After making Shay leave angry and hurt yesterday, he should have kept his distance and prayed that she did the same.
But it was damned hard to keep his distance from the one thing he’d wanted most since he was twenty. He’d managed for six years by staying on the road, staying busy, never spending any more time in Oklahoma than was necessary to pass through to the next state. Even then, with hundreds of hard miles between them, it hadn’t been easy to stay away. Now, with only nine and a half miles separating them, it was proving impossible. Hell, here he was. He’d actually driven into town, had walked down the sidewalk, had gone into a place where he might see other people—all so he could see her. Because he couldn’t stay away.
“How are your folks?”
It took him a moment to realize that she’d spoken, that his desire for more conversation to prolong the visit hadn’t conjured the words in his mind. “They’re fine. Dad’s working in a factory that makes custom cabinets. He works regular hours, says all that wood smells so much sweeter than the cattle he was used to, and those cabinets haven’t kicked or stepped on him once.”
“And, of course, sawdust is much more appealing than the droppings that cattle leave behind. What about your mother?”
“She’s...okay. She’s having a haid time dealing with me. She can hardly bear to look at me” As soon as he said the last words, he wished he hadn’t He wasn’t looking for sympathy, and he sure as hell didn’t mean to remind Shay that other people found him hard on the eyes so it was understandable if she did, too.
But she didn’t have any problem looking straight at him. “I imagine it’s tough to be a mother and see your child going through something that you can’t make better.”
And thanks to him, imagine was all she could do. If he had stayed out of her life, she would have had three or four kids by now, if not with Guthrie, then someone else. If he’d managed to get his own life straightened out, maybe with him. That had been her dream—and his, too. Marrying Shay, the ranch, the kids, the horses, happily ever after.
All his dreams, summed up in one lousy sentence.
All his sorrows.
She was about to speak again when a knock sounded at the door. His first impulse was to turn and look. He acted on the second—sitting utterly still, hoping they were too deep in the shadows to be seen.
“It’s Reese,” Shay said. “I’ll see what he wants.”
He listened to her footsteps cross the wooden floor, heard the key turn in the lock and the bell ring as the opening door tripped it. “Hi, Reese.”
“Shay. I noticed your car was still in the feed store lot and saw this pickup parked out front. Thought I’d make sure everything’s all right.”
She was smiling when she answered. Easy could hear it in her voice, and it made the ugly, irrational jealousy twist in his gut. “Everything’s fine. Easy and I were having a Coke and a piece of Manuel’s cobbler.”
“I didn’t think he got out much,” Barnett said.
Only when he got so damned needy that he couldn’t bear it, Easy thought.
“He doesn’t. Listen, thanks for stopping by. I appreciate it. I’ll see you around.” She closed the door and locked it, then returned to the booth. She didn’t sit down again, but gathered their dishes, stacking bowls together, one glass inside the other. “Since we’ve wasted two pieces of perfectly good cobbler, why don’t you give me a ride to my car, then come over to the house and we can not-eat dinner together.”
He should refuse and go home. He’d satisfied the need to see her, to spend a little time with her, but it had merely intensified other needs—needs he couldn’t even think about satisfying. It wouldn’t take much to make them as unbearable as they were impossible. Spending more time alone with her, going to her house with her—that would probably do it, and he’d wind up in a world of hurt.
But he didn’t want to return to the ranch just yet. Didn’t want to spend one more evening alone. Didn’t want to keep his own company when he could share hers. Even if it meant paying for it later.
“All right,” he agreed, and she turned away with a nod, leaving him to slide out of the booth and get to his feet in private. He waited by the counter while she puttered in the kitchen, and he wished it were already dark outside. He’d parked only ten feet from the door. Even as slow as he was, it’d taken him only a moment to get inside. Still, he felt more comfortable in the dark. He could hide more easily there.
She came out of the kitchen with a plastic bag, shut off the lights except those over the counter, then held the door open. He hesitated a few feet away. “Tell me something.”
She didn’t make him ask. She stepped outside, looked in both directions, then said, “There’s no one around—no cars, no people.”
His face burning with embarrassment, he moved past her, went to the truck and climbed inside. In the time it took him to get settled, stow his cane and fasten his seat belt, she’d locked up, covered the same distance, climbed in and fastened her own seat belt. He admired her agility at the same time he envied it. Once he’d been able to move like that—even faster, smoother—and he had the championship titles to prove it.
Now... He took a couple of steady breaths. Now he had to adjust. He had to quit regretting what he’d lost and learn to live with what he’d been left.
But he’d lost so damned much, and he’d been left so damned little.
He drove her the block to the feed store lot, waited while she moved from his truck to her car, then followed her to her house. It was on the west side of town, with a six-foottall hedge of forsythia separating her yard from one neighbor and only a driveway between it and the other neighbor. There were no cars at home next door, though. Hopefully that meant nobody at home.
“Welcome to my humble abode,” she said with a wry smile as she opened the door.
