a walk down to the river to do a little fishing, like he had done the day that he had found Bix. Something to get his mind off of her seemed like a pretty good idea. He ignored the fact that she seemed inextricably linked now to this location and activity. He walked through the woods, his pole slung over his shoulder. He stopped for a moment, and listened to the sounds.

Smelled the pine heavy in the air.

There were birds, calling to each other. Sunbeams shone through the pine needles, fragments of light reflecting on the forest floor. It was a strange thing, that this place, where he had been a bad man, and had done his best to become a good one, had stayed the same.

That across the river a month and a half ago had been a skinny, half-starved woman who was now enmeshed in his life in a way that he would never be able to explain. And yet it was all the same. The sky, the trees, the scent in the air.

He was the same.

No matter that the day-to-day sometimes felt different.

That was what he had to remember.

No matter how things seemed like they might be different, they were actually the same. He came through the trees to the edge of the river, and looked down a few feet from where he had emerged.

There she was, standing on a rock. Her blond hair was flowing around her shoulders, and she was wearing a short dress that came just midthigh. She had a fishing pole, and she cocked it back over her shoulder and let the bait fly out into the center of the water.

She shook her hair out, and the sunlight caught the golden locks, shining.

It hit him then. Like a ton of bricks.

It wasn’t possessiveness.

That would’ve been too easy.

It wasjealousy. Pure and simple.

When another man had been with her, treating her like a woman, it had been far too easy for him to tell himself that what had happened when he’d danced with her had been a trick of the firelight, but then he’d seen that man holding her...

He’d known it was more.