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The Rancher's Baby
Maisey Yates


Best friends… to parents!Selena Jacobs’s estranged best friend insists on staying with her to keep her safe from her ex husband. She trusts him, but living with the one who got away gets complicated and one night together leads to an unexpected surprise…







She’s having her best friend’s baby... Only from New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates!

When a torrid, possibly dangerous scandal comes to Royal, Texas, Selena Jacobs is nearly caught in the middle. Until her best friend Knox McCoy ensures her safety—by moving in! Selena has loved Knox for years, but she’s never had the courage to tell him. Now the sparks she’s tried to smother burn out of control...and leave her pregnant. But with the pain in his past, will Knox finally take a chance on love...with her?


Selena felt like she was dangerously exposed.

All of her secrets. All of herself.

“So that’s it?” he asked. “We kiss after all these years of friendship, and you’re fine.”

“Knox,” she said, “you don’t want me to be anything but fine. Believe me. It’s better for the two of us if we just move on like nothing happened. I don’t think either of us needs this right now.” Or ever.

She wanted to hide. But she knew that if she did hide it would only let him know how close he was delving into things she didn’t want him anywhere near. Things she didn’t want anyone near.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess so.”

“You don’t want to talk about our feelings, do you?” she asked, knowing that she sounded testy.

“Absolutely not. I’ve had enough feelings for a lifetime.”

“I’m right there with you. I don’t have any interest in messing up a good friendship over a little bit of sex.”

Knox walked past her, moving back into the shop. Then he paused, kicking his head back out of the doorway. “I agree with you, Selena, except for one little thing. With me, there wouldn’t be anything little about the sex.”

* * *

The Rancher’s Baby

is part of Texas Cattleman’s Club:

The Impostor series—Will the scandal of

the century lead to love for these rich ranchers?


The Rancher’s Baby

Maisey Yates






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


MAISEY YATES is a New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty romance novels. She has a coffee habit she has no interest in kicking, and a slight Pinterest addiction. She lives with her husband and children in the Pacific Northwest. When Maisey isn’t writing she can be found singing in the grocery store, shopping for shoes online and probably not doing dishes. Check out her website: www.maiseyyates.com (http://www.maiseyyates.com).


Contents

Cover (#u39703053-75e3-5ac9-8f4d-5ca4fb66849d)

Back Cover Text (#uccf6da35-43f2-53c3-b2bd-0890f7c99417)

Introduction (#u9d90e2b6-51fe-5b87-bf44-aeec116a7952)

Title Page (#u826f365f-d1bd-522f-897c-ee3fac81be0c)

About the Author (#uc01b9a5a-0920-5050-9a85-b5e9985d4162)

One (#uf08b5c2f-8903-5c60-9cd3-97bbf63ba262)

Two (#u41172a7e-d492-5178-af10-90cbb8c1756d)

Three (#uaffdc929-3f9f-5b9b-bb2c-5458d922bac5)

Four (#u70f81d44-2ed2-5a05-897f-86668201b8dc)

Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


One (#u2f029b30-5a06-506d-84de-5895cad61026)

My fake ex-husband died at sea and all I got was this stupid letter.

That was Selena Jacobs’s very dark thought as she stood in the oppressive funeral home clutching said letter so tightly she was wearing a thumbprint into the envelope.

She supposed that her initial thought wasn’t true—strictly speaking. The letter proclaimed she was the heir to Will’s vast estate.

It was just that there were four other women at the funeral who had been promised the exact same thing. And Selena couldn’t fathom why Will would have made her the beneficiary of anything, except maybe that hideous bearskin rug he’d gotten from his grandfather that he’d had in his dorm at school. The one she’d hated because the sightless glass eyes had creeped her out.

Yeah, that she would have believed Will had left her.

His entire estate, not so much.

But then, she was still having trouble believing Will was dead. It seemed impossible. He had always been so...so much. Of everything. So much energy. So much light. So much of a pain in the ass sometimes. It seemed impossible that a solemn little urn could contain everything Will Sanders had been. And yet there it was.

Though she supposed that Will wasn’t entirely contained in the urn. Will, and the general fallout of his life—good and bad—was contained here in this room.

There were...well, there were a lot of women standing around looking bereft, each one of them holding letters identical to hers. Their feelings on the contents of the letters were different than hers. They must be. They didn’t all run multimillion-dollar corporations.

Selena’s muted reaction to her supposed inheritance was in some part due to the fact that she doubted the authenticity of the letter. But the other part was because she simply didn’t need the money. Not at this point in her life.

These other women...

Well, she didn’t really know. One of them was holding a chubby toddler, her expression blank. There was another in a sedate dress that flowed gently over what looked to be a burgeoning baby bump. Will had been too charming for his own good, it seemed.

Selena shuddered.

She didn’t know the nature of those women’s relationships to Will, but she had her suspicions. And the very idea of being left in a similar situation made her skin crawl.

There were reasons she kept men at arm’s length. The vulnerability of being left pregnant was one of them. A very compelling one.

As for the other reasons? Well, every woman in this room was a living, breathing affirmation of Selena’s life choices.

Heartbroken wives, ex-wives and baby mamas.

Selena might technically be an ex-wife, but she wasn’t one in the traditional sense. And she wasn’t heartbroken. She was hurt. She was grieving. And she was full of regret. She wished more than anything that she and Will had patched up their friendship.

But, of course, she had imagined that there was plenty of time to revive a friendship they’d left behind in college.

There hadn’t been plenty of time. Will didn’t have any more time.

Grief clutched at her heart and she swallowed hard, turning away from the urn to face the entry door at the back of the room.

The next visitor to walk in made her already battered heart jolt with shocked recognition.

Knox McCoy.

She really hadn’t expected him to come. He had been pretty scarce for the past couple of years, and she honestly couldn’t blame him. When he had texted her the other day, he’d said he wouldn’t be attending the funeral, and he hadn’t needed to say why.

She suspected he hadn’t been to one since the one for his daughter, Eleanor.

She tried to quell the nerves fluttering in her stomach as Knox walked deeper into the room, his gray eyes locking with hers. She had known the man for more than a decade. She had made her decisions regarding him, and he...

Well, he had never felt the way about her that she did about him.

He looked as gorgeous as ever. His broad shoulders, chest and trim waist outlined perfectly in the gray custom-made suit with matching charcoal tie. His brown hair was pushed back off his forehead, longer than he used to keep it. He was also sporting a beard, which was not typical of him. He had deep grooves between his dark brows, lines worn into his handsome face by the pain of the past few years.

She wanted to go to him. She wanted to press her thumb right there at those worry lines and smooth them out. Just the thought of touching him made her feel restless. Hot.

