Always On My Mind (The Sullivans #8)(27)
Author: Bella Andre

He ran one hand through his wet hair, looking as though he was at war with himself. Well, she knew exactly how that felt. Finally, he said, “I know this isn’t your world, Lori. What is?”

He was right—endless pastures and cows and pigs weren’t any part of her world. And yet, she was falling for it all the same.

Just as she was falling for him.

“I’m a dancer.”

Grayson’s dark gaze ran the length of her covered in her blanket, then back up to her face. “Of course you are. I had already guessed it from the way you move.”

She should have been surprised to hear him admit that he’d watched her move, that he’d paid any attention to her at all.

But she wasn’t.

“Why aren’t you dancing?”

She turned away from him, then, and this time he let her go. It hurt to think of dancing. Of not dancing. Her whole life, it had been her cornerstone. The one thing she could count on.

Lost.

She was utterly lost without dance at her center. If she could have done anything else, she wouldn’t have walked away from it. But her lifelong, soul-deep love for dancing had left her without a word of warning. Leaving a big, black hole inside of her that she couldn’t figure out how to fill back up.

“I don’t want to dance anymore.”

“You lie as badly as you drive.”

God, he was like a dog with a bone, and she spun around to face him. “Why do you care if I’m telling the truth about wanting to dance again, or not? You don’t want me on your farm. You don’t want to have sex with me. Nothing would make you happier than my packing up my things after the storm breaks and getting the hell out of your hair.”

He didn’t contradict her. She didn’t expect him to. Rejoicing was closer to what he’d do the day she threw her suitcase into the trunk of her rental car and drove down his long driveway back to the city.

“You can’t leave Mo.” She couldn’t read his expression as he said, “Not yet.”

“Sweetpea?” She was trying to figure out where that had come from. “Why are you talking about your cat?”

“You’ve made her depend on you. You feed her from your hand, for God’s sake.”

It was a ridiculous reason for her to stay, especially when he could easily feed his cat by hand if she left.

Was it his way of saying he wanted her to stay? She tucked the blanket more tightly around her and picked up her wet clothes, hanging them over the back of a chair near the fire. Whatever his reason, between the gentleness of his touch on her cheek as he’d wiped away her tears and his obvious concern for his cat, she suddenly felt safe enough to finally tell him a little bit of what had happened to her in Chicago.

“I was in a relationship for the past couple of years. A rotten one that everyone I knew kept telling me to get out of, but I didn’t listen until I found him in bed with a dancer I had personally hired.” She sighed at her own stupidity. “Well, it’s over now, and I needed a break from everything. From dancing. From my life.” She couldn’t stop herself from adding, “And especially from men.” Because how could she have known that when she grabbed the want ad at the General Store she was going to be applying to work for a modern-day cowboy who ran a fabulous CSA and could have made serious dough modeling for a high-end underwear ad?

Grayson didn’t reply for a long while, and when she finally looked at him, she expected to see disinterest. Or pity, maybe.

But not disdain. And disgust.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You broke up with your boyfriend? That’s what sent you running away from your real life? That’s why you stopped dancing?”

Whoa. What was going on here?

And why did having him look at her like that hurt so badly? Even worse now that she’d—stupidly—let him touch her.

“He told me he loved me, he said he couldn’t live without me, but I found out he was only using me to dance his way up the ladder. I also found out, too late, that he stole jobs that should have been mine, and did whatever he could to undermine the ones he couldn’t get. He told lies to my face, then lied about me behind my back.” It exhausted her to say it all out loud. And made her furious all over again. “How can I keep dancing when I can’t even remember anymore why I love it?”

She hated what a fool she’d been, that she’d been so blind to what was happening when everyone else had seen it. How desperately she’d wanted to be loved, so desperate that she hadn’t put a stop to Victor’s emotional abuse until it had sucked the will to dance—and to love—from her.

But she could see that nothing she said made any difference to Grayson. “You think I’m a big crybaby, don’t you? That I’m just here to hide from everything and lick my wounds?” She took a step toward him and poked him in the chest. “So what if I am? What makes you the judge and jury for what counts as real pain?”

He grabbed her hand hard enough that she would have cried out if the fury on his face hadn’t stolen her breath away before she could make a sound.

“My wife died in a car crash. Three years ago. It was our tenth wedding anniversary.”

“Grayson.”

He let her hand go and cursed. “The storm is letting up. We need to get back to the farm to make sure the rest of the animals are okay.”

Her own pain instantly forgotten in the wake of Grayson’s confession, Lori desperately wanted to go to him. She wanted to put her arms around him and console him for the pain he’d suffered. And, most of all, she wanted him to trust her enough to bare his soul to her and let her help him finally heal.

“I’m sorry,” she told him over the sound of the crackling fire. “So sorry for what you’ve been through. And for what I just said.”

His face was granite when he turned back to her. “It was three years ago. I’m over it now.” His lie was a thousand times worse than her earlier one had been, about thinking that being a farmhand would be fun. “I’ll go get the horse ready to take us back.”

He was gone before she could reach for him, before she could say anything else. But so much was clear now. The way he’d pushed her away at every turn. The solitude he’d chosen despite the great community.

He was right, his pain was so much worse than hers—and yet, whether he wanted to see it or not, they were kindred spirits despite themselves. Because she’d made the very same vow not to love again and risk another painful loss.