The Cowboy's Homecoming Surprise Read online

  Peyton blinked up at him. Her green eyes nearly evergreen with the night surrounding them but no less potent, even in their dazed state. “I was fine. We were fine and now…”

  “And now?” Why was she no longer fine? What was he missing in the Peyton Brooks puzzle? What didn’t he know that apparently she and his mother did?

  She let her head fall back in an attempt to look at him better. Licking her lips, she asked, “Are you going to kiss me?”

  Whoa, baby. Danger territory.

  He knew it was the alcohol impairing her judgment. After all, three hours earlier he’d worn her welcome wagon, so somehow touching lips didn’t seem like the next step on that journey. And yet he couldn’t help but ask, “Do you want me to kiss you?”

  She shook her head and patted his chest. His muscles jumped to attention. “No. You’re you and better now and…” She swayed to the left. “I just want you to leave before…”

  “Before?”

  Her eyes widened, and she lurched out of his grip. He let her go but hovered as she made her way up the back patio deck to a set of sliders. She tried to yank open the door but missed and stumbled. Ryder steadied her and reached around, pulling the door open and guiding her into her house. They entered her kitchen, lit only by the oven hood light. A quick glance showed everything clean, neat, and tidy, if slightly dated. But Ryder didn’t get a chance to examine further, nor was he going to wonder why he wanted to.

  Peyton wobbled her way through an arched doorway, using the wall as a crutch. He followed, close enough to catch her but not so close as to risk touching her again.

  She took a sharp right and they headed down a short hallway. They passed a bathroom on the left and, directly across from it, a bedroom. Ryder slowed and did a quick inventory. Small twin bed, stuffed animals scattered about, frilly lampshade. It looked like a little girl’s room.

  Shock and jealousy roared through his veins. Did Peyton have a kid? Was she married? Was there a husband due to arrive home any moment to find him in a pretty compromising position?

  Ryder shook his head. Kid, maybe, but he didn’t think a husband. No ring that he’d noticed, and nothing in his thirty second walk through her house hinted at a male presence. Had some guy left her high and dry and pregnant?

  He caught up with her just as she walked through the doorway at the end of the hall.

  “Peyton, do you have a kid?”

  She stopped short, waving from side to side with the abrupt motion. Ryder halted just centimeters from her. Her heat weaved through his clothes, begging him to pull her back the last little bit. He should step away. Too many memories came to the surface by being so close to her.

  They didn’t know each other. Not anymore. Clearly the attraction hadn’t disappeared through the years, but tonight, in her bedroom, was not the time to examine or explore it. Especially when she was stone-cold drunk and might possibly have a kid that needed taking care of.

  Peyton turned to face him. “What did you say?”

  “The room back there looked like a kid’s room. I was wondering if you had one, and if they needed to be picked up or—”

  She reached up and grabbed his head, hauling it to hers. Lips met, firmed and open, allowing instant gratification and intoxicating sensations. She tasted like peaches, her mouth warm and inviting. He snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her against him, her body fitting as perfectly as it had ten years ago, even with the obvious changes brought on by age and maturity. He angled his head and delved deeper into her mouth as she set her tongue to tracing and teasing every groan it could from him.

  He should stop. She was drunk and clearly didn’t know her left from her right, and he had never taken advantage of a woman. Ever.

  Ryder eased Peyton from him step by step, their lips the last part of their bodies to separate. She blinked up at him and her face transformed from lazy sensuality to outright mortification. Her hand rose to her lips. Her fingers tracing them even as she took another step back.

  “That… I… We.”

  “Shhh. It’s fine. You don’t need to say anything. Let’s just get you in bed so you can sleep everything off.”

  She glanced between him and the bed and hallway behind him. “Bed sounds good.”

  Ryder pulled Peyton’s door shut and leaned back against it. What the hell had happened in there? One minute he’s asking about her kid and the next her tongue’s creating a tidal wave of sensations all headed south. Would she remember it in the morning? Would she want to remember it? Somehow he imagined the answer to that would be a resounding no.