And really, really, she needed not to be having a full-blown Knox episode at her ex-husband’s funeral.

Regardless of the real nature of her relationship with Will, her reaction to Knox was inappropriate. Beyond inappropriate.

“How are you doing?” he asked, his expression full of concern.

When he made that face his eyebrows locked together and the grooves deepened.

“Oh, I’ve been better,” she said honestly.

A lopsided smile curved the corner of his mouth upward and he reached out, his thumb brushing over her cheek. His skin was rough, his hands those of a rancher. A working man. His wealth came from the chain of upscale grocery stores he owned, but his passion was in working the land at his ranch in Wyoming.

Her gaze met his, and the blank sadness she saw in his eyes made her stomach feel hollow.

She wondered if the ranch still held his passion. She wondered if anything did anymore.

“Me, too,” he said, his voice rough.

“Will is such an inconsiderate ass,” she said, her voice trembling. “Leave it to him to go and die like this.”

“Yeah,” Knox agreed. “His timing is pretty terrible. Plus, you know he just wanted the attention.”

She laughed, and as the laugh escaped her lips, a tear slid down her cheek.

She’d met Knox at Harvard. From completely different backgrounds—his small-town Texan childhood worlds away from her high-society East Coast life—they had bonded quickly. And then... Then her grandfather had died, which had ripped her heart square out of her chest. He had been the only person in her family who had ever loved her. Who had ever instilled hope in her for the future.

And with his death had come the trust fund. A trust fund she could only access when she was twenty-five. Or married.

The idea of asking Knox to marry her had been... Well, it had been unthinkable. For a whole host of reasons. She hadn’t wanted to get married, not for real. And her feelings for Knox had been real. Or at least, she had known perfectly well they were on the verge of being real, and she’d needed desperately for them to stay manageable. For him to stay a friend.

Then their friend Will had seen her crying one afternoon and she’d explained everything. He had offered himself as her solution. She hadn’t been in a position to say no.

Control of her money had provided freedom from her father. It had given her the ability to complete her education on her own terms. It had also ended up ruining her friendship with Will. In the meantime, Knox had met someone else. Someone he eventually married.

She blinked, bringing herself firmly back to the present. There was no point thinking about all of that. She didn’t. Not often. Her friendship with Knox had survived college, and they had remained close in spite of the fact that they were both busy with their respective careers.

It was Will. Whenever Will was added to the mix she couldn’t help but think of those years. Of that one stupid, reckless decision that had ended up doing a lot of damage in the end.

For some reason, she suddenly felt hollow and weak. She wobbled slightly, and Knox reached toward her as if he would touch her again. She wasn’t sure that would be as fortifying as he thought it might be.

But then the doors to the funeral home opened again and she looked up at the same time Knox looked over his shoulder.

And the world stopped.

Because the person who walked through the door was the person who was meant to be in that urn.

It was Will Sanders, and he was very much alive.

Then the world really did start to spin, and Selena didn’t know how to stand upright in it.

That was how she found herself crashing to the floor, and then everything was dark.

* * *

Fucking Will. Of course he wasn’t actually dead.

That was Knox’s prevailing thought as he dropped to his knees, wrapping his arm around Selena and pulling her into his lap.

No one was paying attention to one passed-out woman, because they were a hell of a lot more concerned with the walking corpse who had just appeared at his own funeral.

It was clear Will was just as shocked as everyone else.

Except for maybe Selena.

Had she loved the bastard that much? It had been more than ten years since Will and Selena had been married, and Selena rarely talked about Will, but Knox supposed he should know as well as anyone that sometimes not talking about something indicated you thought about it a whole hell of a lot.

That it mattered much more than the things that rolled off your tongue with routine frequency.

As he watched the entire room erupt in shock, Knox was filled with one dark thought.

At the last funeral he had attended he would have given everything he owned for the little body in the casket to come walking into the room. Would’ve given anything to wake up and find it all a nightmare.

He would have even traded places with his daughter. Would have buried himself six feet down if it would have meant Eleanor would come back.

But of course that hadn’t happened. He was living a fucking soap opera at the wrong damned moment.

He looked down at Selena’s gray face and cupped her cheek, patting it slightly, doing his best to revive her. He didn’t know what you were supposed to do when a woman fainted. And God knew caregiving was not his strong suit.

His ex-wife would be the first to testify to that.

Selena’s skin felt clammy, a light sweat beading on her brow. He wasn’t used to seeing his tough-as-nails friend anything but self-assured. Even when things were terrible, she usually did what she had done only a few moments ago. She made a joke. She stood strong.

When Eleanor had died Selena had stood with him until he couldn’t stand, and then she had sat with him. She had been there for him through all of that.

Apparently, ex-husbands returning from the beyond were her breaking point.

“Come on, Selena,” he murmured, brushing some of her black hair out of her face. “You can wake up now. You’ve done a damn decent job of stealing his thunder. Anything else is just showing off at this point.”

Her sooty eyelashes fluttered, and her eyes opened, her whiskey-colored gaze foggy. “What happened?”

He looked around the room, at the commotion stirring around them. “It seems Will has come back from the dead.”


Two (#u2f029b30-5a06-506d-84de-5895cad61026)

Will wasn’t dead.

Selena kept playing that thought over and over in her mind as Knox drove them down the highway.

She wasn’t entirely clear on what had happened to her car, or why Knox was driving her. Or what she was going to do with her car later. She had been too consumed with putting one foot in front of the other while Knox led her from the funeral home, safely ensconced her in his rental car and began to take them... Well, she didn’t know where.

She slid her hand around the back of her neck, beneath her hair, her skin damp and hot against her palm. She felt awful. She felt... Well, like she had passed out on the floor of a funeral home.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To your place.”

“You don’t know where I live,” she mumbled, her lips numb.

“I do.”

“No, you don’t, Knox. I’ve moved since the last time you came to visit.”

“I looked you up.”

Knox hadn’t come back to Royal since his divorce. She couldn’t blame him. There was a lot of bad wrapped up in Royal for him. Seeing as this was where he’d lived with his family most of the year when he’d been married.

“I’m not listed.” She attempted to make the words sound crisp.

“You know me better than that, honey,” he said, that slow Texas drawl winding itself through her veins and turning her blood into fire. “I don’t need a phone book to find someone.”

“Obviously, Knox. No one has used a phone book since 2004. But I meant it’s not like you can just look up my address on the internet.”

“Figure of speech, Selena. Also, I have connections. Resources.”

She made a disgusted sound and pressed her forehead against the window. It wasn’t cold enough.

“You sent me a Christmas card,” he said, his tone maddeningly steady. “I added your address to my contacts.”

