Branded as Trouble (10 page)

His thoughts flashed to his family and their continued skepticism of him.

“And if you share that humiliation, there’s the chance the person will use it against you at the first opportunity. Or they’ll cut you out of their life entirely. So how do you ever trust someone?

Without giving them the power to destroy you?”

Colt knew exactly what she meant. Part of him realized it was a trust issue everyone had on some level. But a larger part of him understood addicts harbored dark secrets that would shock and sicken some people who’d never had to deal with an inner demon hell bent on self-destruction.

Twelve-step meetings were a safe haven, a place to talk to folks who’d also hit rock bottom. But in some ways, those meetings provided attendees a false sense of security. If you’re in a roomful of drunks and addicts, and they’re accepting of your sordid history, www.samhainpublishing.com 97

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well, then maybe there’s a chance others will accept you as you are now, and not judge you on what you’d done in the past.

Wrong. It didn’t work that way.

Colt saw India’s chest rising and falling as if she’d run a race.

He let his thumb drift over the back of her knuckles. “Breathe. Slow and steady.”

After a few minutes, she’d calmed down.

“Better?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

A soft laugh. “So the question of the day is…will you still be here after I make my confession?”

“Yep. I told you, Indy, I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

She locked her gaze to his. “If we’re going through with this crazy dating idea of yours, then this is something you should hear.

You should also know I’ve never told this to anyone I care about.”

Rather than let loose a whoop because she admitted she cared about him, he said, “Skylar doesn’t know?”

“No. Just a couple of detox counselors in California and…the other people involved, but I doubt they remember and they were just as stoned out of their gourds as I was.”

Then Colt knew her impending confession would be ugly. He didn’t say a word. He just held her hand, and her gaze and hoped it’d be enough.

“During my using years, I traded sex for drugs. And a couple of times when we couldn’t make rent, I charged for sex.”

“Oh, sugar. That had to’ve been rough.”

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The wariness didn’t leave her eyes. “It’s kind of a blur. I’ve never been sure if it’s because I blocked it out, or if it was because of the drugs and booze.”

“Probably some of both. How’d it happen?”

“The guy I was with at the time, Larry, a loser I’d hooked up with in art school, was a small time dealer. We’d get high on whatever product wasn’t selling. His boss would come around to collect the money, and usually we’d snorted or smoked or shot up more than Larry’s cut. So, the boss would take the difference out on trade. Since Larry didn’t have shit, I was the commodity.”

“How long did this go on?”

“A couple of months. Then I OD’d. I don’t really know how I made it to the hospital, but when I woke up, Skylar was there and Larry was long gone. She sent me to detox. By some miracle I hadn’t contracted AIDS or hepatitis or an STD during my blackout sexual hi-jinks. She took me in for a while. I stayed clean, but I got a job at a bar and started drinking. Heavily. And you pretty much know the rest of the story.”

In and out of jail. In and out of treatment programs. Another OD. When they’d met three years ago, she’d been clean and sober for five years.

It amazed him, how India turned her life around. She’d taken her passion for art and turned it into a career. After her mother died, she’d moved away and started over thousands of miles away.

Colt didn’t have the balls to do that. His life had taken a downward spiral for a year or two, but he’d never contemplated shucking it all and starting over out of Wyoming.

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“You’re awful quiet, McKay.”

“Just thinkin’ about how brave you are.”

“For telling you my dirty little secret?”

“Maybe. But mostly because you haven’t let your past experiences paralyze you.” He studied her, wondering if he’d overstep his bounds if he voiced the issue on his mind.

“Just ask me the question I see in your eyes,
sugar
.”

Colt gave her half a head butt. “Smartass woman, makin’ fun of a poor, dumb cowboy like me.”

“Last thing you are, Colt, is dumb. So ask.”

“You are okay with sex now? No guilt, no—”

“—feelings of shame that make it impossible for me to enjoy sex? I love everything about sex. I’m just a lot choosier about who I have sex with. Why?”

