by Pam Crooks
“At least now you’ll have some time to adjust to the news before he calls you,” Lucienne said gently. “I know it won’t be easy to leave the ranch.”
“You have no idea.”
“Yes, I do, Ava.” Without elaborating, she sighed. “It’s getting late, and Beau is waiting. Call me after your riding lesson if you need to talk, okay?”
Somehow, Ava managed to assure Lucienne she was fine, express her thanks, and end the phone call with a semblance of composure.
An amazing feat, considering the news had ripped her heart in two.
Chapter Twelve
The next night, Beau spied the Toyota first, parked in the shade of a cottonwood tree growing near the bank of Blackstone Lake.
He’d gone looking for her after receiving her cryptic text message saying she’d changed her mind about taking her second riding lesson tonight. Might be he should’ve seen the cancellation coming. She’d been off last night. Not quite herself. She had something heavy on her mind, but she didn’t share any of it with him. Not then, and since she’d given him no other explanation in her text message, not today, either, despite all the voicemails he left with her.
It was like she’d fallen into a dark hole.
Made him want to find her and pull her right out.
He failed to track her down at the cabin or on the jobsite. Checking the lake was his last option before…well, hell, he didn’t know what he would have done if she weren’t here, either.
He drew closer and parked his Ford next to her car. He could see her in full view, sprawled on her stomach on a blanket, knees bent, ankles crossed, her laptop in front of her and a small six-pack-sized cooler lying on its side in the grass. She had to have heard him pull up, but her head was slow to lift, her gaze even slower to land on him.
She made it clear as crystal she didn’t want to look at him. Might be she didn’t even want him here.
Jaw set, he opened the door and got out, letting Gunner jump out before he shut the door. The Lab strolled to the water’s edge with his nose to the ground in search of something wet and interesting. Beau headed straight for Ava.
“Been looking for you,” he said.
He tried to sound casual, but the words came out accusatory. He didn’t have much right to want answers from her, but the worry, the uncertainty, had already taken root.
“Well, you found me.” Her smile held little of its usual warmth; her lips weren’t their usual soft curve, either, but instead tight and strained.
Which was, damn it, not like her.
His uncertainty demanded to be sorted out. He didn’t like what he couldn’t see. Instinct insisted something was going on with her, like some enemy lurking around the corner. Close enough to hit hard when he least expected it.
He squatted down to her level, elbows on his thighs, and gestured to the cell phone lying next to her Stetson on the blanket. An easy arm’s reach.
“I called. You didn’t pick up,” he murmured. “Everything okay?”
“Sure.” Again, she gave him that tight smile. She shifted off her stomach, maneuvered herself to sit cross-legged, and closed the laptop. “Just have a lot to do, that’s all.”
“You get a hundred phone calls every day, Ava. Seems to me answering goes with the territory.”
He wanted to remind her it was his phone call she’d ignored, that his name coming up should have meant something. She should have wanted to answer, and not because he was a Paxton, but because of, hell, what had grown between them these past weeks.
“Sorry,” she said.
“You don’t sound sorry.” He smiled, but that probably came off as forced, too.
“Look.” She raked her hair behind her ear. “I had a bad day, that’s all. And I didn’t sleep well last night, either.”
He studied her face, noted the fatigue in her blue-green eyes. He should’ve noticed sooner they weren’t as bright as they usually were but shone troubled, which left them…yeah, tired-looking.
She didn’t elaborate; she’d likely run into some issues with the resort, and he backed off. He never claimed fishing for information from a woman was one of his strong points. He’d give her some time in hopes she’d open up to him on her own.
“What about you?” she asked after a stretch of silence. “Your day, I mean.”
He shrugged. “Hot and dirty. Moved irrigation pipe all day.”
Her heavy-lashed gaze drifted over his clothes. “Muddy job, huh?”
“Afraid so.”
Beau wasn’t a vain man, but he knew how he looked and smelled. Mud caked his boots and jeans, sweat left his T-shirt sticking to his back, and he didn’t much like being this way in front of her.
“Let me wash up,” he added.
Removing his Stetson and dropping it onto the blanket, he rose. He grasped the shirt’s neckband and pulled the whole thing over his head, then strode to the lake’s edge, squatted, and plunked the shirt into the water. He gave it a loose wringing out, leaving enough water in to use as a washcloth. A few good swipes around his face, neck, shoulders, and chest left him feeling as clean as he could get without a hot shower.
After giving the garment a good twisting to squeeze out excess water, he straightened and caught her staring.
“Did you have to take off your shirt?” she demanded.
His brow lifted. Evidently, she missed the point that his cleaning up was on her account. “A little testy, are we?”
“I’m not testy. I work around men every day who get hot and dirty, and they don’t walk around half naked.”
Her exaggeration amused him. He strode toward her. “Believe me, honey. I’d love nothing more than to shuck my jeans and boots, too, but considering your mood, I’m guessing that’s not a good idea.” He held up the wad of T-shirt. “I can’t put this back on. It’s wet.”
She sighed. “Never mind.”
“Room for me on that blanket?” he asked, knowing there was.