“Well,” she said. “Damn my manners. Apparently they’ve made me traceable.”

“Not very stealthy.”

“And you’re rude,” she said, ignoring him. “Because you did not send me a Christmas card back.”

“I had my secretary send you something.”

“What did she send me?” Selena asked.

“It was either a gold watch or a glass owl figurine,” he said.

“What did she do, send you links to two different things, and then you said choose either one?”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t count as a present, Knox. And it certainly doesn’t equal my very personal Christmas card.”

“You didn’t have an assistant send the card?” he asked, sounding incredulous.

“I did not. I addressed it myself, painstakingly by hand while I was eating a TV dinner.”

“A TV dinner?” he asked, chuckling. “That doesn’t jibe with your healthy-lifestyle persona.”

“It was a frozen dinner from Green Fair Pantry,” she said pointedly, mentioning the organic fair-trade grocery-store chain Knox owned. “If those aren’t healthy, then you have some explaining to do yourself.”

She was starting to feel a little bit more human, but along with that feeling came a dawning realization of the enormity of everything that had just happened.

“Will is alive,” she said, just to confirm.

“It looks that way,” Knox said, tightening his hold on the steering wheel. She did her best not to watch the way the muscles in his forearms shifted, did her best to ignore just how large his hands looked, how large he looked in this car that was clearly too small for him. One that he would never have driven in his real life.

Knox was much more of a pickup truck kind of man, no matter how much money he made. Little luxury vehicles were not his thing.

“I guess I don’t get his bearskin rug, then,” she said absently.

“What?”

“Don’t you remember that appalling thing he used to have in his dorm room?”

Knox shot her a look out of the corner of his eye. “Not really. Hey, are you okay?”

“I am... I don’t know. I mean, I guess I’m better than I was when I thought he was ashes in a jar.” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. Are you okay, Knox? I realize this is probably the first—”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” he said, cutting her off. “We don’t need to. I’m fine.”

She didn’t think he was. Her throat tightened, feeling scratchy. “Okay. Anyway, I’m fine, too. My relationship with Will... You know.”

Except he didn’t. Nobody did. Everyone thought they did, but everyone was wrong. Unless, of course, Will had ever talked to anyone about the truth of their marriage, but somehow she doubted it.

“How long had it been since you two had spoken?” Knox asked.

“A long damn time. I don’t believe all the things Rich said to me before the divorce. Not anymore. He was toxic.”

As little as she tried to think about her short, convenient marriage to Will and what had resulted after, she tried to think about Will’s friend Rich Lowell even less. Though she had heard through that reliable Royal grapevine that he and Will had remained friends. It made her wonder why Rich wasn’t here.

Rich had been part of their group of friends, though he had always been somewhat on the periphery, and he had been...strange, as far as Selena was concerned. He had liked Will, so much that it had been concerning. And when Will had married Selena, Rich’s interest had wandered onto her.

He had never done anything terribly inappropriate, but the increased attention from him had made her uneasy.

But then... Well, he had been in their apartment one night when she’d gotten home from class. He’d produced evidence that Will was after her trust fund—the trust fund that had led to their marriage in the first place. And she needed that money. She needed it so she would never be at her father’s mercy again. The trust fund had been everything to her, and Will had said he was marrying her just to help her. She’d trusted him.

Rich had been full of some weird, intense energy Selena hadn’t been able to place at the time. Now that she had some distance and a more adult understanding, she felt like maybe Rich had been attracted to her. But more than a simple attraction...he’d been obsessed with Will. It almost seemed, in hindsight, as if he’d been attracted to her because he thought Will had her.

And what Rich had said that night... Well, it had just been a lot easier to believe than Will’s claim that he wanted to help her because they were friends. Trust had never been easy for her. Will was kind, and that was something she’d wanted. Not because she was attracted to him, but because she had genuinely wanted him to be a real friend. After a life of being thoroughly mistreated by her father, hoping for true friendship was scary.

Selena had spent most of her childhood bracing herself for the punch. Whether emotional or physical. It was much easier to believe she was being tricked than to believe Will was everything he appeared to be.

She and Will had fought. And then they had barely limped to the finish line of the marriage. They’d waited until the money was in her account, and then they’d divorced.

And their friendship had never been the same.

She had never apologized to him. Grief and regret stabbed her before she remembered—Will wasn’t actually dead.

That means you can apologize to him. It means you can fix your friendship.

She needed to. The woman she was now would never have jumped to a conclusion like that, at least not without trying to get to the bottom of it.

But back then, Selena had been half-feral. Honed into a sharp, mean creature from years of being in survival mode.

The way Knox had stuck by her all these years, the kind of friendship he had demonstrated... It had been a huge part of her learning to trust. Learning to believe men could actually be good.

Her ability to trust hadn’t changed her stance on love and marriage. And she fought against any encroaching thoughts that conflicted with that stance.

It didn’t really matter that Knox sometimes made her think differently about love and marriage. He had married someone else. And she had married someone else. She had married someone else first, in point of fact. It was just that...

It didn’t matter.

“I know this dredges up a lot of ancient history,” Knox said, turning the car off the highway and onto the narrow two-lane road that would take them out to her new cabin. Now that she had the freedom to work remotely most of the time—her skin-care company was so successful she’d hired other people to do the parts that consumed too much time—she had decided to get outside city limits.

Had decided it was time for her to actually make herself a home, instead of living in a holding pattern. Existing solely to build her empire, to increase her net worth.

Nothing had ever felt like home until this place. Everything after college had just been temporary. Before that, it had been a war zone.

This cabin was her refuge. And it was hers.

Nestled in the woods, surrounded by sweetgrass and trees, and a river running next to her front porch.

Of course, it wasn’t quite as grand as Knox’s spread in Jackson Hole, but then, very few places were.

Besides, grandness wasn’t the point. This cabin wasn’t for show. Wasn’t to impress anyone else. It was just to make her happy. And few things in her life had existed for that reason up to this point.

Having achieved some happiness made her long for other things, though. Things she was mostly inured against—like wanting someone to share her life with.

She gritted her teeth, looking resolutely away from Knox as that thought invaded her brain.

“Which is now a little bit annoying,” she pointed out. “He’s not even dead, and I had to go through all that grief, plus, you know...”

“Thinking about your marriage?”

She snapped her mouth shut, debating how to respond. It was true enough. She had been thinking a lot about her marriage. Not that it had been an actual, physical marriage. More like roommates with official paperwork. “Yes,” she said finally.

“Divorce is hell,” he said, his voice turning to gravel. “Believe me. I know.”

Guilt twisted her stomach. He thought they shared this common bond. The loss of a marriage. In reality, their situations weren’t even close to being the same.

