Page 68 of The Moments You Were Mine

HIM: Please tell me you aren’t really dating the Patrick-Swayze-in-Point-Breakwannabe.

HER: Don’t be jealous. It doesn’t fit your SEAL vibe.

HIM: Not jealous, Ducky. You do remember Patrick was the bad guy in that movie, right?

HER: JJ is harmless. A golden retriever.

HIM: Even golden retrievers can bite.

HER: God, I hope so.

HER: Did I scare you away?

HER: You’re such a prude.

HIM: Only with you.

PRESENT DAY

The next morning, while the skywas still a deep gray, I scurried out of the house like a rabbit chased by a cougar. Embarrassment trailed behind me once again. After Parker had walked out of my room, I’d tossed and turned and berated myself until I’d fallen into a fitful sleep. A nightmare followed me into the morning. Sadie and I at the bar, but instead of her answering the back door that early morning, it was Parker, and it was his body that hit the ground after a shot rang out. His eyes that had the light snuffed out of them.

I’d woken up to a racing pulse and an empty, nauseated feeling in my stomach.

As I got ready for the day, the terror from the nightmare burned away, leaving fury at myself and at Parker for how we’d ended the night. How did this one man have the power to humiliate me so many times? And why hadn’t I learned my lesson by now?

I could say I hadn’t offered myself up to him again, that I’d even told him I was absolutelynotoffering myself up, but the truth was, I had issued another dare he’d declined. I wasn’t naïve enough to think I hadn’t tempted him. I’d seen the heat and lust in his eyes. I’d heard the groan when I’d touched him in the lake, but for some reason, he could never seem to climb the wall that he’d placed between us.

It was his damn honor. Some misplaced loyalty for my dad or me or his team.

I hated it. Or rather, I wanted to hate it when, really, his honor was part of the reason why I’d always loved Parker.

Which was the exact reason I should never have let myself slip into a relationship with JJ that had lasted on and off for years. JJ had always been jealous of Parker, and I’d tried to prove to us both that what I felt for him was just childhood affection.

And yet, it had never been that simple.

Maybe before Parker had shown up when I was fourteen, right as everything had gone down with Dad, Sadie, and the Puzos, it had just been friendship and childish adoration. But having a Naval Academy cadet, muscled and gorgeous, tasked by our fathers to guard me like a hero from a fiction novel, had pushed all my teenage hormones into overdrive. After that, all I could feel when I was around him was a burning fire that needed to be quenched.

I’d never felt that same intensity with JJ. I’d been attracted to him. I’d let him be my first, and we’d had good sex. But it hadn’t been life-altering. It hadn’t swept me into a tidal wave where I couldn’t tell which way was up. And just a simple touch from Parker could do that to me. A simple look could flip me around until I was doing the opposite of everything I’d promised myself.

When I walked into the barn, Kevin was frowning over a clipboard, which held the daily list of guest excursions. Helooked up at me, scratching his dark-brown scruff and looking very much the stereotypical cowboy in a plaid shirt, Wranglers, and beat-up boots. As head of guest adventures, he made sure every activity we offered was safe, run by experienced guides, and left people with smiles on their faces, even when they’d spent the day shoveling shit. I wasn’t sure how he did it, but he could convince anyone the worst ranch task was a delight.

“Morning,” I said, heading straight for his office in a converted stall and the coffee I knew he’d have brewing there. We’d tried to make an office for him next to Kurt’s in the ranch-hand house, but Kevin had insisted he wanted to stay close to the action.

“Going to be a scorcher today,” he said, following me.

The compostable cup was only half full when I stopped pouring. The smell, normally a sweet addiction, turned my gut. I tried to take a sip, and my body rejected it furiously. I fought back the nausea before I looked up to find him scrutinizing me.

“You okay?”

“It’s been a long couple of weeks,” I told him. “What had you all squinty-eyed when I came in?” I changed the subject, glancing down at the clipboard he’d brought with him.

“Carrie called in sick. I had her slated to take a set of new riders up the river path to the picnic area near the caves. I’d fill in, but I’m already taking over Randy’s fishing trip. He’s been out since last week.”

My stomach tightened for a completely different reason. “Is she afraid to come to work rather than truly being sick?”

He didn’t respond with an immediate no, which only made my chest ache as much as my stomach. Eventually, he shook his head. “I don’t think so. Bess told me there’s been a bunch of staff at the mercantile calling in sick too. Something is going around.”

Kevin’s wife ran the largest gift shop on Main Street, stuffed to the gills with rustic mountain knickknacks and old forty-niner merchandise the tourists ate up. But it was her voluntary role as president of the Parent-Teacher Association that kept her finger on the pulse of what was going on in Rivers.