Untamed Cowboy
So sexual it was impossible to pretend it was anything else. Feelings she might have been able to squish into another box. That deep, intense ache between her thighs was very difficult to pass off as anything but sexual attraction.
She’d tried.
And she would have never guessed that watching the man deal with fatherhood would have ratcheted that up a notch. She would have said that nothing could. But Lord Almighty, this did. Bennett full of righteous fury staring down his son. Fury at the world for what it had put him through. Uncompromising with a kind of deep intensity, a commitment that no one had ever offered to Kaylee.
It was more than her poor ovaries could bear.
Every little biological thing inside of her was screaming about the suitability of Bennett as a partner. A protector of offspring.
It was ingrained on a hormonal level. She was powerless against it.
That still didn’t make it less disconcerting.
Somewhere in the back of her brain she felt a little itch.
Michael.
Michael was the itch. She had a date with him next week. She had a date with him next week and she was standing here getting hot and bothered over Bennett.
But then, that was kind of the normal state of things. Exacerbated in the moment, but relatively normal nonetheless.
And again, she was mired in her own stuff and she felt like a tool.
Dallas shrugged, as if he was fully unaffected by the proclamation that Bennett had just made. But Kaylee knew otherwise. She just did. Because whether it hit him today or in five years, he was going to realize eventually what Bennett was saying to him. What Bennett was offering.
It would matter then. When he needed it to matter, it would. Someday when a little bit of that anger had subsided, or when he was feeling particularly angry and his body needed a break from it.
She was certain because sometimes having the friend that she’d had in Bennett, having the support she’d had in his family, had been the only thing keeping her grounded, rooted to the possibilities of the future, rather than those old, ugly feelings of inadequacy. Of not deserving.
And that—she knew—was what all that bluff and bluster was.
Feeling undeserving. Unwanted.
“I’m really scoring points all over the place,” Bennett said, when the bedroom door slammed shut.
“You are, actually,” Kaylee said softly. “You just might be saving them up for later. Want to go back outside?”
“Yes,” Bennett said.
They wandered out to the front porch, and Bennett leaned over the railing, lifting the beer bottle to his lips. “He’s real,” Bennett said. “You saw that too.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry I can’t tell you it’s some kind of hallucination.”
“I was actually almost afraid it might be,” Bennett said, his voice rough. “That I was going to take you in there and he was going to be gone.”
She didn’t say anything. She had the feeling that he didn’t want her to.
“I didn’t want him to be,” Bennett said. “As little sense as that makes... Now that he’s here...”
“It makes as much sense as any of this does,” Kaylee said. “If you felt like you wanted him gone in the next five minutes, that would be okay too, because nothing about this is normal. There’s not exactly a guidebook for what to do when the son you didn’t know you had shows up out of nowhere.”
“I guess not,” he said.
“I just can’t believe it,” Kaylee said, shaking her head. “I mean, now that I’ve seen him I can. He looks just like you, Bennett. And I mean in an uncanny way. It’s like looking at you when we were in high school.”
“He doesn’t look that much like me,” Bennett said, kicking against the edge of the porch rail with the toe of his cowboy boot.
“He does,” Kaylee said. “And it’s everything. The way that he stands, the set of his shoulders. He’s just...you through and through, and he’d never even met you before today.” She sighed. “He’s not as happy as you were.”
“Of course not,” Bennett said. “Because he’s had an awful life, and I’m partly to blame for that.”
“You couldn’t force her to tell you. She lied to you, and you had no reason to think that she would do that.”
“My whole...everything since then...this is why I plan like I do. Why I make sure I have everything mapped out in my head, because I know what happens when you don’t do that. When you just...think of the moment and not the future.”
“I thought... I thought it was because of your mom.” She reached out and touched his arm.
“Partly,” he said. “You know things were hard after she died. We missed her, and Dad didn’t do a great job organizing. Not that I blame him. I had to keep my part of the world organized or it would all fall apart.”
Her heart twisted. “I know. I get that.”
