A Game Of Brides (Montana Born Brides) Read online

  He smirked a little bit. “Just tell them I’m bad news,” he advised her. “Or I’d probably care more that the two people who were supposed to mean the most to me betrayed me. And I don’t.”

  Emmy shrugged, a prickling sort of thing sweeping over her, making her feel much too on edge. “Or maybe they revealed their true faces, and what’s the point of caring past that?”

  She didn’t know what made her hold his gaze a little too hard, but she recognized the panicked thing that dripped through her again, the way it had when she’d imagined sleeping in his bed. Surrounded by his scent, resting her head where he laid his… She felt reckless and wild, and that terrified her. She knew where that led: her, naked and alone and rejected. No, thank you.

  It made her feel mean. Or desperate. “Guess where I learned that?”

  She didn’t know what she expected. But it wasn’t the way he laughed then, low and smoky, like the bad news he’d said he was.

  “Let’s be real, Bug. You’ve seen my restraint and self-denial, which might have been pretty rough on you ten years ago, but were necessary evils.” He studied her for a moment that turned into something smoldering. Something undeniable. Something so stark she thought it was really more like beautiful. “You couldn’t handle my true face.”

  Emmy considered him through the riot inside of her. The alarms that kept ringing and the deep, dark hunger that countered them. The chaos of it all—of wanting this man even more than she had before, as if she’d learned nothing in all these years. As if she’d learned nothing from him.

  But Margery’s wedding was already exhausting and it was still three long weeks away. Filled with too many bridesmaids and the stupid things she’d be forced to pretend she enjoyed, like the wildflowers and her overly critical cousin Beth.

  And Emmy wasn’t eighteen any more. Or a virgin, for that matter. Griffin couldn’t hurt her unless she let him. She didn’t have to wonder if this might turn into something it wasn’t. She lived far, far away, and besides, she knew better. She knew him, no matter what he might have done in the interim.

  So she ignored every single one of the rules she’d made up ten years ago, when she’d needed to figure out a way to survive him—and worse, the loss of him and her beloved Montana summers after that night because she’d been foolish enough to kiss her crush. She threw back her second shot and then she smiled at him, and she made no attempt whatsoever to hide the heat in her gaze. Or that driving hunger beneath it.

  This was what she wanted. What she’d always wanted.

  Griffin’s green eyes gleamed. He angled that mouthwatering body of his closer.

  And none of this felt like flirting any longer. It was too raw, too real.

  “Try me,” she dared him.

  Chapter Four

  Emmy’s world shrunk down into that taut, brilliant thing that arced between them, and while she was still dimly aware of the rest of the saloon around them—the music and the laughter and the sound of pool balls clacking against each other in the back—she saw nothing except Griffin and that molten heat that made his green eyes gleam so bright it almost hurt.

  Almost.

  He reached down and pulled out his wallet, then threw a few bills on the bar, all without moving that gaze of his from hers. Then he nodded toward the door and Emmy had to fight to keep breathing as she slid off of her seat and turned to walk toward it. It should have been easier then because she wasn’t looking at him any longer, but it wasn’t. She could still feel him. The way she always had when they were young. The way she had in the airport earlier.

  The way she thought she always would.

  Outside, the evening had taken hold, and Griffin didn’t say a word as they walked side by side back down the street to his truck. He opened her door for her with a quiet sort of confidence that made her feel lightheaded. Or maybe that was anticipation, so thick and pressing it felt like summers in Atlanta. Emmy slid in and then sat there, staring at the lights along Main Street as she waited for him to come around the front of the truck and climb inside.

  “You still have twenty apologies to make,” Emmy pointed out when he’d slammed his door and started his engine, to break the silence that grew heavier and more heart-pounding by the second. Griffin slid one of his dark, thrilling looks her way as he aimed the truck toward the hills.

  “We can talk about that now if you want,” he said. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

  “I didn’t like it then,” she retorted. “When it actually happened. How can talking about it make it worse?”

  Griffin shrugged, and it wasn’t a gesture of uncertainty. Quite the opposite. This shrug struck her as deeply male and even matter-of-fact.

  “You want me to apologize for making a command decision ten years ago. I’m not going to do that. You were a teenager. And a virgin. You deserved better than a literal roll in the hay the night before you headed off to college.”

  “It wasn’t up to you,” Emmy retorted, scowling at him. She told herself that annoyance was edging out the hunger beneath, but she knew it wasn’t. She was beginning to doubt anything could. “But let’s say you were right. Was it entirely necessary to leave me the way you did? Naked and crying?”

  “That wasn’t my finest hour,” he said gruffly, and it wasn’t an apology. So Emmy had no idea why it washed over her like it had been, rendering her some potent, dangerous mixture of relieved and even more fascinated by him. “But I think you’re underestimating how hard it was to practice all that restraint and self-denial at the ripe old age of twenty-one.”

  She didn’t know what was happening inside of her, but it made her feel deeply vulnerable. Transparent, the way she had when she’d been young and so struck by him that it had felt like a flu. Every time she’d seen him. She didn’t care if he saw how much she wanted him, but she didn’t want him to see the rest. She was too afraid of what it meant.

