by Kate Hardy
* * *
Poppy cleared the plates from the table and put the maple syrup back in the fridge.
“You know, you half deserved to lose everything in your freezer for playing that trick on me last night,” she told him. It wasn’t like she hadn’t enjoyed herself, but still. She didn’t like that he’d tricked her, or that she’d so blatantly fallen for it.
“I already had that one sussed out,” he said with a grin. “So long as you don’t open them, freezers are good for at least twelve hours with no power. I had all my bases covered.”
He thought he was so clever. Poppy gave him what she hoped was a withering look. “So how about these animals? You still game for showing me the ropes?”
Harrison was giving her a weird look, one she couldn’t read. “Am I game?” he asked. “I thought you were just saying that to be polite.”
She laughed. “Would it surprise you that much to know that I actually want to learn? I’m part of a rural community now, so I can’t exactly have the children I’m teaching know more about ranch work than their teacher, can I?”
“All righty, then.” He stood up and stretched, looking her up and down. “But you do realize you’ll need to wear something more...” he paused “...appropriate than that, right?”
If he was trying to intimidate her or put her off, then she wasn’t going to take the bait. Poppy walked up close to him, standing in his space, eyes never leaving his. He wanted to intimidate her? Then she’d do the same straight back at him.
“Let’s go saddle up, cowboy,” she said, in her impersonation of a drawl.
His face showed no expression, but his eyes were glinting, and she knew he was trying hard not to smile. Harrison bent slowly, teasingly, and pressed a barely there kiss to her lips. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into,” he whispered.
“Try me.”
He stayed in place, hands moving gently up and down her arms, before he backed away. “I’m not intentionally being hard on you,” he said. “Well, I guess I am, but it’s only because I don’t think you should try to change who you are.”
Her eyebrows rose in question. “I’m not trying to change who I am, Harrison. Is that honestly what you think?”
He shrugged. She could tell he was uncomfortable, from the way he was standing to the look on his face.
“I came here because I wanted to, Harrison. I came because I wanted a new beginning, and if the people of Bellaroo are prepared to give me that, then I’m prepared to push a little out of my comfort zone to embrace life here.”
“I’m sorry.” He was staring out the window as if he was a million miles away, even though he’d just apologized.
Poppy stayed by the table, not sure what was happening and wishing they could go back to how things had been a few moments earlier. When they’d been having fun and pretending they were both just two people with no issues and no ugly pasts to ruin their chances at anything great happening between them.
“I thought we’d already had this conversation,” she said, her voice so low she was almost surprised he heard it. “I’m not her, Harrison.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” His own voice was louder than usual, pained in a way she’d never heard it. She’d seen him sad and stressed—when he’d been rushing to visit his dad in hospital and fearing the worst—but this was different. Now he looked tortured, as if he was struggling hard to fight his inner demons and didn’t know how to stop them from haunting him. “You are nothing like her, Poppy. Nothing at all like her. But having you here, having a woman in my home after so long being on my own...”
Poppy crossed the room, touched Harrison’s elbow and propelled him forward.
“Let’s go outside and just enjoy hanging out. It doesn’t have to mean anything more than you showing me around, okay?”
He nodded, but the anger and pain were still there—in his eyes and written all over his face.
“Yeah, you’re right,” he said.
Poppy looped her arm around his waist and gave him a squeeze. Maybe she should have been angry with him, should have told him at length how wrong he was about her. But Harrison wasn’t trying to offend her or hurt her. He was trying to stop from hurting himself, and she understood that more than anyone else in the world right now.
* * *
“Harrison, you forgot about your dogs! Why weren’t they crying at the door to come in?” Poppy dropped and gave the big dog a cuddle, arms around him. The other one held back a little, but she coaxed him over.
“My dogs are pretty lucky, Poppy. They don’t get locked in kennels, they’re well fed and they get treated well. And last night they were up at the worker’s house, so they’ve only been down here waiting since this morning.”
She shook her head. “They should have been inside, in front of the fire.”
Harrison ran a hand through his hair before pulling on his boots and reaching for a jacket. “I’m already called the soft rancher by most of the men around here, so I think I’ll pass on pampering the dogs.”
“You’re considered soft because you feed your working dogs properly and treat them with the respect they deserve?”
He laughed and this time it hit his eyes, making them shine the way they usually did. “They call me soft because I have an old sofa at the back door for my dogs and because I let my daughter convince me not to send a bunch of cattle she’s fallen in love with to the slaughterhouse. So, yeah, that’s considered pretty pathetic around these parts.”
Poppy completely disagreed, but at least they’d moved on to a new discussion.
“Okay, what do I wear?” she asked, giving the dogs one last pat each.
“Anything you like, just take your pick.”
Poppy liked looking nice, but contrary to what Harrison thought, she couldn’t care less about throwing some boots and a warm top on, even if the latter was five times too big for her.
