Star Valley Winter

by RaeAnne Thayne

  He wanted to be angry at her. He had been for a day or two, and the thunder and fury had been much easier to deal with than this constant, aching sadness that settled in his bones and weighed down his heart.

  Why was she being so stubborn about this? He knew she loved him. She never would have given herself to him so sweetly, passionately, if she didn’t. He couldn’t make her admit it, though. Not when she so obviously wanted to deny her feelings, to him and to herself.

  A couple of giggles sounded behind him, distracting him from the grimness of his thoughts, and he turned to find Lucy and Dylan being teased by Jess. The girls both wore dresses for a change and had put their hair up, and they looked entirely too grown up for his peace of mind.

  “Hey, big brother.” Jess grinned. “I think we need to escort these lovely ladies out on the dance floor. What do you say?”

  The girls giggled again, and he summoned a smile for their benefit. “I think we’d be stupid not to grab the two prettiest girls here while we have the chance.”

  Jess had already snagged Lucy so Matt obligingly held his arm out to Dylan, who took it with a blush that reminded him painfully of her mother. Out on the dance floor, she stumbled around awkwardly for a moment then quickly lost her shyness and started jabbering away about her favorite subject, horses.

  “My mom says maybe I can get a horse in the summer, when I’d have more time to take care of him and learn to ride him. That would be so cool. Then I could ride with Lucy around the ranch without anybody having to worry about us getting into trouble.”

  Like that day would ever come. The two of them invented the word. “I’ll believe that when I see it,” he teased.

  Ellie’s daughter giggled again. “Well, we wouldn’t get into trouble because I don’t know how to ride, anyway.”

  He smiled and twirled her around. Dylan was a great kid, despite her mischievous streak. Full of spunk and fire, just like her mother. He thought of the night she had spent frightened and alone in a concrete room because of that bastard Nichols and saw red again. Good thing the man was in the county jail awaiting sentencing after his guilty plea. Maybe by the time he was released, Matt might have cooled down enough to keep from beating the hell out of him.

  “Oh, look,” Dylan said suddenly. “There’s my mom.”

  She pulled her hand from his arm and started waving vigorously to someone behind him, and he turned and found Ellie standing alone on the edge of the dance floor.

  In the low, shimmering light, her green eyes looked huge. Haunted.

  “Doesn’t she look pretty?” Dylan asked innocently, and he dared another look. Like her daughter, Ellie wore a dress—a soft, sapphire-blue clingy thing that flared and bunched in all the right places.

  He cleared his throat, but his voice still came out gruff. “Very,” he said.

  “I told her she’d be a lot prettier if she’d smile once in a while,” Dylan said, sounding like a middle-aged, nagging mother instead of a nine-year-old, “but she hasn’t been doing much of that lately.”

  “No?” He tried to sound casual and disinterested, even though the little scamp had his full attention, and she probably knew it.

  “She’s been really sad,” Dylan said. “She even cries at night sometimes after I’m in bed, so I know something must be really wrong. My mom never cries.”

  His heart stuttered in his chest at the thought of Ellie crying alone in her house.

  Damn stubborn woman. If she was hurting, it was her own fault. Didn’t she know how absolutely right they were for each other? He needed her to bring lightness and laughter into his life, to keep him from taking himself too seriously.

  And she needed him to show her nobody expected her to bear the whole weight of the world by herself.

  “Maybe you could talk to her, or ask her to dance, even. You’re friends, aren’t you? That might make her feel better.”

  Dylan’s green eyes shone with hope, and he hated to douse it, but he was pretty sure he was the last person on earth Ellie wanted to talk to right about now.

  On second thought, maybe that’s just what he needed to do. He’d told her he wouldn’t grovel. But just trying to talk some sense into her wasn’t really the same, was it?

  He had to try. Even if he looked like a lovesick fool, he had to try. Much more of this heartache was going to destroy both of them.

  As soon as the dance was over, he would grab her, he decided, yank her into a dark corner and kiss her until she came to her senses.

  But when the music ended and he walked Dylan back to Lucy and Jess, Ellie was nowhere to be found.

  * * *

  She couldn’t do this.

  Ellie stood outside the side door of the school breathing the February night air and praying the bitter cold would turn her heart to ice, would take away this pain.

  She pressed a palm to her chest, breathing hard with the effort it took to regain control of her emotions. Seeing Matt tonight—looking so strong and gorgeous in his black dress jeans and Western-cut shirt—had been bad enough. Watching him spin around the dance floor while Dylan smiled at him like he’d just handed her the stars had been excruciating.

  They looked like they belonged together—like they all belonged together—and she knew she had to escape.

  What a fool she had been to think she could handle seeing him tonight without falling apart. She had spent three weeks trying to get through each day without thinking about him more than once every five minutes. Of course the shock of seeing him would be an assault to her senses, especially surrounded by all the trappings of the most romantic day of the year.

  How was she going to get through this? They lived in a small, tight-knit community and were bound to bump into each other occasionally. Would it get easier in time or would her heart continue to pound out of her chest and her pulse rate skyrocket every time she saw him?

