Guilt Ridden

by Marie Johnston

  Normally, they’d be right.

  Kami growled at the weak-willed stupidity she’d slipped back into. But, dammit, being with Austin was better than sitting alone in her house, thinking of how proud Ben would be of his daughter.

  She plowed out the door and right into a fabric-covered wall.

  “Whoa.”

  Strong hands steadied her as she stared at an expanse of green that accentuated a nicely muscular chest. Her gaze drifted up, and heat crept into her face.

  Because this night wasn’t humiliating enough.

  “Sorry, Travis.” She stepped back and brushed her hair off her face. Usually it was thrown back in a ponytail, but she tried to give at least half an effort when she had a sort-of date night. Right now, she was glad she had. She never crossed this close to the brains in the Walker Five farm and ranch operation, Travis Walker.

  Well, once she had. It felt like forever ago, and God, she hoped he didn’t remember.

  Look at her being foolish again. A man remembered who took his virginity.

  “You okay?” His grin faded, replaced with concern. “You banged out the door like it was your worst enemy.”

  Her veins still ran hot with Austin’s immediate dismissal of her dream, but she attempted to sound light. “The door took the brunt for someone else.”

  Her breathing was calming down. Standing next to Travis eased the tangle of her emotions, and in an instant, she was transported to ten years ago when she flirted with a gawkier Travis Walker. To her surprise, he’d taken her up on her offer to hang out…on a weekend night…alone…

  And he’d rocked her world in the backseat of his pickup with only a million stars as witness.

  How a virgin had known to do what he’d done…

  But, word got out in a small town. A few of her fellow cheerleaders had seen them driving around together and the catty comments started.

  Do you really think Travis is interested in you for more than a hookup? I mean, he’s a hot nerd, but still a nerd.

  “Kami?”

  He was talking to her. She pressed her fingers against her temples and played it off as irritation with Austin. “Sorry, I missed what you said. I was supposed to be on a date, but…”

  His brilliant blue eyes twinkled. “But Austin is acting like himself?”

  Her mouth dropped open. She snapped it shut, but her lips twitched. “He was definitely being Austin. So, what are you doing here? I haven’t seen you around in forever.” A slow burn of sorrow washed over her as she remembered. “I’m really sorry about your fiancée.”

  His smile was sincere, but sadness swam in his gaze. “Thanks. My cousins coaxed me to come out, but I’m not feeling really sociable. It was never really my scene anyway.” Again, he soothed her embarrassment with a smile. “But I am really hungry. This place has atrocious pizza, and I don’t see any of their trucks in the lot, yet. Care to head to—”

  “Anywhere but Tyler’s Club.” She meant it as a joke. Her second job was bartending at a local bar, but she realized too late that it sounded like she accepted his offer.

  “Great. The Brown House Cafe doesn’t have pizza, but their omelets are killer.”

  Should she correct him, tell him she’d been joking? Make an excuse that she had to get home? Austin was behind her in the bar, and her tiny apartment was down the street. Spending an hour with Travis was hands down better than either option.

  How long had it been since his fiancée died? It wasn’t long before she’d moved back a year ago. No matter how long had passed, she knew how sitting by oneself after a loss was sometimes the hardest thing to do.

  “As long as I get your hash browns.”

  He grinned and her belly clenched. The man got more potent with age.

  Think of all the bedroom tricks he’d learned since then.

  Immediately, guilt flooded back. He’d just said he wasn’t feeling sociable. He was only being nice, felt sorry for her because everyone knew Austin…and Travis would know she couldn’t do better.

  He dug keys out of his pocket. “Wanna hop in with me? I’ll text the guys that I decided not to come.”

  “Sure. I live close enough that I walked here.” She could even walk to the cafe, it was only a little over a mile, but it was night, and he offered.

  She strolled with him, chatting about the calm June night with little wind. He opened the passenger door to his blue Ford pickup.

