More uneasy silence.
Finally Trevor sighed. “I can tell you got something else on your mind.”
“How?”
Trevor gestured to the hand Edgard jammed in his hair. “That hair thing. You still do it when you’re agitated. I remember you used to do it a lot around me.”
Jesus. It killed him that Trevor hadn’t been as aloof as he’d pretended. Or maybe Edgard had been so self-centered that he’d been aloof to Trevor’s perceptiveness.
“So spill it since we’re already hip deep in shit.”
Edgard caught himself touching his hair and dropped his hand. “I want you like fucking crazy, Trev. That hasn’t changed.”
“I know.”
“But do you know that I’m not gonna do anything about it?”
Trevor’s suspicious gaze snared his.
“I won’t be making moves on you while Chassie’s gone.”
That blue-eyed stare narrowed further.
“Betcha think that’s contrary to my behavior today?”
“Maybe a touch.”
Edgard laughed. “It’s true.”
“Lemme see if this washed-up rodeo cowboy has this right. You want me. You came all the way to Wyoming from Brazil so you could have me. Now that my wife knows what we used to be to each other, and she’s gone…you’re sittin’ on your hands?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
“I can’t believe I’m gonna ask why, but why?”
72
Lorelei James
“I’d actually hoped to feel nothin’ when I saw you again. You are everything I remembered you to be, better actually, probably as a result of marrying Chassie. She is…”
“Is what?” Trevor asked sharply.
“Sweet. She doesn’t deserve this. I never want to see that horrified look on her face again.”
That comment sent Trevor back into full retreat.
Great.
After a while, Trevor said, “Know something funny? Chassie wants us to talk. She thinks it’ll help if we get everything out in the open.”
“So she doesn’t realize that was our issue? That we couldn’t be open?”
Trevor frowned. “First time you’ve said ‘we’ in that old argument, Ed. You always blamed me for us not holdin’ hands and shit.”
“I’ve learned the hard way maybe you were right about the kinda baggage other people hide when they’re showing a different face to the world.”
When Edgard didn’t elaborate, Trevor demanded, “You gonna explain that comment? Or you gonna sit there with that smug-ass look and make me guess?”
“Trying to explain it when you’re in a piss-poor mood would be a waste of breath.”
Edgard gave Trevor a cool once-over. “And for the record, I’m not acting smug. I’m just as screwed up about all this with Chassie as you are.”
“Right. I’m sure you’re happy as shit.”
Seething, Edgard snapped, “You never had the balls to tell me how you felt when we were together every goddamn day, so don’t you ever fucking presume to tell me anything about the way I feel now when you haven’t seen me for three and a half fucking years.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Yeah, you did, so just drop it. Jesus.”
“Fine.”
“Fine,” he retorted.
Meridian grunted and her tail slapped the wall again.
73
Rough, Raw, and Ready
Time dragged on, yet there was no place Edgard would rather be than right there, even if they both were angry, frustrated and not speaking. Hell, it was practically normal for them.
Casually, Trevor remarked, “You’re playin’ with your hair again.”
Edgard lowered his hand. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Long as we’re bein’ honest and chattin’, all friendly like, I wanna know if you stabled a corral full of young studs durin’ the last few years? Or did you just pick one stallion to ride?”
For claiming to be a plainspoken man, sometimes Trevor’s verbiage confounded him. “A few one-nighters here and there. Guy named Reynaldo stuck around longer than most.”
“How long?”
Edgard shrugged. “Less than a year. I wasn’t sorry it ended, just the way it did.”
Rey’s outburst, “I won’t spend my life in the middle of a fuckin’ jungle with a dirt-covered rancher” , and Edgard had been glad to see the ass end of him.
“Bad break up with Reynaldo send you scurryin’ back to the States?”
Trevor’s tone smacked of conceit and Edgard sought to shatter his cool. “No. Rey was a great fuck. Nothin’ that boy wouldn’t do in bed. He wanted a sugar daddy, a citified papi with deep pockets. When Rey realized it wasn’t gonna be a free ride, he bailed to richer pastures. He never was worth a shit with the livestock.”