“I know you do,” he said. “And then Marnie got pregnant. I knew that I had let us both down. I just wanted... I didn’t ever want anything like that again. I was young, and sex was new, and I didn’t think. I didn’t think, and I put her through loss and pain. I blamed myself for everything that went wrong in her life. And maybe I still own part of that blame. Because I was dumb. Because I didn’t keep control. I thought of my own physical pleasure over anything else.”
Kaylee didn’t like the way this conversation was going. Didn’t like the way it made her feel like there was heat crackling beneath her skin. Didn’t like how off-kilter she felt. Didn’t like imagining Bennett, her steady, staid Bennett, losing control with a woman.
It made her feel hot all over, imagining Bennett making love with intensity.
Hell, she was about to have a hot flash.
“I’ve never felt anything like that,” she said, the words sticking in her throat on the way out.
Bennett whipped his head sharply to the side, his beer bottle frozen midway between the porch rail and his lips. “You... Never...”
“I’ve never felt out of control. In that...situation. That’s all I’m saying.”
Something caught between them in that moment, and it was electric, intense enough that it was undeniable. It rolled over her like a wave, an ultrasonic wave, sharp and shocky and quite unlike anything she had ever felt coming from him before. Yes, there had been some small moments. Little pops of awareness, of both of them suddenly remembering that they were male and female, and not simply two genderless people sharing a friendship.
But not like this. Nothing like this.
“Well,” he said, clearing his throat.
“Nothing good comes of it, apparently,” she said, her throat feeling scratchy.
“No,” Bennett said. “And I’ve made sure it never happened to me again.”
“Does that mean...” She shouldn’t be continuing this conversation. She really shouldn’t. “You didn’t feel that way about Olivia?”
“I never slept with Olivia,” he said, his tone rough.
Kaylee felt like she’d been slapped. This was a lot of weird revelations for one night. “You never...you never slept with her?”
“No,” Bennett responded. “I never did. She wanted to wait until we were engaged. And we never got engaged.”
“I thought that you...” She had spent so much time imagining dark-haired, petite Olivia wrapped around Bennett, had made herself sick thinking about it. And he hadn’t done it. “She’s so...beautiful,” she finished lamely.
Olivia was everything Kaylee wasn’t. Petite. Feminine.
“She was safe,” Bennett said. He took another drink of beer. “I wanted safe. I wanted something that I could plan. I wanted to be able to plan my life. And she seemed like a pretty great thing to plan it around. She felt the same way about me. It was never... We were never in love, we were just hoping to make a good life together. And then I lost her, and now I have a kid. So I give up. I give up on sensible. I give up on control.” He shook his head and took another drink.
She had a feeling he did not give up on control at all. That he was going to try to corral and take the reins of this situation, whatever he said now.
“I see,” she said, looking up, her eyes clashing with his.
She hadn’t imagined it. Hadn’t for one moment fabricated that spark between them. It was there. It was there now.
And then he looked down at her lips.
She felt the impact of that shoot down between her thighs. Good Lord Almighty. Bennett Dodge was looking at her mouth.
Bennett Dodge was having a breakdown. And if he did something with her now, it was only going to be for that reason.
That snapped her back to reality. She took a swig of beer, needing for her lips to be busy so that they didn’t decide to occupy their time with him.
“I should go,” she said.
“Do you have to?”
“Yes,” she said, not quite sure if they were talking over the top of the same subtext. She knew what she felt. She knew what she read here, but apparently she didn’t know much of anything. Bennett hadn’t slept with Olivia. He thought she was safe.
It was a totally different relationship to the one she had thought she had been witnessing. The one where he called her princess. Where he treated her like this beautiful, delicate and fragile thing that Kaylee was so certain she could never be.
This wonderful, deserving little creature that Kaylee knew she wasn’t.
But his relationship with Olivia hadn’t been passionate or physical. All that time she’d tortured herself over it and he’d never been with Olivia. She would never have guessed that.
So maybe Bennett was looking at her mouth because he wanted to kiss her, or maybe he was trying to figure out how much beer she was going to drink, or he was just spacing out because everything was weird.
