The Rancher's Dance

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  Which made him wonder what in the hell they were because he damn sure couldn’t get her out from beneath his skin. For that matter, he wasn’t even sure how she’d managed to get there in the first place.

  “What is it, then?” he pushed. “Pride? You think being this—” he gestured “—ballet master is beneath you?”

  “No!” Her hands flew out to her sides and temper entered her eyes. “Good ballet masters are worth their weight in gold!” She exhaled. “I’d have better hours and thanks to my smart agent years ago, the company’s contractually obligated where my pay is concerned. It doesn’t matter what I think about it anyway. That’s the world I know. And that’s the job that’s waiting.”

  “Only if you take it,” he said again.

  “And what else would I do?” She grimaced. “Ballet isn’t as profitable as your architecture firm obviously was. I do have to earn a living!”

  “So teach,” he said abruptly. “You’re getting enough practice with Shelby and her little crew of friends that show up here every day.”

  But again she shook her head. “I can’t stay here.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because of you!” Her lips clamped together. She looked even more annoyed. More frustrated. And there were tears in her eyes again. “Because of you,” she repeated huskily after a tight silence that he couldn’t even attempt to fill.

  The alarms were going off again. “I opened that door last week. You were the one who decided not to walk through.”

  “Sex?” She just shook her head. “That’s really what you think this is about?”

  “What else?”

  She gave him a pitying look that had sweat breaking out at the base of his spine.

  “You’re not in love with me,” he denied flatly. “We met…what? Less than five weeks ago.”

  “How long was it before you knew you loved Harmony?”

  His jaw tightened. The answer swirled in his head. One day. “That’s different.” They’d been kids. They’d grown into adults together. Everything he’d become was because of those years when they’d been figuring out how to be parents, how to be lovers even when they’d wanted to strangle each other.

  “Why?” Her chin lifted. Flags of color splotched her high cheekbones. “Because she’s your sainted Harmony and nobody can ever hold a candle to her?” Then she pushed past him. “Of course that’s why,” she muttered as she rushed out of the room.

  He heard her footsteps on the staircase. And then the slam of a door.

  He rubbed his hand down his face. “Nice work, Ventura,” he muttered.

  The table was still covered in groceries. He poked through them, finding the stuff that still needed to be put in the fridge and shoved it onto the nearly empty shelves inside.

  Then he went up the stairs.

  Only one door was closed and he stopped in front of it. Pressed his forehead against the panel and took a long, deep breath.

  “Harmony wasn’t a saint,” he finally said through the door. “If she had been, she would have wanted to fight a little harder to stay with her family instead of refusing any sort of treatment and simply…giving…up.” He had to force the words out from between his clenched teeth. “Just because I loved her didn’t mean I was blind. It was her way or no way at all and we spent as much time arguing as we did making up.”

  The door cracked open and Lucy stood there. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was husky. “I shouldn’t have said that. It was extremely…unkind.”

  “Mebbe,” he allowed after a moment. “But not necessarily uncalled for.” He swallowed past the knot in his chest. “It’s easier to put someone on a pedestal than it is to face how things really were.”

  “You don’t need to say that. Not for me.”

  “I need to say it for myself, then.” His fingers wrapped hard around the sides of the doorjamb. “Remembering her as she really was…faults and all…has always hurt just too damn much. She could have chosen to fight,” he finished roughly. “And I could have chosen to pay more attention to her instead of my business, and maybe I would have seen earlier that she was getting sick. Before it was too late.”

  “Oh, Beck,” she whispered. “That’s why you walked away from your company. And why you won’t work with Jake and J.D. now on their big project?” She looked up at him. “Why on earth does everything have to be so complicated?” But there wasn’t really a question in her soft voice. And he knew she didn’t really expect an answer.

  He answered anyway. “Sometimes it just is.”

  Her lips curved upward sadly. “I suppose you’re right. It just is.”

  If his fingers were stronger, they’d be leaving dents in the door frame. “So what are we going to do about it?”

  Surprise drifted through her eyes. “Nothing,” she murmured. “What is there to do? You won’t let yourself be over your wife. And I’m too…emotional—” she said the word carefully “—to just have an affair with you. And heaven knows I don’t need mercy sex from you.”

  Trust her to be honest about it. “I’m not sure it’d be mercy for you, but mercy for me,” he managed with an attempt at wry humor.

  She smiled faintly, but her gaze shied away from him. “Don’t try to persuade me. I’m feeling more than a little weak on that score.”

  “Lucy.” Words clogged in his chest. He cleared his throat. “If I could give anyone more, it—”

  She held up her hand. “Don’t. Please don’t.” Her voice went uneven. “I just don’t have much resistance where you’re concerned. And I don’t want either one of us to end up with more regrets.”

  He knew regrets. He’d known them well before, and since Lucy, they’d turned into his constant shadow. “I have to pick up Shelby from day camp soon.”

  She caught her upper lip in her teeth for a moment. “Just as well.”

  He couldn’t help himself any longer. He slid his hand behind her neck and tilted her head toward his. Pressed his lips slowly to her forehead. “This has got to be the strangest conversation I’ve ever had,” he whispered.

