Sloane said nothing in response, knowing anything she said would incriminate her further.
“Why didn’t you answer?”
“Why should I?”
“Um, maybe because it was a hot cowboy calling.”
“If I want a hot cowboy, I’ll just go to the music hall and pick one up.”
“No, you won’t, because you like Jason.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Sloane said as she started chopping the carrots with guillotine-force slices. “Will you let it go?”
“Sloane, the fact that my teasing is getting to you so much is all the evidence I need to prove that something about Jason stuck with you. That and the fact that your head has been anywhere but here the past week. And he must like you, too, if he’s calling you.”
“He probably just wants to know if I talked to his sister.”
“And the fact that he had his sister contact you in the first place says he isn’t just a date-and-disappear kind of guy.”
Sloane gestured with the knife. “He rides the rodeo circuit. That’s the very definition of date-and-disappear. Damn it, I should have never gone out with him in the first place.”
“Of course you should have. You enjoyed it, right? And don’t even think about denying it.”
“Then why ask me the question?” Sloane had to calm down or she was going to risk chopping off one of her fingers.
“Because you need to admit that you like him, and then you need to do something about it.”
“You’re as bad as Mom.”
“This isn’t just me thinking you need to get paired up for the sake of pairing up.”
“Then what, pray tell, is it?”
Angel leaned back against the counter and fixed her gaze on Sloane. “I don’t want to see you deliberately sabotage something just because you’re afraid.”
“I’m not afraid. I just have some common sense.”
“You are afraid that you’ll get hurt the same way you did when Blake left.”
Sloane’s hand slid on the knife handle and she barely got her vulnerable fingers out of the way in time. “Blake? What’s he got to do with anything? That was ages ago.”
“And despite how you tried to hide it and refused to talk about the breakup, I could tell he hurt you a lot. And you haven’t totally gotten over that.”
“I haven’t thought about him in forever.” At least not until Jason started stirring up all her old feelings of mistrust and abandonment and anger. “And I’ve dated other people since then.”
Not too successfully, but she wasn’t about to point that out.
“Sloane, I’m just trying to help you. I know what it’s like to be hurt by someone and not want to ever trust someone again, to want to guard your heart. I think what Blake did to you is always there at the back of your mind, even when you’re dating someone else, even when you don’t realize it. And I totally get that, more than most people.”
Sloane set the knife aside and let out a breath. “Then why would you want me to get involved with someone I can’t be with?”
“You don’t know what the future might hold, but there is something there. It was palpable from the moment you two met, and since he’s been gone your brain has been anywhere but in your head.”
“I just need more time. Whatever...infatuation there might be will fade.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I have to.”
“Why?”
“Because I hate this constant distracted feeling. I need to be able to concentrate on work.”
“Maybe your mind is trying to tell you something, that all work and no play makes Sloane—”
“I swear if you say, ‘makes Sloane a dull girl...’”
“I was going to say it makes you unhappy and lonely.”
“How can I possibly be lonely? I’m surrounded by people who won’t leave me in peace.”
“It’s not the same thing and you know it,” Angel said, her tone changing so that she seemed to suddenly sound like the big sister dispensing advice based on personal experience. “Listen to me. I think if you continue to ignore these feelings you have for Jason, you’re going to regret it. Sure, he’s riding the circuit now and maybe you won’t be able to see him all the time, but how often do you go out now anyway? You’ve been out what, maybe once or twice since you broke up with Jeremy?”
“My dating choices haven’t exactly given me a lot of confidence in the male half of the population.”
“Understandable, but you know there are good guys out there. As annoying as they can be, our brothers are three of them.”
“I know.” The begrudging tone of her response would have made her laugh if someone else had said it.
“And you and I both know that no one can ride rodeo forever. Jason is going to have a life after rodeo, and who’s to say that life can’t be here?”
“You’re really getting ahead of yourself now.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But I’m telling you what I saw between you two is like nothing I’ve seen before, and that’s coming from someone who sees her besotted brothers every day.”
A shiver went through Sloane at the thought that she wanted to believe her sister, wanted to believe there could be something with Jason that wouldn’t end up being a huge mistake. The fact that she wanted that so much scared her because she literally didn’t feel like herself.
Angel placed her hand atop Sloane’s. “You are always doing things for the family, for all those kids who come to the camps. Do something for yourself. Take a chance and call him back.” Angel paused for a moment. “Don’t let Blake, Jeremy or anyone else steal any more from you.”
Her sister’s words hit Sloane like a truth bomb. Had she really been letting Blake’s long-ago abandonment or Jeremy’s betrayal affect her so fundamentally, even when she hadn’t been aware of it or consciously thinking about them? That thought ticked her off. The idea that Blake especially still had power over her feelings caused her to grab her phone.
