“I can’t, Mother. I really don’t feel well.” Please, save her from having another endless conversation about joining the law firm. Couple that with subtle pressure from her mother to get closer to Miles. He probably occupied the #1 slot on her “Amy Rose potential husband list.” Her stomach threatened to heave.
Was Miles handsome? Yes. Was he articulate and well-educated? Yes. Was he rich? Yes. Was he an asshole? Why yes, thank you.
She swallowed hard against the nausea, praying to hold it together. “Sorry, Mother. Must have some kind of bug and I wouldn’t want to pass it on.”
“Well, all right, I guess. If you’re sure. I’ll call first thing and get you a doctor appointment. Constance will be sorry she missed you. She’s joining us, also.”
She bit her lip to stifle a groan. Holy Mary and Joseph!
Another of her mother’s friends who just happened to have two eligible sons. What did her mother want? Backup in case Miles was a no-go for the second time around?
She didn’t have the energy to even address that, so she didn’t answer. She closed her eyes and pretended to lapse back into sleep.
Her mother touched her forehead. “You feel warm, dear. I’ll have Mattie bring you up some ice water. Get some rest.” She bustled from the room, quietly closing the door.
Amy Rose sagged. Jess, I’m sorry. I need you so much.
But, of course, he couldn’t hear her and that brought a new flood of ever hovering tears.
∞∞∞∞∞∞
CHAPTER TWO
Jess shoveled out Lady’s stall. The four-year old filly had a finicky need for a horse. She didn’t like a dirty space and would kick up a ruckus if her stall was the least bit slovenly. Hence, her space got cleaned twice a day. He wiped his forehead, pausing to look down the long row of stalls. The sounds and smells of the ten-horse barn coupled with the mundane rhythm battled back his depression.
Texas weather for July had been unseasonably hot, bone-dry and wildfire prone. For weeks, it had meant extra hours in the saddle making sure the acre-upon-acre of tinder-dry ranch stayed fire free. It helped that the McCormick Ranch that bordered theirs on the east had several men making the same rounds.
But the Adam’s Ranch which bordered them to the south had two part-time hands, doing next to nothing as far as he could tell. So he kept an eye on the place and the two horses in the barn. If anything happened to the old homestead, Amy Rose would be heart-broken. He just couldn’t stand that idea. If that made him more of a fool, then so be it.
He’d finally called her again last night. She hadn’t answered. Not that he had expected she would. He just couldn’t come up with a way to get into the Adam’s Fort Knox of a house.
He worried on the problem for part of the night. Then, he’d risen early, before the stars had burned out, before the moon had set. He’d driven his Jeep the two miles from his house on the opposite corner of the family property, saddled Lady and taken to the trails.
He’d lingered at sunrise, staring at the front porch of the Triple A – named after Amelia Anna Adams, Amy Rose’s grandmother. He let himself replay making love on the back porch swing, remembered her satisfied cry, her sweet scent, the rightness of holding her close while she came apart in his arms. The purgatory soothed even as it burned.
“You spoil that horse.” His older brother Shane led his black filly to a stall, drawing Jess away from his memories. Shane was a mere ten months older, and because their builds were similar, they frequently got taken for twins. Jess watched him scratch behind the horse’s ear and hand her an apple. The sassy filly was happy to munch.
“And you don’t?” Jess went back to spreading fresh hay.
Shane snorted. “Well, there is a degree of spoiling here. Mine is sensible. Yours is…ah, stupid.”
Jess laughed a bit and went back to work, not mentally up to a verbal sparring match with his brother.
“You’re a stick-in-the-mud lately, you know that? Can’t tease you. Can’t insult you.” Shane tied the horse to the railing and began loosening the saddle.
“Just tired. Long hours trying to keep the place fire free.” Jess tensed waiting for another person to butt into his life. Dinner had been flat out miserable last night. The news had an update on all the wildfires. Some were a bit too close for comfort. Then his mama looked at him with those big sad eyes wanting to know when he was going to fix things with Amy Rose. He ended up with heartburn and a sleepless night.”
