by Sylvie Kurtz
“I can believe just about anything,” he said. They’d never know what drove Tessa, but he could understand that sometimes desperate people took desperate measures to get what they wanted. He was living proof.
“I’ll see if I can hold of some STI–571 and let you know,” Dr. Parnell said. He grabbed his bag. After shaking hands with Ellen and Kevin, he duckwalked out of the barn, twirling a piece of hay in his mouth.
“Isn’t that good news?” Ellen said. She picked up a round massage brush from the caddie beside the door and walked into Luci’s stall.
“Great,” he said. “I hope it works.”
As tension wound inside him, he grabbed a bar on Luci’s stall. “Ellen?”
She didn’t look up from her task. “Umm?”
He took in a long breath and let it out in a whoosh. “I’m sorry I lost my temper all those years ago. I never meant for what happened to happen. If I would have known…” He shook his head and stared at her stiff and very still form. “I’d take it all back if I could.”
He silently cursed the crack in his voice. “I loved you, Ellen. I was crazy in love with you and it scared the hell out of me. What I did was stupid and unforgivable.” Gripping the bar tighter, he rushed on. “I’m sorry, too, for lying to you. I never meant to hurt you. I only meant to protect you from more pain.”
Slowly she turned. Slowly she dropped the brush in the caddie by the stall door. Slowly she raised her gaze to meet his own. Fear as he’d never known trampled through him, draining him of all strength. He’d rather meet a hundred Tessas armed with Tasers head-on than suffer the torture of trying to decipher what was going on behind Ellen’s impassive face.
“I have no right to ask,” he said, wishing for a tall glass of water for his desert-dry throat. His voice sounded hot and rushed to him—as frantic as the pulse galloping through his veins. “But I’d like another chance. I never stopped loving you, Ellen.”
The gray-green of her eyes shone bright, but she said nothing.
“You have a right to be angry.”
She said nothing for so long, Kevin thought she wouldn’t.
“What happened wasn’t your fault,” Ellen finally said. “Garth called me from the burger joint. He told me where you’d be and came up with the suggestion to make you jealous. He thought I should pretend to come on to him. I chose to use Kent instead. Garth knew you’d get angry. He was counting on it.”
And as always Kyle had played right into Garth’s hand. He’d let his temper fly with disastrous results.
“I never blamed you,” she said. “What Garth did, it wasn’t your fault.”
“I know, but it shouldn’t have happened.” He should have had the courage to tell her what was in his heart.
“He cost us a lot of good years together.”
At the note of promise in her voice his heart skipped a beat. He dared to ask for his fondest wish. “Can we start over?”
A smile wavered on her lips. She pressed them tight, blinked madly and nodded.
A strange lightness filled him. “Okay.” Whistling to Blue, he strode away, feeling reborn.
“Kevin?” Ellen stood by Luci’s stall door, hanging on to the wood with a white-knuckled grip.
He shot out the barn door, counted to three, then turned around. He knocked on the barn door frame. “Hi, I’m Kevin Ransom. I hear you’re looking for a ranch hand.”
“You heard wrong,” she said, walking toward him. Not once did she take her gaze from his. “I’m looking for a partner.”
“Yeah?” He wrapped his arms around her waist and rejoiced at the purr of contentment filling him at the perfect fit of his hip to hers. “I did have a lifetime position in mind.”
She quirked an eyebrow, slid her arms around his neck and smiled that glorious smile of hers. “Moving kind of fast, aren’t you, mister?”
“I’ve got a lot of time to make up.”
“That’s good because this time I’m not letting you go.” Her hands skimmed over the uneven skin of his face. Her expression grew serious. “I never forgot you, Kevin. Not one day went by that I didn’t think of you. You and the horses, that’s what kept me alive all those years.” Her eyes gleamed. “I thought I’d never get the chance to tell you how much I love you.”
He kissed her then, felt his heart settle, his body hum. He’d finally found his way home.
Epilogue
Fall colored the Colorado mountains all around him. Wind tinkled the golden aspen leaves at his back and reminded him of Nina’s laughter. Kevin thumbed the bone feather in his jeans pocket.
The past few months had been the happiest in his life. The Thoroughbreds were slowly pulling through. C.C. and Pudge had found new loving homes. Two new boarders had joined their ragged band. He was getting to know his brother, his sister-in-law and his niece. Tessa was in jail awaiting trial. And life with Ellen was a constant feast of the unexpected. Every night when he came through the kitchen door she was waiting for him, a ready smile on her face.
Little by little he was learning to stop looking over his shoulder waiting for the other shoe to drop, for someone to steal away the peace he’d found. Not a day went by when he didn’t give thanks for Nina’s push to face his past.
Nina was right, he thought as he looked at the valley below. The day had come when he was ready to let the ranch go. There was just one last thing he had to do before he closed this chapter of his life.
The last time he was here he’d sung Nina’s spirit home. Horses, coats thickening against the coming winter, grazed contentedly. The noon grandfather star winked on the pond. Wind skipped through the grass. His heart suddenly grew warm, felt almost too big for his chest. In the steady rhythm of his heartbeat he sensed her and finally understood. She would be with him always. All she’d taught him lived on through him.
“I was afraid to love, Grandmother,” he said to the memory of the woman who’d given him a second chance at life. “All those years, I was afraid. I’m sorry I never found the words to tell you how much you meant to me.”
The wind teased at his hair.
“But you were right. By loving, fear and sadness disappear.”
A pat of breeze caressed his cheek.
“I’m happy now. I’m in a good place.”
Ellen walked up to him and wrapped an arm around his waist. “There you are.”
“You shouldn’t have walked this far.”
She laughed. The sound always filled him with deep joy and immeasurable gratitude. “I’m pregnant, not an invalid.”
He placed a hand over her still flat stomach. “Twins.”
“You sound so sure of yourself.” Her gray-green eyes shone with happiness.
“Nina told me. A boy and a girl.” She’d been right about everything else.
Ellen’s golden braid slid over her shoulder like liquid gold as her gaze circled the valley. “Does it make you sad to sell your land?”
He took in the mountains, the horses, the marker indicating Nina’s grave. “No.” Kneeling by the marker, he gently placed the bone feather at its base. Goodbye, Grandmother. Thank you for everything.
He rose, draped an arm around Ellen’s shoulders and pressed a kiss against her temple. Leading her back to the small ranch house to sign the sale papers, he knew he’d made the right choice.
“Home is where the hum is.” He smiled at her. “And you make me hum.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-4311-8
RED THUNDER RECKONING
Copyright © 2002 by Sylvie L. Kurtz
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*Flesh and Blood
