The Brazen (Calamity Montana)

SHE WAS one of the most beautiful sights I’d seen in months. Kerrigan had been a constant on my mind since December. Countless hours of picturing her face hadn’t helped me let her go. And damn it, I’d tried.

Then that fucking check had shown up last week.

Nellie had brought me the payoff report and when I’d seen Kerrigan’s name on it, paid in full, I’d immediately started making plans for this trip.

Fuck this distance. Fuck this decision of mine. It wasn’t right. No woman had ever stuck with me like Kerrigan, and I wasn’t going to let her check be the last thing between us.

So here I was in Calamity, hoping I could convince her to listen. Hoping that maybe she thought about me as much as I thought about her.

Apparently not, since she’d been on a goddamn date.

Talk about a knife to the heart.

That pissant she’d been with earlier had competition. I hadn’t come all this way to walk away. I’d tried that once and it hadn’t worked.

Now I was here until I won her back.

Or she asked me to leave.

“Can we talk?” I asked.

She nodded. “Sure. Where?”

“Your place?”

“Okay. I walked to work today.”

“Then I’ll drive.” I turned and strode across the street to where my new Mercedes SUV was parked.

When I’d arrived in town, my first stop had been the gym. The receptionist at the counter had told me that Kerrigan had gone to the art gallery, so I’d trekked there next. The pregnant woman who’d greeted me at the gallery had given me a head-to-toe inspection before finally telling me that Kerrigan had gone to dinner at the café.

I’d been on my way there, ready to interrupt her meal, when I’d spotted her walking with the pissant.

She’d sent him away, and for now, I was taking that as a good sign.

We reached my SUV, and I opened her door for her, crowding her a bit and drawing in a long breath of her hair. God, she smelled good. I’d forgotten that sweet scent.

She hesitated, staring up at me, before taking her seat. But once she was in the vehicle, she kept her eyes down, her expression neutral.

Part of me wished she’d scream and yell, that I’d get some reaction from her, even if it was negative. Maybe she was saving it for her house. I’d find out soon enough. Rounding the hood, I climbed in behind the wheel and reversed out of my parking space.

“Do you remember where it is?” she asked.

“Yes.” There wasn’t a moment I’d spent in Calamity or with Kerrigan that I’d forgotten.

Even the moments when I hadn’t physically been here, when I’d been states away, there was always that tie. Because she’d been with me. On my mind. In my heart.

The atmosphere in the car was thick as we drove. I clutched the wheel and bit my tongue, holding in everything I had to tell her until we were inside.

When I parked in front of her house, I took in the changes she’d made. Months ago, this home had been burgundy. But now, under the fading evening sunlight, the fresh white paint glowed.

Like the other projects she’d tackled and posted on Instagram, I’d kept track of them all. My chest swelled with pride whenever she gained a new follower. Her captions were witty and funny. Her photos were better than some designers who’d been doing this for decades. And her style was unique and impeccable. Maybe she’d done this as a whim or hobby, but her potential was endless.

It had been torture not sending her account to a famous designer I knew in Southern California. Except I suspected Kerrigan would want to do this on her own for a while.

Thank fuck, she hadn’t posted any pictures of the boyfriend on social media.

Just the image of his hand on her back made my skin crawl. I wasn’t a violent person but I’d been seconds away from ripping that son of a bitch’s arm out of its socket.

She was mine.

“Are you, um . . . coming inside?” Kerrigan asked.

I loosened my grip on the steering wheel. I’d been sitting there, staring down the street and imagining a one-armed Jacob. “Yeah.”

As she hopped out, I turned off the rig and drew in a long breath. The nerves I’d been fighting had subsided thanks to jealousy. But they roared to new life now that we were here.

Now that the explanation I was terrified to give was only moments away.

I followed her inside, giving her space in the entryway to shrug off her coat. “You’re too thin.”

Her face whipped to mine. Her lovely cheeks were too hollow. Her eyes had dark circles and the shirt she wore with those skin-tight leggings showed the bones of her shoulders.

I reached out, unable to stop myself, and fit my palm to her cheek.

Kerrigan’s eyes flared and for the briefest second, she leaned into my touch. Then she was gone, slipping from my grasp.

“Are you sick?” I asked, following her to the living room.

She shook her head and held up her chin. “No. It’s just been . . . it was a hectic winter.”

“There’s that brave face I admire so much.” I stepped in closer. “You wear it for everyone. You don’t need to wear it for me.”

Her lips parted.

Maybe shocking her wasn’t the best way to handle this, but tonight, I wasn’t holding a damn thing back. If it came to mind, it was coming out of my mouth. “You’re beautiful.”

She swallowed hard. “What do you want, Pierce?”

“To talk.”

“Okay.” She rounded the couch and took a seat on a chair.

I would have preferred we sit together, but her guard was up and space might be a good thing for what I was about to tell her.

“You’ve done an amazing job with this place.”

“Thanks.” A smile tugged at her mouth. “It’s been fun.”

Based on her photos from Instagram, I’d expected to find her happier. Lighter. It could just be the shock from seeing me, but on the street earlier, there’d been a hollowness to her expression. And it wasn’t just from the weight she’d lost.

