by Ryanne Corey
Tyler swallowed hard. “Don’t you think I would have if it was possible? Rosie needs me here. The boys need me here. My job is here. This is my life, and it’s way too late to change anything now.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Tyler stared at Eliot. “Are you listening? I used up all my choices a long time ago. I spent ten years on the rodeo circuit, living from moment to moment, cheerfully risking my neck for something as stupid as money. I really didn’t give a damn about what was going on here. I was the biggest disappointment in the world to my father. When he died, I realized the only way I could make up for it was to try and take his place here. To take care of the family. What makes you think I have the right to up and leave everyone who depends on me?”
“You could ask me,” Rosie said. “Ask me if you have the right to up and leave me.”
Neither man had heard her come in from the kitchen. Tyler stared at his sister, feeling hot blood sting his cheeks. “Rosie. I didn’t mean…I’m not sorry I came home. I love you, you know that. And the boys mean the world—”
“Give it a rest,” she said, in that blunt way she had. She walked across the room to him, taking his hands in hers. “I’m just going to say this once. You’re a very good man, Ty, though sometimes you have a hard time accepting that fact. I’m glad you came back, but more for your sake than mine. I know what all those years of dad’s anger and criticism did to you. You needed to know you could take care of us, Ty, that you could come through for us when the chips were down. You needed to have that reassurance. And you did take care of us, and I’m grateful. But I’m all grown up now, and I want to make my own way. We’ll always be family. Whatever we decide, wherever we go, whoever we love—” she glanced at Eliot through a screen of lashes “—we’ll always be there for each other. It’s not about the miles. It’s about the love. We’ll always have that. You were my hero, Ty, and I’m grateful for that. But now maybe it’s time you rescued someone else.”
Tyler stared at Rosie, amazed at the wisdom of Solomon in her wide blue eyes. “What are you saying? You want me to just walk away from…everything?”
Rosie shrugged. “Not necessarily. I think of it more as walking toward something.”
Tyler drew a deep breath, his heart lurching. He’d been dying by inches for three long weeks, achingly empty and without direction. Suddenly he recognized a new emotion within himself—something that was equal parts anticipation and disbelief. “Are you sure about this, Rosie?”
She nodded, her lips curling in a dreamy smile. “Oh, yes. Ty, you can go anywhere you want, be anything you want, do anything you want. I’ll be just fine. If you want to worry about someone, you’d do better to worry about poor Eliot here.”
It had been the longest month of her life.
Jenny stayed busy, with a fierce determination. Busy, busy, busy. In the daytime she volunteered at a women’s shelter, providing day care for toddlers while their mothers tried to find work. At night she went to classes—classes for yoga, classes on genealogy, classes in tole painting, classes in self-defense. Every night except Saturday was filled with classes. Unfortunately, Saturdays seemed to be the day when the people who taught the classes had a life of their own. How dare they? Jenny couldn’t find a Saturday class to save her life. Saturday evenings, therefore, she spent fixing up her apartment.
There was a tremendous amount of fixing to be done. Doors hung off hinges, mice cavorted brazenly, electric sockets spit and crackled at her whenever she attempted to plug anything in. Even now Jenny couldn’t explain to herself why she had opted to sublet an apartment. She could have stayed in a nice hotel, could have rented a car and wandered down the coast, could have done anything and gone anywhere she pleased. Sadly, none of these options really seemed to please her. Something had happened to her in Bride Falls on Her Head. A little seed of comfort had been planted, despite all her efforts to remain untouched by her experience. She had known what it was to belong to something and someone, though only temporarily. It was addictive, that feeling of belonging.
And so, for the first time in years, she found herself trying to make some sort of home.
She wasn’t experienced at nesting, that was certain. Little things like buying towels and picking out dishes were Herculean efforts. How did people match everything? How on earth did they decide what sort of bedspread they wouldn’t be sick of within a month? How did they choose the color for the bedroom or pick out something major like a sofa? She changed her mind more times about more things than she could count, but still she persevered. For whatever reason, she desperately wanted something she could call her own.
