Montana Dreaming (Home On The Ranch)
Page 27
“I leave here in less than a month.”
“I know that.”
Jessie’s chin trembled. “I’ll be gone for a long time.”
“I expect you’ll visit us once in a while. There’s summers…”
“More than a year.”
“More than a year,” he agreed.
“We’ll both be different. We’ll change.”
“I’ll certainly be older and wiser and handsomer, and maybe I’ll have walked my way right out of this limp,” he said.
Her eyes stung. She blinked hard, bit her lower lip and tried to push back the emotions that threatened to dissolve her, but suddenly it seemed foolish to hide how she really felt from the man who knew her better than anyone on the face of the earth.
“I don’t want to leave this place,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper.
“I know that. But you won’t be gone forever. And when you come back, you’ll have so much to give to this community.”
“What if you find somebody else while I’m gone?”
Guthrie was shaken to his soul. He reached for her, and this time she didn’t move away. He gripped her shoulders and stared into her dark tear-filled eyes. “When hell freezes over,” he said. “I won’t ever quit you, Jess. Not ever again.” He drew her into his arms and she allowed him to hold her close, and her arms slipped around him and it was the sweetest thing he’d felt in a long, long time. He bent his head over hers and breathed the sweet essence of her, felt the strength and the vulnerability and the courage in her slender, trembling body. “Would you mind too awful much coming back home for holidays and school breaks?” he murmured.
“I will,” she said, her voice muffled against his shoulder and choked with tears. “And would you mind coming to visit me any chance you get?”
“I’m sure something can be arranged. Colorado. That’s someplace south of here, isn’t it? Downhill and easygoin’ all the way….”
She pushed away, gently disentangling herself from his embrace. “I have to go,” she said, wiping the tears from her face with her palms. He watched with confusion and concern as she turned and fumbled for the door. “I have to go,” she repeated, looking over her shoulder at him as if he would surely understand why she did. But he didn’t. He shook his head, moving as if to stop her. “I’ll be back,” she said, and whirled away, fleeing everything she wanted and needed, and everything she feared.
“Life is short, Jess,” he called after her, his guts twisting in his anguish at her leaving. “Don’t be too long!”
He stood in the doorway while she ran to her truck and climbed into the cab. The truck’s engine caught, headlights blazed on, and she backed out, turned, and then he was watching the truck’s taillights dwindle into the darkness.
He stood there with the door open long enough to chill the cabin down, while Blue leaned her shoulder against his leg and thrust her cold nose against his hand, and he stood there still, filled with a kind of pathos and melancholy that he thought might make him cry. Stood and listened to the tumbling waters of Bear Creek, to the tug of the night wind through the spruce near the cabin. Stood and listened to the stillness of a big and lonely land.
And then he heard something else. The sound of the truck coming back. Headlights swept across the cabin’s porch. The truck pulled to a stop and the engine cut out. Silence stretched out for a long moment, while he waited with bated breath and dared not hope. Then the door wrenched open and a slender figure emerged, to walk swift and sure to the foot of the porch steps and climb them one by one. She stood before him and looked at him with those fine, steady eyes that spoke to him in a way that made his heart jump.
“You came back for Blue?” he said.
She shook her head. “For you,” she said. “I came back for you.”
He took her hand and drew her from the cold, lonely darkness into the warmth and light within.
ISBN: 978-14592-4057-5
MONTANA DREAMING
Copyright © 2002 by Penny Gray.
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.
Visit us at www.eHarlequin.com