by Jeannie Watt
“I figured that this gives you room to grow melons and pumpkins if you want.”
“It does.”
“And honestly? I should be here to help plant next spring.”
“We should be able to get the garden in before you start your spring circuit,” she agreed. Then she let out a sigh. “Remember—I totally get it if you need to winter elsewhere. I can’t handle being a project or a duty.”
“Noted.” He gave her one last squeeze before stepping back.
Annie brushed the hair out of her eyes. “The girls are giving you a surprise going-away party tomorrow. They planned it themselves.”
“That’s cool.”
“They wanted to invite Lex, but I made up an excuse. Just so you know.”
“Thank you.”
The twins’ party was cute. They’d been very busy in the kitchen an hour or so before Annie got home, but nothing broke or spilled. After Annie got home and changed her clothes, they’d made a big deal about sitting Grady at the table, complete with tablecloth and flowers with no duct tape. They carefully poured Kool-Aid into the good china cups, then offered Grady his choice of Oreo cookies, Chips Ahoy or vanilla wafers to go with his ice cream and chocolate syrup.
“Dinner’s a no-go tonight?” he asked Annie as she handed Kristen a dish of ice cream to deliver to the table. Katie was waiting for the next.
“Sometimes you gotta say ‘what the hey’ and have ice cream for dinner,” she said as she dug into the carton for another scoop.
“My kind of woman.”
“It’s a special ’casion,” Kristen explained. “Sometimes you don’t have to eat supper on special ’casions.”
“Well, thank you for this special party,” Grady said as Kristen dropped two Oreos on top of his ice cream.
“We know you’re coming back, but it’ll be a long time from now,” Katie said.
“Three months.”
“Almost until Christmas!” Kristen rolled her eyes, telling Grady how far away that was in the kid brain. He happened to know that Annie was counting the paychecks until Christmas arrived and thought it was coming way too soon.
“We’re going to miss you.” The girls spoke in unison without seeming to notice, then took their chairs on either side of Grady. They were looking glum for being in the midst of a special ’casion.
“How about I’ll send you postcards from the cities I visit?”
“Postcards?” Two pairs of interested gazes met his.
“In the mail.” What a novelty to the digital generation. “I buy a postcard with a picture of where I’m at, write a message, put a stamp on it and mail it to you guys.”
Katie grinned. “Can we each get a postcard?”
“I don’t know...they’re almost twenty-five cents each...” He pretended to debate, then nodded. “One each. From each city.” They clapped their hands and he smiled. He was going to miss this. “I know—let’s print out a map and your mom can show you where each card comes from.”
The twins were all over that, and he didn’t have to print out a map because Annie found an old road map of the USA in her junk drawer. Grady and the girls mounted it on their bedroom wall and he made a red dot on Gavin, Montana, and another on New York City.
The girls had no concept of the distance involved, but they agreed that it looked like a long way away.
“Will you send Lex postcards, too?” Kristen asked matter-of-factly.
Grady met Annie’s gaze over the top of the twins’ head. “I, uh...might.”
“She’ll like that,” Katie said.
Somehow he didn’t think so.
The next morning he was loading his duffels into his truck, when Danielle’s car pulled into Annie’s drive. It was barely seven, so Grady was justifiably surprised to see her.
“Everything all right?” he asked as she got out of the car. Because the only reason he could think of for her to be there was to see him, since she’d see Annie at work within the hour.
“You’re heading out now?” she asked instead of answering his question.
“I catch a flight to New York later this afternoon.” The Hayward twins were going to pick up his rig at the airport and bring it back to Annie’s.
“I’d hoped to talk to you before you left.”
He opened his hands in a here-I-am gesture.
“It’s about Lex.” She hesitated, perhaps giving him time to say that he didn’t want to talk about Lex. He didn’t want to talk about her, but since Danielle had come all this way, he’d listen.
“Yeah?”
“She’s scared of loss.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“You know this stems from what happened with her dad.”
“I figured.” He put a hand on the bed of his truck and considered the ground at his feet. He looked up to see Danielle frowning at him, as if hoping he’d say something like “Don’t worry, I know how to handle this.” He didn’t. “I did everything I could to make being with me an okay thing. I even offered to give up bull riding.”
“Really?” It was hard to miss the note of quiet incredulity.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“No,” she replied hurriedly. “It’s okay. It worked out for the best. I’m simply...surprised.”
“I care for her.”
“She cares for you.”
“Not enough.” He could see that she was going to rush to the defense of her friend, so he put up a hand. “I know she’s scared. I know there are issues, but there’s not much I can do about it when she shuts me out. As I see it, the problem is that she doesn’t care for me enough to confront the issues keeping us apart.”
It hadn’t been easy to accept that truth—in fact, it had taken him over a week to finally come to grips with the obvious, but once he had, his course of action had become clear. He needed to get on with his life.
“She needs time.”
He shook his head. “Time isn’t going to help. She’s decided that if she doesn’t feel, then she won’t get hurt.”
