Coming Home Read Free Page B

pasture fence near her father's small farm, crying over Brady.
    "Don't tell me that idiot's gone and broken your heart, Brown Eyes, because I won't believe it for a minute.”
    She was embarrassed to be caught crying, angrily dashing away her tears as she jumped off the fence and tried to get away from him. "Go away. Just leave me alone."
    "I’m sorry, Nick,” he told her. “But you gotta know he's not worth one single tear."
    He touched her, then. He held out a hand and laid it on her shoulder, and she stopped as if iron bars had captured her. When Wyatt moved closer and placed his other hand on her other shoulder he could have sworn he heard her sigh.
    "I'm not crying over Brady," she admitted quietly, so quietly he nearly didn't hear her.
    "Then what?"
    He wondered for a moment if she would answer him. Then, she turned her face and looked at him over her shoulder.
    "You," she admitted.
    He couldn't believe she had the nerve to say it. A grin spread across his lips, his masculine pride swelling with the knowledge that she cared enough to cry over him.
    "Don't you laugh at me, you...you bastard!"
    Wyatt laughed out loud at that. Did she think she was insulting him by calling him what he was? Hell, his grandfather never tired of reminding him of that.
    His laughter seemed to infuriate her even more because she turned around, curled up a fist and socked him one, right in the middle. He doubled over, the air knocked out of him, still laughing, coughing, trying to catch his breath. "Oh, Nick, you crazy kid!"
    "Don't call me that, I'm not a kid," she snapped, fisting her hands on her hips.
    "No, you are not," he admitted as he moved close to her again. She didn't pull away, staring at him with suspicion as he slid his hands into the space between her arms and her waist, pulling her against him.
    Kissing Nicole was the first glimpse Wyatt ever had of what a real romantic relationship could be like. He was tentative at first, knowing she was relatively inexperienced. But she thrust her fingers into his hair and pulled him so hard against her mouth that his teeth banged into his lips with a painful crunch. He started laughing again, and she laughed, too, even as she opened her mouth to him and teased his tongue with her own. Then he was dead serious, taking what she so innocently offered, kissing her like tomorrow was the end of the world and they were the last couple alive.
    "Why did you cry over me?" he asked after they pulled their mouths apart and gasped for air.
    "Because I thought you never noticed me. At first I was flattered that Brady asked me out, then I realized that I kept dating him, even though I really stopped liking him, because it gave me an excuse to come out to the ranch and be near you.”
    "Nick, I've noticed you every minute of every day I've seen you. God, it killed me to see you walk around in those tight pink shorts of yours, with that teeny top you wear with them, knowing you were there as Brady's date. Knowing he was the one touching you."
    She held up a hand against his mouth and shook her head intently. “Brady never touched me, not in any way he wanted to. You're the only one I want to touch me."
    Then he kissed her again and was utterly lost to the unique sensation of drowning in physical pleasure. And where before he'd been filled with teenage attraction to pretty little Nicole Ross, suddenly he found himself falling crazy in love with her.
    Someone walked by him in the hospital corridor, making Wyatt remember where he was.
    "Damn," he muttered, unable to believe he'd allowed himself to mentally revisit those euphoric times before Nicole's betrayal. He'd struggled long and hard to keep those memories in the deepest quagmires of his brain. He'd thought he was completely over it...over her. But after just an hour or two in her company, he conceded that strong emotions still churned inside him toward Nicole Ross. He just didn't know what on earth he was going to do about them.
     
    Nicole slipped