The Cowboy She Never Forgot

by Cheryl Biggs

  He moved to help her.

  Kate felt Shane’s breath on her cheek as his hands framed her waist and he began to lift her from the table.

  The gentleness of his touch was almost unbearable. She tried to calm her suddenly uneven breathing and concentrate on standing without falling into his arms.

  “Shane,” she said, her throat suddenly dry at the words she knew she had to say. “Doesn’t Dee need you here? I mean, are you sure you should be—that she doesn’t mind you taking me...I mean...”

  He looked up, frowning in puzzlement. “Dee? What’s she have to do with anything?”

  Kate stared at him, not knowing what to say.

  “Come on.” Shane helped her settle a crutch under one arm, but when she turned to try adjusting the other, the first slipped from her grasp.

  He caught it.

  Kate looked up as she reached for it, embarrassed.

  Shane smiled, and for one brief moment Kate felt the blood in her veins cease its movement, her heart stop, and the breath in her lungs hold still. The smoldering fire she saw in his eyes drew her like a moth to a flame, reminding her of things she wanted, but knew she couldn’t have.

  She was still a cop...he couldn’t accept her job...and she couldn’t give it up. And, serious or not, he was involved with someone else.

  Send him away. Now, before it’s too late. But even as that small voice of reason within her whispered its warning, Kate knew she couldn’t heed it. Worse, she didn’t want to heed it. She straightened on the crutches. It was only a ride home, after all. Nothing more. Just a ride.

  “You going to make it okay?” Shane asked, standing beside her, ready to catch her if she toppled.

  Kate nodded. “I think so. Just don’t let anyone get in front of me when I go down the stairs,” she said, and laughed, “or they might have another patient in here.”

  Shane’s face remained serious.

  Halfway down the med-trailer’s steps she accidentally put her injured foot down a little too hard, felt a stab of intense pain, and lost her balance.

  Shane caught her in his arms. “Maybe this is a bit safer,” he said, holding her against him.

  Before Kate knew what he was going to do, he’d grabbed both her crutches in one hand, then scooped her off her feet completely and into his arms.

  “Shane,” Kate whispered frantically, “put me down. Everyone’s staring.”

  “Everyone knows you’re hurt,” he said reasonably, and kept walking.

  Her body turned to fire at the contact with his. Kate’s thoughts threatened to spin out of control, along with her already fractured emotions. She struggled for some sense of composure, knowing she couldn’t let anything happen between them. The same things that had torn them apart three years ago still stood between them now. She had to remember that. Nothing had changed.

  Kate was suddenly aware that statement was more true than she’d ever realized. Nothing had changed between them, including the fiery passion that had always been like an electrical charge between them, a hot, wild, heady, and all-consuming emotion that never failed to ignite whenever they were together. And it was igniting now, threatening to consume them both and pull them into a world they had no business going back to, a world that would only leave them wanting and hurting again.

  “Shane—” she said, knowing she needed him to put her down, needed some space between them before she did or said something she’d be sorry for later.

  “I’m not putting you down until we get to the car, Red,” he growled softly, “so just relax and let yourself enjoy the ride.”

  Her cheeks burned, not from the embarrassment of seeing several people they passed watching, but from the emotions that had begun to chum inside her the moment he’d drawn her close. She struggled for calm, fought to hold on to some thread of sanity, no matter how tenuous. “Dancer,” she finally managed, remembering that she wasn’t the only one who’d fallen. “My horse. She fell. Is she—?”

  “Fine,” Shane said. “Cody’s taking care of her. If you want, I’ll have her trailered up to your place first thing tomorrow.”

  “I—I can arrange that,” she said.

  “So can I.”

  Three years ago he had been her other half. He’d worried over her, laughed with her, stood between her and the world and dared it to hurt her. His body had been her pleasure, his heart her haven, and his soul had been her mate. The depth of just how much she’d missed that, missed him, suddenly slammed into her with such force it robbed her of breath.