  “For two nonfriends, nonlovers?” Her fingers curled into his chest for a moment. “I guess it is strange.”

  He lifted his head. Looked at her. “I didn’t mean it about the friends. Anyone who can call you a friend is a lucky person.”

  Her lashes fluttered down to her cheeks. “Oh, great. Go all soft on me now.”

  “There’s no danger of that.”

  Color filled her cheeks again but the long, slow look she gave him had his skin feeling on fire. “You should go pick up Shelby before I tell my own good sense to take a flying leap,” she advised.

  “You still going to do those lessons with her?”

  A frown creased her smooth forehead. “How I feel about your daughter has nothing to do with anything but her,” she assured. “If you’re still willing to bring her in the mornings, I’m still willing, too.”

  He nodded once. He really hadn’t expected otherwise. She was as consistent as the day was long. “I may be back later. I want to get the crown molding finished.”

  Whether she welcomed the possibility or not, he couldn’t tell. And reminding himself that it shouldn’t matter to him anyway did no good.

  It mattered.

  He unlatched his fingers from the door frame and turned to go. “Are you going to be all right?”

  Her gaze met his. “I’m a big girl.”

  That wasn’t really an answer, but he let it go only because he couldn’t be late picking up Shelby. Still, turning around and leaving her standing there was a helluva lot harder than it should have been.

  When he headed back there again later that evening after dinner with Shelby and his dad and Susan, he wasn’t sure if it was the urgency to finish the job as quickly as possible that motivated him, or her.

  Didn’t really matter, he realized, when he arrived at the Lazy-B.

  Her truck was parked in its usual spot, but the house was dark. Empty. He even went up the stairs to he
r bedroom. She wasn’t there, either.

  He glanced around the room. It was still a young girl’s room. Pale pink. Ivory. Worn-out looking ballet shoes hanging from a ribbon on the wall. The only thing that looked out of place was the white shirt crumpled on the foot of the quilt-topped bed.

  She had about a million relatives around Weaver. She was probably with one of them. Sharing her problems with the people who loved her.

  He should have been relieved. He could work in peace. Not have her around disrupting his concentration just by breathing. He didn’t have to see the misery in her expression and know there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to fix it.

  He went downstairs again, flipped on the lights in the addition and set to work. He finished the crown and the chair rail and even added the finish molding around the built-in shelving he’d constructed even though he hadn’t planned getting to that yet either.

  She still hadn’t returned.

  He finally packed up his tools in the toolbox that he’d been leaving inside the house since he’d finished closing in the frame. He turned off the lights. Let himself out and locked up again.

  The sun had long set and the oppressive heat of the August day had abated. The sky was clear and studded with stars; the kind of stars you couldn’t see in Denver where the city lights were too bright.

  He headed around the side of the house and realized there was faint music coming from the barn, though he couldn’t see any light shining around the closed barn door. He walked over and slid the wide, tall door aside.

  The music—some sort of classical stuff that just sounded mournful to him—was louder. But the place was pitch dark. He reached for the light switch that he knew was inside the door and flipped it on.

  Light flickered to life.

  And there she was. Standing in the center of the space wearing a long-sleeved black leotard and pink tights, her hair pinned back in a knot behind her head with her hand gripped around the ballet barre.

  He stepped farther into the barn. “You’re dancing in the dark?”

  “Why not?” She didn’t look at him. “I know the moves and that way I don’t have to see myself in the mirror doing them.” She rose on her toes and one leg—the injured one—swept in a graceful arch around her body. She held it there and for a moment, Beck wished he had a camera just to freeze the moment.

  Then she made a disgusted sound and she dropped her foot to the ground.

  “What?”

  “I can’t even manage a decent attitude.” She pulled a pin out of her hair and it unfurled around her shoulders.

  Attitude, he assumed, meant something in ballet jargon. “How long have you been in here?”

  “A few hours.” Lucy wrapped her hands around the ballet barre, not looking at him. She’d known when he’d arrived at the house, and like a coward had stayed in the barn. “Is that door still open?”

  She could feel his silence all the way across the barn and finally looked toward him.

  His eyes were narrowed. He obviously knew she wasn’t referring to the barn door.

  Then he slowly headed for her, crossing right over her Marley floor in his thick-soled work boots. “Why?”

  “Does there have to be a reason why?”

  “For you? Yeah.”

  She chewed the inside of her lip. “I called one of my friends at the company. Isabella. She knows all about my knee.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  She looked at him.

  “You’re going back. Despite everything.”

  The back of Lucy’s throat burned. “If not there, then somewhere else.” After what Izzy had told her, the somewhere else was pretty much a necessity because there was no way she would return to NEBT now. She shoved her hair behind her shoulders and looked up at him. “So…are you interested or not?”

  He was watching her closely, as if he were trying to divine her thoughts. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.” She moistened her lips and stepped closer to him. He stiffened. But he stayed rooted in place, even when she shifted close enough that she could feel heat radiating from his body. Her hands trembled as she carefully settled her palms against his chest.

  A muscle flexed in his jaw and he wrapped his hands around her wrists. “Lucy, talk to me.”