“In the years I’ve known you, I don’t recall you ever talkin’

about a specific man, or a relationship, or sex and I wondered if this thing with your past might’ve affected it.”

“Only in that no one knows. After I first moved here, I kept a long distance, fuck buddy type thing with a guy from Denver for a while. But it didn’t last.”

Jealousy tightened his gut. “How come I never knew?”

She shrugged. “It’s easier all around if I keep my personal life out of the meetings. When we were together at A.A., especially in the beginning, I was focused on keeping you sober. It was important you saw me as a survivor, not as a woman.”

“I might’ve been a drunk, Indy, but I ain’t never been blind to the fact you’re all woman.”

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“Sweet-talkin’ cowboy. There’s been no one since.”

“No one? Not even a one-nighter?”

“Nope. To be crude, I’ve been getting off with BOB, my battery operated boyfriend, or my own hand.” She gave him the same questioning look he’d given her. “What about you?”

“I’m well acquainted with my own hand.”

“Been dating Rosy Palm, have you?”

He laughed. “Exclusively.”

“But I’m talking about when it comes to sex with a person.

You’ve made no bones about the fact you were a serious horndog with a bad reputation
before
you had a drinking problem.”

“I was. I didn’t particularly care which woman I ended up fucking at the end of the night, just as long as I got laid. Just as long as I satisfied her to the point she’d tell every other chick in four counties what a stud Colt McKay was, so I wouldn’t have to work at all to coax any woman I wanted into my bed.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah. And it worked. For years. Might sound cocky as shit, but I barely had to wink at a woman and I could have her on her knees or on her back in no time flat.”

“Didn’t the easy pickin’s get old?”

He grinned at her. “Are you kiddin’ me?”

India whapped him on the arm. “I’m serious.”

“Yeah, I guess it did. It all changed when my brothers started pairing off. I was jealous, but rather than try to settle down, I got wilder. In my way of thinkin’, if one woman was good, two would be even better. I’d make them jealous of
my
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Hugh Hefner of the notorious McKay clan, charming, sexy, with a rocket in my pocket ready to blow at the first spark and a legion of women lined up to light that match.”

“So what happened?”

“Besides getting hooked on all the booze I had to drink to maintain the illusion?”

She nodded.

“I woke up in the middle of a pile of nekkid bodies. Not all of them female.”

Silence.

He closed his eyes.
Way to toss that embarrassing fact out
there like a rotten fish, McKay.

A cool hand touched his cheek. “No judgment, remember?”

“Good thing, because I don’t remember a damn thing. I could’ve had sex with any one of those guys, or all of them. I blacked out.”

“Was that the first time you’d blacked out?”

“I wish. So, I was totally hungover, I couldn’t find my clothes, had no fuckin’ clue where I even was. I managed to hit a familiar road outside of Wheatland, more than a hundred miles from my house—with no memory of how I’d gotten there. When I got home, I found out my mother and my aunt spent the day cleaning my house.

“We’re talkin’ bags of beer bottles and cans. Bags of liquor bottles. Empty condom wrappers, empty condom boxes. Hell, we even left used condoms all over the whole house. Even though it 102

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Branded As Trouble

was a pigsty, I was livid. Probably out of embarrassment, but at the time, it felt like a total breach of privacy.”

“Why?”

“Because I wasn’t some fifteen-year-old kid. I was a thirty-year-old man, who owned a house and held a job that required more responsibility than I ever wanted. I was a landowner in my own right, outside of the McKay Ranch, with money in the bank, and a brand new truck. I had the adoration of women and the envy of men.

Who the fuck was my mommy to stick her big goddamn nose into my business?”

“Oh Colt.”

“I called her up and said all that shit to her. Really let her have it. And by that time of day, I’d sobered up some, which upset her even more, which pissed my father and my brothers off and they all but kicked me out of the damn family.”

“Then what happened?”

