by Tara Janzen
She finished with her earrings and shrugged into her jacket on her way across the living room. The doorbell rang again, and she muttered that she was coming. She swung the door open with an apology ready on her lips, but it died there unspoken. Apologizing to Colton Haines for anything was taking charity too far. Besides, she’d suddenly lost her voice.
“Looks like I caught you at a bad time,” he said after a long moment of silence.
Yes, he had, but she couldn’t imagine when a good time might have been for him to walk back into her life. He’d left her again when he shouldn’t have, and even though he’d said good-bye, even though he’d had his reasons, she hadn’t forgiven him.
“I ought to shoot you.” Her voice came back in a rush of words she wouldn’t have consciously chosen. Still, she didn’t withdraw them. They were valid enough.
“Whatever it takes.” He stood there in his boots and his jeans and his white shirt, looking steady and strong, and ready to take whatever she might give out, good or bad.
“I—I have to get out to the fairgrounds before seven o’clock.”
“Can I take you?”
At least he’d asked. “Sure.” She couldn’t have driven herself anywhere, except into a ditch. She was going a hundred miles an hour inside, her nerves and her pulse in a dead heat for a world speed record. Damn him, sneaking up on her like that. Didn’t sailors know how to use a telephone? And what about his writing hand? Had it been broken for two damn months?
In the parking lot, he motioned her toward a metallic-blue king cab pickup truck, a new model with four-wheel drive and California plates. When they were both sitting inside, he started the engine and let it idle for a moment, turning toward her.
“Sarah, I—”
“Nice truck,” she interrupted. “King cab. You must do a lot of double-dating.”
“No,” he said, drawing the word out. “Other than you, I can’t even remember the last date I had, let alone the last double date.”
“Oh, were we dating?” She gave him a wide-eyed look of innocence. “Is that what you call it?”
She saw his mouth tighten. He turned back to the steering wheel and put the truck in gear. “You know, Sarah, I’ve always liked that little bitchy streak in you. It keeps me from getting away with murder, lets me know who’s really in charge.”
She couldn’t swear to it, but she thought she saw his mouth twitch, as if the reason he’d tightened it was to keep from grinning at her.
“Bastard.”
“I knew this wasn’t going to be easy.”
And it wasn’t. Colt had been cold-shouldered by women before, but nothing like the polar cap Sarah was showing him. At the fairgrounds she told him he didn’t have to wait, she’d be able to find her own ride home. He parked anyway and followed her through the haphazard lines of pickup trucks and horse trailers. She was heading toward the bucking chutes and, undoubtedly, Hank Cavanaugh—or worse, some other cowboy.
It turned out to be Hank, but Colt couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or not. The bronc rider had drawn a wild horse with a bad reputation. Nothing could have made him happier—except having his good-luck charm show up.
He swung Sarah up in his arms with a whoop and a holler. The cowboy was psyched, and Colt couldn’t help but grin, even when Hank laid a big kiss on her. He’d thought about Hank while he’d been back in California, telling himself there was no way Sarah would get serious with a cowboy who couldn’t stay put.
“Hey, Colton,” Hank said over Sarah’s shoulder, still holding on to her. “See you made it back all right.”
“Still in one piece,” Colt replied.
Hank whispered something in her ear, and Sarah nodded. Somehow Colt found that harder to take than the kiss, harder to take than Hank’s gloved riding hand slipping down to pat her bottom a few times.
“For luck,” the cowboy said, grinning at him.
“You might need more than you think,” he answered. He hated sounding like a macho jerk, but things between him and Sarah were too unsettled for him to be casual.
Hank just grinned and winked, then gave her one more hug before heading back to where the other riders were stretching out and getting ready behind the chutes.
Colt tried to pay for her soda and nachos at the concession stand, but she refused his offer. She did find a place in the stands where he was able to sit beside her, which he took as an encouraging step in the right direction. She wouldn’t look at him, though, and every time they accidentally brushed up against each other, she flinched.
He couldn’t recall a small action ever bothering him so much. Every time she pulled away, it hurt him. She hadn’t flinched when Hank had touched her; she’d held on to him like he was a lifeline. Like Cavanaugh was somebody she could count on not to let her down, not to leave her.
The announcer’s voice broke into his thoughts and captured his attention with the name on his mind.
“Let’s hear it for Hank Cavanaugh, folks. A top cowboy from Huron, South Dakota, in chute number two, riding Warpaint, a bronc who hasn’t been ridden in his last ten times out. But we’ve got a cowboy in there getting ready to show old Warpaint how it’s done. Come on, Hank. It’s only eight seconds’ worth of trouble.”
The chute flew open at Hank’s nod, and Warpaint came out bucking a blaze of fury. The cowboy’s spurs marked him high, and Sarah came to her feet.
“Come on, Hank. Ride him,” she whispered, her gaze trained on the spectacle of man against beast.
Colt looked up at her, and for the first time it hit him just exactly what he’d walked away from two months ago, and just exactly what it was that had made him come back. Watching her pull for her friend made him realize why he’d needed her when no one else would do. It wasn’t an indefinable love, and it was more than what he felt when they made love.
