Harvest at Mustang Ridge

by Jesse Hayworth

  That would be a no. Standing, she crumpled the empty marshmallow bag and stuck it in her pocket. “Well, that’s that, then. Might as well clean up and call it a night.”

  “Whuff.” The quiet canine greeting came from the darkness, sending heat careening through her at a rate far greater than warranted by the bonfire.

  She turned just as Klepto padded into the pool of firelight, followed a moment later by Wyatt. The dog zigzagged with his nose down, hunting graham cracker crumbs, while his human master hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his worn jeans. He was bareheaded, wearing a denim work shirt unbuttoned over a white tee, and looked like everything she shouldn’t still want.

  “I didn’t think you were coming,” she said, going for a noncommittal tone that ruined itself with a quiver.

  His eyes searched hers. “I told myself not to. Yet here I am.”

  “Here you are,” Krista echoed, suddenly very aware of the fire’s warmth on her front, the lake’s chill at her back, and the darkened windows of the cabins and main house. “Why is that, exactly?”

  “I can only erase the same dog so many times before it gets stuck on the page.”

  “That sounds strangely profound.”

  “Wasn’t meant to. I’m sketching concepts—at least I’m trying to.” In a low, mellow drawl that threatened to wrap around her and paint pictures in her mind, he told her his idea of building a cowboy and his horse camped alone at the edge of the frontier. “It’s not working for me, though, any more than it did before. It’s gotten so bad that I even started playing with the idea of switching it around, so the horse was making coffee and the cowboy was standing off to the side, wearing the saddle and bridle.”

  “Which would be . . . interesting.”

  His teeth flashed. “Admit it. You’re thinking it would be fifty-fifty whether it would creep the heck out of the museum patrons or make them think of poker-playing dogs.”

  “Actually, I was thinking it’s really weird to be out here with you, talking like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like we’re friends.” She faced him fully, so it felt like they were a couple of gunslingers squaring off outside a long-ago saloon. “What do you really want, Wyatt? Why are you really out here?” Because her gut said there was more to it than him needing to stretch his legs, frustrated that his work wasn’t going well.

  12

  “I’m . . .” Wyatt paused, needing to get this right. Because some time after erasing the dog for the sixth time, he had found himself looking down at a whole new sketch. And, staring at it, he had known what he needed to do. “How much do you remember me telling you about my old man?”

  Her expression tightened. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “I’m not so sure about that.” He closed the distance between them, so he could smell rain-soaked wildflowers and see the wariness in her eyes. Even without their bodies touching, he could feel the stir of energy between them, could see the change in her expression that said she felt it, too. “Work with me here.”

  After an endless moment that lasted from one pulse thud to the next, she said, “I knew he was a bull rider, like you, and that he wasn’t around much when you were growing up. And that after Ashley was born, he stopped coming around at all, leaving you to pick up the slack.”

  He wished he could say the bull riding was where the similarities stopped. “I’d like to tell you more of it, if you’re willing to listen.”

  She hesitated so long he thought she was going to tell him to jump in the nearby lake. But then she gestured to a couple of chairs near the fire. “Want to sit? Toast a marshmallow?”

  He sat, accepted a stick, and stuck on a couple of the Stay Pufts she offered, not because he was hungry, but because he figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a reason to stare into the fire. When Krista loaded a stick and took the chair beside him so they were shoulder to shoulder, studying their toasting marshmallows, he figured they looked like a couple of fishing buddies waiting for a bite. Except that they weren’t fishing, and the buddy thing was debatable.

  After a moment, she said, “So? I’m listening.”