Whatever, she wasn’t in the space to try to figure it out and she needed to stop trying before she did something really foolish.
“I’m going to have to go over to the ranch and talk to my brothers tomorrow. Will you go with me?”
“Of course I will.”
No matter what was wacky and off tonight, she was going to be there for him. There was no question about that. That was the kind of friendship they had. That kind of unconditional support that he had been the first person to show her.
“Thank you,” he said. She shrugged and set the beer on the porch rail, turning to walk down the steps. And then, Bennett spoke again, his voice heavy. “Kaylee... I really need our friendship right now.”
Those words were so weighted down that she knew in that instance he had felt the same thing she had.
That just made her mad. She had spent all this time subsuming her feelings, and there was one moment of mutual electricity and he was making veiled proclamations.
She’d been guarding their friendship for years. She didn’t need him to go talking about the importance of it. She damn well knew.
“Good,” she said, not offering him any indication that she had any clue what he meant. “I’m glad that I can be your friend. Very glad.”
And with that, she turned and stomped her way back to the truck, not quite sure what the hell it said about reality that the earlier scenario where Olivia was pregnant with Luke’s baby and wanted Bennett back was somehow less complicated than the one she found herself in now.
CHAPTER SIX
EARLY THE NEXT morning Bennett found himself embroiled in indecision.
His son—that was still the weirdest thought it was possible to have—was still asleep, and Bennett had to get to work in the next hour.
He went out and slowly, methodically began to feed the animals. Pepper and Cheddar, his Australian shepherds yipping excitedly at his heels as he navigated the morning chores with all the conviction of a robot performing work on an assembly line.
He didn’t know if he could leave Dallas alone. He thought of the business card that the social worker had left for him. Should he call her about that?
Logically he knew that a fifteen-year-old could handle himself for a few hours, but Dallas had only just shown up and Bennett didn’t know if it meant the kid would run away if he was left unattended. Of course, it wasn’t like he could prevent him from leaving if he wanted to, short of tying him up and locking him in a bedroom, and that was probably frowned on.
He didn’t feel comfortable about leaving him, though. Whatever was technically acceptable and wasn’t, he knew he didn’t feel right about it.
He had to talk to his family tonight. He had decided that he wouldn’t do it until then. Until they had all gotten through the workday and could see each other face-to-face.
But until then, he had patients to see.
Dallas could hang out at the clinic, or he could ride in Bennett’s truck all day. That would work well enough.
Bennett couldn’t think of what they would talk about if they ended up trapped in a vehicle together for the entirety of the day.
He supposed that was a stupid, selfish thing to concern himself with.
But he was concerned.
He walked back into the house just as the clock rolled over to six, and he knew that he was going to be tempting a lot of rage waking a teenage boy out of a dead sleep but he had to do something.
He knocked on the bedroom door and got no answer. He knocked again, this time more heavily, and nothing.
What if the kid had run off in the middle of the night? He should have like...slept in front of the door. But then, he could have climbed out the window.
Dammit.
He opened up the door, and his heart slammed hard against his breastbone when he saw the boy lying on his stomach, his face smashed against the pillow, a little bit of drool coming out the corner of his mouth. His arm was draped over the side of the mattress, his hand bent at the wrist, his knuckles pressing against the floor. He was so profoundly out that he looked entirely limp.
A flood of emotions butted up against some dam inside of Bennett he hadn’t known had existed. And he felt it crack.
Dallas made a croaking sound and sniffed. And the dam inside Bennett burst completely.
It was like being caught between two points in time. He could imagine then, what it might have been like to walk into a nursery when Dallas was a baby, to see him asleep like this in a crib.
But he hadn’t. He had never gotten to see him then.
Were there pictures? Was there a video of him taking a first step? How old had he been?
Had his first word been dada, like so many other babies, but with no dad around to feel like his baby was talking to him?
He had missed that. All of that. And he hadn’t even had a choice. He pressed a hand against his chest and staggered backward, suddenly so overwhelmed with the enormity of the situation that he couldn’t breathe.
