Grady felt his heart break in two. How could she regret anything so perfect?
It was Caleb, of course. Always Caleb. Grady had to wonder, would there ever come a day when Caleb Hanson didn’t share a bed with them?
CHAPTER 13
Grady had seen her tears, felt them, Karen realized as she lay in his arms. She felt the sudden stirring of tension, saw the distance in his eyes where only moments ago there had been such fiery passion.
When he eased away from her, then turned his back, she felt as if she had betrayed two men, not one.
Eventually she slid out of bed and went to her own room, where she showered as if that could wipe away not just the evidence of their lovemaking but her regrets as well.
How could she have been so wrong? she wondered. She’d been so sure she was ready, that her feelings for Grady ran deep enough for this next step in their relationship.
And they did, dammit. She had felt alive and treasured when he’d been making love to her. She had responded in a way she never had with Caleb, without any inhibitions at all.
“Oh, God, that’s it,” she murmured, burying her face in her pillow. It wasn’t just that awful sense of having betrayed someone that she’d been feeling, but guilt that she had felt more, given more, with Grady Blackhawk than she ever had with the man she’d married.
The passion she had shared with Caleb had been quieter, less intense, comfortable—what a terrible word, she thought—even at the beginning. They had been perfectly matched, no extreme lows or giddy highs, just steady, comfortable companions, partners in the running of the ranch.
There was nothing easy or comfortable about Grady. He was a man who tested the limits, who demanded responses that reached new heights. She’d just experienced one of those amazing, astonishing highs. Now, alone in her own bed, she was crashing to its opposite low.
“I can’t do this,” she whispered aloud.
Being with Grady put her at risk, rocked her emotionally in a way she wasn’t prepared to handle. She was afraid to trust this new passion, afraid the fire would burn itself out and she’d be left with nothing.
It had happened before. She had lost Caleb, the man she had expected to spend her entire life with. And if solid, dependable Caleb could leave her, then what guarantee did she have that a volatile man like Grady might not as well, in one way or another? She wasn’t sure she could survive another loss. Or the discovery that he had merely been manipulating her in order to get his hands on her land.
Too late, a voice in her head mocked her.
Karen sighed. It was true—for better or for worse, she was already involved with the man who slept across the hall. No matter the reason, whether she lost him now or years from now, it would hurt.
By the time the first pale slivers of dawn crept into the sky, she was no more certain of what she needed to do than she had been when she’d crawled into her own bed the night before. Nor was she prepared for a face-to-face encounter with Grady so soon.
She crept downstairs, drank a quick cup of coffee and nibbled at a piece of toast, then all but ran to the barn and saddled her horse.
It was only a little past daybreak when she rode out on Ginger. The air was crisp and smelled of approaching snow. Thick gray clouds rolled across the sky. Karen rode hard for an hour, exhausting herself, the wind whipping at her hair and stinging her cheeks.
The exercise cleared her head, but as she rode back into the paddock, all of the turmoil came back with a vengeance at the sight of Grady waiting, a fierce scowl on his face.
“Where have you been?” he demanded, even as he helped her out of the saddle.
She shrugged off his hands. “I should think that would be obvious,” she said, leading her horse into the heated barn to be unsaddled and rubbed down.
“Not to me, it isn’t,” he snapped. “I thought we had agreed you weren’t going anywhere alone until we know what the hell is happening around here.”
She flinched at the worry underscoring his words. She had completely forgotten about the danger in her haste to retreat from a different kind of threat.
“I’m sorry if you were worried,” she said, meeting his gaze for the first time.
He sighed and raked his hand through his hair as he surveyed her from head to toe. “You didn’t run into any problems?”
“None,” she assured him. “I didn’t see a single soul, nor was there any evidence of more fence down, sick cattle or anything else out of the ordinary.”
Some of the concern faded from his eyes then, only to be replaced by what looked surprisingly like sorrow. “Why did you run?”
She thought about that, debated how truthful to be, then settled for total honesty. “I was afraid to see you because I knew I had hurt you last night.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’ll get over it.”
“You shouldn’t have to. What I did was unfair. I went to bed with you willingly. No, it was more than that,” she corrected. “I went eagerly.”
“And then you regretted it,” he concluded.
“But not for the reason you think, not entirely anyway.”
“You’re going to have to explain that one to me.”
It was hard to tell him, but she knew she owed him the truth. “The reason I felt lousy was because I felt so much more with you than I ever had with Caleb.” When Grady would have spoken, she held up her hand. “I’m not comparing exactly. What Caleb and I had together was wonderful—our life, our marriage, all of it. I will never forget those feelings for as long as I live.”
“How reassuring,” Grady said with an unmistakable edge