  The fire hissed and popped. After a moment, he began. “My old man wasn’t just a bull rider. He rode broncs, worked the gates, did setup and teardown . . . pretty much anything it took to keep him on the rodeo circuit year-round. California, Texas, Mexico, he didn’t care as long as he wasn’t stuck at home with me and Ma.” In the single-wide that was all she could afford on a cashier’s salary. “When I was little, he’d visit every month or so. Ma would set out her grandma’s dishes, scrub extra hard behind my ears, and put on her best dress and fancy perfume. And while we waited, she’d tell me about all the bulls he’d ridden the full eight seconds while he was away, all the prizes he’d won and all the important people he’d met.” Later, he’d heard her tell Ashley the same stories, pretending that they were new and Daddy would visit as soon as he could.

  “I think your marshmallows are done,” Krista said. “Unless you’re a fan of charcoal.”

  “Thanks.” He pulled his stick out of the fire and rested it on his knee so the toasted blobs could cool. “Back then, it was like Christmas, my birthday, and the Fourth of July, all rolled into one when he came through the door. We’d all hug and kiss, and he’d spin me over his head, telling me how big I’d gotten, and how much I looked like him.” He had worshipped his old man, felt like he was being tossed around by a giant. “We’d have a big celebration dinner that night, then go somewhere special the next day, and the day after that . . . but after a week or so he would start inviting friends over, staying out later, drinking more. Getting bored.” With the trailer, the town, and his family. “Then, eventually, he would leave. And every time, when he was on his way out the door, he’d turn back and say, ‘You’re in charge, Wyatt. Take good care of your mother, you hear? You’re the man of the house while I’m gone.’”

  “That’s a lot for them to put on a kid,” she said, staring into the fire.

  “He put it on me.”

  “Your mother let him.”

  “She let him do a whole lot of things. That was the least of it.”

  Her sidelong look said she didn’t agree, but she didn’t say anything.

  After a moment, he continued. “Ashley came along when I was twelve. By then, he was down to one or two visits a year, and he’d stopped telling Ma that they would get married as soon as he saved enough for a ring and a proper ceremony.” He paused, then figured what the hell. “Did she get pregnant again thinking it would bring him back to her? I don’t know. Maybe. He visited the hospital right after Ash was born, and gave Ma all the oohs and ahhs she needed, and I could see she thought everything was going to be okay. But then he pulled me out in the hall, gave me a hundred bucks, and said, ‘Take good care of your mother and little sister, you hear? You’re the man of the house now.’”

  Krista’s eyes went wide. “Was that the last time you saw him?”

  “No. But it was the last time I asked him to stay.” He pulled one of the marshmallows off his stick and took a bite, the flavor bringing back childhood campfires with his friends’ fathers. “It was also pretty much the end of me being a kid. When money got tight—which happened fast—I hired on at a neighbor’s place to bale hay and help move cows through the summer and fall, then worked another ranch through the winter, feeding in the morning before school and cleaning after. When I wasn’t working or at school, I watched Ash so Ma could work.”

  Her fingers splayed, like she was stopping herself from making a fist. “I’ll say it again. That was a lot to put on a kid. It’s to your credit that you stepped up the way you did.”

  “A couple of neighbors helped now and then, but they weren’t family. And Ashley made it easy. She was”—a happy, pink little thing that had reached for him, smiled at him, called him Wy-wy and held his hand when she took her first few wobbly steps—“a good baby, grew into a good kid. But kids need more stuff than babies do, and by the time
she started school, Ma was having trouble getting hours at the store where she worked. I had been rodeoing for a bit and was starting to make some money. So the day before my high school graduation, I loaded up my saddle, kissed her and Ash good-bye, and hit the road.”

  Like father, like son. At least he had felt bad that his Ma was crying when he left. And he’d sent almost every penny home.

  “So young.” Krista’s throat worked.

  “No younger than you were when you decided to turn Mustang Ridge into a dude ranch,” he pointed out. “We both grew up early, though we took different paths to do it.” Throat gone dry from the air, the talking, he said, “I had been rodeoing for a couple of years when Ma met Jack. She was still seeing my old man when he bothered to come around, still telling herself that he was going to change. Thank God Jack wouldn’t take no for an answer. He eventually wore her down enough to get a ring on her finger, and moved her and Ashley into his house in the ’burbs. And suddenly I wasn’t the man of the house anymore, wasn’t responsible for any bills but my own.”