  “Yeah,” she said dryly. Flippant and cool, the way she’d always imagined she’d be around this man if she ever encountered him again. “You looked pretty torn up about it as you sauntered off into the night, never to be heard from again.”

  She sucked in a harsh breath when Griffin jerked the wheel and brought the truck to the side of the road, coming to a spitting stop on the dirt shoulder. He threw the truck into park and then he simply reached over and hauled her to him. She had the hectic impression of those bright green eyes of his and then his mouth came down on hers, hard and sure.

  And Emmy simply ignited.

  Last time, she’d kissed him when she’d only been kissed once before, and badly at that. Last time, she’d ended one of their typical sniping matches by simply stepping in close and setting her mouth to his, risking everything.

  But remembering last time was like peering at the daguerreotypes Gran Harriet collected and displayed throughout her house, because this was all color, bright and vivid and coursing through her like a flash flood. This was the sheer mastery of the way Griffin held her against his hard body and claimed her mouth. Completely.

  Emmy couldn’t think. She couldn’t do anything but surrender, and she loved every minute of it. She tasted whiskey and that dark, inviting thing she remembered as Griffin. She felt one of his hands at the back of her head, holding her where he wanted her as he kissed her again and again. Guiding her as she kissed him back.

  Making her burn. Then burn brighter.

  Then worry she might explode—

  When he pulled back, he was breathing a little heavily just like she was, but he still managed to set her back in her seat with the kind of casual strength that made her feel a bit giddy.

  “You should wear your seatbelt,” he told her as he pulled the truck back onto the road. “There’s no telling what could happen on these old roads. This isn’t Atlanta.”

  Emmy stared straight out through the windshield and saw nothing. Not the stars taking over the sky above them. Not the lights coming on in the houses all over the valley floor and climbing into the hills.
Not the wrenching familiarity of sitting in a pickup truck on an old country road she knew as well as she knew her own name. There was too much of that fever in her body and the only thing she could concentrate on was the fact he’d stopped.

  Again.

  “First of all,” she managed to rasp out, surprised she could speak at all, much less in something approximating a calm she didn’t feel, “that’s incredibly patronizing. You’re not my father. He’s hiding in DC until next week. Second and more important, is this what you do? You just… stop? No wonder your fiancée—”

  “If I were you, Bug,” and there was as much danger as dark laughter in his voice then, and she liked both far too much, “I’d refrain from finishing that sentence.”

  Emmy would never know why she obeyed him then. Or how. She kept staring out at the dark night in front of them, telling herself that it was all fine. That her body wasn’t in a state of revolt. That nothing had happened because nothing had.

  Nothing ever did. At least this time she hadn’t stripped naked.

  It didn’t matter how tender her lips felt. It didn’t matter that she could still taste him. It certainly didn’t matter that she could feel that kiss lighting up every part of her, even now, after he’d stopped the way he always stopped.

  By the time they’d made it back to the cabin tucked away high on his grandmother’s land, Emmy had worked herself into a fairly impressive state. As soon as he parked the damn truck, she promised herself, she would race inside and then do her best to ignore this man and all the temptation he represented, and when she woke up tomorrow she’d pretend none of this had ever happened, which she’d gotten pretty good at over the years—

  But when he parked the damn truck, he twisted to look at her, his expression simmering and rueful at once. And she didn’t fling herself out of the truck. She didn’t storm off. She looked back at him. And waited.

  She didn’t know why. But she thought it had to do with that aching thing inside of her that felt like magic and was only ever there when she was near him.

  “Why didn’t you want to sleep in my bed?” he asked quietly. As if mattered, and deeply. “When I offered earlier?”

  Griffin’s voice was soft in the dark. Outside the cab of his pickup, the spectacular Montana sky was putting on its usual night show, with so many stars it made the night look messy. It was how she felt.

  “I didn’t want to sleep surrounded by so much… you,” she said with an honesty she was fairly certain she’d come to regret, and maybe that was why she was whispering. “I didn’t think I could take it.”

  He nodded, like he’d already figured that out on his own. Like it needed no further explanation. Then he reached over and curled his big, warm hand around her neck, rubbing his thumb up and down her nape. She couldn’t help the little sigh she let out. Or the delicious thrill that snaked all the way through her, making her feel tight and hot and loose at once.

  “I want to do this right this time,” Griffin said, soft and intent. “But every time I get my hands on you it goes a little crazy. I don’t want you to feel the way you did ten years ago, Emmy. I want to see what we can do with all of this.” He didn’t have to explain what he meant. Emmy could feel that same insane tension between them, that wild connection that had been there as long as she could remember, as well as he could. “I want it to be fun.”

  “Can you deliver fun?” She meant to tease him, but it came out too throaty. Too choked, like there was too much serious right there beneath it. “Because so far, that really hasn’t been on display. Naked crying and soul-killing rejection, yes. Fun? Not so much.”

  His hand tightened at the nape of her neck, sending another shiver down her back. His smile was a hard, lazy thing, and it made everything inside of her curl up and shake a little bit, like a warning jolt before an earthquake.

  “Don’t worry about my delivery. I have that covered.” There was no reason that should make her mouth go dry, she thought, but it did. “This is about making sure that this time, we’re on the same page.”

