Rescued by the Rancher (11 page)

She frowned and then cleared her throat. He shook his head. “You owe me, Meredith. You followed me here like Nancy-freaking-Drew and now you’re going to have to suffer through me asking you what the hell you were thinking. I’ll follow you back to the ranch,” he said, opening her car door. She gave him what must have been a horrid smile and slid into her crappy seat.

“Right.”

He shook his head. “I can’t talk yet. I need the thirty minutes of silence in the car ride to extract all the bad language from my head.”

She attempted a little wave and then shut the door. Good God, what had she done? She knew she’d crossed the line. She knew his shame, his embarrassment. It wasn’t just that she could see it in his hard profile, or feel it, taste it. She
knew
it. He couldn’t even look at her, and she was torn between speaking and sinking into her quiet place.

…

Gage went straight to his fridge for a beer. He held one up for Meredith. She shook her head. He took a deep breath, twisted off the lid, and then took a long drink. Then he looked over at Meredith. His conscience yelled at him, loudly, until he got over himself.

“Meredith, we need to talk.”

She shook her head. He frowned. He would have thought she’d have barreled into him with a thousand questions. Somewhere in the haze of his own hell, he realized Meredith was acting strange, more closed off than usual.

“What are you doing?” She was standing at the door with her keys and her jacket in hand and opened it.

She paused, her hand on the doorknob. “I’m going to give you some space. I’ll go to the main house.”

“You weren’t worried about giving me space when you followed me to my mother’s.”

She nodded, her shoulders slumped. “You’re right. I never should have done that. I’m sorry.”

“You already said you were sorry.”

She bit her lower lip and clasped her hands together. “What do you want from me? I don’t want to be a bother. I thought I should disappear until—”

“No.”

She winced and walked through the door. “You need your space, Gage.”

He wanted her to go. He wanted her to stay. But more than anything he wanted her to fight.

Meredith walked out and he stared at the door for half a second, and then he stormed over, whipped it open, and called her name. She turned around, and his gut flipped when he saw the tears in her eyes.

“Don’t run from me.”

She shook her head, biting on her lower lip.

“Meredith, tell me I’m acting like an asshole, an idiot, anything, but don’t walk out on me. Don’t ever capitulate. Fight. We’re in a relationship. People in a relationship piss each other off. They aren’t afraid of each other. Never fear me.”

Her chin trembled and she nodded repeatedly. “It’s technically a one-night stand.”

“We both know it’s gone past that.”

She had no response to that.

“Why did you follow me?”

“Because I was afraid you were…going to see another woman.”

Gage dragged his hands down his face and tried his damnedest not to look as though a fireball of rage was forming in his stomach. “Why the hell would you ever think that?”

Wind whipped her hair around her face, and fat, heavy raindrops started falling. Meredith stood there, looking so gorgeous and so vulnerable that what was left of his heart ached for her. “Because Ron cheated on me repeatedly.”

He walked down the porch steps, a few feet from where she stood. Every muscle in his body was coiled until he thought he would snap. He hated what they did to her, but he hated even more that there were still parts of Meredith that were insecure and that she grouped him in with them. “I’m not Ron.”

“I know. It was a stupid, knee-jerk reaction and I was jealous. With Ron I was never jealous. I couldn’t care less what he did, but you, the thought of you with someone…”

“You have no idea how much respect I have for you. I would never, ever do that to you. This, whatever it is we are, whatever it is we’re doing, it’s more than a fling. You’re more than just some woman to me.”

Her chin wobbled and the anger washed out of him. There were times that it felt like she’d come so far, and then times like this that reminded him of what twenty-plus years living with people who dominated you did to a person, how hard it was to erase that. “I know, Gage. There is no comparison. You are one hundred times the man that Ron could even dream of being. Or my father. There is this inherent goodness and sense of honor about you that humbles me and makes me so afraid that you’ll turn from me.”

He walked down the steps and pulled her into him. “I need you to fight back. I need you to be able to tell me off and yell at me and call me out. Don’t ever back down from me. Don’t ever stifle whatever thoughts you have because you’re afraid of my reaction. I can swear to hell and back, but never at you, to you. I will never make you feel like less of a person. You need to know that we can argue and disagree and fight, but in the end, I will be standing right here.” He didn’t know what the hell he was saying, what kind of promises he was making to her, but he believed every damn word.