  It had been like cutting loose from a rank bull—an endless few seconds of free fall, followed by a jarring thud and a whole lot of How the hell did I get here? Except that there hadn’t been a loose bull behind him, looking to get in a shot or two with his horns before the bullfighters ran him off. It had taken him a while to believe that, longer still to figure out who he was without that bull chasing him.

  “So you went back to school, where you developed your eight-week buzzer.” Krista tossed her marshmallows to Klepto, who snapped them out of the air with uncanny precision. “Or had that been part of you all along?”

  She would remember that, wouldn’t she? Damn it, Sam. But although Sam had given the pattern its name, it hadn’t been a new behavior. “The rodeo circuit wasn’t exactly designed for anything long term—more like lips passing in the night. And after, in college . . .” He shook his head. “I’d last a month, maybe two, and be ready to move on.” First, he’d want to hang out with friends instead of catching a movie with his girl; then he’d have trouble getting places on time for their dates. Until, finally, he would start looking for an out. “Then I met you and everything changed.”

  Her head whipped up; her glare cut into him. “Don’t. Don’t you dare say that. Not when we ended exactly the same as the others.”

  “I missed graduation, bailed on my job and bolted. I wouldn’t call that business as usual.”

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” The firelight caught the sudden glint of tears. Or was that anger? He wasn’t sure, but either way, it made him feel lower than dirt.

  “I should’ve broken it off with you before things got serious, should’ve been honest with you when the walls started closing in. I know it probably doesn’t help, but it just about killed me to leave.” Though that hadn’t been enough to make him turn around when the wide open was calling.

  Her expression hardened. “Why are you telling me this now, Wyatt?”

  Don’t do it, he told himself. Leave it alone. But he couldn’t leave it alone—couldn’t leave her alone—so he pulled the folded page from his pocket and handed it over. “Because of this . . . And because the way I feel about you right here, right now, is about as far from leftovers as these things can get.”

  *

  Krista’s fingers trembled as she unfolded the piece of sketch paper—from fury, she told herself, not the almost painful need to weep at guessing that this was a breakthrough sketch, the missing piece he needed to move forward with his sculpture. “Damn it, Wyatt. You don’t get to come out here, say things like that, and then . . .” She trailed off. Stared.

  It wasn’t an idea for the pioneer museum. It was a sketch of her.

  Arcs of soft charcoal hinted at her cheeks, jaw, and throat, while lighter lines suggested her Stetson and the braids she wore out riding. Her lips were curved in a small, secretive smile she didn’t recognize, and her eyes . . . Heat kicked through her, because if that was how she’d been looking at him over the past week, no wonder Bebe had assumed she was flirting.

  “That’s not me seeing the girl you used to be and wishing things had turned out different.” His voice had gone rough, his eyes dark. “It’s me looking at the woman you are today and wanting to do this.” He shifted in his chair, and suddenly their faces were very close.

  Krista stiffened as heat bloomed beneath her skin and she was trapped suddenly in place, not by the broad shoulders that all but blocked her view of the fire or the powerful legs that bracketed hers, but by the churn in her belly and the part of her that said yes-yes-yes as he leaned in.

  And kissed her.

  Wyatt. That was all she could think as his lips closed on hers, just his name. The man kissing her now wasn’t a memory and he wasn’t the brash young cowboy who had told her she was different and tried to mean it.

  Far from it. He was a man now, and knew himself well.

  And his kiss. Oh, his kiss. Where before in the bunkhouse he had held himself back, now he dove straight in, leaving her to hang on for the ride. His lips were firm, his tongue masterful as he traced her mouth and then dipped inside. His stubble rasped gently across her lips and cheek, an unexpected sensation that stirred her and made her want to touch him, explore him, learn the shapes and textures that were uniquely his, and—

  She jerked back so hard that her chair shifted in the lakeshore sand, then batted away the hand he put out to steady her. “Don’t,” she said too sharply, then, softer, “Please. Just give me a second here.”