She scooted over a few inches. Away from him. “Feel free, but I’ve got work to do, so don’t expect me to—” she hesitated “—entertain you.”
This time, his amusement spilled over into a hearty chuckle. “Entertain me. Now that’s something that gets my mind going.”
He didn’t expect a response, nor did she give him one, and the prospect of flirting with her withered. He lowered to a sitting position, then reclined onto his back with a loud, unabashed sigh and one arm over his eyes.
He relaxed for the first time since receiving her text. His senses indulged in the cheerful chatter of a cowbird perched somewhere in the cottonwood and in the peace that came from lying in the shade, something he rarely did, with a light breeze to cool and dry his damp skin.
But mostly, his senses indulged in Ava, beside him.
She sat quietly, except for her fingers tapping over the keyboard. There was a certain contentment in being with her like this, not talking, not doing anything, and he hovered on the edges of a light nap, until the tapping ended.
He could feel her looking at him; she affected his senses that much. Even when his eyes were closed.
“Do you want something to eat?” she asked, her voice hushed, as if she wasn’t sure she should bother him with the request. “I have a pastrami on rye in the cooler. You’re welcome to it.”
He didn’t move. “I’m not eating your supper, Ava.”
“My lunch, actually. I wasn’t hungry then, either.”
He frowned inside. Anyone who worked as hard as she did would have to have an appetite by the end of the day.
“After I got off, I went home and—I mean, I went to the cabin to change clothes, and I grabbed a couple of beers,” she continued. “You want one of those instead?”
His brain zeroed in on the correction. All chances of a nap gone, he opened his eyes, rolled onto his side, and propped his head in his hand.
“You sound like my mother. Always trying to feed me.”
He didn’t want to get her riled all over again by asking her
reasoning behind her word choices regarding the cabin, or what was bothering her enough to keep her from eating, so he kept his tone light.
She stretched to open the cooler. “I’ll take that as a compliment. I love your mother.”
“Feeling’s mutual. She thinks you walk on water.”
Ava set the bagged sandwich on the blanket, along with another of hulled strawberries, and a third with assorted sliced vegetables. Last, she took out two beers before closing the cooler.
“I’ll miss her when the job’s over,” Ava murmured, almost to herself.
She avoided looking at him, and he let the comment slide. She sounded sad about it, and her leaving was the last thing he wanted to talk about, let alone think about.
Changing the subject was the only way to go.
“You got any potato chips in there?” He indicated the cooler.
“No. Sorry. You ate most of the only bag I had the other night. Didn’t take much for me to finish them off.”
He grunted and went for the sandwich. “Always been a junk food junkie. I live for the stuff.” He took heart at the ghost of a smile his comment earned and handed her half of the pastrami on rye. “Here. You eat one, and I’ll eat the other.”
She stayed busy twisting the tops off each bottle of beer, using the hem of her shirt. “I’m not hungry, remember?”
“You want to drink hooch on an empty stomach? It’ll make you woozy. Go on. Eat up.”
“You sound like your mother, you know that?” She traded him a bottle for the half sandwich.
He grinned. “I’ll take that as a compliment. I love my mother.”
“Ha-ha.” But her amusement from his play on words seemed genuine.
He took his time eating, keeping pace with her smaller bites. Eventually, she finished the pastrami, and even went for the strawberries next. By then, he had finished his beer and was ready to dig for a little more information.
“So what didn’t you like about your first riding lesson?” he asked, tossing the bottle across the blanket, closer to the cooler.
Her gaze flew to his. “What do you mean? I enjoyed it. Very much.”
“You cut out early, and then you canceled for tonight, too.”
He laid a hand on her thigh and gave the warm, bare skin beneath her shorts hem a lazy caress to soften his disagreement. But she drew away, pulled her knees up, and wrapped both arms around them.
She didn’t want him to touch her, and that rankled.
“I need to get to bed at a decent hour every night, Beau. My days are busy, you know.” She shrugged, not looking at him. “You said so yourself. I just decided adding riding lessons to my daily itinerary is too much.”
“No, you didn’t.” He rose up on his elbow, took hers and pulled her toward him, moving swiftly to prevent her from resisting; he settled her beside him, where he’d wanted her all along. Where, a buried part of him insisted, she belonged. “Something decided that for you.”
He kept hold of her elbow but braced for her to scramble away, like a spooked jackrabbit in tall grass.
Amazingly, she didn’t.
Instead, her body curled toward him, and that amazed him, too. Her knee eased up, pressed against his thigh. As if she needed to be right there, beside him. Touching him. As if he filled a need in her to be close.
Her breathing quickened. Her gaze caught and held his. He knew when someone conceded defeat. When the fight up and left.
“What happened, Ava?” he asked roughly. “Tell me.”
Moisture turned her eyes into blue-green pools of anguish, and his gut twisted. He didn’t often see a woman cry; that someone as focused and composed as Ava was on the verge shook him more than he expected.
“I got a phone call from my boss this morning,” she said, her voice a ragged whisper. “I have to leave the ranch, Beau. I have to go back to New York.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Damn that to hell.”
