by Caro Carson
“Kristen.” He hadn’t been looking for her; he hadn’t thought a woman would ever understand him so well. Yet she’d been here in this tiny town in Montana, and he’d known, somehow, to come and find her today.
Fate. Destiny. Magic. He was ready to believe all of it.
He picked her up off the step and whirled her into the street. She landed lightly on her feet, laughing with him, gesturing toward the Traub Community Center. “Of course, they’d still have a grand reception. Everyone would come, but it would be just the two of them alone on the dance floor for their first dance.”
“It wouldn’t be a first dance for us.” Ryan took her into his arms to waltz once more. In the middle of the street in their own private town, he led her in the elegant steps of the ballroom dance, thighs brushing in the dark as she hummed a country-western tune.
The fireworks were inevitable. The park was only two blocks away, so the fireworks were spectacularly close, their umbrella shapes forming shimmering willow trees over Ryan and Kristen as they continued to waltz, turning around and around on the solid yellow traffic lines that crossed the dark pavement under their boots.
It was just as inevitable that the fireworks would end, their last burst of thunder echoing off the buildings around them. Ryan and Kristen stopped, slightly out of breath from their dance, slightly breathless in their shared laughter. He had to kiss her, and he did, even knowing where that would lead. After long minutes of bliss and need, when the escalating desire made her whimper and he felt the sound in his soul, he broke off the kiss. “Let me take you home.”
“Yes.” Her fingers tightened in his hair, tugging in a way that was all the sexier because he was sure she hadn’t done it consciously. She pressed herself closer to him, soft breasts against hard chest. “No—I mean, yes, but there are too many people at my house. Where are you staying?”
Maggie’s.
Impossible. He would never bring a woman to his sister’s guest bedroom, anyway, but with a ten-week-old in the house, either Maggie or her husband were up every three hours. Sleep was a precious commodity there, which was why he’d booked himself a hotel by the airport in Kalispell.
Yes. He’d forgotten for a second that he’d booked that hotel after staying with his sister the night before. He’d done it to be kind, wanting to make his predawn flight without waking Maggie and her family in the morning. Kindness was paying off. He could take Kristen to the hotel. They’d have a few hours of bliss, maybe catch an hour of sleep and then…
Damn it. It wouldn’t work. He’d rise and pack his things, turn his rental car in at the airport and board the plane to begin ten hours of travel. He couldn’t leave Kristen in a hotel room twenty-five miles away from Rust Creek Falls. It failed every test on every level.
The fantasy disappeared in a puff of imaginary smoke. The day was over. This was not his real life, and he couldn’t make love to Kristen Dalton as if it were the start of something essential. He was leaving.
“What is it?” she asked. Headlights illuminated her face for a brief second as a car drove through the intersection beyond the church and town hall. Another followed close behind, driving away from the park now that the Fourth of July was over.
He let go of her shirt—his shirt—and walked her back to the sidewalk. “My flight is early out of Kalispell. God knows I don’t want to go, but I have to. I’ve got commitments.”
“We’ve still got tonight.”
“To make love?”
“Nothing less.”
His blunt question hadn’t fazed her. Nothing less made him want her more fiercely than ever, but what he wanted was not what was best for her.
“And then what? I’ll kiss you goodbye and leave you in a hotel bed by the airport, with no way to get home, and no promise that I’ll ever come back.”
She winced at that picture. A pickup truck turned onto Main Street and drove past them.
“Kristen, that’s not going to happen. You’re not the kind of woman who wants a one-night stand, but when I don’t know what I’m going to do with my future, I can’t promise you anything different.”
“Like you said, that’s not going to happen.” Her soft hand rested on his jaw, so tenderly that it didn’t cause him any pain despite taking that hit from the horse earlier. “You’ve got the heart of a true cowboy.”
If today had shown him anything, it was that he wasn’t a small-town rancher at all. “A true cowboy? What does that mean?”
“A true cowboy lives by a code that isn’t so different from a knight’s code of chivalry. You won’t make a promise you can’t keep. You’re telling me that you won’t sleep with me tonight because you can’t stay the whole night and see me safely home? That’s the most caring, romantic thing I’ve ever heard.” She gave his chest a light smack and sighed with regret. “It’s sexually frustrating at the moment, but romantic.”
Her talk of cowboy hearts would only keep them both in this Montana fantasy. He needed to act like the lawyer he was and cut to the facts.