She bought a coffee table, for no other reason than to display a single magazine—a worn copy of American Cowboy. Yes, she had stolen it from Tyler’s home, stuffing it in her duffel bag before she left. Though being a thief was not a good thing, she wasn’t sorry. She picked it up and looked at his face a thousand times—“Rodeo’s Tyler Cook…Next Best Thing to Superman.”
How could a girl forget Superman?
Regardless of how busy she kept herself, inside she was hollow and hurting, like a wounded animal. Being alone pre-Tyler was one thing. Being alone post-Tyler was something else. She had enjoyed the incredible pleasure of waking up next to another person, a man with soul-stabbing sky-blue eyes and a smile that could bake cookies from fifty feet away. She knew what he looked like when he laughed, when he was frustrated, when he was riding a Harley and when he was terrorizing a hospital. Her mind continually gave her pictures, like a slide show of a brief, fast-burning love affair. Roses in winter. Despite the time slowly grinding by, those pictures still had enough clarity to break her heart. And the one picture that haunted her most was the vision of Tyler watching her leave town on a stupid Greyhound bus. He would never know how badly she’d wanted to scramble out the window and run to him.
But she couldn’t. It was a poor reflection on her courage, but she simply couldn’t make the commitment. It was too huge, too immense to contemplate. She didn’t belong there. She felt like she didn’t belong anywhere.
Still…she felt a part of her reaching out, wanting to somehow become like everyone else. If she only knew how.
She tried to focus on the one-room studio apartment that housed her spanking-new leather couch, several cockroaches and her first set of dishes. On this particular Saturday night, the chosen project was putting up a shower curtain. She didn’t own a screwdriver, so tried to make do with a butter knife. She discovered that a butter knife was very good for putting holes in Sheetrock, but a poor tool for attaching a curtain rod. She was seriously considering duct taping the thing to the wall when someone knocked on her door.
She didn’t know anyone in New York. She did know, however, how dangerous New York could be for a woman alone. To be on the safe side, she took her butter knife with her to answer the door. She also made a mental note to somehow install a peephole at the first opportunity, perhaps again using the all-purpose, handy-dandy butter knife.
Keeping the chain latched at the top of the door, she peered out. The hallway light had long ago burned out, so it was difficult to see. The bulky shape of a jacket, the glint of a belt buckle…and the most piercing pair of blue eyes New York had ever seen. They provided more light than a light bulb ever could.
“Holy cow,” she heard herself say.
“Holy cow to you, too,” Tyler replied easily. “Can I come in before I get eaten by one of these mice?”
Gladiator.
Fingers shaking, Jenny unlocked the chain and stepped back. Tyler walked in with his lazy, trademark saunter, as if he’d visited here a thousand times before. He didn’t look like a New Yorker. In Jenny’s limited experience, New Yorkers always looked either angry or bored. Tyler looked like something she might have dreamed up—a vivid, larger-than-life man whose presence was every bit as powerful as his absence had been. He was wearing a denim jacket over a pale-blue shirt, with stonewashed jeans and his beloved cowboy boots. His hair was longer than whe
n she’d seen him last, curling over the collar of his jacket. His faint crooked smile, beguiled, mystified her with a heart-lifting sensuality.
“Hey, Trouble,” he said softly. “Long time no see.”
Jenny was in shock. She stared at him, helplessly gesturing with her screwdriver/butter knife. “You…how…what are you doing here?”
Tyler just smiled and ignored the question, looking around the small studio apartment. There was a kitchenette in the corner, the tiny counter crowded with a toaster, can opener and Crock-Pot. They all looked new. A small bed nestled against the wall, sporting a blue comforter that also looked new. Ditto the coffee table and the sofa. “Jenny, you’d better watch yourself. This looks like you might actually be nesting here.” Then, before she could reply, “Why are you carrying around that knife?”
“I was putting up a shower curtain.”
He nodded, as if she actually made sense. His eyes drifted to a magazine on a coffee table and stuck there. His smile grew wider and brighter. “So that’s where it went. I wondered. You haven’t forgotten me, after all.”