  Quite a conundrum of emotions and responses from Ms. Brooks tonight.

  He pushed off the door and headed down the short hallway to the living area, glancing briefly again at the frilly room. He could see his truck parked in the driveway through the thin white curtains. Should he leave? What if Peyton got sick or stumbled somewhere and fell? He didn’t have anywhere to be tonight, and they really should talk and clear the air. His eyes canvassed the large overstuffed sofa and determined it would do. He might be scrunched a bit, but it definitely looked like the type of furniture meant for comfort and not necessarily style. Besides, his first few years in Alaska had seen him sleeping in far more cramped and uncomfortable corners than a slightly too-small couch.

  He made his way over to it, sat, and removed his hat and took off his boots, sliding them underneath the coffee table. Stretching out as much as possible, he tucked his hands behind his head and let memories filter through him. He thought of the first time he truly saw Peyton.

  They’d gone to school together—he was one year ahead—but it had been at the ranch when he first fell head over heels. Almost literally. His parents had held an end of the year bonfire for the school, and while he’d seen Peyton throughout her time at Fly Creek High, it took seeing her sitting on the top of a split rail fence, her blond hair catching the light of the flames, for him to really notice her. And then he fell practically at her feet thanks to his eyes being glued to tan legs and not the rocky shoreline in front of him.

  She’d looked down at him, smiled one of those smiles that would allow her to get away with murder, and promptly said, “You didn’t have to risk injury. I would’ve said yes anyway.”

  They’d been together after that night. Instant sparks once they got their hands on each other, but it hadn’t been just physical. He’d discovered Peyton loved to listen and somewhere in the beginning he’d decided he wanted to talk. He told her things he’d never shared with another person. Dreams, fears, books he’d secretly read, because someone reading and lassoing a horse didn’t seem to be a matched pair. At least not in Fly Creek.

  Ryder sighed, running his hand through his hair. And yet the one thing he should have talked to her about the most—the reason he chose to leave—he hadn’t been able to bring himself to do. His fear, that maybe his father was right, that he wasn’t worthy of anything, including Peyton, had held him back. He should have trusted her.

  Now here he was years later, sleeping on her couch, with her drunk as a skunk in her room, wondering why he’d stayed away.

  …

  Peyton lay in her bed, willing the room to stop tilting from one side to the other. Perhaps then her heart would resume some form of normal rhythm and that tingling in the vicinity of her neglected female regions would cease its chant for Ryder Marks and his damn “I’ve gotten a million times better at kissing in the last ten years” lips. She had no one to blame but herself.

  And maybe a half a bottle of peach schnapps.

  And perhaps Ryder himself, and maybe Shelby for not giving her fair warning and for sending him over here.

  But really it was her hand that had snaked around his neck, tangling with hair as silky as she remembered and bringing his lips to hers.

  It was self-preservation, really. Well, maybe 95 percent that and 5 percent curiosity, but all she could hear was him asking about Mel’s room and she just couldn’t tell him. Not then. And she wasn’t sure she
was compos mentis enough to evade effectively. She would tell him tomorrow. It definitely wasn’t the kind of revelation one made standing in their bedroom, piss-poor drunk with a lumberjack god standing before you.

  She touched her lips, still warm and branded from their brief time attached to Ryder’s. Her cheeks stung thanks to his short scruffy beard. It would seem natural that living in Alaska might bring out the facial hair, and it worked on every level possible on Ryder Marks. She wondered, not for the first time over the years, why he chose Alaska and what had kept him there. Maybe that could be the opening she needed tomorrow? She could catch up with him over coffee at Potter’s or maybe even convince him to hit the teahouse, Garden Grows. She’d thank him for his help tonight and find out what he had been up to and then she could tell him about Mel.

  In public.

  Where he was less likely to cause a scene. Ten years was a long time to not know something like that, even if he’d chosen the isolation. He’d set the rules in leaving and she’d been forced to abide by them.