  Studying the inside, she developed a major case of vehicle envy. During her family’s best days farming, they could never afford a ride like this. If Ben hadn’t left behind a sensible car, she’d be pouring her scant money into the same pickup she drove in high school, sitting by the barn at her mom’s.

  He fired up the engine and pulled out of the lot. “When’d you move back to Moore?”

  Since everyone knew her story, she let it spill. “We came home about a year ago, thought I’d help Mom and she’d help me.” And to get away from Ben’s parents. Their meddling had been an annoyance when Ben was alive. After his death, they dabbled in being controlling, manipulative. So she’d used the excuse that she’d move home and help her mom. Lord knew, Mom needed it.

  But there was a part of her that wanted to give Kambria more in life, and she could do that with Mom’s place. Land for Kambria to run, semi-tame cats for her to wrangle, and someday, if Kami planned right, a horse.

  “How old is your daughter?”

  Kami couldn’t keep the smile out of her voice. “Kambria’s ten. You know, ten going on twenty-five. So much attitude, it’s ridiculous. And she hated me for moving here, but she survived her first year in a new school.”

  “And where are you working?”

  She wanted to sigh. A guy that ran a successful business in a tough industry wasn’t going to be impressed by her lack of a resume.

  “I bartend at Tyler’s Club and wait tables at Old Main.” She cringed, waiting for the smartest man she’d ever met to comment on her career trajectory like every other adult in her life.

  “Two jobs? Must keep you busy.”

  Letting out the breath she’d been holding, she studied his handsome profile. Strong nose, square jawline, a touch of lankiness that gave him the farm boy appeal and not the former football star appeal like Austin. She remembered Travis had played football, but he’d been there in body only, never as enthusiastic as the other players. Even going through the motions, he’d been a decent player, but he had been much more engaged in class. And in the backseat.

  Being in the same vehicle with him transported her back over eleven years.

  He parked, and she hopped out. They strode into the sparse cafe. Only one server was working, and thankfully it was a young girl Kami didn’t recognize. She didn’t need gossip spread through town that she’d moved on to yet another man.

  When she’d hooked up with Austin after she moved home, word spread like a prairie fire and her mom had called her. They’re saying you barely covered Ben with dirt before you were in Austin’s bed.

  She clenched her jaw and fought to keep tears from welling. Whether people in town really had noticed, or Mom lied to keep Kami from dating, it hurt.

  As she slid into the booth, she couldn’t help but think they’d still say that about her, but not about Travis, who’d also lost someone recently, too. Yet here he was.

  ***

  Travis didn’t want to take his eyes off Kami as she read the menu. He’d seen her in passing since she’d moved back, knew the wild, vivacious girl he’d known had turned into a calmer version as a woman. But he worried she had lost her spark.

  In high school, she held nothing back. Loudest to cheer, first to party, she’d been known to bust out a cartwheel mid-conversation. Tonight, she was reserved, almost hesitant.

  Was she like him and just wanted to go home? He had a new issue of Progressive Farmer waiting for him. He’d almost procrastinated on leaving his house to read the article on the new Enlist E3 soybean. Good thing he hadn’t, or he would’ve missed Kami.
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br />   His family kept pestering him to get out. The few times he had, they went to the usual places. The same crowd would be out and nothing had changed. Just because he was single now didn’t make it any more appealing. He’d rather be working on his second Farmland game, since a lot of his spare swaths of time was spent helping Michelle’s parents. Losing their daughter had devastated them, and leaning on Travis for help around their own farm was how they coped.

  Then he’d come home, where everyone felt bad for him. And yeah, he missed Michelle. But the looks and whispers were about a man who wouldn’t get to marry the woman of his dreams, a man who lost his future.

  He’d lost a friend. A really good friend. He and Michelle would’ve always been on good terms. Maybe they would’ve crossed paths in the agriculture industry, chatted and caught up on life, then parted ways to their separate paths.

