by Karen Rock
She kissed his corded neck, and he grasped a thick handful of her hair. Don’t stop. She’d never touched him here before. His hot smooth skin made her want to be closer still. Her hands slid farther inside his shirt.
He tensed beneath her fingers. “Amberley,” he said softly, but she didn’t stop. He made a low sound in his throat.
“Sweetheart.” He lightly pressed his nose to hers. A slow, sweet ache rose inside her, and she didn’t know what to do. Jared didn’t take his eyes off her face, so she looked down at their hands, his larger hands on hers: chaffed and rough, same as hers. A match in every way but size.
Were they a match? It shocked her how much she wanted the answer to be yes.
“Sweetheart.”
That single word sent a tremor through her skin. “Sweetheart?”
“You don’t like darlin’.” She could feel the smile in his voice and wondered if her heart might explode in her chest.
“You’ve never called me sweetheart before.”
Jared’s strong hands cupped her shoulders, and he released a breath. “Plenty of times. Just not out loud.”
A breathless silence descended, then—“What are we doing, Jared?”
The brown of his eyes vanished, and he averted his head. “I don’t know.”
Her heart squeezed out a sickening thump. “Do you want a relationship?”
He placed her palms on his damp cheeks and shook his head.
Disappointment rolled inside her, a thick, cold fog smothering everything. She’d wanted to know if their first kiss had been a fluke, had taken this chance and...failed. Jared wasn’t a relationship kind of guy. She shouldn’t have believed, even for a moment, that their friendship gave her a different status.
Stupid, stupid girl.
Now they’d crossed the line, twice, and they couldn’t go back. At least, not her. “Then why’d you kiss me?”
“I don’t know.”
Her body trembled, absorbing the blow of those words.
“How come you kissed me?” he asked, his voice so hoarse she could barely hear it.
She groped for Petey’s handle. “Because I wanted to know if this—” she gestured between them “—was real.”
“And...?”
“Guess I was wrong.”
“Amberley.”
“Do you want a relationship or not?”
She spied the flesh-toned flash of his fingers as he must have run them along the brim of his hat, silent. “That’s what I thought.”
And with that, she trudged up the lane to his house, determined, from now on, to go it alone. Her dreams were shattered, her heart in just as many pieces.
Jared made her believe she could fly—all the way to the sun. But the sun had burned her wings clean off and sent her tumbling back to earth. At least now she knew where she stood. Where they stood.
No more Jared.
No more confusion.
No more best friend.
Another loss. What should one more matter?
But it did.
Her stinging eyes screwed shut and her mouth worked.
It did.
Chapter Ten
A SHRILL WHISTLE BLASTED, and Jared exploded off the painted line on a practice field beside the Cade homestead. Peering through the dim, predawn light, he bolted to an old tractor tire, heaved it over, jumped inside it, then sprang out again and dashed to the rope ladder atop flattened grass. His feet weaved, in and out, as he navigated the rungs, and his heart bashed madly against his chest. Sweat dripped from his hair, trickled down his cheeks and slicked his steaming torso.
Clear of the rope, he blasted to a stack of hay bales, spun, reversed course, dodged around them, then repeated the maneuver when a second, then third group loomed. His cleats churned up the soft earth as he sprinted to the marked “end zone,” pushing his screaming muscles to keep working, despite the grueling workout he’d begun an hour and a half ago.
He slowed to a jog, then a walk, then a stop. Bent at the waist, he heaved air into his burning chest. He’d pushed himself hard today, and every part of his body felt broken, including his heart.
He blinked hard in the dawn light, allowing the events of the previous day to seep slowly into him. Amberley hadn’t let him drive her home and was blocking all his calls. It stung hard that he’d left her feeling confused and wounded. He hurt, too. And his head buzzed, his thoughts muddled. Grabbing the toe of his cleat, he pulled his heel up behind him and stretched.