The wind caught her hair, lifting and floating the strands in gossamer trails against a blue evening sky. She turned, following the action in the arena, and sunlight caught the delicate profile of her face. She was beautiful and constant, someone to believe in, someone to count on. She knew what she valued and she took good care of those she loved—when they let her.
For a while, at different times and in different ways, he’d been part of what she valued, someone she’d loved, and those had been his finest moments.
A brief, ironic smile curved his mouth. He’d been trained to conquer, and he’d come back to the woman who left him feeling helpless. She took no prisoners. It was surrender, total and complete.
The rest of the crowd was on their feet, cheering crazily as Hank grabbed on to the pickup man whose job it was to get the cowboys off the bucking horses. He left Warpaint ridden hard and for the money. Colt watched as Hank picked his hat up out of the dirt and waved to the fans, and he added his applause to everybody else’s, rising to stand next to Sarah.
She looked at him then, willingly, and he smiled at her. He knew she was justified in keeping him at a distance. He’d screwed up, and she was going to have him on his knees before the night was over. He might as well prepare himself.
They watched the rest of the bareback riders, with Sarah keeping track of the scores to make sure Hank won with his phenomenal eighty-four point ride. He did.
“Well, that’s it,” she said when the last score was announced.
“I thought he rode saddle-broncs.”
“He used to,” she said, gathering up her nachos and purse. “But he’s started specializing, putting all his money and energy into bareback riding.”
“Are you going over to say good-bye?” Colt thought he might skip that part.
She shook her head. “He’s got a morning slack in Cheyenne tomorrow. He’s probably already left. He said he’d rather get there and sleep than have to drive early in the morning.”
Colt couldn’t fault his reasoning, yet he couldn’t help but wonder if his presence had helped decide Hank’s schedule. For the kind of miles a rodeo cowboy put on, getting from Laramie to Cheyenne wa
s a walk in the park.
“Can I take you out to dinner? For a steak somewhere?” he asked. It was a straight question. He meant nothing by it except that he wanted to sit someplace and share a meal with the woman he had never been able to forget.
She looked away, then back toward the arena, and for an awful moment he thought she was going to turn him down, tell him to get lost and never come around again.
She did.
“No. No, I don’t think so,” she said, still looking out at the arena, where the steer-wrestling was getting ready to start. As if guilt had gotten the better of her, she gave him a brief glance. “I don’t mean anything by it, Colt, really I don’t. You’re—you’re the best. I mean that. I just don’t want to go with you. Thanks for the ride.”
And with that, she was gone.
He didn’t believe it. It was impossible. There was no reason for her to leave him like that, standing in the bleachers with his heart and his pride slipping down around his ankles. She had every right to be angry, but they were supposed to talk things out, work things out. She wasn’t supposed to walk away from him.
But she was walking all right, and she already had a good ten yards on him.
He swore, one succinct word that got him a few sidelong glances, and took out after her.
He lost her once in the maze of trucks and trailers, and he knew a moment of true panic, the kind where a man’s heart lodges in his throat with the force of a piston thrust. Then he caught sight of blond hair. He skirted around a group of kids heading toward the concession stand and got tripped up on a particularly little one, tangling himself with about thirty-five pounds of pure tough.
“Hey, mister.” A bony elbow jabbed him in the knee. “Get off me.”
Colt was trying to get out from around the boy, who from Colt’s point of view looked like nothing more than a hand-me-down cowboy hat and a pair of baggy Wranglers. They sidestepped each other in the wrong direction twice, and the boy kicked him with his small pointy-toed boot. Then he burst into tears and yelled for his sister.
“Annn-nnieee!”
Colt grabbed his shin and looked up in time to get the threatening look that big sister Annie gave him. She whisked the little boy off his feet and swung him onto her hip. The whole incident took about thirty seconds—long enough for Sarah to disappear.
He took out after her again, limping the first couple of steps. Things weren’t going right. They weren’t going right at all.
He caught up with her at the fence. He reached for her, thought better of it, and with effort got ahead of her.
“Sarah.” He took a couple of steps backward as he faced her, expecting her to stop. Thankfully, she did. “Sarah. We need to talk.”
“Talk?” She looked surprised.
“Yes. I’ve got some things I have to say. Some things I need to explain . . . about why I left, and I—”
“No. You don’t need to explain anything.” Her gaze faltered. “You were right, Colt. We hurt each other too much. I’m even more guilty than you are. You don’t need to apologize. You don’t owe me explanations.”
Sarah? Hurt him? He was momentarily speechless. When she started to move away, though, he found his voice in a hurry.
“You have never hurt me.” She kept walking, and this time he did reach for her, holding her gently around her arm with his hand. “Missing you has hurt me, remembering you has hurt, but you have always been kind and loving, sweet and generous, giving me more than any person has a right to expect, and all I’m asking for is a chance.”
“A chance for what?” She looked up, her eyes filled with a guilt he didn’t understand. “A chance for some other bastard to come along and strip the skin off your back? All because you loved me? Was it worth it, Colt?” Her voice broke. “Was it worth it?”
“Yes.” His answer was as clear and steady as his gaze, which held hers. “I made you mine that first night, and it gave me a reason to believe I could make you mine again. I’m here because I love you, Sarah.”