“Will and I were only married for a year,” she commented. “It’s not really the same as you and Cassandra. The two of you were together for twelve years and...”

“I told you, I don’t want to talk about it.”

Blessedly, distraction came in the form of the left turn that took them off the paved road and onto the gravel road that took them to her cabin.

“Why don’t you get this paved?” he asked.

“I like it,” she said.

“Why?”

That was a complicated question, with a complicated answer. But he was her friend and she was glad to be off the topic of marriages, so she figured she would take a stab at it. “Because it’s nothing like the driveway that we had when I was growing up. Which was smooth and paved and circular, and led up to the most ridiculous brick monstrosity.”

“So this is like inverse nostalgia?”

“Yes.”

He lifted a shoulder. “I understand that better than you might think.”

He pulled up to the front of the cabin and she stayed resolutely in her seat until he rounded to her side and opened the door for her. Then she blinked, looking up into the sun, at the way his broad shoulders blotted it out. “What about my car?” she asked.

“I’m going to have someone bring it. Don’t worry.”

“I could go get it,” she said.

“I have a feeling it’s best if you lie low for a little bit.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Well,” he said. “Your ex-husband just came back from the dead, and both of you cause quite a bit of media interest. You were named as beneficiary of his estate along with four other women, and that’s a lot of money.”

“But Will isn’t dead, and I don’t care about his money. I have my own.”

“Very few people are going to believe that, Selena,” Knox said, his tone grave. “Most people don’t acknowledge the concept of having enough money. They only understand wanting more.”

“What are you saying? That I’m...in danger?”

“I don’t know. But we don’t know what’s going on with Will, and you were brought into this. You’re a target, for all we know. Someone is in an urn, and you have a letter that brought you here.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions, Knox.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but I swear to God, Selena, I’d rather have you safe than end up in an urn. That I couldn’t deal with.”

She looked at the deep intensity in his expression. “I’ll be safe.”

“You need to lie low for a while.”

“What does that mean? What am I supposed to do?”

Knox shrugged, the casual gesture at odds with the steely determination in his gray eyes. “I figured I would keep you company.”


Three (#u2f029b30-5a06-506d-84de-5895cad61026)

Selena looked less than thrilled by the prospect of sticking close to home while the situation with Will got sorted out.

Knox didn’t particularly care whether or not Selena was thrilled. He wanted her safe. As far as he was concerned, this was some shady shit, and until it was resolved, he didn’t want any of it getting near her.

All of it was weird. The five women who had been presented with nearly identical letters telling them that they had inherited Will’s estate, and then Will not actually being dead. The fact that someone else had been living Will’s life.

Maybe none of it would touch Selena. But there was nothing half so pressing in Knox’s life as his best friend’s safety.

His business did not require him to micromanage it. That was the perk of making billions, as far as he was concerned. You didn’t have to be in an office all the damned time if it didn’t suit you.

Plus, it was all...pointless.

He shook off the hollow feeling of his chest caving in on itself and turned his focus back to Selena.

“I don’t need you to stay here with me,” she said, all but scampering across the lawn and to her porch.

“I need to stay here with you,” he returned. He was more than happy to make it about him. Because he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist. She was worried about him. She didn’t need to be. But she was. And if he played into that, then she would give him whatever he wanted.

“But it’s a waste of your time,” she pointed out, digging in her purse for her keys, pulling them out and jamming one of them in the lock.

“Maybe,” he said. “But I swear to God, Selena, if I have to go to a funeral with a big picture of you up at the front of the room...”

“No one has threatened me,” she said, turning the key and pushing the door open.

“And I’d rather not wait and see if someone does.”

“You’re being hypervigilant,” she returned.

“Yes,” he said. “I am.” He gritted his teeth. “Some things you can’t control, Selena. Some bad stuff you can’t stop. But I’m not going to decide everything is fine here and risk losing you just because I went home earlier than I should have.”

She looked up at him, the stubborn light in her eyes fading. “Okay. If you need to do this, that’s fine.”

Selena walked into the front entrance of the cabin and threw her purse down on an entryway table. Typical Selena. There was a hook right above the table, but she didn’t hang the purse up. No. That extra step would be considered a waste of time in her estimation. Never mind that her disorganization often meant she spent extra time looking for things.

He looked around the spacious, bright room. It was clean. Surprisingly so.

“This place is... It’s nice. Spotless.”

“I have a housekeeper,” she said, turning to face him, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and offering up a lopsided smile.

For a moment, just a moment, his eyes dipped down to examine those breasts. His gut tightened and he resolutely turned his focus back to her eyes. Selena was a woman. He had known that for a long time. But she wasn’t a woman whose breasts concerned him. She never had been.

When they had met in college he had thought she was beautiful, sure. A man would have to be blind not to see that. But she had also been brittle. Skittish and damaged. And it had taken work on his part to forge a friendship with her.

Once he had become her friend, he had never wanted to do anything to compromise that bond. And if he had been a little jealous of Will Sanders somehow convincing her that marriage was worth the risk, Knox had never indulged that jealousy.

Then Will had hurt her, devastated her, divorced her. And after that, Selena had made her feelings about relationships pretty clear. Anyway, at that point, he had been serious about Cassandra, and then they had gotten married.

His friendship with Selena outlasted both of their marriages, and had proved that the decision he’d made back in college, to not examine her breasts, had been a solid one.

One he was going to hold to.

“Well, thank God for the housekeeper,” he said, his tone dry. “Living all the way out here by yourself, if you didn’t have someone taking care of you you’d be liable to die beneath a pile of your own clothes.”

She huffed. “You don’t know me, Knox.”

“Oh, honey,” he said, “I do.”

A long, slow moment stretched between them and her olive skin was suddenly suffused with color. It probably wasn’t nice of him to tease her about her propensity toward messiness. “Well,” she said, her tone stiff. “I do have a guest room. And I suppose it would be unkind of me to send you packing back to Wyoming on your first night here in Royal.”

“Downright mean,” he said, schooling his expression into one of pure innocence. As much as he could manage.

It occurred to him then that the two of them hadn’t really spent much time together in the past couple of years. And they hadn’t spent time alone together in the past decade. He had been married to another woman, and even though his friendship with Selena had been platonic, and Cassandra had never expressed any jealousy toward her, it would have been stretching things a bit for him to spend the night at her place with no one else around.

“Well,” she said, tossing her glossy black hair over her shoulder. “I am a little mean.”

“Are you?”

She smiled broadly, the expression somewhere between a grin and a snarl. “It has been said.”

“By who?” he asked, feeling instantly protective of her. She had always brought that out in him. Even though now it felt like a joke, that he could feel protective of anyone. He hadn’t managed to protect the most important people in his life.