  Had he built himself a new life? Did he have a wife? She lurched up, closing her eyes on a nausea-induced groan. Oh God, had she kissed a married man? Did he have a family? Did Mel have half siblings wandering around?

  Each one of those scenarios sat about as well as the thought of eating on top of her peach-drenched stomach. Why anything to do with Ryder Marks should bother her really made no sense in her perfectly ordered and no surprises world. Just because his kiss lingered on, and he was all hard muscle and scruffy sex, didn’t mean squat to her.

  She flopped back down. He was here in town for a reason and then he would leave. And she would be just the same as before except she would know that Ryder finally knew about Mel. And maybe she would finally know why he left her. Nowhere in any of that “knowing” did more kisses or sex or anything that fell in between figure into the equation. Short and sweet and in the past.

  Peyton rolled onto her side and closed her eyes on a groan. The spinning decreased through deep breaths and eventually her body relaxed in its nauseous state. She hadn’t thrown up since she was pregnant with Mel. Fitting that the return of Ryder Marks might be the catalyst that broke her streak. At least he’d left, and if she did find herself bowing down to the porcelain gods, he wouldn’t be there to witness her in all her record snapping glory.

  Chapter Four

  Three short knocks sent Ryder crashing to the floor the next morning. He looked at the carpet and up at the bay window and finally remembered where he was. Another knock, and Peyton’s voice carried from her bedroom. “I’m coming.”

  Ryder pushed up on his knees just as her legs came into view. They stopped, and he raised his gaze to meet hers. It was part horror and fear. None of the lust that had clouded them last night during that brief kiss. Her eyes shifted to something behind him and then back. She crossed her arms over her tank top-covered chest. “What are you still doing here?”

  He stood, struck by how deliciously mussed Peyton looked. Other than her color, she looked like she’d spent the night enduring hours of endless lovemaking.

  The door shook again. “Peyton Brooks, open up, or I’m going to have Adam knock this damn door down.”

  Peyton’s gaze darted between him and the interruption. Sighing, she threw the bolt. A second later a tall brunette pushed through. Ryder recognized her as Peyton’s sidekick from the bar last night.

  “Are you okay? We’re supposed to meet at the diner. Whose truck is that?”

  Peyton glanced at him and her sidekick followed the movement. Letting out a low whistle, she crossed her arms as a cat’s-got-the-cream grin spread across her face. Ryder stepped toward her, arm extended. “Ryder Marks for my sins, of which I’m assuming you believe are plentiful.”

  The woman looked at his fingers and then back at Peyton, who looked ready to hurl. He let his hand drop and moved closer to her. “Are you okay? Should I find a bucket?”

  She shook her head. “Ryder, this is my neighbor and best friend, Emily Conley.” Ryder nodded, still not convinced Peyton wasn’t going to be sick right there in the middle of her living room floor. Her color resembled something found in a pig trough and the smell was not much better.

  The friend didn’t seem to be concerned. She tilted her head to the side and asked, “So, Ryder, where have you been all these years?”

  Accusations tinted with malice formed the question and for the fifth time since having a drink thrown in his face, he wondered what the hell was going on with Peyton. Clearly her version of whatever happened wasn’t reflecting on him in any way positively. And why would it really? Although a small part of him had hoped she’d known him well enough to believe he had good reasons for doing what he did.

  “Alaska,” Ryder answered at the same time as Peyton did.

  “Alaska?” Emily questioned as Ryder looked at Peyton. He hadn’t realized she knew where he’d been all these years, though now knowing the relationship she had with his parents, it didn’t surprise him that his mother would have told her. Peyton grabbed her friend’s arm and tugged her back to the door.

  “Ryder, excuse me for a minute.”

  He nodded and turned to survey the living room. He hadn’t spared it, or the rest of her house, much thought last night, essentially collapsing in the overstuffed sofa after putting Peyton to bed. In the light of day, it was an airy, lived-in room, with a fireplace in the center of the far wall. Pictures crowded every available space on the mantle. The front door shut, and Ryder looked back to see that Peyton and Emily had stepped onto the porch.