“Ready when you are,” she said, grabbing the closest jacket and zipping it up. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Harrison was starting to see a pattern where Poppy was concerned, and he didn’t like it. Not one bit. He hated being rude to her, acting as if she was somehow deserving of the stupid comments that he just couldn’t seem to hold back, but she wasn’t. Which meant he had to learn how to hold his tongue, get used to the hurt look on her face when he offended her or stay the hell away.
He clenched his fists. The last one wasn’t something he wanted to do, but he knew it was the logical choice.
“Do we go through here?” Poppy was striding on ahead of him, hand poised on the latch to the gate.
“No!” he yelled. Harrison sprinted the short distance and slammed his hand over hers. “No,” he said, more softly this time.
Poppy was frozen, her body like stone, and he gently lifted her hand from the gate.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I’m fine,” she mumbled.
He could see how strained her face was, as if he’d finally managed to push her that one step too far. Only this time his rudeness had been warranted.
“I have our stud bull in this field,” he explained, pointing him out. Poppy followed his gaze, and he placed his hand on her shoulder, trying to reassure her, show that he actually did care. “The fences are all electric, but if you’d gone through that gate...” He blew out a breath. “On second thought, let’s not even think about it.”
Poppy was slowly starting to nod. “So you kind of saved me, huh?”
He grinned, could see she was seeing how amusing the situation was. “Yeah, I guess I kind of did.”
“Maybe I should let you lead the way. You know, so I don’t make some massive blunder that ends up with you needing to resuscitate me.”
Harrison slowly removed his hand and started to walk again.
Him having to resuscitate her was not something he needed to be thinking about, not with the thoughts of Poppy in his arms the night before still playing through his head like a movie stuck on repeat.
“Let’s go through here. We can check on Katie’s herd, walk down to the river and see how high it is.”
“This might be a silly question, but don’t you have hundreds of cattle that need to be checked?”
“I do, but with the size of this place we let the cattle do their own thing because they’re on massive blocks rather than just in fields. They have hectares and hectares to roam, so we make sure they’re okay, but in general they’re just left to do what cows do.” Harrison glanced at Poppy, made sure she wasn’t bored to tears. “We do our mustering with helicopters these days, and I have a few guys working here full-time, so they’ll be out doing the grunt work for me already.”
“You love it here, don’t you?”
Poppy’s question made him turn. “What made you say that?”
“It’s true, isn’t it? I can see it in your eyes and the way you talk about the place. I don’t even think you’re aware of how your face lights up when you’re looking at the land.”
Harrison dropped to his haunches, scratching one of his dogs on the head. “That’s why I’m so protective,” he said, knowing he had to be honest right now, that he needed to answer more than just the question she’d asked. “I love Bellaroo Creek more than anything because it’s the land I grew up on, and it’s the land I want my children to grow up on.”
Poppy’s face was soft, her eyes locked on his, tears glistening. “I understand, Harrison. Not because I have a ranch or get your connection with the land, but because I know what it’s like to have the home you love and the people you love snatched away without having any control over it happening or not.”
He tried to smile and failed. “I need you to know that the Harrison you met that first day at school, that’s not who I am. But the idea of having to sell this place and move to stay near my kids, to keep them out of boarding school...” He shook his head. “It’s eating me up, one day at a time. It’s all I think about, why I’m so sure you’ll bolt and leave us. Because someone like you coming here and sticking it out just seems too good to be true.”
He wanted to touch her, to connect with her physically and show her that he did care about her. That he wanted to think she would stay, but that he couldn’t let himself believe it.
“Harrison, I’m not going to let this community down. Not if I can help it.”
He didn’t doubt her intentions, but past experience told him he wasn’t always the best judge of character. “Poppy, what happened last night was great.” He shut his eyes for a beat, trying to get his head straight, wanting to say this right.
“Geez, Harrison, I feel like you’re breaking up with me.”
She was trying to be lighthearted, but he could see she was hurting, and he hated being the cause of that. He’d already attempted to have this conversation last time they’d kissed, and now...now it was much more than just a kiss.
“When I met my ex-wife, I thought I’d met the person I’d spend the rest of my life with,” he told her, speaking as honestly as he could. “When we moved here, she said she’d do it for me, that she wanted to give our life here a chance, and when we had Katie and then Alex, I thought everything was going great.”
“So what happened?” Poppy asked.
Harrison leaned against the timber fence and looked up at the sky. “I knew she was struggling, but there was nothing more I could do for her.” He recalled the day when he’d woken to find her gone and the reality of raising two kids on his own had set in. “When she left, it was so final. A note on the kitchen table, the car and some of her things gone, and that was it. For a while I thought she’d come back, that there was no way a mom could leave her children, but it never happened. And then I became so angry, so furious about the way she’d left and what it had done to my kids, especially to Katie at the time, and I couldn’t see past it.”