“I wasn’t thinking of a particular incident,” she responded, wandering toward the kitchen, kicking her shoes off as she went, leaving them right where she stepped out of them, like fuchsia afterthoughts.

“Did Will say you were mean?”

She turned to face him, cocking one dark brow. “Will didn’t have strong feelings for me one way or the other, Knox. Certainly not in the time since the divorce.” She began to bustle around the kitchen, and he leaned against the island, placing his hand on the high-gloss marble countertop, watching as she worked with efficiency, getting mugs and heating water. She was making tea, and she wasn’t even asking him if he wanted any. She would simply present him with some. And he wouldn’t drink it, because he didn’t like tea.

A pretty familiar routine for the two of them.

“He put you pretty firmly off of marriage,” Knox pointed out, “so I would say he’s also not completely blameless.”

“You’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead. Or the undead, in Will’s case.”

He drummed his fingers on the counter. “You know, that does present an interesting question.”

“What question is that?”

“Who died?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“There were ashes in that urn. Obviously they weren’t Will’s. But if he’s not dead, then who is?”

Selena frowned. “Maybe no one’s dead. Maybe it’s ashes from a campfire.”

“Why would someone go to all that trouble? Why would somebody go to that much trouble to fake Will’s death? Or to fake anyone’s death? Again, I think this has something to do with those letters. With all of the women in his life being made beneficiaries of his estate. And this is why I’m not leaving you here by yourself.”

“Because you’re a high-handed, difficult, surly, obnoxious...”

“Are you finished?”

“Just a second,” she said, taking her kettle off the stove and pouring hot water into two of the mugs on the counter. “Irritating, overbearing...”

“Wealthy, handsome, incredibly generous.”

“Yes, it’s true,” she said. “But I prefer beautiful to handsome. I mean, I assume you were offering up descriptions of me.”

She shoved a mug in his direction, smiling brilliantly. He did not tell her he didn’t want any. He did not remind her that he had told her at least fifteen times over the years that he did not drink tea. Instead, he curled his fingers around the mug and pulled it close, knowing she wouldn’t realize he wasn’t having any.

It was just one of her charming quirks. The fact that she could be totally oblivious to what was happening around her. Cast-off shoes in the middle of her floor were symptoms of it. It wasn’t that Selena was an airhead; she was incredibly insightful, actually. It was just that her head seemed to continually be full of thoughts about what was next. Sometimes, all that thinking made it hard to keep her rooted in the present.

She rested her elbows on the counter, then placed her chin in her palms, looking suddenly much younger than she had only a moment ago. Reminding him of the girl he had known in college.

And along with that memory came an old urge. To reach out, to brush her hair out of her face, to trace the line of her lower lip with the edge of his thumb. To take a chance with all of her spiky indignation and press his mouth against hers.

Instead, he lifted his mug to his lips and took a long drink, the hot water and bitterly acidic tea burning his throat as he swallowed.

He really, really didn’t like tea.

“You know,” she said, tapping the side of her mug, straightening. “I do have a few projects you could work on around here. If you’re going to stay with me.”

“You’re putting me to work?”

“Yes. If you’re going to stay with me, you need to earn your keep.”

“I’m earning my keep by guarding you.”

“From a threat you don’t even know exists.”

“I know a few things,” he said, holding up his hand and counting off each thing with his fingers. “I know someone is dead. I know you are mysteriously named as a beneficiary of a lot of money, as are a bunch of other women.”

“And one assumes that we are no longer going to inherit any money since Will isn’t dead.”

“But someone wanted us all to think that he was. Hell, maybe somebody wanted him to be dead.”

“Are you a private detective now? The high-end health-food grocery-chain business not working out for you?”

“It’s working out for me very well, actually. Which you know. And don’t change the subject.”

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

He was genuinely concerned about her well-being; he wasn’t making that up. But there was something else, too. Something holding him here. Or maybe it was just something keeping him from going back to Wyoming. He had avoided Royal, and Texas altogether, since his divorce. Had avoided going anywhere that reminded him of his former life. He’d owned the ranch in Jackson Hole for over a decade, but he, Cassandra and Eleanor hadn’t spent as much time there as they had here.

Still, for some reason, now that he was back, the idea of returning to that gigantic ranch house in Wyoming to rattle around all by himself didn’t seem appealing.

There was a reason he had gotten married. A reason he and Cassandra had started a family. It was what he had wanted. An answer to his lifetime of loneliness. To the deficit he had grown up with. He had wanted everything. A wife, children, money. All of those things that would keep him from feeling like he had back then.

But he had learned the hard way that children could be taken from you. That marriages crumbled. And that money didn’t mean a damn thing in the end.

If he’d had a choice, if the universe would have asked him, he would have given up the money first.

Of course, he hadn’t realized that until it was too late.

Not that there was any fixing it. Not that there had been a choice. Cancer didn’t care if you were a billionaire.

It didn’t care if a little girl was your entire world.

Now all he had was a big empty house. One that currently had an invitation to a charity event on the fridge. An invitation he just couldn’t deal with right now.

He looked back up at Selena. Yeah, staying here for a few days was definitely more appealing than heading straight back to Jackson Hole.

“Okay,” he said. “What projects did you have in mind?”

* * *

He never said he didn’t like tea.

That was Selena’s first thought when she got up the next morning and set about making coffee for Knox and herself. Selena found it singularly odd that he never refused the tea. She served it to him sometimes just to see if he would. But he never did. He just sat there holding it. Which was funny, because Knox was not a passive man. Far from it.

In fact, in college, he had been her role model for that reason. He was authoritative. He asked for what he wanted. He went for what he wanted. And Selena had wanted to remake herself in his mold. She’d found him endlessly fascinating.

Though she had to admit, as she bustled around the kitchen, he was just as fascinating now. But now she had a much firmer grasp on what she wanted. On what was possible.

She had felt a little weird about him staying with her at first, which was old baggage creeping in. Old feelings. That crush she’d had on him in college that had never had a hope in hell of going anywhere. Not because she thought it was impossible for him to desire her, but because she knew there was no future in it. And she needed Knox as a friend much more than she needed him as a...well...the alternative.

But then last night, as they had been standing in the kitchen, she had looked at him. Really looked at him. Those lines between his brows were so deep, and his eyes were so incredibly...changed. Physically, she supposed he kind of looked the same, and yet he didn’t. He was reduced. And it was a terrible thing to see a man like him reduced. But she couldn’t blame him.

What happened with Eleanor had been such a shock. Such a horrible, hideous shock.