  She huffed, more shaken by that than she wanted to admit. “Fine. You know the dancer that Lars replaced me with? Natalia? Well, she’s pregnant,” she said flatly. “And according to Izzy, Lars actually handed out cigars when they announced it.”

  “If she’s pregnant she’s not going to be able to dance for long.”

  “Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean I’m in line for my old job.” She tugged her wrists out of Beck’s hold and moved away from him. “When Natalia took my position with the company, everybody figured I was jealous, but I wasn’t.” Her lips twisted. “Angry, yes, but not jealous. Not until now.”

  “Because she’s having a baby with Lars.”

  “God, no.” She shook her head. “Because she’s having a baby, period. She’s barely twenty-five and she’s taking the road that I chose not to.” She blew out a breath.

  “If you want a baby so badly, have one!”

  But she didn’t want just a baby. She wanted a family. A mom. A dad. Children.

  When she’d been with Lars, she’d let herself be put off when she’d broached the subject with him. She’d wanted to go on the tours. She’d wanted to perform the dances he’d choreographed just for her. Even though a part of her had wanted more, it was the career that had always won out. Because it had always mattered more.

  Now, the career was gone. Not even hope remained.

  And that family that she wanted more than ever before?

  She wanted that only with Beck.

  She knew it as certainly as she’d known when she was a girl that she’d be a dancer.

  Feeling that burn in the back of her throat again, she propped her foot on the shelf that held the boom box and began untying the ribbons of her pointe shoe. “Single parenthood? By choice?” She shook her head. “Oddly enough, I guess I’m more old-fashioned than that.” Her voice went husky. “Angeline’s husband was with her for every one of the twelve hours that it took to bring their little Sofia into the world. I want that.” She pulled the shoe off and leaned over to undo the ribbons on the other foot.

  But Beck knelt at her feet first. “Were you really on some documentary?” His fingers slid around her ankle, searching out the knot in the ribbon.

  Her breath shortened. “I suppose Shelby told you she watched it.”

  “Mmm.” He’d found the knot and worked it free. Then seemed to take an inordinate amount of time unwinding the ribbons and slowly slipping the shoe off her foot. He looked up as he handed it to her. “She was pretty fascinated.”

  Feeling more self-conscious than ever, she set the shoe on the shelf. “It was just a small a cable show that Leandra used to work on. Walk in the Shoes. A camera crew followed me around for a few weeks. Going to rehearsals. That sort of thing.”

  “I’d like to see it someday.” He straightened. She couldn’t help but be aware of how close he stood.

  “There’s a copy in the house,” she said faintly. “I, um, I could get it for you.” She started to move around him to get the slip-on sandals she’d worn when she’d walked over to the barn, but he shifted.

  Blocked her way.

  And her heart slid dangerously into overdrive.

  “Changed your mind about walking through that door, now?”

  She stared at him. “Have you?”

  He slowly shook his head. His hands closed over her shoulders. “I just want to know why, though.”

  “It’s not because I want a baby right now.” She forced a smile, trying to lessen the tension. “I’m on the pill, in case you’re worried or something.”

  He just looked at her and she exhaled, feeling exposed right down to the bone. “All right! Maybe I need to do some moving on of my own. Or maybe I’ve just had a mis
erable day and would like something pleasant for a change!”

  The corner of his lips kicked upward. “I think we could outdo pleasant.”

  She had no doubt about that either. His thumbs were slipping beneath the neckline of her leotard, sending nerves tightening up and down her spine. “You don’t have to worry. It’s not like I’m going to expect anything.”

  “Ah, Lucy.” His voice was low. Regretful. “You should expect everything. You deserve to have that. And if I could—”

  Her eyes burned and she lifted her hand, covering his mouth. She couldn’t bear to hear the rest.

  With him there were no illusions to be broken. He didn’t love her. She knew that. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t a good man. A good man who wanted her.

  And for tonight, it was going to be enough. Because it had to be. Because she couldn’t back away from him one more time.

  “The only thing I expect for either one of us is to forget everything but this.” She stepped closer until her body brushed his.

  His hands slid down her shoulders. Around her waist. He lifted her off her feet until her mouth was level with his. “I’ve been dreaming about this,” he murmured and slowly grazed his lips over hers. “But where’s your brother?”

  She actually felt dizzy and tightened her hands around him. Her legs just seemed to naturally find their way around his hips. Helped, no doubt, by the hands he’d slid beneath her derriere.

  “Caleb?” She had to focus her thoughts. “He’s fishing for a few days with some of our cousins.” He’d actually left a note for her. “Why?”

  “I don’t want to be interrupted.” He brushed a kiss against her mouth again and her fingers tunneled through his thick hair. She kissed the hard line of his jaw; felt the tantalizing bristly roughness against her lips.

  “There’s nobody here but you and me,” she whispered near his ear.

  His fingers flexed against her rear. “Are we gonna keep talking?”

  She tilted her head back until she could see his face. “I hope not,” she admitted breathlessly.

  The corners of his eyes crinkled a little, and then his mouth was on hers.

  Colors exploded in her mind, sending bolts of heat through every vein. Her legs tightened around him.