Page 12 of Buck This (Battle of the Bulls #6)

“You didn’t have to do that,” Torrey said. “You didn’t have to pay for my food.”

“Of course I did. You’re here as a favor to me.” He shoved his worn wallet into his back pocket and tipped his hat at the server before he gestured for Torrey to go in front of him.

The restaurant was huge and had a sprawling garden and outdoor dining area outside, but when she got a little turned around and lost her sense of direction, Buck guided her in the right direction with the soft touch of his fingertips right on the arch of her back.

She went completely pliable under his touch, and God, he loved her body’s response to him.

Outside, Quickdraw was waiting with Tuff and Luna near his truck. “You have a couple of hours to pick up the T-shirts from the printer and deliver them, then get ready for tonight at your trailer before I need you to head to the address I gave you. You’ll Change into your bull there.”

“What do you need from me?” Torrey asked.

“To stick right with him. Take care of the merchandise and then go with him to his trailer. Don’t let anyone mess with his head. You’ll be there for his Change as well.”

“Ha. No thanks. I like survival.”

“You’ll be fine,” Quickdraw clipped out.

“Probably. Shoot me a text when he’s Changed.

We’re going to give him space until he’s the bull.

I’ll have the trailer backed up to the building and I can get him loaded with my guys.

” Quickdraw climbed into his truck, and Tuff Enough offered his hand for a shake again. “Tonight will be fun.”

Buck This snorted. “For who? Not me. Probably not for your dad either.”

“I know he’s a grizzly son of a gun, but my mom is due to fly in soon. He’ll probably be nicer when she’s here.”

Torrey was standing off to the side talking to Luna, and her face was all lit up and animated. God she was pretty.

“Did you hear what I said?” Tuff Enough asked.

“Oh, yeah. Your mom’s flying in.”

“No, after that.”

Honestly, he hadn’t been paying attention.

Tuff Enough twisted around to look at the ladies, then offered Buck a smirk. “They’ll do that to you.”

He didn’t understand what Tuff meant, but before he could ask, the werewolf was moving to open Luna’s door. “Don’t suck tonight,” Tuff advised as he walked around to the other side of the truck to load up.

“It’s all I know how to do,” Buck joked.

“You ready?” Torrey asked as she waved them off.

“Hold up. Have you ever been here before?”

“To this specific place you mean? Or playing house with a hot shifter I’m never going to see again in a couple of days?”

“Playing house?” he asked.

She shrugged. “We’re comfortable with each other.

Really comfortable. You’ve kissed me multiple times, and you are smooth and decisive about it.

You grabbed my butt in front of your fans.

I’ve been on the jumbotron with you, and you didn’t even freak out.

You kissed me last night in front of the crowd before you shotgunned that beer and you held my hand under the table in the restaurant while Quickdraw was telling us a hundred things we need to remember for tonight. ”

“I’m not playing house.”

“You don’t feel like this is too much too fast?” she asked softly. “Because for me, I’ve never gotten comfortable with touch this fast. Not with anyone. Not even with my ex-husband.”

He didn’t like that word combination coming from her lips, but he couldn’t figure out why it bothered him so much that she’d mentioned her ex.

Clearly it was in her past, and he had no right to get all bent out of shape for decisions she made before she even knew he existed.

He thought about the playing house comment.

Maybe she was right. He hadn’t been much on affection with anyone. Not ever.

Playing house. Huh. “It doesn’t feel dangerous when I know you’re going back to your life in a couple days.” He shrugged. “It’s easy to just be, you know? You won’t hurt me. You can’t. You won’t be around to do the hurting.”

“I think I’m the one who is supposed to be saying that.”

“Well, I guess we feel the same then.”

Her smile had faded to nothing. “I suppose we do.”

“If I had a drink, I would make a toast.”

“What would your toast be?”

“To playing house.”

She cracked a grin. “You’ve probably been trouble since the day you were born.”

“No shit. I’ve literally given you every indication of that. Come on.”

“Where are we going?” she asked, following behind him as he led her toward the outdoor seating area.

“To see the reason I was asking if you have ever been here before. I want to show you something.” He turned and offered his hand and then messed with her head just to see her reaction. “Come on, Pretend Wife.”

“Wife?” she blurted out.

“Yeah. If we’re playing house for two days, I’m going all in. We’re cursed to stay together every second we can, and by cursed, I mean you are cursed with me, and I’m going to call you whatever I want.”

“You don’t seem like the marrying kind,” she observed, slipping her hand into his.

He hid a private smile as he felt a little zing of victory wash through him. He’d called her the scariest word in existence, and she’d still put her hand in his. She was fun.

“I’m not,” he assured her. “Never will be.”

“That makes two of us.”

He snorted. “Except for you were already married. You’re absolutely the marrying kind.”

“That was another lifetime ago. I learned a lot from that.”

“Like what?” he asked, leading her down a path lined with huge potted plants.

“Like I never want to give my heart to someone like that again. I was young and had stars in my eyes and I was naive. I thought if I gave a man my heart, he would take care of it.”

“Most men wouldn’t know what to do with a woman’s heart,” he said.

“I learned that the hard way.” He heard her drag in a big breath. “He messaged me yesterday.”

A rumble emanated from his chest, and her hand flinched in his. “What was that?”

“It’s fine,” he gritted out. “Why did he message you? Are you still messing around with each other?”

“No. That’s long over. He’s got something of mine and sometimes he likes to flaunt it. Usually, he does it between girlfriends. I’m the only one who tells him no nowadays, and he likes a challenge.”