“My cousin Dag basically killed himself in a stupid fuckin’

accident. But it was almost like…he’d wanted to die. I figured it’d be the best thing for me—and everyone else in my family—if I followed his lead. It wasn’t the cold bucket of water Kade dumped on me that woke me up. It was the truth that Kade seemed to be the only person who cared whether I lived or died, when he should’ve hated me for fucking up things with Skylar.

“Might sound sappy as shit, but I wanted to be the kind of man Kade was. A stand-up guy. He and Keely and our cousin Nick West got me into rehab. A month later I came back here and met you.”

They stared at each other in silence for several long minutes.

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“Talk about spilling our guts, huh?” she said with a laugh.

“Yeah. Mine hurt a little, to tell you the truth.”

“Regrets?”

“No.” Pause. “You?”

She shook her head.

“So the question is…you still up for datin’ me?”

“Uh-huh. But no sex? Seriously?”

“Nope. To start with, just havin’ you in my arms all night tonight would be good enough.”

“It has been a while since you’ve had sex, if you think cuddling is a good substitute for it.”

Colt laughed.

“Would there be kissing?”

“Some.”

“Touching?”

“Some. Only over our clothes, not on bare skin.”

India’s mouth dropped open. “We’re going to have our clothes on?”

“Yep.”

“All our clothes?”

“Well, you can take your socks off as long as you don’t put your cold feet on me.”

Her surprised look morphed into a shrewd one. “Fine. I’ll literally only sleep with you tonight. On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“We have an end date for the moratorium on sex.”

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He considered it. “Two weeks. From last night. That sound fair?”

India rolled her eyes. “I was hoping for two days.”

“Be glad I didn’t go with my original plan of two months.”

“That’s just cruel, McKay.”

“I’ve—we’ve—waited this long, a couple of weeks will be a snap.” He ran his knuckles down the side of her neck.

India leaned forward and kissed him. “I’m gonna so love tempting you into giving in before the official time is up.”

“You can try. But I can be damn stubborn.”

A cry sounded from the baby monitor. Then silence. When he looked back at her, she was yawning.

“Let’s call it a night. How about you check on the girls, I’ll set the alarm system and track down blankets and pillows?”

“Sounds like a plan.” India popped up off the couch like a jack in the box.

Less than five minutes later, they looked at the couch and then at each other. “What now?”

“Now we do what parents with little kids do. We fall into bed, exhausted, with thoughts of raunchy, hot sex the furthest thing from our minds.”

“That’ll work. But if you snore, I’m punching you in the nose.”

Colt tumbled them onto the couch, wrapped her in his arms and felt at home for the first time in years.

***

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“But I really am a princess,” India read. She covered her hand with her mouth and yawned.

The book jiggled and an impatient Eliza said, “Innie. Read.”

“Eliza, we’ve read this book twice already. It’s boring me.

Can’t we read something else?” Headlights swept across the living room windows. “Hey. I think your mom and dad are home.”

The book flew and Eliza slid off the couch. She ran to the foyer and jumped up and down in front of the window.

The door opened and Eliza launched herself at the first person through the doorway.

“Daddy!”

Kade dropped the overnight bag and scooped Eliza into his arms. “Whatcha doin’ up, girly? It’s past your bedtime.” He kissed her cheeks and her forehead and the crown of her head.

Lord. He was so wrapped around her finger it wasn’t funny.

“I miss you, Daddy.”

“Missed you too, princess. Let’s move outta the way so Mama can get in.”

The second Skylar came in Eliza wiggled to be let down and threw herself at Sky. “Mama!”

“Whoa.” She lifted Eliza and the little girl clung to her neck.

“It’s good to be missed.”

India hung back while Eliza chattered away at her amused parents.

“…an’ unka Cole an’ me frowed rocks.”

Kade looked at India. “Colt was here?”

“He came by to help out.”

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“Did the girls give you enough trouble so you had to call in reinforcements?”

“Yes. My God, at one point I think we all were crying at the same time.”