“Come inside.”

Once they were in the warm house, he waited. He wasn’t going to make this easy for her. “So now you’ve seen where I’m from.”

“Your mother seemed…nice.”

He almost laughed. “No need to go back to being polite, Mer. Everything’s out in the open.”

“What about your real father?”

Well, maybe everything wasn’t out in the open. “I don’t have a relationship with him. I met him once when I was fifteen. He claimed he never knew about me. He only slept with my mother once and they went their separate ways. He…uh, I just found out today that he paid off my mother’s house and has been sending her money every month for the last fifteen-plus years.” He was still trying to process that fact. It made him uncomfortable to think what that meant. Gage shoved his hands in his pockets and watched Meredith.

“So you never saw him again? If he’s sending your mother money, it must mean he cares for you.”

Gage shrugged. He didn’t want to analyze what that meant or the small possibility that maybe he’d misjudged his biological father. Right now he was more concerned about the fact that Meredith had caved in front of him, that she’d backed down, that she’d compared him to Ron.

“So now you know. What are we doing here, Mer? What do you want?”

He refused to smile when her gaze went to his lips and then up and down his body. He wasn’t going to give in. He wasn’t going to make this easy for her, because he cared too damn much about her to allow her to be helpless. She had no idea how powerful she was.

She cleared her throat softly. “I want you.”

Rain pelted against the windows and her declaration was only slightly louder. His heart swelled at her honesty, but it wasn’t enough. “Well, I’m right here.”

She blushed but didn’t move. He knew this was hard for her. Not once had she taken the lead, except the night she’d propositioned him, but then he’d taken over. When she started wringing her hands together he took pity. “If you want me, then come get me and take control. I’m yours.”

“Gage, I can’t.”

“You can. I’m easy, Mer. I’d never turn you down. You walk into a room and I want you. You smile and I want you. You speak and I want you. You stalked me.”

“Technically, it wasn’t stalking because it was one location.”

“We said we’re not doing the whole relationship thing. This was supposed to be one night only, but this has gone far beyond that, Meredith. You can’t deny it. If you just wanted me for one night, you wouldn’t have come over here the other day.”

“I needed a quiet place to work.”

“You wouldn’t have stalked—”

She threw up her arms. “Stop saying that word, it makes me sound psychotic. Besides, so what, it’s gone beyond one night. We both know you’re leaving, right?”

Hell, yes, that problem. He didn’t know what he was going to do about leaving her. He leaned against the wall casually, the complete opposite of how he was feeling. He was wound up, pissed that everything was a mess and there was no clear way out. “Well, that’s not for a while, and right now we know each other better than anyone else.”

She crossed her arms and looked down. “When you leave here, you’ll go back to your weekly pickups at some new bar.”

“You think that’s what’s going to happen? You really think that after everything I’m going to walk out of here and go sleep with some random woman, knowing that you’re here?”

She shrugged, looking up at him, vulnerability stamped on her gorgeous face.

“One year,” he whispered harshly.

She frowned. “What’s one year?”

He took a step toward her, liking the way her eyes lit up. “It’s been almost a year since I’ve done the bar pickup, and just to clarify it wasn’t weekly. That’s a gross exaggeration perpetuated by Cole because he had no life at the time.”

She folded her hands in front of her. “Oh, I see.”

He smiled. “I don’t think you do. A year, Meredith.”

She pursed her lips. “Well, that’s wonderful, Gage. I’m sure you’ve lowered your STD risk by a huge percentage.”

He laughed softly. “I’m as clean as a whistle. I never leave home without a condom.”

“How wonderful, a regular Boy Scout. I’m glad you brought up this topic.”

“A year ago you fell into my arms. A year ago, I met you and wanted you from that first second, and I haven’t wanted anyone but you. So yeah, this thing we’ve got going on is a helluva lot more than a one-night stand. I hate to break it to you, darlin’, but this is a relationship.”