This boy was fifteen. He took up the length of this entire bed. There had been a point when he had been no larger than a loaf of bread, and dammit, Bennett had had the right to know him then. To hold him then. But he hadn’t. And Dallas had spent all these long years with no one. Being bounced around, no safe place.
But he had slept easily here last night. He had slept deeply.
Whatever happened today, Bennett was going to take some solace in that.
And he was not leaving the kid here by himself.
“Wake up,” Bennett said. “Dallas, wake up.”
“What?” Dallas jerked up, rolling over onto his back and blinking hard. “It’s still fucking dark out,” he moaned.
“Yeah,” Bennett said. “But it won’t be for long. And I have to go to work.”
“So?”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“I’m not a baby,” Dallas muttered.
Bennett was well aware of that. It had all been driven home just a second ago.
“Yes. I know. But you are my kid. If you weren’t a kid, they would have turned you loose. But you are. That means I’m the adult. And I make the rules. I’m your dad.” He felt a strange, out-of-body sensation when those words fell from his mouth. “And I think that it would be best if today you weren’t here by yourself all day.”
“Afraid I’m going to steal the silver or whatever rich thing people get wound up about?”
Be∆nnett crossed his arms. “Do I look like I have silver?”
Dallas lay back down, his eyes on the ceiling. “I don’t know what the fuck you have.”
“Well, I don’t fucking have silver.”
He turned his head slightly to look at Bennett. “You shouldn’t use that kind of language in front of me. I’m impressionable.”
“Somehow, I don’t think you are.” Bennett made a jerking motion toward the door with his head. “You’ve got ten minutes. Then be out in the kitchen. I’ll get you something to eat.”
“What do you have to eat?”
“You know what? Nothing good. I’ll take you to Sugar Cup if you can be ready in five minutes.”
Dallas squinted. “What’s that?”
“Coffee shop. Bakery. Food.”
That seemed to get the kid’s attention. Bennett gave him some privacy, and went out and paced the length of the kitchen while he waited. Dallas appeared not four minutes later, clearly motivated by offers of baked goods.
“They better have doughnuts,” he muttered.
“They do,” Bennett responded.
Dallas pulled on a hoodie and zipped it up, throwing the hood over his head and shoving his hands down his pockets. “I never get up this early.”
“I always get up this early,” Bennett said.
Dallas’s lip curled. “Why?”
“I have animals to take care of.”
Bennett pushed the door open. Dallas looked at it for a moment, then at Bennett, then walked out ahead of him.
“What animals do you have?”
“Well, there’s the dogs. I know that you saw them. Pepper, she’s the old lady. And Cheddar, the puppy.”
“Those are stupid names.”
“They’re great names. For great dogs. Anyway, you’ll get used to it. So we’ve got the dogs and then there’s the goats, which are kind of rescue animals. All my ranch animals are. Kind of a hazard of being in this business. When there is an animal that someone can’t take care of, I end up with it a lot of the time. Goats that people were finished with after their property was cleared. Three horses, retired from the rodeo. And a llama.”
“Do they have names?” He was trying not to sound interested, Bennett could tell.
Bennett led the way across the gravel drive over to his mobile veterinary truck and unlocked it. “You would just think they’re stupid,” he said.
“Yeah, maybe I would. But it seems better than saying hey, Llama.”
Bennett shrugged. “Get in the truck.”
Dallas complied. Once they were on the road, Bennett started talking again. “Blanche, Sophia, Rose and Dorothy are the goats.”
“That’s weird.”
“They’re named after The Golden Girls.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
Bennett shook his head. “This is what’s wrong with kids today.” In fairness, Kaylee had named the goats. Kaylee was the only reason he’d ever watched that show.
“I don’t even know what to say to that.”
Luckily, he didn’t have to say anything, because that was right about when they got to Sugar Cup.
“The llama is Candace,” Bennett said. “I didn’t name her.”
He killed the engine and the two of them got out of the truck.
“Okay. At least you didn’t name her. And the horses?”