One day, she had been a normal, healthy toddler, and then she had been lethargic. Right after that came the cancer diagnosis, and in only a couple of months she was gone.

The entire situation had been surreal and heartbreaking. For her. And Eleanor wasn’t even her child. But her friend’s pain had been so real, so raw... She had no idea how he had coped with it, and now she could see that he hadn’t really. That he still was trying to cope.

He hadn’t come back to Texas since Eleanor’s death, and she had seen him only a couple of times. At the funeral. And then when she had come to Jackson Hole in the summer for a visit. Otherwise...it had all been texts and emails and quick phone conversations.

But now that he was back in Texas, he seemed to need to stay for a little while, and she was happy for him to think it was for her. Happy to be the scapegoat so he could work through whatever emotional thing he needed to work through. Knox, in the past, would have been enraged at the assessment that he needed to work through anything emotionally. He was such a stoic guy, always had been.

But she knew he wouldn’t even pretend there wasn’t lingering damage from the loss of his little girl. Selena had watched him break apart completely at Eleanor’s funeral. They had never talked about it again. She didn’t think they ever would. But then, she supposed they didn’t need to. They had shared the experience. That moment when he couldn’t be strong anymore. When there was no child to be strong for, and when his wife had been off with her family, and there had simply been no reason for him to remain standing upright. Selena had been there for that moment.

If all the years of friendship hadn’t bonded them, that moment would have done it all on its own.

Just thinking of it made her chest ache, and she shook off the feeling, going over to the coffee maker to pour herself a cup.

She wondered if Knox was still sleeping. He was going to be mad if he missed prime caffeination time.

She wandered out of the kitchen and into the living room just as the door to the guest bedroom opened and Knox walked out, pulling his T-shirt over his head—but not quickly enough. She caught a flash of muscled, tanned skin and...chest hair. Oh, the chest hair. Why was that compelling enough to stop her in her tracks? She didn’t even have a moment to question it. She was too caught up. Too beset by the sight.

Genuinely. She was completely immobilized by the sight of her best friend’s muscles.

It wasn’t like she had never seen Knox shirtless before. But it had been a long time. And the last time, he had most definitely been married.

Not that she had forgotten he was hot when he was married to Cassandra. It was just that...he had been a married man. And that meant something to Selena. Because it meant something to him.

It had been a barrier, an insurmountable one, even bigger than that whole long-term friendship thing. And now it wasn’t there. It just wasn’t. He was walking out of the guest bedroom looking sleep rumpled and entirely too lickable. And there was just...nothing stopping them from doing what men and women did.

She’d had a million excuses for not doing that. For a long time. She didn’t want to risk entanglements, didn’t want to compromise her focus. Didn’t want to risk pregnancy. Didn’t have time for a relationship.

But she was in a place where those things were less of a concern. This house was symbolic of that change in her life. She was making a home. And making a home made her want to fill it. With art, with warmth, with knickknacks that spoke to her. With people.

She wondered, then. What it would be like to actually live with a man? To have one in her life? In her home? In her bed?

And just like that she was fantasizing about Knox in her bed. That body she had caught a glimpse of relaxing beneath her emerald green bedspread, his hands clasped behind his head, a satisfied smile on his face...

She sucked in a sharp breath and tried to get a hold of herself. “Coffee is ready,” she said, grinning broadly, not feeling the grin at all.

“Good,” he said, his voice rough from sleep.

It struck her then, just what an intimate thing that was. To hear someone’s voice after they had been sleeping.

“Right this...way,” she said, awkwardly beating a path into the kitchen, turning away from him quickly enough that she sloshed coffee over the edge of her cup.

“You have food for breakfast?” he asked, that voice persistently gravelly and interesting, and much less like her familiar friend’s than she would like it to be. She needed some kind of familiarity to latch on to, something to blot out the vision of his muscles. But he wasn’t giving her anything.

Jerk.

“No,” she said, keeping her voice cheery. “I have coffee and spite for breakfast.”

“Well, that’s not going to work for me.”

“I’m not sure what to tell you,” she said, flinging open one of her cabinets and revealing her collection of cereal and biscotti. “Of course I have food for breakfast.”

“Bacon? Eggs?”

“Do I look like a diner to you?” she asked.

“Not you personally. But I was hoping that your house might have more diner-like qualities.”

“No,” she said, opening up the fridge and rummaging around. “Well, what do you know? I do have eggs. And bacon. I get a delivery of groceries every week. From a certain grocery store.”

He smiled, a lopsided grin that did something to her stomach. Something she was going to ignore and call hunger, because they were talking about bacon, and being hungry for bacon was much more palatable than being hungry for your best friend.

“I’ll cook,” he said.

“Oh no,” she said, getting the package of bacon out of the fridge and handing it to Knox before bending back down and grabbing the carton of eggs and placing that in his other hand. “You don’t have to cook.”

“Why do I get the feeling that I really do have to cook?”

She shrugged. “It depends on whether you want bacon and eggs.”

“Do you not know how to cook?”

“I know how to cook,” she said. “But the odds of me actually cooking when I only have half of a cup of coffee in my system are basically none. Usually, I prefer to have sweets for breakfast. Hence, biscotti and breakfast cereals. However, I will sometimes eat bacon and eggs for dinner. Or I will eat bacon and eggs for breakfast if a handsome man fixes them for me.”

He lifted a brow. “Oh, I see. So you have this in your fridge for when a man spends the night.”

“Obviously. Since a man did just spend the night.” Her face flushed. She knew exactly what he was imagining. And really, he had no idea.

That was not why she had the bacon and eggs. She had the bacon and eggs because sometimes she liked an easy dinner. But she didn’t really mind if Knox thought she had more of a love life than she actually did.

Of course, now they were thinking about that kind of thing at the same time. Which was...weird. And possibly responsible for the strange electric current arcing between them.

“I’ll cook,” he said, breaking that arc and moving to the stove, getting out pans and bowls, cracking eggs with an efficiency she admired.

“Do you have an assignment list for me?” he asked, picking up the bowl and whisking the eggs inside.

Why was that sexy? What was happening? His broad shoulders and chest, those intensely muscled forearms, somehow seeming all the more masculine when he was scrambling eggs, of all things.

There was something about the very domestic action, and she couldn’t figure out what it was. Maybe it was the contrast between masculinity and domesticity. Or maybe it was just because there had never been a man in her kitchen making breakfast.

She tried to look blasé, as though men made her breakfast every other weekend. After debauchery. Lots and lots of debauchery. She had a feeling she wasn’t quite managing blasé, so she just took a sip of her coffee and stared at the white star that hung on her back wall, her homage to the Lone Star State. And currently, her salvation.