Her gaze alternated from his mouth to his eyes and her face was flushed. “A year?”

He gave her a curt nod. “You were worth waiting for.”

She ran across the room and straight into his arms. He lifted her up and then set her down in front of him. “Gage—”

“I’m not like the rest of them, Mer.”

His heart hammered in his chest as she rose on her tiptoes, snaked her arm up his body, and tugged at the nape of his neck. He lowered his head until his lips almost touched hers, and waited. Her tongue lightly traced the curve of his mouth and she pressed her wet body against his. He slanted his head and kissed her back with the hunger only she seemed to evoke from him until it became wet and hot. He groaned as she moved her lips down his chest, her hands sliding down his jeans to cup his ass.

In seconds, zippers were undone, pants were off, and then Gage was inside her, hard and deep, and she gasped with the pleasure. She held on to him and whispered against his ear, “This is where I want you, Gage. I want you everywhere. Most of all, I want you inside me.”

Chapter Twelve

Meredith eyed the chocolate spoon and contemplated whether or not she should take a lick or continue to ice the cake. The knock at the door spared her from making that decision. A quick glance at the clock above the stove told her it was too early for Gage to arrive, so there was no need for her to hide the cake. She smiled on her way to the front entrance. Gage was going to be so surprised that she was in his house
and
had baked him a cake. And thanks to her secret lessons with Mrs. Harris, said cake was going to taste divine.

Every ounce of bliss trickled out of her body when she opened the door and found Ron Westbourne standing there.

“Hello, Meredith.”

She stared at him, taking in the perfectly coiffed sandy-brown hair, the clean-shaven face, the sleek suit, the weasel expression in his glittering eyes. It was as though she were staring at the poster child for the stupidest years of her life. She had dreaded this day from the night he called her at the bar, but since then whatever remaining fear she had of him had vanished. She had grown in the last year, and even more so in the last few weeks. Ron was about to witness a very different Meredith.

She clutched the side of the door and didn’t need to borrow Gage’s mean-ass glare—this time she used her own. “What are you doing here?”

He stepped closer to her. “I’m here to take what’s mine.”

Meredith tempered the jolt of panic that struck her, then she quashed it. She pretended to look around. “I don’t see anything here that belongs to you.”

His smile was cold and slimy. His blue eyes remained cool and distant, never warming with his smile. “Why didn’t you answer any of my calls? Or my texts?”

Meredith tapped a finger to her chin. “Because I don’t answer to you anymore.”

His jaw clenched and she saw telltale sign number one that Ron was going to lose his temper quickly. Normally that would have made her shut up and drop whatever it was she didn’t agree with. Not anymore. “What about your parents? Your mother?”

He knew her mother was her weakness. Meredith crossed her arms. “My parents haven’t contacted me. I’m not my mother’s keeper. She’s a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions. If she wanted to talk to me she could have called. What, are you their spokesperson now?”

His eyes narrowed. “You humiliated all of us by canceling the wedding.”

“I couldn’t care less. Why don’t you go back to kissing my father’s ass and leave me alone?” She tried to slam the door shut, but his smooth, manicured hand stopped her.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in to this little shack you’re now living in?”

“I would, except for the fact that you’d be signing your own death warrant when the man I’m living with comes home to find you here.”

His eyes changed. The blue was glacial and the smile tighter. “Oh, this man?” He held up a thick folder, his smile turning into a sneer.

Meredith focused her gaze on the folder. “What is that?”

“This is a nice little bio of the trailer-park trash you’re banging.”

She tried to slam the door shut in his face, but he pushed it open, his shoulder colliding against hers as he muscled his way in. “A little under a year with that bratty sister of yours and you’re slumming it. Well, I’m about to make you an offer you won’t be able to refuse to get you out of this place.”

Meredith tried her best to retain her composure, clamping her hands together so he wouldn’t see they were shaking. She stood there, watching him, in Gage’s home, as though he had the right. He always thought he had the right to do whatever he wanted. His sense of entitlement was nauseating. He walked casually over to the kitchen table and her stomach flipped over when he slid his index finger over the chocolate icing on the top of the cake, lifted his hand, and licked his finger.