Yesterday’s kiss had knocked him flat. Every emotion he’d ever had for her, ones he didn’t know he possessed, had bubbled to the surface. He loved Amberley, always had, always would. Only now those feelings felt deeper, fiercer, harder. Like he could conquer the world with just one hand as long as she held the other one.
Was he in love with her?
He’d never been in love before and didn’t know what it felt like. It’d be every kind of wrong to mess with Amberley’s heart while he tried figuring it out. Was he ready for a real relationship?
He’d never done anything by half. When he loved a woman, he’d love hard, with everything that he was, with all that he had. But what he had right now wasn’t much. Until he achieved his goal to return to a starting football position, reclaimed his hero status, he’d never have a worthy life to offer another, especially someone like Amberley.
“A minute forty,” his mother called, interrupting his thoughts as she hurried his way. “You shaved off six seconds!” The pinkening light gleamed on her silver hair and set her frameless lenses aglow. She wore a light pink sweater buttoned over a flowered house dress and white sneakers with a matching pink swoosh decal. “Very good.”
“Not good enough,” he muttered, twisting side to side, elongating his lats.
A soft hand fell on his shoulder. “You’re trying, honey. That’s what matters.”
He bent at the waist and touched his toes. “Dad wouldn’t agree.” Pa wanted a winner, a hero. The real world didn’t award points for effort.
“Your dad’s gone.”
“And now you’re dating Boyd Loveland,” he said as he straightened, instantly regretting the bitter words the moment they left his lips.
The corners of her mouth drooped and her brow furrowed. “We’re not seeing each other. Not anymore.”
“How come?” he asked, though he could guess. Without Boyd knowing, his children had blocked his mother’s number on his cell, and Jared and his siblings did the same to their mom, cutting off communication...phase one of the plan.
Phase two started next week.
Instead of answering, she whirled and marched away, her stride brisk, her shoulders hunched as if she faced a strong headwind. “What can I get you for breakfast?” she called over her shoulder.
“Eggs and bacon. But I can get it.”
In the distance, Mount Sopris’s bald top glittered, the rising sun peeking over its crest. Its first rays sliced through the chill, and pure air and dew-soaked grass brushed his calves as he followed his mother back to the homestead.
“Let me. Makes me feel useful.”
A sigh heaved out of him. Was waiting on him and his siblings all that gave Ma’s life purpose? She had her new grandson, plus her church group. She also chaired the annual garden gala. Those counted...but were they enough? There had to be other ways to fill her time besides Boyd Loveland.
“Alright, then,” he muttered, thinking hard, for the first time, about his mother’s life, or lack of one, outside of her children... “Much appreciated.”
Petey bounced up and nudged his wet nose into Jared’s hand. “Ready for more training, boy? Your test is coming up quick.”
“Was Amberley impressed with him?” The hem of his mother’s housecoat belled around her ankles as they mounted the rear porch steps. Petey streaked off after a chittering squirrel.<
br />
“I reckon.” He held the door for her, kicked off his dirt-crusted cleats and followed Ma into the kitchen.
She grabbed a frying pan from the wrought-iron rack above a large granite-topped island. “She seemed to leave awful quick yesterday.”
“Uh-huh,” he murmured, noncommittal. After grabbing eggs, bacon and a bottle of orange juice from the fridge, he joined her at the island.
His mother cracked an egg and dropped it into a bowl. A thick white square of paper, his brother Jack and Dani’s wedding invitation, dated just a week away, rested on the brown-and-white-speckled surface. It struck him suddenly that Jack would no longer just be his brother, he’d be Dani’s husband, and someday, a father, too. A strange yearning opened inside him, the wanting for something previously unknowable. The same sensation that came over him whenever he witnessed James cuddling with Sofia and Javi.
A family.
A love of his own.
Was he ready for all of that with Amberley?
After dropping eggshells in the garbage, his mother turned. “Did she like the training rink?”
