“My brothers call me a robot.” Their constant jabs about how much I worked and how little I poured my heart out to them got old. I wanted to leave the rest of my thoughts unspoken, but after worrying that she’d moved on, I couldn’t backtrack with her, or myself. “I’m the oldest. I’ve always had the most responsibilities. The highest expectations from Mama and Dad. Sometimes I feel like I raised my brothers, but they’d tell me Dad was around more than I know. He had to be…after I left for college.”

“And it makes it hard to be a brother when you feel like you’re not quite their brother, but not their parent.”

I nodded. I wouldn’t have been able to describe it like that, but she’d summed my feelings up perfectly.

“You loosen up around them a lot more than they realize.”

I should get better about that too. But first, my wife. “Dawson invited me out for Christmas. Want to come with me?”

She dropped her hands to my shoulders. “Do you think it’s appropriate?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my family knowing we’re working on our relationship.” I rubbed her thighs through her soft pajama pants. “Bristol would like to see you, and I know how much you enjoy King’s Creek.”

“I enjoy King’s Creek because of you.”

“Because I loosen up.” Jesus, what had I been like at home if being a dusty mess and smelling like horse sweat and cattle made me more approachable to my wife?

“Yes. And because you wear your cowboy boots.” She leaned in to whisper in my ear, her breasts rubbing against my chest. “When you put your cowboy hat on, it drives me crazy.”

I dug my fingers into her hips and pulled her closer. “Then next time I put my cowboy hat on, I want you to show me exactly how crazy it makes you.”

Her smile held more than a hint of wickedness and I captured her mouth. Despite my growing erection, I didn’t take it further. I was content to hold my wife and make out at the kitchen table. All my notifications were silent and it was easy to tell myself that I didn’t have twelve hours of work looming ahead of me. Just like having Kate on my lap, meeting her tongue stroke for stroke made it easy to tell myself that divorce wasn’t still an option.

CHAPTER 14

Kate

Sunlight shone through the driver’s side of the window, highlighting Aiden’s strong profile. He wore jeans and the same Princeton sweatshirt from the night we’d reconnected with explosive results. Our winter jackets were tossed into the back seat with our luggage and we were on our way to King’s Creek.