Yet as she glanced at the painted walls and the refinished fireplace, the happiness I’d expected shone through her eyes.

“I’ve been following you.”

She blinked. “You have?”

“I have.” I nodded. “It’s fantastic. Truly. I’ve seen a lot of people pitch social media accounts over the years and yours is so real, so undeniably you, it’s incredible, Kerr.”

Her eyes turned glassy as she swallowed hard. “Thank you.”

“Why didn’t you keep the farmhouse?”

“It was time to let it go. I wasn’t actually sure I’d even get an offer, but when it came, I knew in my heart that it was the right decision.”

“You didn’t need to pay off your loan.”

“Yes, I did.” She sighed. “You were right. I was overextended. And as much as I appreciate what you’ve done, I don’t want to be tied.”

“Tied to me.”

She met my gaze and her barely-there nod slashed deep.

“You’re dating.”

“No.” She scoffed. “Well, yes. But no. Jacob is an old family friend and we’ve gone out a bit over the past month.”

“Is it serious?” I had no business asking but I was going to anyway.

“No.”

The air rushed from my lungs. Thank fuck. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize. You were honest from the start that you weren’t in a position for a relationship.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t want you all the same.”

Her entire body stilled like she feared to breathe.

“I’d like to explain. If you’ll let me.”

“Okay.”

I leaned forward on my elbows and started at the beginning. “Heidi and I met in college. We dated for a couple of years, and I proposed after graduation. A year later, we were married.”

It was entirely predictable and what most of my friends had done too.

“I was working for Barlowe Capital at the time and determined to prove myself. That I was good enough to be an executive there, not just a token VP because I was Gabriel Barlowe’s grandson.”

Kerrigan sat deeper in her chair, pulling her knees into her chest. She looked like I was going to hurt her.

Because I had hurt her.

And for that, I’d always be sorry. This story might hurt too, but she deserved to know the truth. Even if I was four months too late.

“Heidi was dedicated to her own career,” I said. “We both worked a lot. A few years into our marriage, she came to me and said we were drifting apart. That we needed more to our family and she wanted to try for a baby.”

There were so many things I wished I had done differently with her. Mostly, I wished I had been honest. With Heidi. And myself.

A baby hadn’t been the right decision, but I’d gone along with it. Neither of us had been happy. We’d gotten married because it had been convenient and the next logical step, not because we’d been passionately in love.

“There were complications. For years, we tried. Heidi didn’t ovulate regularly so eventually we went to a specialist. The hormones. The doctor appointments. The shots. We got pregnant three times and had a miscarriage with each within weeks. It was hard for me. But it destroyed Heidi.”

Kerrigan gasped, her hand coming to her mouth. “Oh, Pierce. I’m so sorry.”

I’d never forget her confession at the mountain house. She knew that pain. And as she stared at me, her eyes full of tears, there was so much sympathy in her face for both Heidi and me that if I hadn’t already fallen for her, I would have that very second.

“She decided on surrogacy,” I said. “The first attempt was another miscarriage. After that . . . we totally fell apart. For the first time, we sat down and talked. She was unhappy. I was unhappy. I didn’t know it at the time, but she’d been sleeping with my grandfather.”

“When did you catch them together?”

“A couple of weeks later. We’d been dancing around the idea of separating, just hadn’t pulled the trigger yet. Then I walked in on them together and divorce was the next discussion.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I think they’d planned to hide it from me, then maybe tell me after the divorce. I don’t know.” I raked a hand through my hair, taking a moment. “We had given our fertility specialist permission to try again with the surrogate. In all the drama with Grandpa and Heidi, I forgot about it. Crazy as it sounds, I just . . . forgot. There was so much more happening and I assumed that while we were negotiating the divorce, Heidi would shut that all down.”

Kerrigan’s eyes widened as she put it together. “The surrogate got pregnant.”

“Two weeks after I found out about the affair, Heidi called and told me that Jasmine, she was our surrogate, was pregnant. My son was born the day I called you in December. The day I was going to fly here to see you again.”

Her jaw dropped. “You . . . you have a baby?”

“Elias.” I pulled my phone from my pocket and scrolled to the latest photo I’d taken yesterday before the drive to Montana. He was lying under a mobile, smiling a toothless grin as he played with his toes. I handed it to Kerrigan.

Her face softened as she took in the picture. “He’s beautiful. He looks like you.”

Elias had my dark eyes and a mat of dark hair. He’d been born with both and they hadn’t changed. “Not exactly how I imagined having a family but he’s the best, most incredible gift to come from that mess.”

My only wish was that Heidi could have been here to meet him.

“I didn’t handle the pregnancy well,” I told her. “Actually, I didn’t handle it at all. Heidi chose the name when we found out that the baby was a boy. Heidi went to all of Jasmine’s doctor’s appointments and ultrasounds. I just . . . avoided it. All of it. I was so furious with her and Grandpa. I was even angrier when they stayed together.”

“Well, yeah. Who wouldn’t be angry? You had every right.” There was a fire in her now as she spoke. A fire for me.