“Like that’s going to work.”
“She thinks it will.”
Danielle gave him a sympathetic look. “Sorry she feels that way.”
So was he, but he was done beating his head on a wall.
“Well, at least one of us is happy,” Grady said, working up a smile for the woman he’d once thought to be the most perfect on earth, before he’d met the imperfect woman who’d stolen his heart. Stomped on it. Walked away.
Danielle smiled back. He opened his arms, and she walked into his embrace, hugging him hard. “Congratulations,” he murmured. “Curtis is a lucky guy.”
She pulled back, holding him by the shoulders. “Thank you. And good luck to you.”
He didn’t know if she meant with the bulls or getting over Lex. Either way, he needed it.
* * *
IT DIDN’T TAKE a rocket scientist to deduce that Danielle and Annie were either angry at her or felt sorry for her. Maybe both.
Lex laid out the jewelry she’d finished making the night before in a marathon session in her basement. They were good pieces—pieces that Tiffani would probably enjoy because Lex had incorporated shiny things in the design.
Grady was gone, headed off to NYC, the first stop of the Bull Extravaganza, with the intent of returning to Gavin in early winter. Danielle had filled her in as if they were discussing a mutual acquaintance instead of her former lover—the guy she’d intended to have fun with before he moved on. The guy she now couldn’t get out of her head.
But she would.
All she had to do was to focus on other matters, as she’d done after her dad died. It had taken some time, but eventually she’d edged back to normality. Or a state that closely resembled normality. Did it once, she could do it
again.
And in the future, she was going to avoid falling in love.
“These are nice.” Annie stopped next to her to admire as she hung a pair of copper earrings shaped like boots with hearts cut out of the center and small crystals hanging in the hearts.
“New design,” Lex said, glad that Grady’s sister was making the attempt to talk to her. “I’m trying to branch out.”
“Seek new horizons?” Annie asked. Lex shot her a glance, wondering if there was another meaning behind the words, but Annie’s expression was clear.
“Keeping myself busy,” she said honestly. She was all about keeping busy. Enjoying the life she’d made for herself—the store, her farm. Her animals.
Annie held up a bracelet loaded with whimsical Western charms. “I might have you make something special for the twins’ birthday if you take special orders.”
“I’d be happy to.”
“I have a few months, but I think something Western like this, but smaller, of course.”
“I’ll bring in my charm catalogue,” Lex said, glad that things with Annie seemed to be moving back toward the way they were before she and Grady had hooked up—and that was how she had to think of it. As a hookup.
Later that afternoon during a lull, Lex and Danielle worked on the wedding favors while Annie ran to the school to help with a library hour. And even though it was only the two of them, the back room of the store didn’t feel as comfortable as usual. Danielle was deep in thought, her movements quick, almost jerky. Lex was about to ask her if everything was okay between her and Curtis when Danielle suddenly leveled a look at her. A suck-in-a-breath-and-go-for-it look. “You know I’m your friend.”
Lex pressed her lips together and concentrated on tying a bow. Any conversation that started like that was bound to be uncomfortable. As in one that might address things she’d yet to fully come to terms with. “I know,” she said.
“As your friend, I feel that I can say that I’m concerned about you. About this thing with Grady.”
Lex set down the tulle bag. “Because we broke up?”
“Because of the reason why you broke up.”
Lex narrowed her eyes. “We broke up because I didn’t want to see him anymore.” Which was entirely her call, her business.
“Because...?”
Lex rolled her eyes. “In the long run it wasn’t going to work.”
Danielle cinched a circle of tulle shut, knotted it and reached for another. “With Grady? Or with anyone?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I’m concerned about you shutting down emotionally in order to avoid pain.”
Lex reached for a roll of ribbon and unrolled about four times more than she needed. “What if I feel better when I’m shut down?”
“Better for how long?”
Lex started chopping the ribbon into more manageable lengths. “I don’t know...the rest of my life?” Now the ribbon was too short. She brushed the pieces into the garbage can with a sweep of her hand.
“You need to think about what you’re doing.”
“I know what I’m doing.” Although she was a bit concerned by what Danielle was doing. Never, in their long years of friendship, had Danielle gotten tough with her.
“I always thought of you as an honest person, Lex. Too honest most of the time.”
“Guilty.” And why weren’t any customers coming into the store to rescue her from this conversation?
“So I want you to be honest with yourself now.” Danielle put down the tulle and leaned onto her forearms, her expression serious. “Are you lying to yourself?”
“About?”
Danielle held her gaze. “Anything.” The single word hung between them.
Lex pulled in a breath, set her scissors down and stood. For a moment she faced off with her friend across the work table, telling herself that Danielle didn’t understand. She hadn’t lost a loved one. She didn’t understand the depth of pain involved...
But Danielle hadn’t been talking about loss. She’d been talking about honesty.
And Lex didn’t have an answer. Not an honest one, anyway.
