Page 14 of Meant for You

Cassy visibly relaxed. “Thank you! I owe you, Eves, big-time.” She handed Jack to me. “I’ll try not to be too late, but you know how these meetings can drag on.”

“Go. Be as late as you need to be. We’re fine.”

Cassy kissed Jack on the cheek, thanked me again, and ran back the way she came.

“Looks like it’s just you and me, cutie,” I said to Jack, tickling his ribs and making him giggle. “Let’s go find you some grub.”

Three hours later, Jack was bathed, fed, and in bed, and I was in the shower.

He was definitely out for the night. The little guy had been falling asleep while I was putting him in his pj’s.

Cal had called to apologize earlier. He had a client at Rocktown Ink and wouldn’t be finished until at least midnight, and knowing how Cassy’s meetings usually went, she’d be a few hours away as well.

Which meant I had the house to myself, and as much as I liked my room off the barn, sometimes it was nice to curl up on a soft couch in their gorgeous living room with the big-screen TV and watch movies without having to squint at my laptop screen.

I climbed out of the shower, dried off, and wrapped a towel around me. I hadn’t brought any of my clothes up to the house earlier, and the idea of putting on my smelly, dusty work clothes was not appealing in the slightest. But I’d stayed in the main house for a few weeks when I first moved here, and I was pretty sure I had some things still there.

I scooped my dirty clothes off the floor and the baby monitor from the bathroom counter, carried them downstairs to the kitchen, and threw my stuff in a trash bag to take out with me later.

Might as well get the popcorn going before I trekked all the way back upstairs to find clothes.

After tightening the knot on my towel, I got a bag of microwave popcorn going and leaned on the breakfast bar, flicking through Horse and Corral magazine.

I barely saw the words, though. The one thing I’d been trying not to think about, the one person I’d been trying to push from my mind until I was emotionally ready to deal with him, kept coming to the fore.

I hadn’t recovered from my “talk” with Dane three days ago—far from it. The things that were said and that goodbye outside Rocktown Ink had shaken me to my core.

Because I realized two things, and they were huge.

First, we would never get back what we had, what we were. Never. That time was gone.

That was the past. I didn’t know what we were now, but it looked different, so very different.

And second, I wanted Dane in my life. I couldn’t imagine one without him in it. Yes, he’d hurt me when he vanished, but I loved him too much to do the same. What we felt for each other was far more complicated than just friendship. It always had been. And if I wanted my best friend back in my life, I had to figure out what that would look like going forward. We had to be on a more even footing, though. I knew that much. No more protector to my damsel.

I couldn’t let him run right over me anymore—

“What the fuck?”

I shrieked and spun around.

Dane stood in the kitchen doorway behind me, gaze zigzagging over me from head to toe and back again.

“What are you doing here?” I fired at him.

His cheeks were slashed with color and his chest was rising and falling fast, and those golden-brown eyes were still moving over my damp-towel-covered body in a way that was almost…I had no idea what it was.

The room was full of the smell of buttery popcorn, but I still jumped when the microwave beeped.

“Dane?” I said when he said nothing.

His eyes shot up to mine, and he flinched.

“What are you doing here?” I tried again.

His big body was frozen in place and his throat worked, Adam’s apple sliding up and down his inked throat before he finally spoke. “I’m here to see Cal and Cassy.” His brows lowered. “Why the fuck are you naked in their kitchen?”

That husky note to his voice sent a little shiver through me. I ignored it and scowled. Naked? I was fully covered by a towel, for God’s sake.