“I can take a few of those morning hours when I’m not on shift, you know.” Shane started brushing down the horse, who whickered and tried to sidestep. Shane soothed a hand down her throat, settling her. “Come on, baby. You know you want this.”
“Does Kendra know you talk to your horses like that?”
Kendra Dawson had been Shane’s girlfriend for all of six weeks. Shane was smitten and didn’t even try to hide it. “Ummmm, she’s scared to death of horses, so no she hasn’t seen me in action.”
Jess let the shovel fall and stared at him. He couldn’t keep the humor out of his voice. “She’s scared of horses?”
“Yep. Car accident. Hit one with a car when she was sixteen. Big gelding by the sounds of it. Totaled her car and landed in the hospital for a month. Killed her best friend.” Shane finished brushing down the horse and opened the stall door.
“Uh, that’s bad.” He leaned on his pitchfork and tried to bite his tongue, but he just couldn’t. “Um, she does know she’s dating a champion, regular-bone-breaking, bronc rider, right?”
“Nope. She’s dating a fireman.”
“Right. Traded crazy bucking horses for fires.” Jess shook his head. “How could she not notice all the memorabilia in your apartment?”
Shane stayed silent, backing the horse into her stall and feeding her a handful of grain. Closing the gate, he looked at Jess. “A. She hasn’t been to my apartment. B. I packed them all up.”
“Packed them all up? Why?” Jess had never had any kind of desire to do rodeo. He’d been more interested in the raising of horses, cattle and the business end of the ranch. But he’d always been real proud of Shane’s accomplishments.
Shane shut the gate and turned to Jess. “That part of my life is over, never to be revisited again. I’m happy being a fireman.”
“Except when you volunteer to ride the trails for me. She does know your family has a ranch – a horse ranch? Right?”
“Of course.” The words sounded like the lie they were.
“Shane?”
“Look, Jess. This girl’s important to me. Just let me do this my own way and I’ll butt out of why you screwed up with Amy Rose.”
“I didn’t screw up.”
“She’s gone. So yes, you screwed up. Not my business and not my problem.”
“You’d be a first. Everyone else has an opinion.”
“Well I have an opinion, too. I’m just not going to tell you what it is.”
Jess sighed. “You don’t have to.” He already knew.
Shane leaned against the railing and gave Jess a hard stare. “You’re smart enough to know that letting her get away is going to be something you’ll regret for the rest of your life. You’ve been hung up on her since tenth grade and it took you for-ev-er to ask her out. That’s a hell of a long time and a lot of dithering. I figured the two of you’d be married with a kid about two years back.”
“We’ve got a couple things to work out first.” Acid burned in the back of Jess’s throat. He should have just kept shoveling manure instead of starting this.
Shane laughed at his stupid answer. “You love her? Yes. Work the rest out married. Ranch is doing well. Dad’s semi-retired and loving the hell out of it. You’re the big hat around here now and doing a damn fine job. You can more than afford a wife and a couple of kids. Since she left, you’ve been the most unsettled I’ve ever seen you.”
“Thought you weren’t going to tell me your opinion.” Jess put his tools away, his calmer mood evaporating.
Shane rubbed a hand over the
back of his neck. “It’s plain as the star on Lady’s forehead that Amy Rose is your sunrise and sunset. Call the woman, beg forgiveness and go forth and multiply.”
Jess stopped next to his brother, chaffing at the advice that was so damn close to Sully’s it made him think they’d conspired. Shane had this annoying and manipulative habit of hammering on a body until he heard the answer he wanted. Only this time, Jess couldn’t tell him what he wanted. “I tried. She’s not answering. Figure, she had her reasons for leaving and isn’t ready to talk, yet.”
“Wrong answer. Go after her.” Shane held up his hands. “Now I’m going to walk away from this conversation before pounding on you.”
“Try it.” They’d been equally matched since high school so it was debatable who would win.
Smart man that he was, Shane changed the subject. “Playing poker tonight at the Low Down?”