  Long-held-off emotions threatened to overwhelm her. Tears stung Kate’s eyes. How many nights after he’d walked out of her life had she lain awake crying? Or sat on her patio and stared out at the night sky, wondering if he was looking up at the same stars that she saw? How many times had she turned toward an opening door and held her breath, praying it would be him walking through it? Or answered the telephone, hoping to hear his voice?

  She laid her head against his chest and breathed in the scent of leather and horseflesh and Shane. A whisper of a smile touched Kate’s lips. She raised her head slightly and looked up at him, studying his sun-bronzed profile as they walked toward the parking lot. Had she realized before how strong the line of his jaw seemed? Or, how there was just the slightest rise of a bump on the bridge of his nose?

  He shifted her weight in his arms and she felt the power that coiled within him as they walked.

  “You’re staring at me,” Shane said.

  “I know.”

  Her eyes followed the thin lines that framed his eyes, then moved to examine the ones surrounding his mouth. She wanted to reach out and trace them with the tips of her fingers, but forced herself to remain still. Her gaze moved to the ragged strands of hair just visible beneath the brim of his Stetson, and before his ears.

  Several short, silvery strands, which hadn’t been there the last time she looked this closely at him, were invading the otherwise silky darkness that Kate had once reveled in slipping her fingers through.

  Shane opened the passenger door of her Cherokee truck, then turned to help her slide onto the seat and held out his hands for her keys.

  “You don’t have to do this, Shane,” she said softly. “You know that.”

  His gaze met hers, the blue of midnight shading into the green-touched azure of a Caribbean sea. “Yes, I do.”

  Chapter 9

  “I’ll be okay, Shane. You don’t have to stay,” Kate said, after he’d settled her on the sofa. “I know you have rides scheduled tomorrow night, and things to take care of before then.”

  Like Dee Brant, a devilish little voice in the back of her mind whispered.

  Shane looked down at her and shook his head. “You can’t manage on your own, Red.”

  That’s not your concern. The words formed in her mind, but failed to make it to her lips, and she knew it was because she wanted to be his concern. Right or wrong, she didn’t want him to leave. “I...I could call Bree,” she offered, though even to her ears it sounded like a halfhearted offer. Which was exactly what it was. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind coming up to stay with me.”

  “Do you really want me to go?”

  “I know you have things to do.”

  “Most people do, but that’s not what I asked you.”

  She turned her gaze away from his. “I don’t want to be a bother.”

  He suppressed the smile that struggled to take hold of his lips. “I could use some coffee,” he said, ignoring her evasive reply and glancing toward the kitchen. “Still keep it in the same place? Cupboard next to the fridge, top shelf?”

  “Shane, you really don’t have to—”

  He suddenly pinned her with a gaze so hard and direct it nearly took her breath away. A play of emotion danced through his eyes, too swift and deep for her to decipher. “I know I don’t have to, Red.”

  “Then—”

  “Is there really another man in your life now?”

  Stunned by the question, Kate stared up at him
for several long seconds before answering. “No,” she said finally, the lone word little more than a whisper of sound on her lips. The moment the confession left her mouth she remembered how it had to be between them and wished it back, but the wistfulness she thought she saw touch his smile pulled at her heartstrings. Why couldn’t it have worked for them? she wondered for the thousandth time. Kate dragged in a deep breath and summoned what little resolve she had left. “But you still don’t have to stay and take care of me, Shane.”

  “I asked you before, do you want me to leave?”

  She suddenly realized she was too selfish to send him away. “No.”

  “Good.” Shane looked around the spacious old room. The green, black and red overstuffed Southwestern style sofa and chairs that sat in a semicircle before the rock fireplace were the same as he remembered, as were the myriad of framed family pictures on the mantel, the massive, rough-cut pine accent tables and wrought iron lamps. But there had been a few, subtle changes made to the room. A colorful Indian blanket had been draped across one wall, in a corner over a small writing desk was a framed picture of the movie poster from Tombstone, and on the desk itself, in among a dozen other framed photographs, was one of himself and Kate.

