Page 52 of Apple of My Eye

"I know." My voice came out smaller than I intended. "I'm sorry. I told you from the start it wouldn't be fair to you."

"Daisy." His thumb traced along my jaw. "You don't have to be sorry. Just don't make the secrecy permanent. Because I know what this is between us, even if you don't yet, and I'm not going to pretend I don't." He held my eyes. "I'm going to stay and be the man you need."

The man I need?” You already are."

Eventually we ate,though I had no real appetite. Knox cleared the bowls, and cleaned up. While I suddenly had a headache.

"Come on," he said, and carried me upstairs and drew me a bath. The lavender steam rose up while I sat on the edge of the tub and tried to remember how to be a normal person.

He washed my hair like he understood that some thingscould only be fixed with time. I closed my eyes closed, the tension I'd been carrying in my shoulders finally left.

After, I fell asleep with my head on his chest, the sound of his heartbeat the most reliable thing in my world.

Somewhere in the middle of the night I startled from a bad dream I couldn't remember.

He was still there.

He was always there for me.

Chapter Sixteen

Knox

I’d pulledbarn duty that morning, which suited me fine. The other guys were rotating horses and other livestock through the east pastures, checking fences and such, and I had three stalls to muck, two water troughs to clean and refresh, and approximately zero obligations to make conversation with anyone. A good morning, by most measures. Especially because it left me alone with my thoughts.

Daisy had told quite a story to me a few days ago, about her past with Trevor. The rage in me—fuck, it simmered under the surface. But it was something I managed, which was a polite way of saying I had been white-knuckling it since she told me about the notes on her windshield. Trevor’s marriage ultimatum. Her father’s response to it.

By the time she got to the part about her parents’ accident, and the question she’d been carrying for years, the one she’d never said out loud to another soul, I had approximately zero patience left between me and doing something to Trevor that would have landed me in the county jail instead of the ODRR barn.

I’d held it together for her. She needed someone solid for her, not someone who confirmed that the world was as dangerous as she’d always feared. Trevor Brewster’s day was coming. I didn’t need to be the one to deliver it. Which made it my job to protect her.

The request to keep things quiet between us, that one I understood more than she knew. She wasn’t ashamed of me. She was afraid. I saw the difference, and knowing the complete story now, I could hold the difference without letting it eat at me.

Mostly.

The unmistakable sound of Daisy’s farrier rig pulled up to the barn. I dropped everything I was doing and rushed to greet her once she was inside the barn door. Whatever we were doing, whatever she wanted to call this thing between us, the discipline held back from throwing her over my shoulder and claiming her as mine was still a daily negotiation.

“Well, if it isn’t the sexiest Wylde woman in the county.” I nuzzled into her neck when she came right to me. A lighthearted chuckle escaped her when I did. I pulled back to see a smiling face that warmed my heart. She walked lighter; the weight of the world had lifted from her shoulders, full of more sunshine than I’d ever seen in her. After giving all her secrets to me, it must have been cathartic for her.

“I’m covered in mud and horsehair, smelling like a barn. Still sexy?”

“Yep.”

“Even this morning when we woke up and my hair was a mess, eyes puffy, and wearing my granny nightgown? Still sexy?”

“Fuck. The sexiest.” No one was around, so I cupped herass and picked her up. She yelped, throwing her thick thighs around my middle with a laugh. I captured her lips, giving the horses a show. They neighed approval as if they’d been rooting for us all along. I had half a mind to sweep her into the straw room and take her right here. But Dusty’s truck came up the ranch road with a two-horse trailer hitched behind it.

“That’s why I’m here,” she said, straightening out her clothes when I set her back down. I quickly adjusted myself. “Dusty called and has a couple of new horses to bring, but can’t check them over himself due to his schedule. He asked if I’d stop by to do the intake checkup.”

Dusty got out and greeted us. “Got a call from the county animal control yesterday. They found these two horses up off the White Tail Creek trail, nobody claimed them after forty-eight hours. Malnourished, both of them, but tame. I think someone owned these animals at some point and either lost them or gave up on them.” He glanced back at the trailer.

“Perfect. I have two stalls I just cleaned out,” I motioned toward the stable with my head.

“If you can do the initial workup, Daisy, I’ll come back in a couple of days for a full exam on both of them once they’ve settled.”

“I can manage. I’ll check hooves, teeth, weight assessment. Get them started on a proper ration,” she said, moving toward the trailer. She produced a peppermint from her pocket and held it out to one curious nose poking out. She knew how to dangle the goods just enough to calm a horse. “Hey, sweetie.”

“There’s a bay mare and a chestnut gelding. Mare’s the more skittish of the two. Gelding came to me as if we were old friends,” Dusty explained.