Jess closed his eyes and grimaced. He’d just get more lectures from cousin Gifford, and friends Nick and Peyton. On the other hand, none of them missed a Friday night poker game unless dead or on a date with potential benefits. They’d hunt him down and the grief would be doubled. “As long as my love life isn’t a topic of conversation.”
“What love life?” Shane slapped him on the back and whistled his way out of the barn.
He stood in the shimmering heat and acknowledged that he was quietly going out of his mind. Amy Rose, I need you. Call me.
∞∞∞∞
Friday night. Amy Rose rolled over and stared at the clock on her bedside table.
8:30 p.m.
Jess’s poker night.
He always played and then met her on her back porch around midnight. God, she’d give anything to be back on that porch, holding his callused hand, kissing his warm lips and hearing his rumbling voice in her ear.
The ache in her chest widened.
Seems since she calmed down and let the hurt settle, the ache worsened. He hadn’t supported her choices. It wasn’t just about the continuing law school argument. Even though they argued frequently about her schooling, they fundamentally agreed. She’d just taken a passive approach to the problem of pleasing her father, where he would have taken an aggressive approach. She placated both of them by rationalizing that it didn’t hurt to go to law school. She’d learned a lot about herself and it bought her time to get to know Jess, to know if he was the one she wanted and not some flash of lust moment.
Amy Rose sighed and punched her pillow. When Amy Rose had been fifteen, her father’s health had taken a bad turn on a cancer threat. The doctor had ordered him to slow down, to fight the cancer consuming his body while work was consuming his soul.
He’d followed the advice to the letter. He took a leave of absence from his law firm, the firm he’d founded a tumultuous decade prior. The family left their high profile home in the suburbs north of Dallas and relocated to his mother’s homestead in Copper Canyon. As much as he hated his roots there, he hated the cancer more. Even with Dallas a short drive away, Amy Rose’s mother had pitched a fit. Born and raised in upper crust Houston, she hated being dumped into the middle of a western homestead.
Amy Rose loved it, the homestead and the country life. First day of school, she’d met Jess and fallen in typical high school puppy love. She waited all through her sophomore year for any sign that he was interested. While he was friendly, no date invitation was forthcoming. By then, her father had decided that nine months of slow life in Copper Canyon was enough. He wanted his firm back, his life back, and had moved them back to Dallas. She’d had to go back to her private school and give up Jess and let the notion of love die in the scribbling in her notebooks.
High school graduation arrived, then college years, and still she found herself thinking of Jess every time she dated anyone. After graduation, she’d had a nasty argument with her father about further schooling. She’d finally agreed to go to law school only if she could move to the homestead and live full-time. It was a long drive to school, but would allow her to live the way she wanted to. He’d finally agreed, but life had been miserable until then with her feet dug in and her parent’s harping at her every second.
Life in Copper Canyon had been worth it, though. She’d met Jess again, was thrilled when he asked her out, and fell harder into adult love.
She sat up and turned the light on. She pulled open the drawer in the nightstand and took out the book Jess had given her for Christmas – Shakespeare’s Love Sonnets with a ribbon in #116. Inside on the front cover, Jess had inscribed the volume of love poetry with “Your Jess.” It was a reminder of sophomore English in high school where she’d first seen Jess. She hugged it to her. It was the most treasured item she owned.
“Dammit, I hate this.” She sat up and slugged her pillow, rejoicing for once that her stomach wasn’t rebelling. She reached for her cell phone.
Broken dead.
Amy Rose sighed. “Grrrr. Where’s the damn charger?” She eased out of bed and went searching in her bag. She’d slept most of the day, so had no idea how long it had been turned off. But, after fiddling for long minutes with plugging it in and trying to turn it on, she gave up. Dead.
“Great. Just great.” She knew Jess’s phone number, but he was at his poker game. She always joked that nothing except a tornado warning would blast them away from the table.
She dialed the only other number she knew by heart and almost disconnected before Jess’s mother could answer. Then it was too late.
“Hello.”
“Ladonna, it’s Amy Rose.”
“Oh honey, honey.” The woman sniffed. “I’m so glad you called. I didn’t want to interfere, but I’m missing you something awful, girl.”