  That sent a stab of longing through him.

  He remembered when it had been taken. They’d been in Virginia City, and on a lark went into one of the tourist photo studios and donned a couple of costumes. He looked like a poor imitation of Wyatt Earp, but Kate had looked like the most beautiful saloon girl he’d ever seen.

  A week later, he’d left her.

  Kate saw the direction of his stare, followed it, and silently cursed herself. How many times had she told herself to put that picture of them away? To toss it? Destroy it? But she never had.

  Flapjack jumped onto the cushion next to Kate and rubbed his head against her shoulder, demanding to be petted. She absently scratched him between his ears.

  “So, who’s this?” Shane asked, pulling his gaze away from the photo and the memories it stirred, and looking down at the cat

  Kate smiled. Her father had brought the big tom to her a week after Shane had left, saying she needed some kind of man in her life other than him, except that then Flapjack had been a tiny kitten, rather than the huge mass of cat he was now. “This is Flapjack,” Kate said. “The man of the house.” The minute she made that last comment, she knew it was a mistake.

  Shane nodded and glanced toward the kitchen again. “I’ll—” he cleared his throat, and turned abruptly “—make that coffee now.”

  Kate propped her bandaged leg on the sofa’s matching ottoman, and rested her head against the cushion at her back. A long sigh slipped from her lips.

  The clatter of dishes in the kitchen startled her. Kate looked up, concerned. “Everything okay in there?”

  A crash was her answer.

  “Just dropped a dish,” Shane called out. “Nothing lifethreatening.”

  Except for the dish. She hoped it wasn’t one of her grandmother’s old stone-fired Navajo-designed ones. Kate laid her head back and smiled. Contentment washed over her. Her tightly bandaged ankle throbbed, her head had become home to a dull but relentless ache, her ribs were sore...and the man she loved was standing in her kitchen making her coffee.

  Tears stung her eyes and threatened to fall free and slide down her cheeks. If she could somehow stop time, keep this moment forever, she would. She quickly brushed her tears away, not wanting Shane to return and see her crying and think she was in pain.

  He walked into the living room carrying a serving tray. “I didn’t know if you were hungry, but I am, so I made us some sandwiches too.”

  “And dessert,” Kate said, laughing as she spotted the huge mound of chocolate chip chocolate cookies he’d dumped onto a plate.

  “No meal is complete without dessert,” Shane said. Like I am not complete without you. “Especially chocolate,” he added, trying to get his thoughts back on safe terrain.

  His eyes caught hers again and, for a few brief seconds that Kate wished would never end, he held her prisoner within a prism of desire and memories.

  She knew this easiness between them wasn’t going to last, knew that she shouldn’t even have let things go this far. They were treading near dangerous ground, but that was a concern for tomorrow. Tonight he was here with her, and that’s all she cared about, all she was going to let herself care about. Tomorrow she could feel guilty, she could regret, she could wish she’d done things differently a thousand times. But she wasn’t going to think about those things tonight.

  They ate, and talked about nothing, about the rodeo, politics, country music and old movies, and the pain in Kate’s body slowly subsided until she didn’t even remember it was there.

  Finally, Shane set his empty plate on the tray and settled back in his chair, coffee in hand. “So, why’d you finally do it, Red?” he asked softly.

  The deep, velvet edge she suddenly heard in his voice sent a ripple of awareness racing through Kate. She busied herself reaching for another cookie and breaking it into bite-sized pieces on her plate. “Do what?” she chirped brightly, smiling widely and pretending she didn’t know what he meant. Her already frayed nerves threatened to disintegrate.

  He studied her for a long moment, his eyes dark with emotion. “Why’d you quit the police force? You said you never would.”

  The lie between them suddenly seemed to burn into her soul. Three years ago she’d chosen her job over him. Now she had to do it again, but she really had no more choice than she’d had then. It was her life. What she was meant to do. What her father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had done. It was what she’d always wanted to do. Kate shook her head. “I...just did. But I don’t want to talk about that now, Shane. Please.”