  But no one knew that. They thought it was a great tragedy for him. He hated the attention, as if he didn’t feel guilty enough. Michelle’s parents said they felt like they lost him, too. Their words tore him up inside, so he helped them out more. They had enough to worry about, needed to take care of themselves, not be concerned with how he was doing. He hated that they spent one ounce of worry on him.

  But all his inner turmoil faded when he looked at Kami.

  Like a spring breeze, she’d charged out of that bar and into him, saving him from another pathetic night.

  What the hell did she see in Austin? Hopefully, she’d quit seeing him.

  She glanced at him, a question in her eyes.

  And he was leering at her like the dork he’d been in school. “Sorry, what?”

  “What kind of omelet are you getting?”

  “There’s only one kind—the Everything Omelet.”

  She smiled and closed her menu, her rich brown eyes full of humor. “Then I’ll have what you’re having.”

  “All right, but get your own hash browns. I don’t share.”

  He shoved the menus to the edge and reclined. If he could go back and tell his seventeen-year-old self that he might have another chance with Kami Lee English, he’d do it in a heartbeat. The crush he’d fostered for years had been blown to bits after their earth-shattering night together when she’d hooked back up with Austin the next weekend.

  Oh, Travis had heard the gossip in high school. All his friends had told him he was too good for her. A wild child raised by a single mom who had earned her own reputation before she’d settled down with Kami’s grouch of a dad.

  Kami was—had been—carefree. But they’d rode the bus together all through elementary school and middle school. He knew her. She had a good heart and gave it away too easily. It was probably for the best she’d left him in the glow of the taillights. It was more like she left him sitting in an empty parking lot for hours after their agreed upon meet time. He would’ve been wrapped around her finger so hard, he wouldn’t have left her side.

  Instead, he’d gone to college. Gone to more college. Met Michelle and…

  He took a sip of water. Again, the thought of Michelle brought the dull ache of sadness and a whole heap of guilt. Despite her breaking up with him twice to entice him to leave the farm and move to Fargo, he couldn’t get over what his goal had been as she’d taken her last breath.

  “How are you doing, Travis?” Kami’s soft voice shattered his thoughts.

  His expression must have broadcasted what was going on in his mind. “I’m fine.”

  She tapped the back of his hand and shot him a knowing look. “How are you really doing?”

  He should’ve realized he wouldn’t be able to bullshit her. She’d lost a husband, and while he’d had the intention to break up with Michelle, he’d still lost a fiancée.

  “I miss her, but I feel worse for her family. I mean, her parents were…destroyed, obviously.”

  “They will be for a long time.”

  He considered her frank statement. She seemed so much more at ease with this subject, and she’d actually been married and had a kid. How’d she move on?

  For one, she’d moved back home. Did her in-laws cling to her for support?

  “Can I ask you something?”

  She nodded, and he continued.

  “How was it living in the same town after he died? How’d you do it, moving back here? Michelle wasn’t from Moore, either, but enough people knew her, and if they didn’t, they at least knew I was engaged. I can’t go anywhere without—” He clapped his mouth shut when the young server appeared at their table.

  They ordered, and the server moved on, but Travis didn’t finish what he’d been saying. Saying it made him feel like too much of an ass, like he was ungrateful people actually cared.

  “You can’t go anywhere without the looks.”

  So he wasn’t crazy. “God, yes.”

  “And the reassuring comments.”

  “I don’t want to dread them, but I do.”

  She nodded. “In a way, they were comforting. I hung on to the thought that he was in a better place, took reassurance from it. But another part of me grew to hate some of the statements. They made me think, gee, thanks for assuming life with me was hell. Ben was in a car accident. It’s not like he was sick for months or years, not like he’d been suffering. We had a good life.” A sad smile lifted her lips. “Simple, but good.”

  “Is that why you came back?”

  She shook her head, and under the dim cafe lights, her hair glowed as gold as a ripe wheat field. “The people in town were amazing. I had a lot of emotional support—when I needed it and when I didn’t want it. Mostly when I didn’t want it,” she muttered. “But I couldn’t move on with my life there. Mom’s here, and shift work as a single mom is the worst juggling act.”