“What does he have of yours?”

She pulled her hand from his. “Can we talk about anything else?”

He pulled to a stop at the edge of the clearing he’d wanted to show her. He was confused. She had shut down on him, he could tell. Even her eyes stayed downcast and wouldn’t meet his.

“Hey,” he rumbled, but his voice didn’t sound right. The animal was getting riled up. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Are you good?”

“I will be if we could stop talking about wife stuff and my past. You’re not playing the game right.”

“The game,” he repeated.

“The playing house game. This is the honeymoon phase, don’t you know? Nothing serious. We keep it light. We don’t share anything real. That way, when we leave in a couple of days, it will be shallow enough to not hurt.”

He didn’t like any of this. Sure, he knew she was right, but he didn’t like it. Nothing real with her? How did he tell her he wanted to know everything about her? How did he explain that without her shutting down on him harder and bolting?

Buck gestured to the huge fountain in the middle of the clearing. It was visible from the outdoor eating area, and there were a few kids running around it, playing.

“It’s pretty,” she said softly.

“Come on,” he said, digging into his pocket for the pair of pennies he’d put in there earlier.

He’d planned this. Buck didn’t know why he wanted to do this. He’d never done it before, but he’d eaten out on that huge patio last year and watched a couple throw pennies into the fountain, and he had wondered often what normal people wished for in moments like those.

Maybe today he wanted to feel normal. Maybe he wanted to banish the nervous jitters that were eating up his stomach every time he thought about bucking tonight. Maybe he wanted to feel like a good man with Torrey.

“Here,” he said, placing a penny in her palm, face up for luck.

“What is this for?”

“To make a wish.” He drew up to the edge of the huge fountain and stared at the coins scattered all over the tile floor of it. So many wishes.

“I wonder how many of those wishes have come true,” she murmured, eyes trained on the coins.

“Maybe none of them.”

“Or maybe all of them.”

Huh. “I saw someone make a wish last year when I was here, and they seemed to know what they were doing.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and gently turned her around, her back facing the fountain. “Close your eyes, make a wish, and throw the coin over your shoulder. Don’t miss.”

Torrey took a deep breath and nodded, closed her eyes. He watched her lips move slightly with whatever she was saying in her mind, and God, he wished he knew what she was thinking.

She tossed the penny over her shoulder, and it flipped end over end until it splashed into the water.

“You wished for that five hundred thousand dollars, didn’t you?” he teased.

Torrey’s eyes opened slowly, and she smiled cheekily. “I can’t tell you. If you tell a wish, it won’t come true.”

“Look who knows the wish-rules.”

“It’s science.”

He chuckled and gave his back to the fountain, closed his eyes, and thought, I wish I could keep her for more than two days.

And just as he tossed the penny, a gust of wind blasted through the clearing, and he muttered a curse as he turned just in time to see the coin fall onto the edge of the fountain, missing the water completely.

“Wow, the universe did not want you to make that wish,” she said through a giggle. “If you were wishing for that money, I don’t have a good feeling about us being rich by tomorrow night.”

He approached the coin slowly, his stomach clenching with some emotion he didn’t understand. It felt kind of like dread. The coin had landed on tails. With a frown, he pushed the penny over the ledge of the fountain and watched it flip in the water three times before it landed on the tile bottom.

Disturbed, and feeling like his wish was stolen from him, Buck wrapped his hand around Torrey’s and led her back toward the parking lot.

Maybe the universe was justified in whatever had just happened.

Buck really had been trouble since the day he was born, and Torrey was good. Torrey was the kind of down-to-her-bones good that lit up rooms, and banished darkness. All he had was darkness. Of course he wasn’t meant to keep her for more than two days.

“Are you okay?” she asked, jogging to keep up.

“Hey Torrey,” he said, turning on her.

“Yeah?”

“You don’t have to tell me the real stuff. We can do this pretend thing all you want.”

Confusion swirled in her pretty blue eyes. “Okay.”

“But if you ever do get the urge to share the real, I won’t judge you. I can’t. I’m more fucked up than you could ever be.”

He didn’t know what he’d expected her to say to that.

Maybe a little part of him had wished she would tell him what her ex had taken from her, but she didn’t bare her soul in any way.

Instead, she shocked him to his soul by hugging him.

That was all. There were no words. Torrey just slipped her arms around his waist and rested her cheek on his chest, and he stood here frozen, his heart pounding like a drum as he tried to remember how to breathe.

Before he could wrap his arms around her, she released him suddenly, and backed away a few feet, eyes on the ground.

“Okay, we need to go. We are getting off track and we have a very tight schedule.” When she looked up at him, she had a smile plastered on her face, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

It was his least favorite of her smiles.

He wanted to ask her again. He wanted to ask her what she’d wished for. It would torture him, not knowing.

Torrey turned and walked away, headed for the parking lot, and this time, she didn’t wait up, or even slow. She was putting distance between them in more ways than one, and he hated it. He had no right to hate it, but hate it he did.

This woman was tying him up in knots, and it made no sense. She didn’t even fit into his life. She wasn’t like him. She wasn’t even interested, clearly.

This was a little escape from whatever was heavy on her heart, and that was it. He was a buffer. He was a distraction.

She was happy and smiling with him because it was so different from what she was probably going through at home.

Her asshole ex had messaged her, but when he’d pressed, she’d grown protective of that hurt, and he felt…he felt…

Well…

He felt.

It was awful.

If this was a honeymoon phase as she’d said, Buck This wanted nothing to do with it.