“Assignment list,” she said, slamming her hands down on the countertop, breaking her reverie. She owed that star a thank-you for restoring her sanity. She’d just needed a moment of not looking at Knox. “Well, I want new hardware on those cabinets. The people who lived here before me had a few things that weren’t really to my taste. That is one of them. Also, there are some things in an outbuilding the previous inhabitants left, and I want them moved out. Oh, and I want to get rid of the ceiling fan in the living room.”

“I hope you’re planning on paying me for this,” he said, dumping the eggs into the pan, a sizzling sound filling the room.

“Nope,” she said, lifting her coffee mug to her lips.

Knox finished cooking, and somehow Selena managed not to swoon. So, that was good.

They didn’t bother to go into her dining room. Instead they sat at the tall chairs around the island, and Selena looked down at her breakfast resolutely.

“Are you okay?”

“What?” She looked up, her eyes clashing with Knox’s. “You keep asking me that.”

“Because you keep acting like you might not be.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m alive,” he responded. “As to being okay...that’s not really part of my five-year plan.”

“What’s your five-year plan?”

“Not drink myself into a stupor. Keep my business running, because at some point I probably will be glad I still have it. That’s about it.”

“Well,” she said softly, “you can add replacing my kitchen hardware to your five-year plan. But I would prefer it be on this side of it, rather than the back end.”

He laughed, and she found that incredibly gratifying. Without thinking, she reached out and brushed her fingertips against his cheek, against his beard. She drew back quickly, wishing the impression of that touch would fade away. It didn’t.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Are you keeping the beard?”

“It’s not really a fashion statement. It’s more evidence of personal neglect.”

“Well, you haven’t neglected your whole body,” she said, thinking of that earlier flash of muscle. She immediately regretted her words. She regretted them more than she did touching his beard. And beard-touching was pretty damned inappropriate between friends. At least, she was pretty certain it was.

He lifted a brow and took a bite of bacon. “Elaborate.”

“I’m just saying. You’re in good shape, Knox. I noticed.”

“Okay,” he said slowly, setting the bacon down. His gray eyes were cool as they assessed her, but for some reason she felt heat pooling in her stomach.

Settle down.

Her body did not listen. It kept on being hot. And that heat bled into her cheeks. So she knew she was blushing brilliant rose for Knox’s amusement.

“I’m just used to complimenting the men who make me breakfast,” she said, doing her best to keep her voice deadpan.

“I see.”

“So.”

“So,” he responded. “There’s nothing to do other than work,” he said. “Lifting hay bales, fixing fences, basically throwing heavy things around on the ranch. Then going back into the house and working out in the gym. It’s all I do.”

Well, that explained a few things. “I imagine you could carve out about five minutes to shave.”

“Would you prefer that I did?”

“I don’t have an opinion on your facial hair.”

“You seem to have an opinion on my facial hair.”

“I really don’t. I had observations about your facial hair, but that’s an entirely different thing.”

“Somehow, I don’t think it is.”

“Well, you’re entitled to your opinion. About my opinion on your facial hair. Or my lack of one. But that doesn’t make it fact.”

He shook his head. “You know, if I had you visiting in Jackson Hole I probably wouldn’t work out so excessively. Your chatter would keep me busy.”

“Hey,” she said. “I don’t chatter. I’m making conversation.” Except, it sounded a whole lot like chatter, even to herself.

“Okay.”

She made a coughing sound and stood up, taking her mostly empty plate to the sink and then making her way back toward the living room, stepping over her discarded high heels from yesterday. She heard the sound of Knox’s bare feet on the floor behind her. And suddenly, the fact that he had bare feet seemed intimate.

You really have been a virgin for too long.

She grimaced, even as she chastised herself. She hated that word. She hated even thinking it. It implied a kind of innocence she didn’t possess. Also, it felt young. She was not particularly young. She had just been busy. Busy, and resolutely opposed to relationships.

Still, the whole virginity thing had the terrible side effect of making rusty morning voices and bare feet seem intimate.

She looked up and out the window and saw her car in the driveway. “Hey,” she said. “How did that happen?”

“I told you I was going to take care of it. Ye of little faith.”

“Apparently, Knox, you can’t even take care of your beard, so why would I think you would take care of my car so efficiently?”

“Correction,” he said. “I don’t bother to make time to shave my beard. Why? Because I don’t have to. Because I’m not beholden to anyone anymore.”

Those words were hollow, even though he spoke them in a light tone. And no matter how he would try and spin it, he didn’t feel it was a positive thing. It seemed desperately sad that nobody in his life cared whether or not he had a beard.

“I like it,” she said finally.

She did. He was hot without one, too. He had one of those square Hollywood jaws and a perfectly proportioned chin. And if asked prior to seeing him with the beard, she would have said facial hair would have been like hiding his light under a bushel.

But in reality, the beard just made him look...more masculine. Untamed. Rugged. Sexy.

Yes. Sexy.

She cleared her throat. “Anyway,” she said. “I won’t talk about it anymore.”

Suddenly, she realized Knox was standing much closer to her than she’d been aware of until a moment ago. She could smell some kind of masculine body wash and clean, male skin. And she could feel the heat radiating from his body. If she reached out, she wouldn’t even have to stretch her arm out to press her palm against his chest. Or to touch his beard again, which she had already established was completely inappropriate, but she was thinking about it anyway.

“You like it?” he asked, his voice getting rougher, even more than it had been this morning when he had first woken up.

“I... Yes?”

“You’re not sure?”

“No,” she said, taking a step toward him, her feet acting entirely on their own and without permission from her brain. “No, I’m sure. I like it.”

She felt weightless, breathless. She felt a little bit like leaning toward him and seeing what might happen if she closed that space between them. Seeing how that beard might feel if it was pressed against her cheek, what it might feel like if his mouth was pressed against hers...

She was insane. She was officially insane. She was checking out her friend. Her grieving friend who needed her to be supportive and not lecherous.

She shook her head and took a step back. “Thank you,” she said. Instead of kissing him. Instead of doing anything crazy. “For making sure the car got back to me. Really, thank you for catching me when I passed out yesterday. I think I’m still...you know.”

“No,” he said, crossing his muscular arms over his broad chest. “I’m not sure that I do know.”

Freaking Knox. Not helping her out at all. “I think I’m still a little bit spacey,” she said.

“Understandable. Hey, direct me to your hardware, and I’ll get started on that.”

Okay, maybe he was going to help her out. She was going to take that lifeline with both hands. “I can do that,” she said, and she rushed to oblige him.


Four (#u2f029b30-5a06-506d-84de-5895cad61026)

Knox was almost completely finished replacing the hardware in Selena’s kitchen when the phone in his pocket vibrated. He frowned, the number coming up one he didn’t recognize.