  A second to get a grip, to pull herself together. To level off her breathing, and keep her voice steady as she said, “What do you want from me, Wyatt?”

  His eyes were dark in the firelight, his breath warm on her skin. “I think that’s pretty obvious at this point. Even knowing I should keep my hands off you, I can’t do it. I can’t walk away, and I can’t stay away.”

  The rough declaration shouldn’t have sent a new kick of heat into her bloodstream, especially when he’d done both of those things before. “I may not be the same girl, but I still want pretty much the same things.” She waved toward the main house, pleased that her hand stayed steadier than her thundering heartbeat. “A home, a family, a future.”

  He touched her lower lip with his thumb. Lingered there. “Seems to me you’re not giving yourself near enough credit. You’ve created a whole fantasy world here for your guests—a living, breathing paradise they can escape to. You become their best friend while they’re here, and they’re better for it when they leave.” His thumb cruised across her lip, then caught her chin as he dropped his voice low to say, “You don’t just sell the adventure, Krista. You live it one week at a time. Don’t you think you deserve to take some of it for yourself?”

  And darn him for knowing her too well, even after all these years. Adventure. She yearned for it some days, just like she wished at times she could be like the rest of her family—creative, artistic, inventive, and more than the sum of their parts. And while she loved the smaller, quieter niche she had carved for herself . . . it was too quiet some days, too much like she was surrounded by friends and family, yet still alone. But what kind of adventure was he talking about? “So . . . what is this, Wyatt? Are you asking me out?”

  His eyes were steady on hers. “Name the day, and tell me whether to saddle a horse or clean out Old Blue.”

  But it was more than that, she knew. Because there was no way they could be together and not want to take it all the way. “A no-strings fling. Is that what you’re offering? A few weeks of fun and then done, no regrets?”

  He nodded, expression guarded, maybe even a little regretful. But there was no regret in his voice when he said, “I’m here for six more weeks, until the end of the season, and I want to spend them with you.”

  Why don’t we forget about the calendar and just see what happens? she wanted to say. She didn’t, though, because she’d be darned if she tried to talk him—or herself—out of the familiar pattern. B
een there, done that, and it hadn’t ended well. Besides, she might be a soft touch for aged mustangs, dried-up cows, and three-legged barn cats, but she wasn’t in the market for a project when it came to men. No, she wanted someone who wanted her enough to make a grand gesture to win her, like Foster offering to give up the Double-Bar H and move to Boston with Shelby, and like Nick taking on a partner so he could travel with Jenny. More, she wanted to be romanced, wanted the slow step-by-step buildup, the foundation that could be turned into something lasting and important.

  One of these days she would make the time to find the guy who could give her all those things. She would love him, adore him, and trust him utterly. In the meantime, though, she had a gorgeous cowboy sitting with his knees bumping hers, the pulse at his throat still working from their kiss, making her want to kiss him again.

  “Say yes,” he urged, “but only if it’s what you want.”

  “I don’t know what I want anymore,” she said, shocked to realize that she was seriously considering it. “So for tonight, let’s just say I’ll think about it.” It wasn’t like she was going to be able to think about anything else.

  13

  The next morning, Krista woke late and hit the ground running, pitching in to help her mom and Gran with more than the usual number of “did anyone turn in a left boot to lost and found?” and “have you seen my pink sweater?” calls to the front desk, with a bonus round of “I think the maid threw out my dentures. They were in a water glass next to my bed.”

  A veteran of far odder Saturday morning calls, Krista didn’t miss a beat at that one. “The cabins haven’t been cleaned yet this morning, Sukie. Have you checked the bathroom and the floor under the bed?”

  “Of course I did!” the Manhattanite said with twice her normal level of starch. “I’m old, not dead.” That last bit came out with a hint of pride, like she’d done something recently to prove it.