Jenny’s cheeks felt seriously sunburned. She put down her weapon and hid her shaking hands in the pockets of her baggy bib overalls. These were her Saturday-night overalls, her uniform for messy, do-it-yourself projects. She found herself wishing she was wearing something else. Anything else.
In a voice that was froggy with nerves, she said, “How did you find me?”
“Eliot said you were in New York. I did the rest.” Tyler turned and faced her for the first time. Though he didn’t show it, he was nervous. Still, his eyes drank her in like a starving man taking in water. Whatever happened, just seeing her again would be worth the trip. Her overalls were shapeless, her hair hanging down her back in a fat braid. She wore no makeup and needed none. Her doe eyes carried a startled quality, very bright above her flushed cheeks.
“I missed you,” he said.
That threw her. Unvarnished honesty in this situation was something she hadn’t expected. She opened her mouth to say something. Nothing came.
“Cat got your tongue?” Tyler asked innocently. “This isn’t the outspoken Jenny Kyle I know and love.”
Love. The single word was dangerous enough to kick Jenny’s speech into overdrive. “It couldn’t have been easy. Finding me, I mean. This is a really big city. Can you imagine how many people live here? There’s so much to see, and usually—”
“Be quiet,” Tyler said gently, placing his finger over her lips. “You’re going to hyperventilate. Have you missed me?”
Jenny blinked once, her vision misting over. She stepped back, away from his hand, away from the magnetic field the man seemed to have. This was so much to take in all at once, too much. After four weeks of nothing but Tyler’s one-dimensional photo on an old magazine, here he was. Three-D and in full color.
“I’ve missed you,” she said almost inaudibly.
Tyler raised his brows in a questioning arch. “Then why are you backing up? Wouldn’t it be nice if you threw yourself in my arms and scattered kisses all over my face? Wouldn’t it?”
“Tyler—”
He sighed heavily. “I have to do everything.”
He crossed the floor in two steps, taking her into his arms with all the dash and confidence of Valentino himself. He’d wanted this woman desperately for four long weeks, and he wasn’t about to waste any more time. His kiss was long and deep and hard, the kiss of a man who’d waited far too long already.
Jenny lifted on her toes, her hands clinging to the front of his denim jacket. He hadn’t given her time to get her defenses firmly in place. She melted into him like hot wax, too bemused and shocked to do anything besides respond. Her legs were up to mischief, threatening to buckle. The questing pressure of his lips made her gasp, imparting deep, traveling sensations in her most secret parts. Rain comes when the wind calls, Jenny thought wildly. One touch and I’m gone.
He pulled back, cradling her face in his hands, staring at her flushed face with rapt attention. Her breath caught in her throat, recognizing the emotion in his glittering eyes. Then, with the slow-moving eroticism of a dream, his head bent to hers, kissing first one cheek, then the other. Another kiss on her lips, placed with exquisite care. “Jenny…you are the sweetest, most amazing—” another kiss on the pink tip of her nose “—most adorable…”
“We can’t do this.” Racked with a sudden shiver, Jenny pulled away from him, wrapping her arms around her body. “This won’t solve it. Nothing’s changed, Tyler. I still can’t…you’re not…I could never…”
She was thinking too much again. “Want to go out to dinner?” Tyler asked.
Her head was spinning. “What?”
“I’m really hungry,” he said, sitting down on the sofa as if he had all the time in the world. “I’ll read this fine copy of American Cowboy while you change. Or you can go in your overalls, except you have that white dust all over—”
“Sheetrock,” Jenny said numbly.
“Whatever. I’ll wait here.”
That seemed to be the end of the conversation. Jenny was either unwilling to confront him about his plans or too befuddled. She truly didn’t know which. And so, still clutching her butter knife, she went to the small closet in the corner, pulled out a skirt and top, then headed to the bathroom to change.
It didn’t seem like her gladiator would take no for an answer.