  What could she do? She wasn’t sure she had the strength to endure seeing him every week or even every month, not if it made her feel as if her heart were being sliced open again and again.

  Yet she couldn’t leave. She had a job here, a business that was booming now that people in town knew how Steve had tried to blacken her reputation. She and Dylan had a life now, and she couldn’t walk away from that.

  She blew out another breath. She could handle this. She was a strong and capable woman who could do anything she set her mind to.

  Except stop loving Matthew Harte.

  The door at her back was suddenly thrust out, and for one terrible moment she was afraid he had followed her outside. To her vast relief, Sarah McKenzie peeked her pretty blond head out the door.

  “Ellie! I was wondering where you ran off to.”

  “I just needed a little air.” A vast understatement. If she’d been any more breathless watching Matt dance with her little girl, she would have needed to yank old Bessie Johnson’s portable oxygen tank right out from under her and steal a few puffs.

  Concern darkened the schoolteacher’s brown eyes. “Everything okay?”

  “Sure.” Ellie managed a smile. “I’ve been running all night and I just needed a breather.”

  “That’s why I came to find you. I had to tell you what a fantastic job you and Matt did organizing this evening. I’ve had so many comments from people telling me it’s the best carnival they’ve ever attended, and they can’t remember having such a good time.”

  “I’m glad people are enjoying themselves.”

  “And the bottom line is that we’ve already raised twice what we were expecting for tonight! The school library will have more books than shelf space now.”

  Ellie smiled. “Maybe next year you can raise enough money to build a whole new library.”

  “I hope you’ll help us again next year. You and Matt both.”

  Sure. When monkeys fly out of my ears. “Let’s get through tonight befor
e we worry about next year.”

  “Well, I just wanted you to know how good you have been for Salt River. This town needed shaking up. I’m so glad you’re staying—we would all miss you very much if you left.”

  After Sarah slipped inside the school, Ellie stood looking at the rugged mountains glowing in the pale moonlight and thinking about what she had said. If she had given anything to the town, she had received it all back and then some.

  She thought of all the people she had come to care about in the months since she had come to Wyoming. Sarah. SueAnn. The rest of the friends she had made on the carnival committee, and the people—some perfect strangers—who had rallied around her after Dylan’s kidnapping, bringing food and offers of help and comfort beyond measure.

  Her life would have been so much poorer without all of them.

  She stared at the mountains as the truth she had refused to see finally slammed into her.

  She needed them. All of them.

  How stupid she had been. She thought she was so damned independent, so self-sufficient. But she would have crumbled into nothing after Dylan was taken if not for the people of Salt River she had come to love.

  She had been trying so hard to stand on her own two feet that she never realized she would have fallen over long ago if it hadn’t been for the people around her providing quiet, unquestioning support.

  The door pushed open behind her once more, and she thought it would be Sarah again or one of the other committee members. She turned with a teary smile that fell away instantly at the sight of Matt standing in the open doorway, looking strong and solid and wonderful.

  Her heart began a painful fluttering in her chest when she thought of how she had wounded him by rejecting the incredible gift of his love.

  He had been right. She had pushed him away because she was afraid of needing, of trusting. It had all been for nothing, though. She had needed him from the very beginning, his slow smile, his strength, his love. Especially his love.

  She had just been too stubborn to admit it.

  Tears choked her again and she suddenly knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he would never hurt her. He would protect her heart like he had tried to protect her body that day in Steve’s office, by placing himself in front of anything that threatened her.

  “Hi,” she whispered.

  He continued to study her, his beautiful, hard face as still as the mountains, and for one terrible moment she was afraid that her epiphany had come too late. That she had lost any chance she might have had.

  Then she saw his eyes.

  They looked at her with hurt and hunger and a vast, aching tenderness, and she forgot to breathe.

  “It’s frigid out here,” he finally said. “Come inside. Are you crazy?”

  A tear slid down her nose, and she quickly swiped at it before it could freeze there. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. Completely crazy. I must be or I wouldn’t be so miserable right now.”

  He said nothing, just continued watching her, and she gathered up that courage he seemed to think she had in spades and took a step forward. “I’m sorry, Matt. I’m so sorry.”

  He stared at her for several seconds, blue eyes wide with disbelief, then she was in his arms. Her heart exploded with joy as he kissed her, his mouth fierce and demanding.

  “I have to say this,” she said, when she could think straight again. She pulled away and wrapped her cold hands around the warmth of his fingers. “You were right the other night. I didn’t want to let you help me, to let you inside. I think I knew even from the beginning that you would have the power to destroy me if I let you.”

  “I never would,” he murmured.

  “I know. I should have realized it then, but I’m afraid I don’t have much experience with this whole love thing.”

  His eyes turned wary suddenly, and she realized she had never given him the words. “I love you, Matt,” she said softly. “I love the way you smile at your daughter and the way you take care of your horses and the way you hold me like you never want to let me go. I love you fiercely and I hate so much that I hurt you.”