  He looked at her carefully, his gaze trying to reach through her, inside her. Had she been hurt? he wondered. Was that why she’d given up the career she’d sworn she loved too much to ever quit? Had she been shot? Knifed? In a wreck? The thought of anyone trying to hurt her sent a swift surge of rage through him.

  “It’s been a long time, Red,” he said softly.

  His seductive drawl brought her gaze jerking back up to meet his.

  “I’ve missed you.”

  The breath she’d just pulled into her lungs stalled in place. She waited until her pulse quieted before trying to put her coffee cup down. “I’ve missed you too, Shane,” she said, striving to keep her voice calm and her tone noncommittal. “It’s been wonderful seeing you again, but it is getting late and—”

  “I’m not leaving.”

  Surprised pulled her eyebrows higher.

  “The doctor told you to stay off that foot for a while, and I intend to see that you do.” And see about a few other things, he added to himself. There was no other man—she’d quit the police force—they were alone together—and desire was burning between them as heatedly as it ever had. Maybe he was still playing the fool, looking at things through rose-colored glasses, but at the moment he just didn’t care.

  “Shane, really—” Kate was blushing. “I don’t want to put you out. I can manage.”

  He smiled. “Still as stubborn as ever, aren’t you, Red?”

  Before she could respond, he pushed himself up from his chair and strode toward the hall that led to the bedrooms.

  “Where are you going?” Kate called after him.

  Shane walked into her room. His gaze moved over the spacious interior, the rugged pine bed and multicolored grandmother quilt, the leather love seat before the fireplace, and the French doors that led out onto the patio, with its view of the Carson valley far below and the lights of Reno to the north. Memories slammed into him like a bullet to his heart, swift, hot, and so vivid he nearly reeled from the impact. Only two months before he’d left her, she had inherited this house from her grandfather and moved into it.

  He had made love to her on that bed. He had lain with her on the floor before that fireplace as a fire crackled in the grate,
and talked of his dreams, had sat with her cradled in his arms on that patio, watching the night steal away the light of the day, and the day brush aside the darkness of the night. His thoughts fragmented into a thousand cherished memories, each pulling at his composure.

  Steeling himself against his own thoughts and desires, Shane walked to her bed and pulled back the covers, then fluffed up the pillows. He opened the top drawer of her dresser and pulled out a silky, lavender negligee. He held it in his hands for a moment, imagining her in it, then laid it over the foot of the bed.

  He could make her dinner, sit and talk about nothing with her, he could even carry her to her bed...but he could not help her disrobe.

  The mere thought sent his pulses into overdrive and his heart beating erratically.

  He’d said he would take care of her, and though everything in him screamed that he was being a chump, taking care of her was exactly what he intended to do, not seduce her when she was hurt, or didn’t want to be seduced. Why else would she have lied about having another man in her life, but to keep Shane at a distance?

  He ignored the fire coiling hot and demanding deep inside of him.

  “Shane?” Kate called. “What are you doing?”

  He walked down the long hall and looked into the bedroom that had once belonged to her grandparents, making sure it was still a guest bedroom, then returned to the living room. Without a word he bent over and scooped Kate effortlessly from the sofa and into his arms.

  Her heart rushed to her throat. “Shane, what are you doing?”

  “It’s time for you to go to bed and get some rest,” he said, carrying her toward her room.

  A fluttering of apprehension erupted within Kate that caused her entire body to tremble. “No, I can do this myself. I can...”

  Shane lowered her gently to the bed. A long-forgotten sense of home unexpectedly washed over him as he looked into her eyes. Every day for the last two years he’d done anything and everything he could think of to try to forget about her, to erase her image from his mind and his love for her from his heart. He’d purposely buried his memories deep and tried to pretend they didn’t exist any longer. He’d concentrated on his career, building the ranch with Dee and Cody, and looking ahead of him, instead of behind him.