  Had over ten years really passed since she’d gotten married? Their senior year, Kami had gotten pregnant by a football player in Normandy, an hour away. Not long after their graduation ceremony, he heard she’d up and moved to be with the dad.

  He and Kami had taken much different routes after school, but they were both here. And she’d mentioned her mom.

  “How’s your mom doing?”

  Kami’s expression turned guarded. “What happened? Did she yell at you about something?”

  He chuckled. They weren’t exactly feuding families. Their land bordered each other’s, and Kami’s dad and his dad had butted heads more than once. If one of his family’s cattle got out, Earl English raised hell and demanded reimbursement for every blade of grass the cow ate. If one of their tractors so much as grazed an inch of his land, he was pointing out the damage before they shut the engine off.

  Earl had passed away years ago. Travis and his cousins wouldn’t mind if Kami’s mom, Pam, came charging out. It might mean she gave a shit about any of her acreage.

  But they’d heard rumors… Pam English was considering selling. And his family was considering expanding.

  “I heard she was thinking of putting her place up for sale.” The house would have to be demolished, or burned. Useless. They could expand their herd up to four hundred head, two hundred cattle in each pasture. Then they could grow silage for their stock in the neighboring field.

  Kami’s face lost all expression. “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe it was just farmer gossip, but she’s seeing Doc Granger, and he told Dale at the parts store, who mentioned something to Brock.” Why’d Kami look so stunned? It should’ve been good news, a lot less stressful life for her mom. Weird that Pam hadn’t told her, but maybe Doc was full of shit. “Anyway, it’s perfect for expanding our ranching operation. Think you could put in a good word?”

  “Dad would roll over in his grave if the Walkers got his land.” Kami shook her head and her gaze darted around the restaurant. She didn’t seem to notice the server delivering their food.

  “I understand. Our parents had their issues, but it’s not being cared for. It’d make sense for her to sell.”

  Her brow furrowed. “She’d never sell to you.”

 
He stared at her for a moment, couldn’t understand her reaction. Her expression was offended, but her body language defensive. “Honestly, though. Who would buy it? Even if she sold at a reasonable price, it’s still three quarters of land, the eight acres the house is on, and the back forty your dad used to keep the horses in. Unless she piecemealed it out, who’s going to afford to buy it? I guess she can always rent it out.” He shook his head. “I have no clue why she hadn’t been doing that since your dad passed.”

  Kami’s expression darkened, her jaw tightened. Was this discussion making her angry? That was the last effect he wanted on Kami Lee English—Preston. How could he forget? Kami Lee Preston.

  He strove to explain his reasoning. “See, even if others could afford the price tag, they’d still need people to work it. But in order to afford it, they’re already working pretty hard, right? It’s not common someone’s going to suddenly take up ranching, so if your mom lists it, then she might sit on it for months. Years.”

  He stopped talking, hoping she’d agree wholeheartedly. There was no ill will between him and her mom. The Walker Five snatching up that property would be the best thing for Pam.

  Kami worked her jaw, her gaze slanted on him. He waited for her to talk, afraid he’d dig himself into a larger hole and still not know why.

  She touched one of her pockets, her gaze introspective. With a look of resolve, she sat up straighter and ran her tongue across her teeth. Her shoulders were wide and her chin high. This was the Kami he remembered. The girl who dominated Powder Puff football night their senior year because the other team had said that third grade boys could run faster and tackle harder than them. Powder Puff used flags, but Kami had gotten some tackles in that night.

  “Say my mom is selling. I may have the money.”

  It was his turn to wear the shocked look. He managed to keep his jaw closed. Could Kami make an offer? How could she have that much cash available? To finance, she’d need a sizeable down payment. Then there was the old double-wide manufactured home that needed too much work. It was better to build new.