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
Angel smiled as Sloane passed her on the way to the back door.
Once outside, Sloane’s stomach tightened and her entire body felt jittery.
Come on, it’s just a phone call.
She took a deep breath and exhaled as she walked across the backyard toward the picnic tables. As she sat atop one of them, she was beginning to think that Jason wasn’t going to pick up. But then she heard his voice, and damn if she didn’t have the thought that it was a good thing she was sitting down. Why did just the sound of his voice make her feel a little dizzy?
“Hey, how’s it going?” he said.
“Good. Busy. You?” Hello, monosyllabic much?
“Same. So are you calling to tell me you’re going to come see me ride?”
“What?”
“I left you a message that I’m down near San Antonio for a rodeo.”
“Oh, I didn’t listen to the message. I just saw you called and figured you were checking to see if Shannon contacted me. She did.”
“She told me. But no, I’d like to see you.”
“I don’t know—”
“Did you have fun on our date?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then let’s do it again. In fact, I’m free all day tomorrow. I hear they’re having a free day at the zoo. I haven’t been to a zoo in forever.”
The zoo? What were the odds that of all the places in San Antonio, he’d pick that? Was the universe trying to tell her something?
“Don’t think too much,” he said. “Just come down and have some fun.”
“Okay.” Had she just agreed to a second date with a man with whom she had no future?
Or was Angel right? Was there a chance, however slight, that
there might be some sort of future for her and Jason?
She shook her head. She had to keep those kinds of thoughts from forming. This was just another casual, no-expectations date, two people simply having fun together. If she started thinking about the future and commitment, it would freak her out. She simply wasn’t ready for that, might never be. But a bit of fun she could handle.
“Great,” he said.
She smiled at the tone of his voice, which sounded as if he was happy with her answer. Or was she reading more into his single-word response than was there? She ran her hand over her face and tried to remember the person she was before Jason strolled into her life and scrambled her brain like a skillet of eggs.
* * *
SLOANE SAT IN the zoo’s parking lot, debating with herself whether to get out of her truck or head straight back to Blue Falls. She normally didn’t experience much confusion about how her days would go, and she liked it that way. But since meeting Jason, she’d felt as if she’d been tossed into a boiling vat of confusion. The rational side of her brain told her that meeting him again was a mistake, that she was just dragging out the inevitable and allowing herself to become more attached, which, of course, would make the eventual end of them that much more unpleasant. But the other part of her brain would not relinquish its grip on him, and she feared that part was growing larger by the day.
Or maybe she was just overthinking every last bit of this potential encounter. If she walked through those zoo gates, she had to do it with her head screwed on right and no expectations.
After taking a deep breath, she opened the door and stepped out into the parking lot.
As she approached the entrance gate, she scanned all the people heading the same direction. Moms pushing strollers and holding the hands of small, excited children. An older couple wearing matching T-shirts that said Retired and Loving It. And then her gaze lit on Jason. She actually stopped and stared at him. He wore faded jeans, boots and a blue T-shirt that made her mouth water so much that barbecue ribs would be jealous. It seemed like some movie special effect, but she’d swear on her life that everything around her screeched into slow motion. Some part of her brain knew she should take a breath, but she found it remarkably difficult. What was happening to her? How could someone she’d only been around a handful of times affect her in such a powerful way?
She watched as he slowly turned his head and spotted her. As he smiled and lifted his hand to wave, the world around her shifted back to normal speed. She nearly tipped over at the sudden motion but headed toward him to cover up her wobbly response to his smile.
“Hey,” he said as he met her halfway and gave her a kiss on the cheek that nearly made her moan in pleasure. “Good to see you.”
“You, too.”
She nervously glanced past him toward the entrance. “So, the zoo, huh? You don’t get enough of animals on a daily basis?”
“Not a lot of lions and giraffes on the rodeo circuit.” He entwined his fingers with hers and guided her toward the gate.
She wondered if she’d be able to drag her attention away from how great his hand felt around hers enough to notice a single exhibit.
Once they were inside and walking toward the African section, he said, “I wondered if you’d actually come.”
“I recall you saying something similar when we met for dinner.”
“Well, I felt the same. Nervous as a teenage boy waiting for his first date.”
She stopped in the middle of the path, requiring other visitors to choose to go right or left around them. “You were nervous? Why?”
Jason turned to face her. “Because I thought I might not get to do this again.”
And then he kissed her right there in the middle of the zoo as if no one else was around. Though some little speck of her brain was aware they were making a scene, the rest didn’t care and she kissed him back. Oh, he tasted so good.
Someone whistled, causing her to jerk back to reality. Jason, blast him, just grinned against her lips, then chuckled.
“You’re a bad influence,” she said as she pushed away.
