“I appreciate that. Thanks so much for coming out so quickly, too.”
Nina heard a truck roll up outside, followed by a door slamming. A minute later, Tessa ran into the barn towards her.
“Is everyone okay?” she said, out of breath.
Gabe stood up in the stall. “You look like you ran the whole way home, Tess. Everything’s fine. Dusty just has some swelling we’ll need to watch for a few days. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before.”
Tessa looked at Nina and took in the dirt on her jacket from her shoulder to her waist.
“Did you get thrown?” she asked. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. I’m just worried about Dusty.”
Tessa heaved a sigh of relief. “I’m so glad. I was so afraid something really bad happened. All I need is my ex-husband to make more of this than it is and he’ll…”
Nina saw tears fill Tessa’s eyes as emotion flooded her.
Gabe stepped out of Dusty’s stall and walked over to Tessa. His face full of concern.
“He’ll what, Tessa?” Gabe asked.
Tessa looked at Nina and then at Gabe. “Nothing. I’m just glad Nina is okay.”
Gabe looked at Nina. “Dusty’s a little agitated. I’m sure he could use some comfort.”
“Thanks again, Gabe,” she said.
“Why don’t you and I go back to the house and give Nate Collins a call.”
Tessa nodded, then turned to Nina. “You’re really not hurt?”
“I’m fine. I feel bad you had to run home from the rig for this.”
Gabe draped his arm over Tessa’s shoulder and walked her out of the barn. Gabe had been coming out to Rolling Rock Ranch even while Tessa was still married to her ex-husband. The look of protection on his face when Tessa started to cry was telling.
Nina walked into Dusty’s stall. “If I didn’t know any better, Dusty, I’d swear you did this just to make me stay in Lakeridge a little longer.”
Dusty bobbed his head as Nina approached. She rubbed his head and his neck, relieved that her friend was going to be okay.
* * *
The house in Lakeridge was dark. Gray looked through the window to see if there was a fire in the fireplace or if there were signs that Nina was home. There were none.
Worried that she’d been hurt out at Tessa’s ranch, Gray decided to drive over to the Rolling Rock Ranch to find out what happened. He pulled into the driveway and saw Nina’s SUV parked next to Tessa’s truck. The kitchen light was on inside the house. Through the window, he saw Tessa sitting at the table. She was talking on the phone. He didn’t see Nina.
Gray got out of his truck and shut the door. Even though it was officially spring, the night air was still bitter cold. He climbed the side porch by the kitchen and stood in front of the window so Tessa could see him before he rapped on the windowpane of the door. Tessa lifted her head and then stood up, still talking on the phone. She shook her head, clearly agitated with whoever she was talking with. As she walked to the door, she pressed a button on the phone to hang up the call. Then she pulled the kitchen door open with a pasted smile on her face.
“That bad?” he said as she stepped aside and motioned him into the kitchen with the hand that held the phone.
Tessa chuckled. “Just my ex. My blood pressure always goes up when I talk to him. He wants to keep Haley for a few more days. I told him I’m off the rig in two days and I expect Haley to be back at the ranch by then. Honestly, I don’t understand him. I follow the visitation order. I don’t know why he can’t keep to it.”
“It stinks you’re going through that. My sister Grace is struggling with her own visitation issues. Except her ex never seems to want to show up.”
“I wish I had that problem.” Tessa shook her head. “No, that wouldn’t be fair to Haley. She loves her dad. She just doesn’t know him the way I do. But never mind about that. I assume you came out to ask me about work?”
“Actually, no. I assumed you’d let me know if you couldn’t make your shift tomorrow.”
“I can. I’ll be leaving here in the morning and working a full twelve hour shift.”
She seemed relieved to be able to tell him that. But Gray knew that given the time, Tessa was going to get next to nothing for sleep if she had to get up early, take care of the animals and then get on the road for a seven AM shift. But Tessa was nothing if not determined and she was a good worker.
“Good. But it’s okay if you need to take some time. Some of the guys are looking for extra shifts. I can call someone in.”
Her expression collapsed. “I could use the money. I’d prefer to keep my shifts if I can.”
“That’s fine.”
She looked at him with widened eyes. “So why did you come out?”
“I wanted to make sure you were okay. You ran off pretty quickly. I see that Nina’s car is in the driveway.”
“Oh, sure. Nina is out in the barn with Dusty. He got a little injury this afternoon. I’m sorry I overreacted out at the rig. My stable boy didn’t give me a lot of details when he called.”
Relief filled him.
“Dusty’s okay?”
“Yes. He just threw a shoe and is a little tender after his fall.”
“Fall?”
“Yeah. Nina can tell you about it. Like I said, she’s out in the barn.”
A few minutes later, Gray pulled the barn door open with one hand while steadying two coffee mugs in his other hand. He put the coffee mugs down on the stool by the first stall and then closed the barn door.
As he picked up the coffee mugs again, Nina poked her head out of Dusty’s stall.
