She reached the last step and paused, thinking about the way he would kiss her while she stood on the bottom step, bringing her to eye level with him. His kisses never failed to set her on fire.
Why had she left him? After the fight they’d had, she’d ended up becoming infatuated with Toby Jennings for all of the wrong reasons. Choosing Blake meant staying in a town filled with bad memories of her abusive father. Toby meant getting away from Prescott and into the wide world just waiting for her.
Nothing had turned out the way she’d thought it would. Nothing.
Chapter 3
Cat Hayden. Her name went through Blake’s mind once again. KitCat was back.
A breeze tugged at his work shirt as he rested his hands on the top wood rail of the riding arena and stared out at the valley. A mix of emotions clenched his gut. Twisted inside him was a good dose of anger at the way she’d left him, surprise at how the accident had changed the way she looked, and an uncertain feeling about the fact that she’d returned.
Part of him knew that they’d both been young and he shouldn’t hold what had happened against her. Hell, they’d both been only eighteen, not more than kids. But the other part of him couldn’t get past the fact she hadn’t even said goodbye.
He gripped his leather gloves in one hand and tugged down his Stetson with the other, shading his eyes from the warm Arizona sun.
When he’d hugged her, memories had flooded him, one after another. She had the same soft scent that he remembered and he’d breathed her in without even realizing he was doing so. She had felt good in his arms, familiar and comfortable, even for the short time he’d held her.
She’d looked so different but her eyes were the same beautiful golden-brown and she still had that dimple when she smiled as she was complimenting his daughter’s abilities.
His heart had known it was Cat even before she’d told him. Nineteen years and a new face couldn’t take that knowledge away from him.
Her quieter, less confident attitude had taken him aback. She’d always been confident and outgoing. She seemed more reserved now, guarded even. He’d noticed how she’d put her hand up to her face as they talked, as if embarrassed by the way she looked. He didn’t give a damn about the scar and he hated the way it seemed to make her feel about herself.
She must have been through hell and back once that horse had tried to kill her. He couldn’t imagine the kind of pain she’d been through, both physically and emotionally.
Damn, but he’d loved her and she’d broken his heart and scattered the shards across the valley. He’d known she wanted to get away from Prescott, but he’d never expected her to leave like she did.
In some ways it reminded him of Sally… His ex-wife had always battled drug and alcohol addiction and had gone through rehab before abandoning her husband and daughter to run off with a man she’d met in rehab. Blake had never loved Sally—the only reason they’d married was out of duty, because he’d gotten her pregnant. They’d only dated a few times and then a month later she’d come to him, telling him that she was having his child.
The single good thing to come out of that marriage was Demi. And that girl meant everything to him.
Despite the fact that he hadn’t loved Sally, it had still stung when she’d left him and Demi. The hardest part was telling his daughter that Sally wasn’t coming back and then seeing how much it had devastated Demi to lose her mother.
That had been eight years ago, when Demi was six.
Blake shook his head. Hell, it wasn’t fair to compare Cat and Sally. The situations had been different, and the women couldn’t be more different. Cat had left after they had broken up over the fact that he wouldn’t leave Prescott and she couldn’t wait to escape their small town.
But he couldn’t help but feel guarded after what had happened with each of the two women.
He pushed away from the wooden fence rail and tucked his work gloves into his back pocket, then walked around the barn so that he could see his sprawling ranch house. An unfamiliar truck was parked in front of the house. Whoever it was must have driven up while Blake had been out riding the range.
When he reached the house, he jogged up the porch stairs then wiped his boots on the rubber mat in front of the door before entering. It was cool inside with no sign of Demi, or anyone else, for that matter. He frowned.
He walked through the house to Demi’s room. Maybe one of her friends had come over. Although, considering she was only fourteen, she didn’t have any friends who could drive themselves anywhere.
When he reached her room, her door was closed but he heard voices from the other side. Demi’s voice and another that definitely wasn’t female.
He grabbed the doorknob and opened the door. Demi was cross-legged on the bed and a good-looking teenage boy was sitting close to her. In one sweep of his gaze, Blake saw books and papers scattered on the comforter… And he saw the way the boy was looking at his daughter.
The boy and Demi looked up. A look of fear crossed the boy’s face.
Jaw clenched, Blake strode over to the boy, grabbed him by the collar, and jerked him to his feet.
“Dad!” Demi slid off the bed, horror on her face. “What are you doing? Stop it!”
“What the hell are you doing in here with my daughter?” Blake said in a growl as he jerked the boy out of the bedroom.
The boy looked terrified. “We were just—”
“Shut up.” Anger made Blake’s gut burn as he marched the boy toward the front door.
“Dad!” Demi hurried beside him. “Stop it! Let Brett go! We were studying. What are you doing?”
Blake flung open the front door and shoved Brett onto the porch. “I don’t want to ever see you around my daughter again.”
He cut his gaze to Demi. “Get his things.”
Demi had her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She whirled around and ran toward her room.
Blake turned his glare on Brett. “How old are you?”