Beau slid his hand against the back of her head and pulled her against him. Ava curled her arm around his waist, pressing her forehead to his chest. She closed her eyes and soaked in his heat, his musky scent. His sheer cowboy masculinity.
Already she felt better, just saying the words. Her terrible secret that no one else knew, except for Lucienne, and she didn’t count. Now that Beau knew the truth, Ava could move on. She’d get through what little time she had left.
“When?” he asked, his voice a husky rumble.
“A week.”
He cursed again, through his teeth.
“I asked for two,” she said. “But no go.”
He drew back, only slightly, but enough for his fingers to slide into her hair, his palm to rest against her temple.
“The guy has a contract to honor,” he said. “He has no legal right to pull out early.”
She shook her head. “There is no contract with him or his company, Beau. Carter gave me the time off from my regular job as a favor, that’s all. Your mother’s contract is with Roger. That’s how Erin set it up.”
He grunted. “I didn’t know.”
“The arrangement is…unusual.”
“I’ll call your boss. I’ll do whatever it takes to—” he halted, his mouth tight “—to keep you here longer.”
If only he would have yelled. Punched something. Kicked something. But this low-voiced sincerity, this raw desperation dredged up from deep within him, would be her undoing.
The tears threatened again, damn them, and she blinked fast. If ever she needed her composure, her focus and determination to do things right, it was now.
“Don’t even try. It won’t work. I’m Carter’s employee. He’s not out of line to expect me to fulfill my obligation with him.” She hesitated. “Not if I want to keep my job.”
A long—very long—moment passed. Beau was, she guessed, only now fully processing all she’d given up to respect her promise to Erin. How she was caught between a rock and a hard place with no easy way out. That whatever she did, right or wrong, someone would end up hurt.
And it’d be her, more than anyone.
Beau’s head lowered, and he took her mouth with a gentle thoroughness, as if he hoped to soothe whatever hurts building his family’s resort had inflicted upon her. Or maybe it was to soothe his own pain, whether now or in the future. As if words were inferior, useless, and completely lost to him.
Just when she thought he’d keep on kissing her forever, nibbling her lips with his teeth, touching her tongue with his, making her lose herself in the sensation of his big body heavy and warm against hers, his head slowly lifted.
His gray eyes smoldered, like ashes in a campfire. She’d done that to him, and she took satisfaction from it. Her hand lifted to curl around his neck; her fingers buried themselves in his sun-bronzed hair.
“Why now?” he asked finally, his palm settling on her stomach. “What’s the big rush?”
“An entertainment organization in New York City is building a conference and arena center that is unexpectedly ahead of schedule,” she said. “The city is making noise about needing more hotels in the area. Carter found an investor who agreed to pony up the cash to finally get our project going.”
“What kind of project?”
“A fourteen-story hotel that will not only provide space for the arena’s attendees, it will fill an eyesore of a lot that’s been vacant for a couple of years.”
“Nice gig.” But he frowned.
“It is.” As much as she hated to admit it.
“Nice bullet point on your resumé.”
She shrugged and didn’t bother to agree. It was a no-brainer.
“Makes the Blackstone resort look like small potatoes,” he added.
She stilled. “It does not.”
“A project fit for the Texas hicks.”
“No!” She pushed against his shoulder. “It absolutely is not. It’s a wonderful project.”
“C’mon, Ava. Look at it from your boss’s view. A ghost town for a guest resort? He probab
ly burst out laughing when he found out about it.”
Sometimes, Carter could be an ass. His initial reaction had not been supportive, it was true, but she’d never admit that to Beau in a million years.
“There was nothing in it for Carter,” she said instead. “Can you blame him for not wanting me to go?”
She scooted away and sat up. Beau kept a close eye on her as she took her laptop and hugged it to her chest.
“So.” Her lips pressed together. “No progress on a buyer yet for the ghost town?”
He scratched his chest and frowned. “No.”
“Then will you do something for me?”
“Anything,” he said, low.
“After I’m gone—” she exhaled at the depressing unpleasantness of her own words “—will you try to be more supportive of your mother? The resort means the world to her.”
“I know it does.”
“If I show you some information, will you promise to be open-minded? Even better, accept what you can’t change and like it?”
He reached out and drew his knuckle down her cheek. “Show me anything you want.”
“Ginny did not make this decision lightly,” she said, clamping her hand onto his so he couldn’t distract her by wanting him to touch her everywhere. “She worked with Erin for a long time, and together they consulted financial advisors to make sure the resort was viable way before any construction started. Ginny and Erin had to do their homework before they could secure a loan. The bankers believe the potential for profit is very strong. I want you to know that.”
He made a crooked smile. For the first time since she told him she was leaving so soon, his mood appeared improved. “And now I do.”
She narrowed her eyes and released him. “You’re patronizing me.”
“Don’t mean to. But from my point of view, she went about planning for this project with land that was supposed to be mine.”
“She didn’t want you to sell your family’s history, Beau.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face; frustration, she knew, from an old argument he had no hope of winning.