“Heidi let me check out of the pregnancy. I always intended to be a part of my son’s life, but I needed time to get my head around it all. How to parent with an ex-wife—an ex-wife sleeping with my grandfather. How to know that she’d betrayed me in every possible way. How to ever forgive her or Grandpa. Then . . .”

“The plane crash.” Kerrigan pressed a hand to her heart.

“One day I was furious with them. The next, they were both gone and I was still angry.” And sad.

Heidi would never get to meet the baby boy she’d loved before he’d ever taken his first breath.

“I was hurt. And instead of dealing with the pain or coming to terms with being a single dad, I focused on what I knew. Business. It was the one thing in my life that I could control. Grandpa left me his company and all I wanted was to erase it all. To consume it. I wanted every piece of him gone because it was easier to blame him than deal with how much I regretted that he’d died and the last words I’d ever spoken to him were in hate.”

The lump in my throat started to choke me so I dropped my eyes, staring at the coffee table. “I didn’t do a damn thing right.”

“That’s why you came here and gave me that letter.”

“You were special to him. I hated that you were special. Then I got here and . . . I saw it. I saw why he’d loved you. And that just made me even angrier.”

“I couldn’t believe it.” She huffed a laugh. “That day on the street, I just couldn’t believe you were the Pierce I’d been told so much about. But it makes sense now.”

“I’m so fucking grateful that you pushed and pushed. You were there, and without you, I would have had more regrets.”

The ashes. Going through the lodge. I would have tossed the ashes and the photos and, later, despised myself for it.

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” she asked.

I sighed. “Can you imagine how that conversation would have gone? I wasn’t even sure how I was going to deal with any of it, let alone ask you to take it on.”

There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she would have been there to support me. But I’d needed to take this on. I’d needed to come to terms with it.

“Elias had to be my focus.”

“And I would have been what? A distraction?”

“No, a crutch,” I admitted. “I would have leaned on you. Too much. I was afraid, Kerr. I was goddamn terrified. I couldn’t fail. And the only way I knew I wouldn’t fail him, fail you, was to put some blinders on and just focus.”

It had been the same way with my business. It had been scary and intimidating to start my own company, to know that if I failed, it would be on my shoulders. So I’d put on blinders and worked my ass off. Those blinders had been the reason I hadn’t seen my marriage crumbling around my feet. I’d been too busy staring at the stars.

“Why are you here now, Pierce?”

“Because I can’t stop thinking about you. Because you sent me that check and the idea that I’d lost you sent me into a blind panic. So I came, as quickly as possible, because I had to see you. I made a mistake walking away. I don’t plan to do it again.”

“This is . . . crazy.” She shook her head. “We don’t even know each other.”

“I disagree. We know each other.” We knew what mattered. Maybe I didn’t know everything but that was the fun part about spending your life with a person: learning something new, each and every day.

Kerrigan shifted, giving me her profile as she stared at the wall. “Where is your son?”

“At the motel.”

Her face whipped back to mine. “He’s here?”

I shrugged. “I wasn’t going to leave him in Colorado. He’s at the motel with the nanny.”

“Oh.” She picked at some invisible lint on the knee of her leggings. “I don’t know what to do with all of this.”

“That’s fair.” Fair, but I did not like the tone of her voice. It sounded a lot like I’d be leaving here with a hole in my chest.

“Thank you for telling me,” she whispered.

I’d been in enough meetings to recognize the end of a discussion, but I couldn’t bring myself to get off this couch. So I stared at her as she stared back.

All I wanted was to take her in my arms and hold her. To feel her lips against mine and show her that everything would be different this time around. It would be better.

No more secrets. No more hesitation.

My life was exponentially more complicated than it had been. A baby did that effortlessly. But we had a shot. This—us—was worth a second chance.

“You’d better get back to the motel.” She untucked herself from her chair, then stood and walked to the door.

Fuck.

Following on leaden feet, I joined her beside the new coat rack she’d posted about last week.

She stood with her eyes cast to the floor, looking anywhere but at me.

I reached for the doorknob, ready to take my leave, but stopped.

This wasn’t how I was leaving. Not tonight. She could be pissed at me for pushing, but I didn’t care. I needed to see that spark in her eyes. I needed her to remember just how good we’d been.

So I took her face in my hands, tilting it up. Then I smashed my lips against hers, swallowing a gasp as my tongue stroked across her lower lip. A jolt of electricity raced through my veins, spreading with a fire that was wholly Kerrigan’s.

She clung to my forearms, holding me to her.

My knees nearly buckled when her tongue snaked out and the tip touched mine. Then I slanted my mouth over hers, taking a deeper taste, until I knew if I didn’t pull back, I’d sweep her up and carry her to the bedroom.

I broke away and dropped my forehead to hers. “What do you want? Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.”

“I don’t know,” she breathed. “I don’t know what to do with all of this.”

Not that long ago, I’d felt exactly the same way. Time. We needed time. So I dropped a kiss to her temple, and without another word, I let her go and walked outside.

Kerrigan stood in the open doorway as I pulled away from the curb, her silhouette limned by the house’s golden light. Her hand was pressed to her lips.

This wasn’t over.

Not yet. Not ever.

Not by a long shot.