She gasped softly. “You brought coffee,” she said quietly as if she were afraid to wake a baby.
Disappointed a cup of hot coffee got a better reaction out of Nina than seeing him, he walked the few feet down to Dusty’s stall. Nina was clearly exhausted. Her eyes were puffy and dark and her hair was pushed up on one side as if she were resting it against the stall door. He handed her one of the cups.
“You have no idea how much I need this. How did you know I was here?”
“Tessa ran off the rig earlier like a bat out of hell. I wanted to make sure everything was okay here.”
“So you came here to see Tessa?”
“She’s my employee. I came out to make sure she was alright.”
She nodded and wrapped her fingers around her warm mug.
A smile tugged at his lips. She was testing him again. “I went out to your house first and you weren’t there. I figured I’d try here.”
She hid her smile behind the coffee mug as she took a sip. But Gray saw it in Nina’s eyes.
“Gabe Rinehart was out here tonight. He said Dusty is going to be fine. There’s no reason for me to put off leaving tomorrow.”
His heart sank. “Tomorrow?”
She looked at the liquid in her mug. “Tomorrow.”
“Were you even going to say goodbye to me before you left?”
She shifted uncomfortably where she stood. “It’s too hard, Gray. How many times are we going to do this?”
“Here’s a plan. How about not at all.”
“Gray, the house is sold. I have to move out of there.”
“That’s an excuse.”
“Being homeless is an excuse?”
“You could find an apartment anywhere. You saw half a dozen in Rapid City last month. You didn’t like any one of them?”
“I need a job.”
“You can find a job here. Hell, you could get a job at the oil company if you really wanted one.”
“And then what?”
Taken aback by her question, he said, “And then you’d be here.”
“Why? My entire family is gone.”
He took a few paces away from her, frustrated by the walls she kept putting between them again.
When he paced back to her, he said, “You’re always running away, Nina. You’re not facing the tough stuff. You ran away two years ago and you’re
running away now. Why?”
“You’ll never understand, Gray. I’m not sure I do.”
“Well, let’s put it all on the table right now. I keep coming back to you and you keep telling me to leave you alone. You’re scared, Nina. But you don’t have to be afraid of me.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Tell me why,” he demanded.
She took a slow breath and let it out before speaking. “Imagine riding a great bull at a rodeo,” she said.
He shook his head. “What does bull riding have to do with anything?”
“Humor me for a minute. Imagine it. You’ve just ridden eight seconds on a bull that was so rank that you’ve received the highest score of your career. It’s amazing. You feel great. Then you go to the next rodeo and that bull isn’t in the lineup.”
He saw where she was going with this and he didn’t like it. “You are not going to compare yourself to a bull.”
“Why not? I know the high I get when I’m riding Dusty Surprise and we get a great score. It’s a lot like the high of falling in love.” She said the last part so softly he could hardly hear it over the barn noises.
“I know how I feel about you, Nina. I haven’t felt like that in a very long time. I don’t want to lose that feeling again.”
“How do you know it’s real, Gray? How do you know you’re not just reacting to losing Jen? How am I ever going to know that it’s really me you want?”
He reached out and touched her face. “Because I know. We’re good together, Nina. You have to see that.”
“I can’t even think about us without feeling guilty. I know I shouldn’t. Maybe it’s because my father seems so angry with me all the time lately.”
“He’s not angry with you. He’s angry with me,” Gray said. “You should have seen him during the funeral. He wouldn’t even look me in the eye. It’s like he thinks it’s somehow my fault that Jen’s gone.”
“He doesn’t think that. He’s grieving. He’ll eventually come to terms with that.”
He touched her cheek and let the silky softness of her skin bring back memories of the two of them in a warm embrace. Despite the cold in the barn, Gray felt that warmth deep in his chest where his heart beat loud and strong.
“You’re really going to leave?”
Nina drained the last of her coffee and tucked the mug in her jacket pocket. “Not tonight. Tonight I’ll stay here with Dusty. But the plan right from the beginning was for me to leave.”
“But everything has changed.”
“Jen dying?”
Frustration flared inside him. “Yes and no. If Jen had survived, I’d still feel the same.”
Nina looked into Gray’s eyes and saw the war he was waging.
“Gray, what do you want from me? What did you think was going to happen between us?”
He started to say something and then stopped.
“You don’t even know, do you?”
“I don’t know,” he said, raising his arms and then letting them fall at his side. “I wish I did. I feel like I’m spinning and I hate it. I don’t know if I even have the right to ask you to stay. All I know is that I stood there at Jen’s funeral, listening to all these beautiful words people were saying about Jen and thinking they were going through emotions I’d spent the last two years revisiting. I’ve mourned her, Nina. I’ve cried for her and missed her. I’ll always miss her. But the entire time I was there I felt like a monster.”
“A monster? Why?”
“Because I realized I’d already said goodbye to Jen a long time ago. I just didn’t realize it until…”
“Until that night we spent together at the house?”