Meredith marched over to the table, eyeing the large knife on the counter behind her. “You disgusting pig. Don’t touch the cake.”

“Not bad. I can see you’ve had to resort to learning how to cook and play house for the hired help. I guess that explains the extra ass you’re carrying around.”

Meredith clenched the back of the kitchen chair. She was surprised how little his comment affected her. A year ago she would have been panicked and stopped eating for the week. “Funny you should mention that. Gage was telling me this morning how much he liked my ass. That was, of course, after a couple of orgasms. I guess that blows your theory about me out of the water. Turns out the problem wasn’t me, it was you and your minuscule—”

“Shut the fuck up.” He grabbed a fistful of her hair so tightly that tears welled in her eyes, but she held his gaze and didn’t back down.

“What are you going to do, Ron? Is this your attempt at intimidating me? Because you don’t. Nothing you do or say will ever make me afraid of you again. I will take great pleasure in fighting back. And even more pleasure when Gage walks through that door and finds you here. If I were you, I’d run out of here before he gets back, because you won’t be able to run, much less walk if you’re here when he comes home.”

His smile fell and he relinquished his hold with such a force that she stumbled back a step. She quickly regained her composure, her attitude, and crossed her arms. She was torn between praying that he would just walk out now, or that Gage would indeed come home, find him, and beat the crap out of him.

He slowly walked around the table and held out a file. “You’re going to find what’s in this very interesting.”

Meredith took the file from his hands as though she were picking up a dead rat. The first page made her stomach churn. She flipped through it, growing increasingly nauseous. It was all about Gage. His mother. The drug addiction. Their house. She took a deep breath. She needed to remain calm and collected. She needed to find out what he wanted. “So? I already know all this.”

“Well, what you don’t know is that your daddy doesn’t like the idea of you taking off. And neither do I. You don’t actually believe that your stunt that night at the club was simply accepted? It was never over. You don’t tell your father when it’s over, you don’t tell me when it’s over. I didn’t put up with your whining all these years to end up without a chunk of your father’s business. So here’s what we’re going to do about it. You come back with me.”

“What planet are you on? You actually think I would go back so that you can have my father’s business when he retires? I’d rather poke my eyes out with—”

“Or we arrange it so that your beloved brother-in-law’s ranch goes under.”

Her breath refused to escape her mouth, trapped inside her body. A searing heat swam through her body. “What are you talking about?”

He braced his hands on the table and leaned forward. “It’s simple. You come back with me, everything is fine. You don’t, and I’ll make sure that Cole’s USDA approval gets revoked and his beef is contaminated. It’ll hit the media, and we’ll make sure that all evidence points to the trailer-park trash foreman, Gage.”

He sucked all the air, all the confidence, all the power she thought she had, until she was unable to breathe. They were trapping her, and this time, they were threatening more than her. Gage would be humiliated beyond belief, and to be accused of ruining his best friend’s business would break him. And Cole. There was no way she could do this to the man who had become like a brother to her. He and Melanie had taken her in, no questions asked. They’d healed her and given her a new start.

He straightened himself, chest puffing with satisfaction, his gaze darting to the window. “I can see you’re thinking about it. Don’t take too long. Your little gang of misfits is on their way in. Just know this, if you don’t walk out of here today acting like it was the biggest mistake of your life to leave me, your father and I will do this. Don’t even think about attempting to tell them about this plan, because it won’t work. We have people and money and ways to make this happen so that none of you stand a chance.”

Meredith cleared her throat, her hands sweating as she tightened her grip on the back of the chair. “What do you want from me?”

“I’ll go slowly this time, so you can process. You come back with me, pick up where we left off. The wedding is back on. We’ll tell friends that you took a year off to do some traveling. Then we get married, and I take over Anderson when your father retires next year.”

Meredith’s stomach swirled in circles until she was sure she’d be sick. “And what about Tall Pines?”

“Nothing. You have my word.”

Meredith shut her eyes, knowing what she was going to have to do. “Your word means nothing. Where will I live?”

“At our penthouse.”

“Separate rooms. You make one move and I’ll—”

“Relax. I have no interest in you whatsoever.”