Brett’s throat worked as he swallowed. “Sixteen.”
“My daughter is fourteen years old,” Blake growled. “You have no business being around her.”
The boy looked frantic. “I was tutoring—”
“I don’t want to hear a word out of you,” Blake said in a growl.
Brett clamped his mouth shut.
“Here.” Tears wavered in Demi’s voice as she came up beside Blake and pushed a backpack at him.
Blake, in turn, shoved the backpack into the boy’s arms. “Get on out of here and don’t ever come back into my home again.”
Brett didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the backpack, turned and jogged down the stairs, and headed toward his truck. He didn’t look back as he got into his truck. Moments later the truck tore down the dirt road, dust roiling up from the tires.
“How could you?” Demi shouted and Blake turned to face her. “How could you embarrass me like that?”
“Get to your room.” Blake narrowed his gaze. “We’ll talk about this when you calm down.”
“Calm down?” Her fists were still clenched at her sides, her eyes glossy with tears. “You were the one who overreacted and threw my friend out for no reason.”
“Friend?” Blake nearly roared the word. “You’re fourteen and you had a sixteen-year-old boy in your room. Boys that age have only one thing in mind and it sure as hell isn’t studying.”
“Brett’s not like that,” Demi shouted. “He’s a nice guy.”
“Get on out of here and go to your room,” he repeated.
“I hate you!” Demi stamped her foot, tears rolling down her face now. “I wish Mom was here. She wouldn’t have embarrassed me.”
The words hit Blake like a concrete block to his chest. He pointed to the hallway. “To your room. Now.”
Demi looked like she wanted to say something else but she spun and ran away from him, and then disappeared down the hallway. A moment later a door slammed.
Blake stared in the direction his daughter had gone. A
slow burn in his chest threatened to erupt as he thought about the boy being alone with his daughter in her room and he gritted his teeth.
He raised his hat and pushed his hand through his hair before settling his hat on his head again. Had he overreacted?
Hell, no. That boy had no damned business being anywhere near his daughter.
The sound of a truck coming up the drive caught his attention. “It had better not be that boy,” Blake growled out loud.
With his jaw clenched, he headed back outside to see his brother’s truck coming up to the house, the truck pulling a horse trailer. Gage parked and climbed out of his vehicle and adjusted his straw Stetson on his head.
“What’s gone and ticked you off?” Gage asked as Blake met him at the foot of the stairs.
Blake scowled. “Damned sixteen-year-old boy was in Demi’s room with her when I got home.”
“And you chased him off with a shotgun,” Gage stated as if he knew it was fact.
Blake’s eyes were narrowed. “Boy had no business being around my daughter.”
“I bet Demi didn’t take that too well,” Gage said.
“Sent her to her room.” Blake set his jaw.
Gage eyed Blake steadily. “She’s a good kid, Blake. You know that.”
“Yeah, she’s a helluva good kid.” Blake let out his breath. “I just don’t want her to end up like her mother.”
“You can’t come unhinged on her like that,” Gage said. “She might start doing things she shouldn’t out of sheer rebellion. You know how kids are. Hell, you were one yourself if you can’t remember that far back.”
Blake thought about what Demi had said—that she wished her mother were here. He felt another blow to his heart. Was he being too hard on her? Was she getting the feminine influence that she needed?
He looked away from his brother, at the land stretched out before him. When Blake looked back at Gage, he said, “So why did you stop by?”
“You must be getting old, big brother,” Gage said, with an amused smile. “I came over to see that young bull of yours.”
Well, hell. He’d forgotten that. Maybe he was getting old.
Gage drove away with the young Angus bull loaded into the horse trailer, and Blake headed back into the house. He’d thought long and hard about it, and maybe he hadn’t handled the whole situation well.
He closed the front door behind him and went to Demi’s room. When she’d entered her teens, he’d started knocking on her door before he let himself in. This time he knocked and waited for her to answer.
Silence followed and he knocked again. “Demi, we need to have a talk.”
Still nothing but silence. He tried the knob but it was locked.
He braced his hand on the doorframe. “You’d better open this door now if you don’t want me to take the whole thing off its hinges.”
A moment passed before heard the lock click. The knob turned and the door opened about an inch and stopped. He pushed the door open and walked into her room. He stopped and studied his daughter who was on the bed doing her homework, her head bent over a math book and her long blonde hair falling across her face so that he couldn’t see her eyes. Her cell phone was on the bed beside her thigh.
He gave an inward sigh and moved to her bed. The bedsprings squeaked and the mattress dipped under his weight as he sat on the edge of the four-poster bed. The canopy and her comforter were white with tiny purple flowers. Her room was done in purple with posters of horses and a collection of horse figurines on a shelf that went along one long wall.
She refused to look at him, just kept doing her math homework. For some reason that reminded him of Cat and how they’d studied together and how she’d always kicked his ass in math. But he and Cat had been the same age-—although that hadn’t stopped him from thinking about sex every time he was around her.
“Demi.” His voice sounded gruff and he cleared his throat as he tried to even his tone. “We need to talk.”