“Shadrach, Meshach and Lucy. She’s the only girl.”
“Well, at least now I know all their names. But I’m probably not going to remember them. And I’m probably not going to do anything with them.”
“Pepper and Cheddar will force interaction, so good luck with that.”
He and Dallas walked down the sidewalk together, along the quaint little storefronts in the redbrick buildings that lined Gold Valley’s Main Street. None of the shops were open yet—it was too early. Only the coffeehouses and the Mustard Seed diner were open this early. Though, it occurred to him just then that people were going to take one look at Dallas and know they were family of some kind. It was undeniable, Kaylee was right about that. The way that Dallas walked reminded Bennett of Grant and Wyatt, which probably meant that really, he walked like Bennett. It was just that Bennett had never observed himself walking down the street.
It made his heart squeeze tight. Made his whole body feel a little bit numb.
“Right here,” he said as they turned a corner. He pushed the door to the coffee shop open and held it, letting Dallas walk on through.
Sugar Cup was busy, even at this early hour, with tables filled with older people reading the paper and drinking their morning coffee, and the line full of people on their way to work. Ranchers, teachers and guys who worked in the mill out of town.
Teachers. The school year was about over, but eventually, Bennett was going to have to figure out school. In fact, Dallas might need some kind of summer school.
“How are you doing in school?” Bennett asked.
Dallas choked out a laugh. “Um. Not great.”
“Why?”
“Could be the moving around. And also the hating it.”
“Is it hard for you?” Bennett pressed.
Dallas shrugged. “It’s boring. Anyway, there’s no point to it. It’s not like I’m going to college.”
Bennett frowned. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“Because I don’t have any money, dumbass,” Dallas muttered.
“I do,” Bennett pointed out.
“That doesn’t have anything to do with me. I’m not smart enough to get a scholarship. I’m not like a piano prodigy or really good at football or anything like that. So, I would have to get perfect grades, and I already don’t do that. So yeah. What’s the point of school?”
“I wouldn’t... I wouldn’t make you go to college. But know that you could.”
Bennett had money, his family had it. And he was more than able to take out loans if necessary.
Dallas looked stricken by the information, and not really pleased or excited, or anything that could be construed as positive. “You don’t mean that,” he said.
“I do,” Bennett said, the two of them moving up in the line. “I told you, I’m your dad. That means that you’re my responsibility.”
“And I told you we’re not going to be speaking in a couple of years. You know how I know that? Because nobody that was in my life a couple of years ago still talks to me. Except for Grace, and that’s because it’s her job. It’s because she’s assigned to me and she has to. But believe me, the minute she doesn’t have to deal with me anymore? She won’t. I’m not telling you a sad story, I’m not fishing for sympathy. That’s just the way it is.”
“Not anymore,” Bennett said. “We don’t have to talk about this now. But eventually we’re going to have to figure out how to get you caught up in school. Because you’re going to have options. I know you’re not used to that. But I’m going to make sure you have them.”
Dallas didn’t say anything after that. He occupied himself by studying the case full of pastries, and Bennett did the same. At this point in the day eating healthy seemed overrated. He needed something that paired nicely with the emotional turmoil that came with discovering you had a secret son.
He had no idea what the hell that was, but he imagined it contained a lot of butter.
“Good morning.” Kelly, the usual morning shift worker at Sugar Cup, who never gave any indication that she felt like the morning was good at all, addressed Bennett and Dallas. “What can I get for you?”
“Coffee for me,” Bennett said. “And a cinnamon roll.”
He turned to Dallas and waited. “You’re just going to buy me something?” he asked.
“Yes,” Bennett said.
“A mocha. And a chocolate doughnut.”
“Okay.” Kelly gave them the total, and Bennett handed her his card.
They walked over to the part of the counter where the drinks came out, waited for a few moments and then were presented with their pastries and drinks.
While they waited in line he shot a text to Kaylee to check if she was in the clinic today and if she’d mind if Dallas hung out in the break room, in case he didn’t want to drive around with Bennett all day while he saw to his appointments.