The tears started. “I’ve missed you, too.” Ladonna had two sons and no daughters. From the first, she’d opened her arms and welcomed Amy Rose into the family. They’d been instant close friends, which is more than she could say for her parents and Jess. Jess definitely got the worse end of the parent stick and the thought gave her pause.
“I know why you haven’t called. That Jess of mine is being a silly fool.”
A defense leaped to her tongue. “It’s not his fault. We both said stupid things.”
“Oh, I understand, honey. These things happen in relationships. Just don’t give up on him. He’s so miserable.”
The news didn’t make her feel any better. “I’m miserable, too, but we’ve got to work this out ourselves.”
“I understand, honey. Once your kids get to a certain age, they don’t appreciate interference. I’m afraid I’ve said more than I should. Chase says I’m pushing and I’ve gotta stop.”
Chase and Ladonna had been married for thirty-five years. He was a strong, burly man with a soft heart and an infectious sense of humor. Jess and Shane had inherited the best combination of their parent’s strengths.
“I didn’t mean to cause problems between y’all.” She rubbed her tummy and wished with all her might that she could tell Ladonna about the baby. She was going to be a fabulous grandmother.
“Oh honey, nothing can stop me from lovin’ my boys with a big ole heart. And nothing can stop me from butting in with my opinion. You know that.”
Amy smiled. Ladonna’s opinions had always been grounded and honest and steeped in nothing but the purest loving, something she couldn’t say about her own mother.
She had to get out of this bed, morning sickness be damned, and find Jess. She loved him, wanted him and obviously her absence had just confounded him. It had been a mistake to come here, a reminder really. She didn’t have the same kind of relationship with her parents that Jess did with his. She felt closer to Ladonna than to any other woman and had from the very first.
She wiped her cheeks, brushing away the tears. “Well, I called because I’m coming home, back to my place that is. Tonight. Please, don’t tell Jess. I’d rather do it.”
Ladonna gushed with delight. “You’re going to give him a second chance to get it right?”
She fussed with t
he covers, ashamed of herself for running home in the first place. She knew that had never proven to be a good option. She couldn’t make her parents happy without sacrificing her own wants and needs. She’d know this crossroads was coming, had maneuvered around it for years, playing out as many other options as possible. She took a trembling breath. “I figure he can’t get it right if I’m not there to get it right with. I love Jess. I’m hoping he gives me a second chance to get it right, too.”
Ladonna squealed in delight. “I’m so glad, honey.”
She hung up after a few more minutes, heartened by Ladonna’s reaction. She shoved the covers off and found her traveling bag. Within minutes, she was repacked and ready to leave. Downstairs, she scribbled a note to her parents, who were attending the symphony with friends, thankful for the reprieve from that confrontation.
She opened the garage and got in her car. “Ready or not, Jess. Here I come.”
∞∞∞∞∞∞
CHAPTER THREE
Jess stared over the top of his cards at Gifford. Three-of-a-kind, kings high was pretty good hand for him. But Gifford had the dangest luck. He claimed he got it from his mama’s side of the family. Her ancestors had been gypsies and gamblers. Since he and Giff were related on their father’s side of the family, Jess couldn’t claim any of that luck as his own. Frankly, he couldn’t see Aunt Fayrene carrying on that family tradition either, but Gifford sure got the skill.
“Call.” Gifford shoved a matching dollar amount into the large pile in the center of the table.
Peyton Reed, Jess’s best friend, hooted. “You’re in for it now, Jess. Say goodbye to your money. Again.”
Shane and Nick Campbell had left the table and gone to the bar to gather more drinks. Sully was leaned back in his chair, feet propped on the opposite empty chair with his eyes closed, catching a snooze while Gifford and Jess went head-to-head over the hand.
Happened every Friday night.
Jess would get a deep need to beat Gifford and every time, he went home broke. This time, he was feeling reckless and just a tad pissed, so he’d pushed it further than normal.
Cowboy's Heart (Copper Canyon, Texas) Page 2