  And Emmy thought that she would rather die than be the one let down easy again, which was what she very much feared he was doing. She would, she decided. She would rather die right here and now.

  “Oh my god,” she said, glaring at him. “Is this about the crush I had on you? I was eighteen.”

  “You were hurt. You just said so. Naked rejection, etcetera.”

  Maybe she was already dying. She hated that he knew he’d hurt her, that he would use that now, when she’d thought she was making light of it. She hated that it was true. That he had. But more than that, she hated the fact that he clearly still believed that she was such a fragile thing he had to take all this care with her. While his feelings were never endangered at all.

  Whatever else Griffin Hyatt was, he was so patronizing it hurt.

  “Believe me, Griffin, a good cure for hurt feelings is ten years,” she said dryly. “And not being eighteen any longer.” She pulled back from his hand and studied his gorgeous face in the light he’d left on over the cabin door. “What do you think is happening here? My sister is getting married in three weeks and once that three-ring circus is over I’ll be headed straight back home to my life in Atlanta. This? Is nothing but nostalgia and some chemistry.”

  But he only watched her, his brows slightly raised.

  “Chemistry which is sputtering away by the second,” Emmy said, more pointedly. “I’m not opposed to exploring this thing, but I gave up being patronized by men who hardly know me about a decade ago. I have three weeks here in Montana and a dirty little fling sounds like an excellent way to avoid my responsibilities as Margery’s maid of honor. It would be kind of fun if it was you. But I’d be perfectly happy if it was someone else, too.”

  And then, finally, with her head held high and a whole lot of nonchalance she didn’t feel, Emmy slammed her way out of the truck and headed for the cabin she really didn’t want to share with him.

  Griffin watched her go.

  He didn’t believe her. But he also had no intention of letting her slip off to someone else, thank you, especially after she’d used the word dirty. And neither one of those things mattered anyway, because she was a grown woman and it wasn’t his goddamned business.

  His grandmother had sat him down when he was fifteen and full of himself and starry-eyed Emmy had been, in his estimation, no more than an annoying little kid.

  You have a responsibility here, Griffin, she’d told him, very solemnly.

  It’s not my fault, Gran, he’d protested. She’s, like, twelve.

  That had been an insult as he’d been so worldly and adult, by his reckoning. Gran Martha hadn’t laughed the way Griffin thought he might have if some shithead fifteen-year-old said something like that to him now.

  Three years seems like a long time now, she’d said calmly, sitting at the long table in the breakfast room surrounded by glass and mountain views on all sides. But there may come a time it won’t. And you’ll remember we talked, Griffin. Because you have a responsibility to that girl, and to yourself, not to go ahead and do something simply because you can.

  Even in his own memory, he’d been sulky. I don’t know what that means.

  You do. Gran Martha had eyed him, her short hair still salt and pepper then instead of the snow it was these days, making her green eyes gleam. You will. I expect that when the time comes, you’ll behave like the young man I admire.

  And so, that night in the barn, he had.

  Eventually.

  But that was then, he thought, watching Emmy Mathis’s perfectly adult body enter his cabin—once again, without looking back, which shouldn’t smart the way it did. And this was now.

  The glorious now, where everybody was all grown up and no one had responsibilities to anyone but his or her own damn self. Where those three years signified nothing, as Gran Martha had promised. Where there was absolutely no reason for him to think about responsibilities when he thought about Emmy.

  Halleluj
ah.

  That got him out of the truck and into the cabin, only a step or two behind her.

  “Have you finished making up my mind for me?” she asked over her shoulder, and he thought she was the sexiest creature he’d ever seen, with that hint of laughter in her voice and that line of her jaw and that way she moved her hips. “Because nothing’s hotter than that.”

  He wanted to pick her up, spin around, and slam them both back against the door he shut behind him. He wanted to be inside her before he took his next breath. That he didn’t succumb to that desire, that he took a deep breath and reminded himself he wasn’t an animal, made him feel like he deserved a freaking medal. Or five.

  “I apologize,” he said, and he meant it. “I’m not trying to be patronizing. I promise.”

  Emmy turned to face him fully then, and she grinned.

  “That’s a step in the right direction. Only nineteen more to go.”

  “Come here.”

  He heard the way his voice scraped through the cabin. He didn’t take his eyes off of her as he watched her pull in a breath, then another, like she was having trouble getting air. He wanted that mouth of hers on his again. He wanted her beneath him. He wanted to see exactly what he’d walked away from ten years ago. God, what he wanted.

  And she’d said she was looking for dirty. He could do that.

  He couldn’t wait to do that.

  “Why are you giving the orders?” she asked, but her voice was breathy and she was moving toward him anyway.

  “Catch-up time is over,” he said, but his attention was on that mouth of hers. “Unless you have any important confessions to make?”

  “No.” She stopped a scant inch in front of him and he could smell her. Apple shampoo. The peat and fire of whiskey. Emmy. His. “I’m all out of confessions.”

  “That’s a good thing, Bug,” he said, reaching over and tugging her closer with his hands sunk deep in her hair. “Because I’m no priest.”