Meredith stared at him. The front door crashed open and she jumped.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Meredith slowly turned to see Gage in the doorway, his tall frame rigid, tight, powerful. But more than anything else, it was the look in his eyes. It went beyond the anger she’d seen at his mother’s house. She leaned against the table as her blood pumped through her body painfully.

“Just came back to get what’s mine,” Ron said with a slow, smug smile and reached for Meredith. She instinctively recoiled from him, and before he could touch her, Gage crossed the room and shoved Ron against the wall, pinning him there. The veins in his neck strained and he stood nose to nose with Ron, who was now red in the face and looking slightly panicked.

“Meredith is not yours,” Gage hissed before he leaned back and punched him in the face. Ron grunted and fell.

“What the hell is going on here?”

Cole and Melanie were standing in the doorway. Gage towered over Ron, and for once it seemed Ron had enough common sense not to move. Meredith knew she should intervene, but a perverse part of her was so satisfied to see Ron on the ground and vulnerable.

“Tell him, Meredith, tell him the truth about us. Tell him you’re
mine
.”

Meredith squeezed her eyes shut.

Melanie and Cole came to stand beside her.

Everyone turned to her and waited. The room shrank; the air evaporated, was sucked up and out of her lungs until it was impossible to breathe. The weight of the lie she was being forced to tell threatened to crush her before she could get the words out.

“Tell him, Meredith.”

“Meredith,” Melanie whispered, touching her arm. Meredith shrank back a step from her sister, Cole, Gage, the people she was about to destroy in order to protect. She finally got the nerve to look at Gage, and agony and shame sliced through her swiftly. She cringed as Gage’s eyes went from confident to wary, narrowing on her. “I’m sorry. I…Ron’s right. I’ve decided that I want to go back.”

“No,” Gage bit out harshly. “You’re lying.”

Ron moved away from him, scrambling to stand up. He brushed off his suit, a smirk making his face even more repulsive. “No, I think our little Meredith here decided she got tired of playing trailer-park wife and needed to class things up a bit.”

Gage’s expression closed up, his jaw tense, clenched.

“That’s a lie. You’re a
liar
,” Melanie hissed.

Ron smirked at her sister.

She needed to end this so she wouldn’t have to look at any of their faces. “Please, it’s what I want. I called Ron. It’s time for me to go.”

Ronald stood and walked over to the table on wobbly legs and retrieved his folder surreptitiously reminding her of the contents. “I’d watch yourselves. You never know what can happen to a small family ranch, especially when you’ve burned a bridge with Anderson Food Group. If I recall, you were warned, Forrester. And you,” he said, walking up to Gage. “Stupid, stupid move fucking Anderson’s beloved daughter.”

This time when Gage moved, Meredith moved faster, standing in front of Ron, protecting the man who had hurt her, protecting him from the man who had saved her. She bent her head, not able to look at Gage.

The room was silent. She took a deep breath and looked up at Gage, and wanted to die. This hurt more than anything. The betrayal, the rage, but worst of all, what made her want to hang her head in shame was the vulnerability that shone from his eyes. He thought she was rejecting him, just like everyone else in his past. All the strength he’d given her, all the sweetness he’d shown her, was now being thrown back in his face.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She couldn’t stand the censure that hung in the room like a suffocating blanket.

…

Gage stared at the only woman who’d ever made him want to be a better man, and wondered how he could have been so wrong. He didn’t want to be staring at the top of her head. He didn’t want her avoiding eye contact with him. He didn’t want any of this. He’d fight for her, if she gave him any indication she was still here, with him, that this was all some lie.

“Mer,” he said. His voice came out harsh, and she flinched. Ron put his hands on her shoulders and for a second it was all he could focus on, the sight of that bastard’s hands on Meredith. “Meredith,” he repeated, until she finally looked up at him. Her eyes weren’t filled with anything. His instincts to protect Meredith from Ron were slowly being drowned by the sickening feeling of betrayal.

His gaze narrowed in on Ron’s thin fingers massaging Meredith’s shoulders. His muscles killed with tension as he forced himself to remain still.