The customers started coming then, trickling in one after another. Tourists and locals. Danielle’s grandmother stopped by to show her a photo of a veil, and Lex couldn’t bring herself to join them as she normally would have done. She needed some time. Some space.
After Annie got back close to closing time, she took off as she’d originally intended to do.
She stopped at the feed store to buy dog food, cat food, alfalfa pellets and rolled oats and almost asked for a bag of Nancy’s special duck food. She missed having the ducks and had thought more than once about getting a few of her own in the spring—except that the ducks reminded her of Grady and the first time they made love.
It’d been a mistake. A miscalculation on her part.
She’d thought going in that they’d make love a time or two and when the novelty wore off, they’d part as friends. Or friendly nemeses, or something along those lines.
The novelty hadn’t worn off. It had changed into something deeper, something she hadn’t been prepared for. Something she was afraid of losing and was therefore afraid of embracing.
You’re a coward, Lex.
Grady’s words sounded in her head at least a dozen times a day, first thoroughly irritating her then making her think. Did protecting herself give her coward status?
She refused to believe that. But refusing to believe it didn’t give her any sense of peace.
Nothing gave her a sense of peace.
The twins came by the shop after school, looking adorable in polka-dot dresses, Kristen’s red with white and Katie’s white with red.
“We don’t usually wear matching dresses,” Katie explained to Lex when she complimented them.
“’Cept special ’casions. We’re going to Julie’s birthday party.”
Lex agreed that special occasions called for special dresses, and then Kristen said, “Do you miss Uncle Grady?”
Only when she was awake. Okay—that wasn’t quite true, since she also dreamed about him.
“I do,” she admitted.
“He’s riding the bulls now. We saw him on TV!”
“He’s really brave,” Katie added.
He was brave. He rode bulls, and he wasn’t afraid of emotions. He embraced everything, while Lex hid from the most challenging and rewarding arena in life. The feeling part.
And doing that kept her sane. Everyone had their survival strategies. Despite what Danielle thought, she was being honest with herself. Not everyone would agree with her strategies, but they worked for her.
The weeks marched on, first one, then two, then three. She finally gave in to temptation, looked up Grady’s rides in the Bull Extravaganza, telling herself it was a step in her healing process. A small part of her actually tried to believe it. He hadn’t won any legs of the competition yet, but he’d earned some respectable scores. The banner on the Bull Extravaganza site helpfully listed the next stop on the tour and the time it would be televised.
Lex closed out of the site and leaned back in her chair. Did she want to watch?
Her instant stomachache told her no.
Was she tough enough to watch?
Two days later she found out when she tuned into the show, just in time to see Grady accepting a buckle for that leg of the tour and then getting a major lip-lock from a gorgeous redhead. His hand slid down around the redhead’s waist to the top of her hip and even though it was a perfectly normal thing to do during a kiss, Lex was instantly conscious of an emotion that rarely cropped up in her life.
Jealousy.
She couldn’t tear her eyes away from Grady, the familiar smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he spoke to t
he interviewer. Yes, he’d taken a break from PBR, so he was happy to have this opportunity to join the Bull Extravaganza. No, the break hadn’t hurt his form or his concentration and no, he didn’t see retirement anywhere in the near future.
Grady accepted the interviewer’s good luck wishes and kissed the redhead one more time, and Lex turned off the television.
Sleep did not come easily tonight. Or the following night.
When her dad died, it had been done. Over. No fixing the situation. But Grady was still there—living life, taking chances, haunting her dreams...kissing redheads.
Time. This would pass with time.
Except she’d given it time, and if anything she felt worse than when she’d ended their relationship to keep from being hurt. She’d given up the possibility of happiness to avoid the possibility of pain.
Grady was right.
She was a coward.
Chapter Fifteen
It hadn’t been easy to get herself into the gates of the Bull Extravaganza—and it would have been impossible if she hadn’t been Luke Benjamin’s daughter. The bullfighters at the extravaganza were the best in the business and several of them knew her father. A few phone calls and she was able to not only get in the doors, but to get a ride to the arena, sharing a taxi with one of her dad’s oldest professional friends, Wild Bill Johnson.
“First rodeo?” Bill asked.
Lex knew exactly what he meant. First since her father had died. “No...but I didn’t make it through the bull riding.”
“You won’t have a lot of choice today, if you insist on going through those gates.”
“I know. I need to go.”
“Clear things out of your system?”
“Yes.” She hadn’t told him about Grady—only that she had a friend riding and it was important that she be there.
Bill reached over and patted her shoulder. “It’ll be all right, kid. The first rodeo is the hardest.”
It was hard. The first few rides had Lex’s heart in her throat and her stomach in a tight knot, but she hadn’t thrown up as she’d feared. The bullfighters on this competition were extraordinary, knowing exactly how to distract the bull away from the downed bull rider in the most efficient manner. Her father had been a master at that. He’d also been at the end of his game. At forty-five, he should have been retired, but he’d been one of those athletes who had defied time.