He answered it and lifted it to his ear. “Knox McCoy,” he said.

“Hi there, Knox” came the sound of an older woman’s voice on the other end of the line. She had a thick East Texas drawl and a steel thread winding through the greeting that indicated she wasn’t one to waste a word or spare a feeling. “I’m Cora Lee. Will’s stepmother. I’m not sure if he’s ever mentioned me.”

“Will and I haven’t been close for the past decade or so,” he said honestly. Really, the falling-out between Will and Selena had profoundly affected his friendship with the other man.

In divorces, friends chose sides. And his side had always clearly been Selena’s.

“Still,” Cora Lee said, “there’s nothing like coming back from the dead to patch up old relationships. And, on that subject, I would like to have a small get-together to celebrate Will’s return, just for those of us who were at the service. You can imagine that we’re all thrilled.”

If she was thrilled, Knox wouldn’t have been able to tell by her tone of voice. She was more resolute. Determined. And he had a feeling that refusing her would be a lot like saying no to a drill sergeant.

“It will be kind of like a funeral, only celebrating that he’s not dead. And you’ll be invited. He said he wanted you to come.”

“He did?”

“Not in so many words, but I feel like it is what he wants.” And Knox had a feeling it wouldn’t matter if Will did want it or not. Cora Lee was going to do exactly what she thought was best. “And he wants that ex-wife of his to come, too. He says you two are close.”

“Which ex-wife?” He had gotten the distinct impression that there was more than one former Mrs. Sanders floating around.

“The one you’re close to,” Cora Lee responded, her voice deadpan.

Reluctantly, Knox decided he liked Will’s stepmother. “Well, I’ll let her know. She went to the funeral, so I imagine she’ll want to go to this.” He wasn’t sure he particularly wanted to, but if Selena was going, then he would accompany her. He was honestly concerned that the other women who had been named beneficiaries, or whoever was responsible for sending the letter, might take advantage of a situation like this.

“Good. I’ll put you both down on the guest list, and I’ll send details along shortly. You have to come, because I wrote your names down and there will be too much brisket if you don’t.”

And with that, she hung up the phone. He looked down at the screen for a moment, and then Selena came in, her footsteps soft on the hardwood floor.

He looked up and his stomach tightened. Her long black hair was wet, as though she’d gotten out of the shower, and he suddenly became very aware of the fact that her gray T-shirt was clinging to her curves a little bit more than it might if her skin wasn’t damp. Which put him in mind to think about the fact that her skin was damp, which meant it had been uncovered only a few moments before.

What the hell was wrong with him? He was thinking like a horny teenager. Yeah, it had been a few years since he’d had sex, but frankly, he hadn’t wanted to. His libido had been hibernating, along with his desire to do basic things like shave his beard.

But somehow it seemed to be stirring to life again, and it was happening at a very inappropriate time, with an inappropriate person.

The good thing was that it must be happening around Selena because she was the only woman in proximity, and it was about time he started to feel again. The bad thing was...Selena was the only woman in proximity.

“Who was that on the phone?” she asked, running her fingers through her hair.

“Will’s stepmother. She wants us to go to a non-funeral for him in a few days.”

“Oh.”

She was frowning, a small crinkle appearing on her otherwise smooth forehead.

“Something wrong?”

“No. It’s a good thing. I’m glad to be asked. I mean, I was thinking, when I assumed he was dead, that it was so sad he and I had never...that we had never found a way to fix our friendship.”

“You want to do that?” He was surprised.

“It seems silly to stay mad at somebody over something that happened so long ago. Something I know neither of us would change.”

“The marriage?”

She laughed. “The divorce. I don’t regret the divorce, so there’s really no point in being upset about it. Or avoiding him forever because of it. I mean, obviously there was conflict surrounding it.” She looked away, a strange, tight expression on her face. “But if neither of us would go back and change the outcome, I don’t see why we can’t let it go. I would like to let it go. It was terrible, thinking he was dead and knowing we had never reconciled.”

Knox pressed his hand to his chest and rubbed the spot over his heart. It twinged a little. But that was nothing new. It did that sometimes. At first, he had thought he was having a heart attack. But then, in the beginning, it had been much worse. Suffocating, deep, sharp pain.

Something that took his breath away.

No one had ever told him that grief hurt. That it was a physical pain. That the depression that lingered on after would hurt all the way down to your bones. That sometimes you would wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to breathe.

Those were the kinds of things people didn’t tell you. But then, there was no guidebook for loss like he had experienced. Actually, there was. There were tons of books about it. But there had been no reason in hell for him to go out and buy one. Not before it had happened, and then when Eleanor had gotten sick, he hadn’t wanted to do doomsday preparation for the loss he still didn’t want to believe was inevitable.

Afterward...

He was in the shit whether he wanted to be or not. So he didn’t see the point of trying to figure out a way to navigate more elegantly through it. Shit was shit. There was no dressing it up.

There was just doing your best to put one foot in front of the other and walk on through.

But he had walked through it alone, and in the end that had been too much for him and Cassandra. But he hadn’t known how to do it with another person. Hadn’t really wanted to.

Hadn’t known how he was supposed to look at the mother of his dead child and offer her comfort, tell her that everything was going to be okay, that anything was going to be okay.

But now they had disentangled themselves from each other, and still this thing Selena was talking about, this desire for reconciliation, just didn’t resonate with him. He didn’t want to talk to Cassandra. It was why they were divorced.

“It’s not the same thing,” she said, her voice suddenly taking on that soft, careful quality that appeared in people’s tones when they were dancing around the subject of his loss. “Mine and Will’s relationship. It’s not the same as yours and Cassandra’s. It’s not the same as your divorce. Will and I were married for a year. We were young, we were selfish and we were stupid. The two of you... You built a life together. And then you lost it. You went through hell. It’s just not the same thing. So don’t think I’m lecturing you subtly on how you should call her or something.”

“I didn’t think that.”

“You did a little. Or you were making yourself feel guilty about it, and that isn’t fair. You don’t deserve that.”

She was looking at him with a sweet, freshly scrubbed openness that made his stomach go tight. Made him want to lift up his coffee mug and throw it down onto the tile, just to make the feeling stop. Made him want to grab hold of her face, hold her steady and kiss her mouth. So she would shut up. So she would stop being so understanding. So she would stop looking at him and seeing him. Seeing inside of him.

That thought, hot and destructive, made his veins feel full of fire rather than blood. And he wasn’t sure anymore what his motivation actually was. To get her to stop, or to just exorcise the strange demon that seemed to have possessed him at some point between the moment he had held her in his arms on the floor of the funeral home and when they had come back here.




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