She was quiet for a long moment, shifting her gaze from his face to the toes of her boots. “He’s lucky you didn’t kill him. I almost did myself.”
“Did Daniel tell you?”
“No. Ruby and I found the shirt in your mom’s closet. It took me a while, but I finally figured out what must have happened, and when. God, I’m sorry, Colt. I knew he was a son of a bitch, but I never dreamed he’d do anything like that. I swear. I never would have left, if I’d known. Toby or no Toby.”
Colt took her nachos and set them on the hood of the nearest truck. “You weren’t going to eat those, were you?”
“No.”
He held her hand, caressing it with his thumb. “I was going to tell you myself, later tonight, but what I was trying to explain just now was why I left you at your house in April, not why I left ten years ago.”
“I think I already know that too,” she said, carefully holding herself apart from him.
He laughed quietly. “Yeah. I guess if you thought about killing him yourself, you probably understand. It’s a scary thing, hating somebody, but it’s not near as complicated as loving somebody, especially in the long run.”
With an easy tug, she pulled her hand free. “What do you want, Colt?” Though she wouldn’t look at him, the words came out more challenge than question, like she was expecting the worst and the least of him.
He was glad that this time he could prove her wrong. “I want you. I want us together. I want to sell my land in Rock Creek and make a new start, maybe right here in Albany County. I’d like to try my hand at ranching again, and see if I’d make a good math teacher somewhere. I want kids of my own, and I want you to be their mom. I’ve been thinking that you might have wanted to pick out your own wedding rings, but that it would be better if I came with something I could put on your finger in case I got lucky and you said yes.”
“You want a lot,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“I’m a selfish bastard,” he agreed. Her nod surprised him nonetheless, compelling him to add points in his own defense. “I still have to resign my commission, but after that I’ll never leave you. I’ve got two weeks, and I want to be married before then. We can still have all the good years together.” He leaned his head to one side to look at her face. “Sarah? What do you think?” God, it had taken a lot of guts to ask that, just as it now took a lot of patience to wait for her answer.
He waited as she scuffed a mark in the dirt with the toe of her boot. He waited through a sigh that sounded heavy with indecision, and then he waited some more.
Finally she spoke.
“I think I’d like to hear the part again about why you’re here.” She looked up at him through her lashes, and he thought he detected the slightest smile on her mouth.
“That little part?” he asked. “You want to hear that little part again?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” He reached for her hand, glancing around as he pulled her into the shadows provided by the setting sun and the horse trailer they were standing next to.
When he had her situated where he wanted her, close enough to feel her breathe, her hands against his chest and the rest of her just simply and seriously pressed against him; when he had one hand caressing her waist and the other sliding through her hair; when he had her remembering how good love could be with the man who loved her, he bent his head and whispered in her ear.
“I’m here because of everything you are, everything you’ve ever been to me. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. Every time I see you, something happens inside me, and I need that something like I need air. You’re the best part of me, Sarah, and I want to be the best part of you.”
He felt her hands slide over his shoulders and meet behind his neck, and he kissed her, a light brushing of his mouth over the velvet softness of her cheek.
“I love you, Colton Haines.” Her voice was a whisper, and her arms tightened around him. “I love you.”
He was
n’t going to ask for more, but she turned toward him and their lips met. He instinctively pulled her closer. He wanted her; he never seemed to stop wanting her. He held his breath and felt the heat rising, drifting up his body, and he lowered his mouth to hers.
Sarah felt the vibrations of his groan echo in her mouth, setting off a chain reaction of impulses. He was gentle and seductive, his tongue slipping inside to taste and tease, until with the subtlest of reactions she signaled her acquiescence. He asked for more then, and took everything she gave.
She’d been so afraid of loving him, even of being with him. She’d mentally kicked herself a hundred times on the way to the rodeo for letting him drive her to the fairgrounds, for thinking she could simply accept a friendly gesture and not want more. Turning down his offer of dinner had been her one intelligent decision where he was concerned, and she’d applauded her good sense all the way across the lot. It had helped her hold back the tears she was so damn tired of crying for him.
But he’d surprised her, not with his love, but with his telling her about it. If they hadn’t somehow gotten started kissing, she was sure he’d still be telling her how he felt. Not that she was complaining. She was going to give him a lifetime of chances to say I love you, Sarah. . . . I’m here because I love you.
Colt slipped his hands down over her hips and cupped her buttocks, caressing the slope from her waist to her thighs, feeling the firm, erotic curves. It was almost too much, yet it wasn’t nearly enough. He moved his hands to a place that didn’t give him such crazy ideas and broke off the kiss. It was survival time.
“This means yes, right?”
“Yes?” she asked, wonderfully breathless.
“You’ll marry me.” He gave it to her as a statement of fact, but was still gratified to hear her answer.
“Yes.”
“And I can take you home?” He wasn’t taking anything for granted.
“Yes.”
“And I can stay with you there, tonight?” He was taking absolutely nothing for granted. “It’s been a long two months. I would have written, but I was on a submarine most of the time, and my love life is not considered priority mail.”