He nodded. “I should have been thinking about Jen. But while everyone else was weeping, I was thinking about you and what it felt like to make love to you. And I was wondering what you were wearing underneath that black dress. That makes me a monster.”
Nina stared at Gray with her mouth agape from what he’d just confessed. She felt a stir in her body that was still fresh and aching with the memory of their two bodies entwined in front of the fireplace in her living room.
“I don’t want you to think that what happened between us was nothing,” he said.
She lifted her chin. “Sure it was. It was sex. Granted, it was great sex. But it was still just sex.”
He shook his head. “You’re wrong.”
She sighed. “Look, you and I were both feeling some pretty raw things that night. I can live with the fact that I was there for you at a time when you needed someone. I needed someone, too. I was honest about some old feelings and…it happened.”
“That’s it?”
She nodded even as she saw the anger simmer in him, turning his face crimson. She lived in the real world. She’d needed him and loved being in his arms. But that moment had passed.
“You aren’t just someone, Nina.”
“I know. I’m Jen’s sister.”
“You’re Nina.”
She chuckled softly. “I was wondering if you…”
“Saw you? Do you really think I would have made love to you otherwise?”
She shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know what I think. That’s just the problem. I’ve got too much going on in my head and no way to sort it all out.”
“That’s all the more reason to stay, don’t you think?”
She glanced at the floor. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“I want to.”
“Until that night we made love, I hadn’t been with another woman…since the last time I was with Jen.”
Nina tried her best to squash her shock. “You dated so many women since Jen.”
“Not at first. It took a long time for me to take that step.”
“Well, yeah, not at first. We were all hoping Jen would pull through. But Jen was in that state for a long time. I thought surely you would have been with…any number of women.”
“You thought wrong. I didn’t want to be with anyone. Not until you.”
Nina didn’t know how to take that. She’d been on an emotional roller coaster for the last week that she didn’t know what was real and what was fantasy. She felt the rise and fall of her chest as she took each breath and processed what Gray had confessed.
“Nothing,” she finally said.
Gray cocked his head slightly to one side. His eyes drew together slightly in a frown.
Answering his unasked question, she said, “You wondered what I was wearing under my dress.”
“Nothing,” he whispered as he eyes flared with fire.
She nodded.
“I think I should tell you that I’ve made a decision about something.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“I’ve decided to definitely go to California. I’m leaving as soon as I get the car packed.”
His mouth dropped open. “California? That’s so far.”
“I got in touch with someone at a horse farm in Santa Barbara. They have a small apartment available over the garage. I can rent it for a few months while I figure things out. I may even be able to get a job there. Let’s face it, there isn’t anything left here for me anymore.”
She may as well have slapped him across the face. His reaction was the same.
“Let’s not lie to each other, Gray. It’s time for us to move on. Isn’t that what everyone has been telling us all for so long?”
“I thought I was,” he said. “With you.”
She brushed her hand over his chest and remembered what it felt like to feel his heart beating beneath her hand as he slept.
“See, the truth is, I’m never going to know if it was me you really wanted, Gray. I need to get away. I know how I feel about you. I know you think you know how you feel about me. But I also think we probably need to get a little distance from Jen’s death to know if all these feelings we have between us are real or just a fantasy because we both needed someone.”
“What I feel for you is r
eal.”
“You say that now. But reality has a funny way of slapping you in the face when you aren’t paying attention. We’ve both been through a lot these last few weeks. It’s only right that we’d reach out to each other. We’re friends.” Her bottom lip quivered and she bit it for a second to steady it before going on. “I want you to look at life six months from now, or a year from now. What’s there? You won’t be feeling as raw and unsettled as you feel now. And quite frankly, I don’t want to see what we shared die a slow death because we jumped into something we thought was about us when it’s really about us feeling so bad over losing Jen.”
The somber expression on Gray’s face nearly broke her heart. “She’s always going to be between us, isn’t she?”
“She’s a part of us. How can she not be? She was my sister and I loved her. You loved her, too. I can’t help wondering what we’d be like if things had been different, if she’d gotten into that accident and she’d survived. What would we have been like then? I felt this way about you before you met Jen, and when she took my place, I couldn’t handle being around the two of you.”
“You avoided me.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m a coward. There, I admitted it.”
Gray chuckled softly. “You’re anything but a coward. I’ve never met a woman stronger.”
“How do you figure that?”
“I don’t know if I could have been strong enough to walk away. I don’t know if I can do it now.”
Tears stung her eyes. “You can. Just turn around and don’t look back. You’ll wake up tomorrow and maybe it won’t feel right but eventually it will.”
He put his hands on her cheeks and kissed her lightly on the lips. “I feel like I’m losing my best friend.”
She shook her head, fighting back tears. “You’ll never lose that. Never.”
With that, Gray slowly turned and walked away. Neither one of them made a promise to call when she got where she was going. Neither one of them said anything. He just walked out of the barn and shut the door.
Nina sighed as an errant tear ran down her cheek. “Goodbye, Gray.”
#
His Dakota Heart Page 9