  Emotions blazed out of his blue eyes. “I’m tough. I’ll survive. Just don’t do it again, okay?”

  Another tear slipped down her cheek. “I won’t. I swear it.”

  His thumb traced the pathway of that lone tear. “Dylan says you never cry.”

  She sniffed. “See all the bad habits you’re making me develop?”

  A soft laugh rumbled out of him, then his face grew serious. “I want everything, Ellie,” he warned. “Marriage, kids, the whole thing. I won’t settle for less. Are you ready for that?”

  She thought of a future with him, of making a home together among these mountains she loved, of raising their daughters together—and maybe adding a few sons along the way with their father’s eyes and his strength and his smile.

  She couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful. In answer, she lifted her mouth to his and wrapped her arms tightly around him.

  His exultant laugh rang out through the cold February night. “Come on. Let’s go inside where it’s warm and tell the girls. Hell, let’s tell the whole world.”

  She went still in his arms, suddenly horrified. “Oh, no. The girls.”

  He shrugged. “What’s the problem? This is what they wanted all along. They figured out we belonged together months before we did.”

  “That’s what I mean.” She groaned again. “They are going to be completely insufferable when they find out how well their devious little plan worked.”

  He winced. “Good point. So what do we do about it?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything we can do, just accept the fact that our nine-year-old daughters are smarter than either of us.”

  “That’s a terrifying thought.”

  “Get used to it, Harte. I have a feeling the two of them are going to make our life extremely interesting.”

  His smile soaked through her, filling every empty corner of her heart with sweet, healing peace. “I can’t wait,” he murmured.

  She smiled and took the hand he offered. “Neither can I, Matt. Neither can I.”

  * * * * *

  SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM

  Army doctor Eli Sanderson always had a thing for Melissa Fielding so when he returns home to Cannon Beach, Oregon, he’s determined to make a move. After a divorce and her own need to start over, will Melissa’s walls be insurmountable?

  Read on for a sneak preview of

  A Soldier’s Return,

  the newest book in

  New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne’s

  Women of Brambleberry House miniseries.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Some days, a girl reached a point where her best course of action was to run away from her problems.

  Melissa Fielding hung up the phone after yet another unproductive discussion with her frustrating ex-husband, drew in a deep, cleansing breath, then threw on her favorite pair of jogging shoes.

  Yes, she had a million things to do. The laundry basket spilled over with clothes, she had bills to pay, dirty dishes filled her sink, and she was scheduled to go into the doctor’s office where she worked in less than two hours.

  None of that mattered right now. She had too much energy seething through her, wave after wave like the sea pounding Cannon Beach during a storm.

  Even Brambleberry House, the huge, rambling Victorian where she and her daughter lived in the first-floor apartment, seemed too small right now.

  She needed a little good, hard exercise to work some of it off or she would be a stressed, angry mess at work.

  She and Cody had been divorced for three years, separated four, but he could still make her more frustrated than anybody else on earth. Fortunately, their seven-year-old daughter, Skye, was at school, so she didn’t have to witness her parents arguing yet again.

  She yanked open her
apartment door to head for the outside door when it opened from the other side. Rosa Galvez, her de facto landlady who ran the three-unit building for her aunt and a friend, walked inside, arms loaded with groceries.

  Her friend took one look at Melissa’s face and frowned. “Uh-oh. Bad morning?” Rosa asked, her lovely features twisted with concern.

  Now that she was off the phone, the heat of Melissa’s anger cooled a degree or two, but she could still feel the restless energy spitting and hissing through her like a downed power line.

  “You know how it goes. Five minutes on the phone with my ex and I either have to punch something, spend an hour doing yoga or go for a hard run on the beach. I don’t have a free hour and punching something would be counterproductive, so a good run is the winner.” Melissa took two bags of groceries from Rosa and led the way up the stairs to the other woman’s third-floor apartment.

  “Run an extra mile or two for me, would you?” Rosa asked.

  “Sure thing.”

  “What does he want this time?”

  She sighed. “It’s a long story.” She didn’t want to complain to her friend about Cody. It made her sound bitter and small, and she wasn’t, only frustrated at all the broken promises and endless disappointments.

  Guilt, an old, unwelcome companion, poked her on the shoulder. Her daughter loved her father despite his failings. Skye couldn’t see what Melissa did—that even though Skye was only seven, there was a chance she was more mature than her fun-loving, thrill-chasing father.

  She ignored the guilt, reminding herself once more there was nothing she could do about her past mistakes but continue trying to make the best of things for her child’s sake.

  Rosa opened the door to her wide, window-filled apartment, and Melissa wasn’t surprised to find Rosa’s much-loved dog, an Irish setter named Fiona, waiting just inside.

  “Can I take Fiona on my run?” she asked impulsively, after setting the groceries in the kitchen.

  “That would be great!” Rosa exclaimed. “We were going to go on a walk as soon as I put the groceries away, but she would love a run much more. Thank you! Her leash is there on the hook.”