  He moved closer to the mantle and the adorable little girl who was growing up before his eyes in each consecutive picture. Starting with an infant with a shocking head of jet-black hair, not unlike his own. Then came the wobbly toddler in an Easter dress and hat with large brown eyes sparkling with mischief.

  As he traveled down the frames, each one showing a slightly older version, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Rolling his shoulders to throw off the sensation, he came to the final picture. A close up of a young girl he would guess to be around ten. As he took in her pale skin, dark curly hair, and dimpled smile, disbelief and pain bubbled in him. Shaking his head, he closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the mantle.

  It couldn’t be. There was no way. He would have known.

  Opening his eyes, he once again explored every facet of the young girl’s face and when he came to her eyes and the eyebrow growing straight up, the truth slammed into his rib cage like a bowling ball.

  The front door opened and closed, but Ryder couldn’t bring himself to turn around and look at her. He couldn’t bring himself to face someone who had concealed something so important. Who had betrayed him in such a soul-deep way. On the heels of those thoughts came the voice that suggested maybe she hadn’t had a choice. He’d done everything in his power to hide from her. From his family. To control his future and return to Fly Creek on his own time.

  And yet he had to know. To see her when she denied or confirmed what his heart already knew.

  Grabbing the picture, he whirled around and thrust it toward her, the frame shaking in his outstretched arms. “Who. Is. This?”

  Peyton clasped her hands in front of her and met his roiling pain with a look of utter calm. “That’s Melanie. Your daughter.”

  …

  If Peyton had ever allowed herself to imagine telling Ryder about Mel, she figured anger would be the predominant emotion driving the scene. That would have been a huge misconception. Oh, he’d initiated the moment with anger. His movements just short of volatile. But the minute she confirmed what he’d already guessed, it was like a thrown switch and anger flew out the door.

  He’d turned away from her but not before she’d seen his eyes cloud over in pain. He was hurt and lost in a sea of emotions but nowhere currently did she detect anger. Disappointment? Yes. Betrayal? Yes. Confusion? Absolutely. Maybe the anger would come later. She could deal with the anger. She had defenses to hurl back a
t anger. But disappointment and betrayal? Well, those emotions were beelining straight to her gut and battering her insides until they resembled a bowl of jelly.

  Had she betrayed him?

  No. If anyone was betrayed, it was her. She’d loved him, and he’d claimed to love her.

  Then he left.

  Left her with no way to find him. No words for her in all the years. Not one letter his mother received mentioned her or wondered about her.

  So, no. This sense of betrayal he’d flung in her direction was unfounded.

  Wasn’t it?

  “How long?” he croaked out, the words bitter and raw and once again nailing her straight in her heart. Anguish fueled the question and Peyton swallowed hard. Had she been a fool all these years for believing he wouldn’t have cared?

  “Two days after you left.”

  Ryder stumbled backward, coming up hard against the mantle. He dropped his head, his hands clenched at his side, one still holding the picture frame.

  Peyton ached to go to him, to try and ease whatever pain he felt. She could look past her anger and pride at this moment to help him through the shock. She’d been naive, perhaps even selfish, in thinking it wouldn’t be a big deal. That finding out about a daughter wouldn’t rock him at his core. And yet she stayed rooted to the spot. He was wounded right now and while she knew he’d never lash out at her, she felt a mixture of guilt and inadequacy. All of the sudden she was second-guessing the many decisions she’d made since the test turned positive.

  “I want to see her.” The words were spoken to the picture frame he clutched to his chest.

  “You can’t—”

  Ryder’s gaze snapped to hers. He was big. So much bigger than anything or anyone she’d ever encountered in her life. And the worst part was it was both terrifying and intoxicating. He was a potent force. A papa bear, even if he’d just discovered the role, and nothing could be more earthshattering or attractive at that moment.