They ate at a little Italian place not far from Jenny’s apartment. The food was good, which was fortunate. Chewing gave Jenny something to do while Tyler carried on the conversation pretty much single-handedly. He mentioned that Rosie and Eliot were seeing one another on weekends, which was yet another shock for Jenny. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t picture Eliot Dearbourne with Rosie and the boys. She was brash, open and funny, he was polite, particular and extremely cautious. And the twins…they were a handful in and of themselves. That just went to show that you never knew how people would react to one another. Logic didn’t seem to have a say when it came to matters of the heart.
Still, now and then she caught him staring at her in a certain way, and she thought, He wants to touch me. And it amazed her how badly she wanted that touch.
After dinner they walked the six blocks back to the apartment. Jenny had herself worked up into a controlled state of panic by the time they got home. She had no idea why Tyler had come, what he wanted or where he planned on spending the night. She also had no idea what to do about her own quivering sensitivity. The fact was, throughout her Italian dinner, she had quietly lusted. She knew passion would solve nothing, that it was passion that had got her into this mess in the first place, but that didn’t stop her. He was beautiful to her, and she had missed his touch more than she had ever imagined possible. Hence, the lust.
She turned on the lamp near the sofa, trying to dispel the soft, romantic shadows in the room. Turning to face Tyler, she realized she had made a mistake. The fuller light detailed his features, gilding his smile and lingering on the soft golden strands in his hair. Up close and personal, he was far more charismatic than the man on the cover of American Cowboy could ever be.
There was a long moment when neither of them spoke, when Tyler caught and held her in his gaze. He seemed content just to look at her, but the extended silence made Jenny squirm.
“Please don’t do that,” she said hoarsely. “You’ve been doing that all night.”
“Doing what?”
“Staring at me.”
“I told you,” he said simply. “I missed you. Would you mind sitting down for a minute?”
“Why?”
Gently he took her arm, leading her to the sofa. “Sit. There are a thousand things I’d like to do to you tonight…right now, in fact…but instead, we’ll talk.”
She sat, more because her knees buckled than anything else. Her slim-fitting black linen skirt rode up to her thighs, which Tyler noticed with a put-upon sigh.
“I like the skirt even better than the overall
s,” he said. “But I digress. You know, this is a very bad apartment. It needs some serious repairs. Well, actually it needs a bulldozer, but we won’t go there. You really have your work cut out for you.”
Jenny gaped up at him, oddly disappointed. “You wanted to tell me that? That’s what you wanted to talk to me about, this apartment?”
He shrugged. “No, but I thought it would be a good way to open up the subject of what you need and don’t need. Why did you rent this place? I thought you were a gypsy.”
“I am a gypsy,” she muttered. “But even gypsies need to pull their wagons in a circle around the old campfire now and then.”
He grinned, his smile lighting his eyes. “Oh, that’s good. Prickly to the end, aren’t you? There are a few drawbacks to being a gypsy. If you never put down roots, you’ll always be a slave to the wind. That can get lonely.”
“We gypsies are very plucky. Very independent.” She stood up abruptly, the skirt sliding down to a decent hemline. “Would you like coffee?”
He gently but firmly pushed her back on the sofa, the skirt whipping up to near-centerfold height. “No, love. No coffee. No more evasions. No more running away. Tonight you’re going to do something new and exciting. You’re going to be normal.”
“I resent that! You’re implying—”
“Tonight,” he went on, quelling her with one of his sheriff looks, “You’re going to take advantage of your right to remain silent while I talk. Staggering, isn’t it? No, no…just sit there and listen.” He took a deep breath, slowly pacing the length of the sofa. “Okay. First, I want you to know I forgive you.”
“For what?” she sputtered. Once more they repeated the stand-up, get-pushed-down-again thing.
“For leaving me,” Tyler said. “For doubting us. For insisting on being alone when it isn’t necessary anymore. For being scared. For making me crazy. For humiliating me in front of all those passengers on a Greyhound bus. For giving up.”
Jenny’s nose was suspiciously pink. “I told you. I told you—”