“Seemed to.” He perched on a stool, picked up his cell and scrolled through a screen of baseball stats.
“Jared William Cade.”
Hearing his full name spoken by his mother meant only one thing. Trouble. He lowered his phone quickly.
“I’m talking to you.”
“I’m listening.”
Her elbow jerked as she whisked the eggs, her steady gaze on him. “What’s going on with you and Amberley?”
Shoot. “Nothing. Want me to put on the bacon?”
She nodded. “You two fighting?”
He flicked on the stovetop, placed a pan on the front burner, then peeled back the top of the package. A smoky, apple wood scent rose from the cured meat. “I’m not.”
His mother clucked. “What’d you do?”
His lips burned as the memory of the kiss returned, so real he could taste and feel Amberley, sweet and spice.
“K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”
Javi sashayed in the kitchen wearing Batman pajamas. “I saw them, Grandma!”
“Javi!” Sofia smoothed his tangled dark hair from his face. “You didn’t brush your teeth yet.” She met Jared’s eye. “Sorry. Kids and their imaginations...”
He didn’t need a mirror to know red now stained his cheeks. If Javi knew, then James knew...
“Well. It’s about time,” his mother exclaimed once they were alone again. She elbowed him out of the way and set another pan on the stove.
A bacon slice dropped from his numb hand, landing half in, half out of the skillet. “What?”
“You and Amberley are made for each other.”
He placed ten more slices in the fryer, mulling that over. “How do you know if you’re in love?”
A sizzling sound rose as his mother poured the eggs into her pan. “It’s more a feeling than a knowing.”
Small bubbles appeared around the edges of the bacon, and he nudged them with the fork. How did he feel? He saw her face each time he closed his eyes. She haunted his thoughts, made him wish to do grand and wonderful things in her name, made him want to be a man who deserved to be by her side.
But would those feelings last forever?
He had no experience with permanent and wouldn’t start something he couldn’t see right through to the death-us-do-part end. Heroes didn’t fail their women, and he didn’t have a crystal ball telling him if he and Amberley would make it.
“How’d you feel about Pa?”
Bacon fat splatted in the silence as she stirred the eggs. “Comfortable,” she said after a moment. “Like I’d been lost and just found my way home.”
He turned the darkening strips. “Doesn’t sound exciting.”
“It doesn’t have to be. It just has to feel right.”
“James said you dated Boyd Loveland in high school.”
Her spatula scraped the side of her pan. “True.”
“Did that feel right, too?”
“I thought so.”
“What about now?” He clamped his lips together. He shouldn’t be encouraging her to talk about a man they needed her to forget.
“I thought...maybe...” She slid the eggs onto two plates and he added bacon. “Guess I’ll never know.”
Glasses in hand, he joined her back at the island. “Why’s that?”
A twinge of guilt turned his stomach, and he pushed the eggs around on his plate with his fork. He knew why she’d never know...he and the Loveland gang wouldn’t let them.
“He hasn’t called in a week. I guess I’m just an old fool for having a young woman’s dream.” Her stool scraped back as she stood. “I’m not as hungry as I thought. Just leave the dishes in the sink for me when you’re done, honey.”
He watched her slumped shoulders as she retreated to her room, and his heart squeezed. His mother wasn’t an old fool. He grabbed her cell phone, unblocked Boyd’s number and slid it back next to her purse before he changed his mind.
He speared his fork in his eggs and shoved a big bite into his mouth. Suddenly ravenous, he chewed furiously, in a hurry to get to Spirit Ranch and Amberley.
His mother deserved a chance to figure out her feelings.
And so did he.
* * *
AMBERLEY SWAYED ATOP Harley later that afternoon as he followed the string of horses traveling on Spirit Ranch’s beginner trail. The sunlight warmed her skin, and the weight around her shoulders drifted away momentarily as she lost herself in the moment.