She ignored him, but her pencil faltered a little.
“Look at me,” he said, but she didn’t look up. He repeated, more firmly this time. “Look at me.”
She set down her pencil, leaving it on her math book, and slowly raised her head. Her eyes were red and he could tell she’d been crying.
But she had a hard set to her jaw that told him how angry she was. It reminded him a lot of himself at her age.
“Maybe I didn’t handle that in the best way,” he started.
“You think?” she said, in a sarcastic tone.
“But you know the rules,” he continued. “No boys in your room. You’re fourteen and a sixteen-year-old boy has no business in your bedroom. Hell, no teenage boy of any age belongs in your room.”
“We were just studying.” She glared at him. “We weren’t doing anything wrong. Besides he’s not like that—he wouldn’t do anything. He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I was his age once,” Blake said. “And I damned sure know how teenage boys think.”
“He’s not like you,” she snapped back.
“Honey, all teenage boys have one thing on their minds.” Blake tapped her math book. “And it’s not homework.”
She raised her chin. “I can’t believe you don’t trust me and that you treated him like that.”
“I made that rule for a reason.” Blake studied her for a long moment. “It’s boys. I don’t trust boys.”
Her tone grew sharper. “If you trusted me, you would never have done what you did.”
“It had nothing to do with trusting you,” he said. They were going around in circles. “It has everything to do with boys being boys.”
“You embarrassed me.” Her bottom lip trembled. “How could you do that? I’m not going to be able to show my face at school.”
As he studied his daughter, Blake wondered if he was enough for her. Maybe she needed a feminine touch or support from a woman who wouldn’t go crazy when she talked about boys and dating.
Blake let out a sigh. “I’m sorry, Demi. You’re right. I should have handled it differently, but I didn’t. But you need to follow the rules. No boys are allowed in your bedroom.”
“I want to go live with Mom.” Demi crossed her arms over her chest and the set of her jaw reminded him of himself. “She’s not as strict as you are and she wouldn’t have that stupid rule.”
Again, pain slammed into his chest. Demi knew exactly what she was doing when she’d said she wanted to live with Sally.
“That’s not going to happen.” He kept his tone even. “I have full custody and it’s going to stay that way.”
“Why?” Her glare was back. “Mom has an apartment now, someplace that I can live.”
It was true that Sally wasn’t transient any longer, but knowing Sally, her life could turn from stable to unstable at any moment. Once again she could turn back to drugs and alcohol if she hadn’t already, and he wasn’t about to allow his daughter to be put in that kind of situation. Sally was the one he didn’t trust one damned bit.
Blake tried to relax because his body had tensed at the thought of Sally.
“I was very clear about it before,” Blake said, “I need you to follow the rules of this house. Boys aren’t allowed in your bedroom. Period.”
“That’s not fair.” She grabbed an old stuffed horse and held it tightly to her chest like she had as a young girl. Ironically, she added, “You treat me like a little girl.”
“You’re a young woman now and not a little girl,” he said. “But we have rules in this house and that’s just how it’s going to be. You know there are consequences to breaking the rules. If I find you with that boy again, you’ll lose your cell phone for a week.”
She looked at him stubbornly. “That’s not fair.”
“If you follow the rules then you don’t have to worry about losing privileges,” he said. “But when you don’t follow them, there will be consequences for your actions.”
Her jaw was set and she scowled.
“You�
�re growing up to be a beautiful young woman,” Blake added quietly. “I want you to know how proud I am of you.”
Demi said nothing but looked away. She was a lot like he’d been as a teenager and he knew it was hard to back down once riled up.
He touched the side of her face and brought her back to face him. “I love you. Always remember that.”
She looked down at the stuffed horse she was holding and he let his hand fall away from her face.
“I’m going to fix dinner now.” He stood and the bedsprings creaked again. “How do tacos sound?”
Even though he knew tacos were her favorite meal, she shrugged.
“I’ll let you know when dinner’s ready,” he said before walking out of her bedroom and closing the door behind him.
Chapter 4
Thunder rolled across the valley and rattled the barn and Cat scooted closer to Blake on the alfalfa hay bale they were both sitting on. Rain pattered against the wood as the storm went on but the barn was well built and no water leaked through any cracks.
It was Cat’s eighteenth birthday and they’d spent the day together, going to a movie followed by eating at the local pizza place where all of the seniors hung out. What a perfect way to end the day, alone with Blake, feeling like they were shut away from the world.
She leaned her head against him and he put his arm around her shoulders and held her close.
“You’re not afraid of thunderstorms,” he said in a teasing voice.
She tilted her face to look up at him. “No, but it’s a good excuse to snuggle next to you.”
He gave her a sexy little grin. “You don’t need an excuse to cuddle with me.” He lowered his head slowly and brought his mouth to hers.
Blake could kiss like no other guy she’d ever been with. Not that there had been a lot of guys, but he seemed like he had a world’s worth of experience, despite the fact that he was the same age as she was, now that she was eighteen, too.
Roping Your Heart Page 3