He followed her inside and felt an immediate sense of... Not welcome. Belonging. Homecoming. Compared to this strange place where he’d never set foot before, his house where he’d lived the better part of twenty years felt as impersonal as all those motels where he’d spent thousands of nights. It was a place to spend as little time as necessary. A place to sleep, then leave.
This was a place to live.
Shay closed the door behind him, left her purse and the food on the coffee table, then gathered an armful of pillows from the sofa and divided them among the chairs in the room. “It’s not much besides small, but for a reasonable rent that doesn’t stretch my budget, it’s mine.”
“I like it.”
She gave him a sidelong look before retrieving the food. “Right. If this impresses you, then you’ve spent too many nights on the road. Have a seat while I put this up.”
Ignoring the sofa and easy chairs, he followed her into the next room. The kitchen filled two-thirds of the space, with the rest taken up by a round table and four chairs. It was a bright room, with white cabinets and yellow walls, with a bouquet of scarlet, orange and hot-pink flowers in the center of the table. It would be a pleasant place to have breakfast, a pleasant place to eat dinner—hell, to do damn near anything that included Shay.
She glanced at him as she put their dinner cartons in the refrigerator but didn’t say anything. She didn’t ask him to not go through the door that connected dining room to hall, to not look into the hall bath, done in eye-popping electrifying blue, or to not go into her bedroom.
He stopped inside the door and took a deep breath. It was enough to tell him, even if he hadn’t already known, that this was her room. The air smelled of her—of those sweet fragrances that combined to become her. Perfume, powder, shampoo, laundry detergent, fabric softener, makeup, lotion. For a time after he’d left her, the fragrances had stayed with him—had permeated his clothing, the interior of his truck, even his own skin. They’d threatened to drive him insane, but once they were gone, he’d wanted them back. Like he’d wanted her back. Desperately.
This room was painted a soft shade of rose. The trim was white, the bed iron and fl
aking white paint. The dresser and chest had come from her parents’ house and were topped with doilies of the sort he’d watched his grandmother crochet when he was a kid. There were fresh flowers on the chest, delicate lamps on the night tables, fussy curtains over the windows that matched the bedcovers. The bed was a double and looked inviting as hell, and not just because Shay slept there. The comforter—flowers that matched the walls on a deep-green background that matched the rugs—was thick and puffy, and the pillows—dozens of pillows—promised a soft place to rest his head.
He could sleep in this room. He could overlook the doilies and frills and be more than comfortable there.
If it didn’t make him feel like a selfish bastard.
Abruptly he turned away and came face-to-face with her. She looked around the room, then at him, at his scowl. “You don’t like my room?”
“This is what you wanted—what you always wanted. It’s not a lot. Just a stupid room with pillows and lacy curtains and furniture that isn’t bolted to the walls—but I couldn’t give it to you.” His voice sounded harsh, out of place in the cozy, serene space.
Her gaze remained level, her expression steady. “You could have. It just didn’t fit into our plans.”
“Our plans?” he echoed. “We didn’t have any plans. Your plans included settling down, having a house, a family, friends. My only plan was to keep running for as long as I could.”
She smiled as her gaze moved slowly again around the room. “My only plan was to be with you. Settling down, having a house and a family would have been nice, just like having that ranch and raising horses and kids would have been nice for you. It would have been the icing on the cake. But all I really wanted, Easy, was the cake.” Her gaze settled on him, and so did her smile, for a moment before she walked away.
He remained where he was, surrounded by her fragrance, and listened to her last words echo. But all I really wanted was the cake. And he had been the cake. And all he had really wanted was her—more than the ranch, the horses, the kids—so how in the hell had they wound up like this?
Because he’d never been able to forgive himself for betraying Guthrie and, though it made no sense, he’d never been able to forgive Shay for doing the same. He had hated that she’d found it so easy to leave Guthrie at the same time he’d been on his knees thanking God that she’d done it. Guthrie had deserved a better best friend, a better fiancée, and Easy had despised both himself and Shay for not being better.
As he stood there, his gaze settled on a photograph on the night table. He didn’t need to go closer to recognize it, but he did. He circled the bed, picked it up and tilted it to the light. It had been taken by the pool in the Stephenses’ backyard. He, Shay and Guthrie stood in the middle, surrounded by all their friends, celebrating her birthday and her engagement to Guthrie. But it wasn’t her fiancé she was looking at. It was him. She was looking at him as if she didn’t quite know what to do, and he wore exactly the same expression.
In fourteen years they’d never managed to figure it out.
He wondered if they ever would.
Chapter 5
Shay felt as nervous as a girl on her first date. More than she actually had, in fact, on her first date. She’d been best buds with Guthrie all her life, so when he’d invited her to the spring dance at school, it’d been more like hanging out with her brother than a date. As for Easy, they’d skipped the dating routine altogether and gone straight to sex, then living together.
And this wasn’t a date, either, she reminded herself. He’d come over for dinner, nothing more. Though if he wanted something more...
She sighed and plumped the pillow she’d pulled into her lap. If she didn’t get her hopes up, she couldn’t be disappointed, right?