“Don’t stop on our account,” a teenage boy walking by with friends called to them.
Heat rushed to Sloane’s cheeks. Jason just laughed and escorted her toward the first of the exhibits. They ate ice cream, took goofy photos, fed cups of nectar to the beautiful lorikeets and finally ended up seated on a bench opposite the carousel.
“You look as if you’re having a good time,” Jason said as he draped his arm around her shoulders.
“I am.” More so than she could have even imagined. If only it could last.
Don’t think about that now.
“This zoo was the inspiration for my camps.”
“You’re going to have to help me see the connection,” he said.
She stared at the spinning carousel, the large hand-painted animals and the laughing children and was transported back in time.
“I attended an overnight camp here when I was a kid, before I was adopted.”
“You lived in San Antonio?”
“Yeah, with my dad. We...” Was she really going to tell a person she barely knew about her past when she didn’t even speak of it often with her own family? She glanced over at him and felt her heart expand. She doubted she’d be able to explain what was happening if she were the smartest person in the world, but she found herself wanting to share everything with him, to believe that whatever it was between them wouldn’t end as soon as she drove away again. She bit her lip and shifted her gaze back to the carousel. “We were not well-off at all. My mom died when I was so young I don’t remember her, but my dad missed her terribly. He did his best to hide it from me. He didn’t succeed, but he tried. And then...” A pang of old loss hit her square in the heart. “He got sick with cancer. Life was really hard, and one of my teachers suggested my dad sign me up for this zoo sleepover. I’d never even been to the zoo because we couldn’t afford it, and when I walked through those gates and saw an elephant...it was as if I’d entered another world. I couldn’t get enough. Every animal I saw was just amazing, and when we got our meals I ate until I thought my belly would pop.” She looked up at the sky. “Sleeping out beneath the stars was something I’ll never forget. For that one twenty-four-hour period, I got to live a life that wasn’t my own. It didn’t have to be hard or sad or filled with worry.”
A lump filled her throat, growing larger by the second. “A year later, my dad was gone and I went into foster care. When I was lonely or scared, I’d think about that night at the zoo.”
“And you wanted to give that same feeling to other kids in tough situations,” Jason said, his voice full of so much understanding that she felt her heart fall for him a bit more despite the heartache that it might eventually cause her.
She nodded. “There are so many kids who either come from impoverished or broken homes, who are bounced around foster care like hot potatoes. I’ve never told anyone this, but there’s a part of me that wishes I could give them all happy, stable homes like my parents did for me and my brothers and sisters. I know that’s not possible.”
“Maybe not for all of them. I can see you adopting a kid or two though.”
He couldn’t have surprised her more if he’d said he could picture her as a runway model in Paris.
“I don’t know. Helping out kids and being a parent are two different things. And I’ve seen how hard it is to be a single parent, so many times. Being a mom or dad is hard enough when there are two people sharing the responsibility.”
And the fact that for a moment she could see clearly sharing that type of responsibility with him should tell her more than anything else that she’d made a mistake coming here. She started to stand, but his hand on hers stopped her.
“What do you say we ride that carousel instead of just staring at it?”
His question surprised her, but she latched onto the chance to change the topic of conversation. And when she finished the ride, she’d tell him that it was nice to see him, and then head home.
And stay there, far away from the temptation posed by the man beside her.
Chapter Eleven
Even though it didn’t bother him to jump off speeding horses and tackle steers, Jason hated riding things that spun. But he’d sensed that Sloane was about to bolt. She’d honestly surprised him with her confession about her past, and maybe she’d freaked herself out, too. But he liked being with her, perhaps more than liked, and he didn’t want her to leave. Honestly, he wanted her to spend the entire weekend with him, but that might be asking too much. As strong and independent as Sloane was, there was also a part of her that was skittish. He’d thought those traits contradictory in the same person, but maybe it had to do with losing her birth parents so young. He couldn’t imagine what that must have been like for her. He’d always taken having his parents there when he needed them for granted, even when hundreds of miles separated them.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Sloane asked, drawing his attention.
“Yeah, why?”
She laughed. “Liar. You look as if all the blood has drained from your face.”
“Okay, confession. Me and things that spin don’t get along so well. It’s why I’m not a bronc or bull rider.”
“Then why did you suggest riding the carousel?”
He pulled her around to face him. “Because I didn’t want you to leave.”
“I didn’t say anything about leaving.”
“But you were thinking it.”
“You’re a mind reader now?”
“Didn’t need to be to see you were about to race for the exit.”
“I wasn’t going to race anywhere.” She paused. “I would have walked calmly.”
“Oh, well, that makes all the difference.” He smiled at her and was rewarded with a smile in return.
Her Texas Rodeo Cowboy Page 11