“But you did, you must have,” Poppy said. “If you were that filled with anger still, then you wouldn’t be the father I’ve witnessed firsthand with his kids.”
Harrison nodded. “Yeah, that’s true, but the anger is still there somewhere. It’s never really left.” He took a deep breath. “I mean, I can see now that maybe she wasn’t cut out for motherhood or living here, but it still hurts me to see my kids grow up without a mom. I would do anything for my children, anything to protect them, and keeping our family unit together and free of any more pain is the most important thing in the world to me.”
Poppy had tears in her eyes now. “And it’s why you’d sacrifice your family’s land to move away with them if they had to change schools. Why you’d give up what you love.”
“Without a moment’s hesitation.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
HARRISON FELT AS if he’d been broken all over again, dredging up the past and reliving it.
“Do you know what it’s like, to hold your baby in your arms, to look into his eyes and whisper to him that his mommy has gone, that she’s never coming back?” Harrison choked, emotion ripping his throat and making him so angry he could have bellowed like a bear. “What it’s like to want to do everything in your power to love and protect this little child when you have no idea where to even start? How to do it on your own? Not to mention having a heartbroken little girl sobbing in your bed night after night?”
He stared into Poppy’s eyes and then wished he hadn’t, because he could see how his words were hurting her, as if he was accusing her of something that she most certainly wasn’t guilty of. But now that he’d started, he couldn’t stop. He’d kept his feelings bottled up inside for years, locked it all away, and now that he was talking about it, everything was crashing back. The way it had been at the time, alone with two children, thrust full-time into solo parenthood.
“When you have a child, all you want is to give them everything. But there were so many times, late at night, when I’d only just managed to get Alex back down after walking him around the house for what felt like hours, then would get into bed and have Katie crying for her mom, that I almost gave up. Thought I couldn’t give them what they deserved, the love they needed that only I could give.”
Tears started streaming down his cheeks and he couldn’t do anything to stop them. Because his children weren’t here, he was talking about the past and he couldn’t hold it back any longer.
“I had to be everything for those kids, two parents rolled into one, and it made me like a protective papa bear. And it’s why I’ll never be able to let anyone close to me or them again.” Harrison wiped at his eyes, furious with himself for breaking down since he was usually so good at keeping his composure. “They mean everything to me, Poppy, and I’m all they’ve got. And while they’re little...” he paused and stared out at the field, the young cattle Katie loved so much putting a smile on his face “...then I’m going to make sure I protect them the only way I know how.”
Poppy had started to walk away. Harrison rubbed the back of his hands over his eyes and down his cheeks, refusing to let his emotions take over again. “I’m sorry, I don’t know where that all came from.”
She didn’t stop, so he jogged to keep up with her, touched her elbow to make her halt. When she didn’t turn, kept her face down, he stepped around her to force her to stop moving or crash into him.
“Hey, I’m sorry.” Why the hell had he gone off the handle like that? Acted as if it was somehow her fault, that he had a right to just burst out with something he’d been sitting on for five years? Poppy hadn’t deserved it, not when she’d been there for him this past week more than anyone else in his life. “Poppy, honestly, I don’t know where all that came from, why I...” Crap. She was crying.
When he reached for her arm, she just shook her head, but he wasn’t
going to give up. Why the hell did he have to go and ruin everything? Upset the one person who deserved more than anyone not to be hurt?
“Poppy?” Harrison tucked his fingers under her chin, gently lifted until her eyes met his. They were swimming with tears, tears that hit him so hard because it was his fault she was crying.
“You’re right, I don’t know what it’s like to hold my own child,” she said, her voice cracking even though he could see how hard she was trying to be brave.
“I didn’t mean it like that, Poppy. It’s just that I’ve been sitting on all that crap, the past, for so long, and it just came spewing out of me.”
She was looking out into the distance now, but her eyes found his again before she spoke. “Something I do know, though,” she told him, wrapping her arms around herself, “is what it’s like to want a child so badly only to lose it. To be pregnant and so excited, then find out you’ve lost that baby you’ve been so desperate to have.”
Double crap. How the hell had he screwed up to such an extent, talking as he had without even thinking that Poppy might have been through a tragedy of her own? “You lost a child?”
“I’ve miscarried twice in the past couple of years, but then, I guess, given everything that happened, some people might call it a blessing.” She cleared her throat. “The last one happened not long before I moved here, most likely from the stress of everything, because aside from what I was going through, I’m as healthy as can be.”
Harrison frowned.
“My wife said she wanted children, Poppy, but the way she left them tells me she didn’t ever love them like I do.” He was trying to say the right thing, make the situation better, but he felt he’d put his foot in it again.
“Just because your wife walked out and left your children doesn’t mean every woman in the world would, Harrison. And it certainly doesn’t mean that I would.”