Oh, yeah, right, the little devil inside her whispered as Easy returned from the bedroom. You bet.
She hoped he would sit at the other end of the couch. He chose an armchair instead, laying the cane aside, propping his left foot on the edge of the coffee table, looking troubled and tired and too damn handsome for her own good
“Are you okay?” she asked as he rubbed his forehead. his fingertips bumping over the scar with each stroke. She’d seen him do it before and wondered whether he was easing a headache or reminding himself of his flaws.
“Yeah.” He let his hand drop to the chair arm. His right hand was tucked out of sight.
“Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do?”
“About what?”
“Life Living.”
A puzzled look came into his dark eyes. “I’m going to stay at the house.”
“But what are you going to do?”
“Nothing.”
Grimacing, she moved to the end of the couch nearest him. “What about money?”
“I had some good years, and I invested everything I could. I’ve got money.”
“What about something to fill your time? You can’t just sit on the sofa and watch TV for the rest of your life.”
The stubborn look she knew too well came across his face, darkening his eyes, setting his jaw in a never-gonnaback-down jut. “I can if I want.”
“You’ll get bored. You’ll get lonely.”
“I’ve been bored before, and I survived.”
A beat passed, then another, before she softly asked, “What about lonely?”
His fingertips took on a purplish hue from pressing so hard against the chair arm. “I’ve been lonely,” he admitted, his voice husky, “and I survived that, too.”
There was no denying that. He was surviving, but just barely. She knew that because she was just barely surviving, too. They were living day to day, finding no joy, no peace and damned little satisfaction, and that was a sorry way to be.
“Have you considered getting a horse?” The question popped out of her mouth without warning, without thought, but once it was out, she wouldn’t have called it back if she could. He’d loved horses since he was a baby, had had one since he was three. Just because he couldn’t ride right now was no reason why he shouldn’t have one now. It might do him good, might give him some badly needed incentive—to say nothing of acceptance by someone who cared nothing about his handicaps.
“Have you considered minding your own damn business?” he growled.
“You are my business.”
He shook his head but didn’t voice his denial on that topic. “I can’t handle a horse.”
“You don’t have to handle him. You put him in the corral, feed him, see that he’s got water, then sit back and admire him.” She gestured toward the rear of the house. “Pete Davis’s pasture ends at my backyard. His horses are out there all the time. When I’m tired or down—” or missing you “—I like to go out to the fence and just look at them. They’re so beautiful, so...” At a loss for words, she simply shrugged. “Just looking at them makes me feel better.”
“So looking at something I used to have but can’t have anymore, something that I’ve lost forever—that’s supposed to make me feel better,” he said sarcastically, then followed it with an obscenity.
“I don’t know,” she disagreed, giving him a long, thorough look. “It works for me.” Looking at him—even if she couldn’t have him—made her feel less empty, less sorrowful, more hopeful. Looking at him reminded her of the wonderful times that had often gotten lost in the bad. It reminded her that once in her life, she had loved someone wholly, completely, with a great, soul-stealing passion, and he had loved her the same way. A lot of people never knew what it was like to love like that, to be loved like that, and that was sad.
Of course, a lot of people also never knew what it was like to lose a love like that. She could tell them. Boy, could she tell them.
She deliberately changed the subject. He looked relieved. “Does this trip into town mean that you’re not going to hole up out there forever? That maybe you’ll start buying your own groceries, doing your own laundry? Maybe you’ll even get a haircut?”
“No. It means—” He t
hought better of his answer and looked away without finishing it.
What? That after only a week, he’d gotten tired of his own company? That he was entirely too accustomed to following her mother’s orders? That he hadn’t wanted her to come out to his house to reclaim the dishes herself? That—maybe, possibly, please—he’d wanted to see her?
“Maybe,” she said evenly, “it means that your next visit will be to Guthrie.”
His gaze jerked back to hers. He looked guilty, as if he should never even consider the idea, and startled, as if he had already considered it, and, underneath all that, just a little wistful. But there was no wistfulness in his voice. Just harsh, cold insistence. “No. That’s not going to happen.”
“Why not? Because you still feel bad for running off with me?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Guthrie’s a forgiving man. He’s no good at holding grudges.” At least, not after fourteen years or so—or, more truthfully, not since Olivia came into his life.
“The hell he’s not. According to Joelle, he’s holding quite a grudge against Ethan.”
“Did she tell you what Ethan did? He stole Guthrie’s ranch and sold it to some businessman in Georgia. Jeez, you think that’s not worth holding a grudge over?”
“And I stole you. You think that’s not worth holding a bigger grudge over?”
Her smile came quickly, unexpectedly, and it felt so good. “No, but I’m flattered that you do.”
He struggled to keep his harsh expression in place, but the corners of his mouth twitched with a hint of a smile. “As I recall, you’re easily flattered.”
“Hmm. Tell me I’m pretty and I’ll follow you anywhere.” She stood up to go into the kitchen, then stopped in the doorway and looked back. “Do you also recall that it didn’t work with anyone else? It was just you, Easy. You were the one I would have followed anywhere.”
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