Carbondale in summer was the most beautiful place on earth. With her eyes closed, she pictured the scene her senses relayed. Songbirds flitted overhead, calling out their territory. A soft breeze carried the sweet smell of wildflowers and rustled the leaves of cottonwood trees arching overhead.
When she opened her eyes, she peered at the smears of sunlight filtering through the canopy. Harley threw his head back and opened his mouth in a huge yawn that mirrored her boredom. With the reins loose in her hand, Harley on autopilot, she felt more like a burden than a rider. What a difference a day made. The exhilarating rush of yesterday’s barrel racing practice, followed by a shattering kiss, looped in her brain.
Bitter heat rose inside. She’d acted a fool to fling herself at Jared. What had she been thinking? Doing? She should have known he’d get squirrely when she pinned him down about a relationship. Yet she’d gone ahead and done it anyway.
You wanted to know, soothed the angel on one shoulder.
You looked like an idiot, bit out the devil on the other, savage, sulking.
Her shoulders slumped and her head dipped. For once her vision loss worked to her advantage. She couldn’t see Jared, riding in the lead. It’d been easy to avoid catching sight of him for much of today’s therapy session. Whatever expression he wore, she didn’t want to see it: pity, regret and, worst of all, concern. She’d done her best to pretend she didn’t want him anymore. She would just have to pretend hard enough to make it come true.
The trees must have thinned because she could hear Crystal River where it raked over the shallows to her right. The tangy smell of horsehair crept into her nostrils. She bent down and patted Harley’s velvet-soft neck.
“Sorry, boy,” she whispered, and he bobbed his head, shaking the silky strands of his mane over her hand. This morning, he’d greeted her with a high-pitched whinny, raring to go, she supposed, back to the practice rink. Now she’d ruined not only her chances, but his, as well. That hurt worse.
The hard edge of a folded-up flier dug inside her pocket.
The ERA Premier touring group was pleased to announce tryouts in Denver next month, her mother had read out loud over breakfast.
Four weeks.
If she hadn’t messed up with Jared, she could be training for it. Maybe she didn’
t have much of a chance, but it would have been a shot. Now, she’d lost her friend, her heart and this opportunity.
For her and for Harley.
“Everyone pull up in the clearing,” she heard Jared shout up ahead.
A moment later, the brown-green of the trees parted as she passed through them, and the open field surrounded her in an explosion of space and green grass and blue sky. She swung down from the saddle and waited for someone to guide her to a tie-up spot for Harley.
“Want me to take him?” she heard Maverick ask.
Her gaze traveled up, up and up to reach where his face must be. Corn-fed and stalk-high, her mother always said about the Loveland boys.
“I’d appreciate it, thanks.”
After accompanying Maverick and securing Harley beneath a copse of trees, she groped forward and helped a few of the other children. Their happy chatter eased the strain inside her, and she found herself smiling when one of them thrust what felt like a bouquet in her hands.
“For me?” she buried her nose in the fragrant flowers. Honeysuckle. Her favorite. And not easy to find.
“It’s from Jared.” Emily giggled. Then Amberley noticed the tall, broad-shouldered shape behind the child’s wheelchair.
“Please tell him thanks,” she said, keeping her voice steady despite her jumpy heart. Flowers? Why? What did they mean?
“Jared,” Emily twisted around and shouted, “Amberley says thanks.”
He chuckled. “I heard.”
“There you are!” a woman exclaimed, Emily’s mother if Amberley recalled the voice correctly. “The peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are going fast. Best hurry.”
A moment later she found herself alone with Jared. Her lungs expanded, dragging in the subtle spice of his cologne.
“Can we talk?”
She shook her head. “You said everything yesterday.”
“Not everything. Would you hear me out? Please?”
She wanted to sink through the ground and escape this agonizing moment. No doubt he’d prepared one of the gentlemanly breakup talks he gave infatuated ladies. Jared embodied old-school cowboy cordiality. He couldn’t bear to hurt a woman, and now she’d become just another one to let down gently.