“We’ve found something amazing today, Ryan. This isn’t going to disappear in the morning.”
“But I am.”
She flinched. If he’d ever needed proof that lawyers could be bastards, there it was. She withdrew her hand and looked at him with a little frown of reproach. “You don’t need to drive that point home. I get it.”
A passing car’s headlights cast her shadow on the sidewalk and stretched it to the church steps beyond. Ryan didn’t trust himself to speak.
“I understand that your job isn’t the kind you can just leave on a moment’s notice. I know it won’t be easy for you to break away for a while, but once you’ve fulfilled all your commitments, you’ll come back. I’ll be waiting for you right here in Rust Creek Falls.”
Her expression was open and honest and her words were full of promise. It was all too good to be true. Or rather, it was all too good. Nothing good lasted very long. He knew it, but judging by her hopeful blue eyes, she did not.
“I haven’t made a decision. You shouldn’t wait for me.”
She bowed her head briefly, and his heart ached for hurting her.
“I’m sorry,” he began, but she cut him off.
“Please don’t. I don’t want you to say anything that will make you feel bad while we’re apart.” She looked over her shoulder at the cars and trucks that drove through the intersection, then nodded to herself a little sadly. “Here’s what I think. This magic between you and me isn’t going to disappear. I will still want you next week, and next month, and the month after that. You go and take care of whatever you need to take care of, then make your list and tally up your check marks. I have faith in you, Ryan. I’m going to leave now, while our day is still perfect and I can do it without falling apart.”
She rose up on her toes and kissed him, hard and quick, on the mouth. “Hurry and come back. I miss you already.” She turned and started walking away.
Ryan was so dumbfounded she was out of arm’s reach before he called out, “Wait!”
She spun around, hope in her expression.
It was a hope he didn’t feel. “I’ll drive you to your ranch.”
She plastered on a smile that looked almost genuine. “There’s no need. At least a dozen people who are going my way will drive past me at the corner and give me a lift. It’s a small town, remember? Being able to hitch a ride is a definite check in the plus column.”
Then she turned around again, and this time, he let her go.
She’d be better off without some outsider from LA interfering with her secure life and her small-town dreams. Still wearing his shirt, she headed back to the life he’d interrupted today, a life that made her happy.
His gaze settled on the swish of her hem and the backs of her legs. Woman Walking Away, that was what he’d title it, if he could capture it i
n a photograph. He could paint it from memory, if he could stand the pain.
He was no artist. There was no way that losing Kristen after one perfect day could really hurt as much as watching his mother leave him while he’d held a snow globe in his hands. No way—but damn if it didn’t feel close.
At the corner by the church, an SUV stopped and Kristen climbed in. She was gone.
A second of childish memory suddenly surfaced. He hadn’t dropped that snow globe. He’d thrown it on the ground deliberately with all his three-year-old might, shattering it into a thousand pieces. This new bit of knowledge about Ryan Michaels fit Ryan Roarke. If he had a snow globe now, he’d hurl it at those church steps with all his might, too.
Ryan shoved his empty hands into his pockets and turned to walk in the opposite direction, heading toward the river that would lead him back to the park.
Back to the Porsche.
Back to reality.
CHAPTER FIVE
October
“I hate this stupid column.”
Kristen let go of one side of the newspaper to flick the offensive page.
“Which one?” Kayla sat behind her on the bed, patiently working a wide-toothed comb through Kristen’s hair.
“Rust Creek Ramblings. It’s still going on and on about ‘the power of the punch’ and how many couples fell in love because of that Fourth of July reception. Ouch!”
“Sorry.” Kayla was silent for a moment as she tugged a little harder at what must have been a particularly stubborn knot. “Maybe there is something to that poisoned punch theory. Don’t you think it’s awfully coincidental that people were acting so strangely? I mean, Will Clifton got married that night but didn’t even realize it until the next morning. Our own cousin got arrested for dancing in a fountain and then fell in love with the police officer. That’s a pretty crazy way to fall in love. Then Levi and Claire—”
“Levi and Claire were already married.” Kristen snapped the paper shut and glowered at her sister’s reflection in her dresser’s mirror.
“Well, they’re even more in love now.”
If that stupid punch had made everyone realize who their true love was, then why hadn’t Ryan come back yet? He’d drunk the punch with her. Kristen tossed the newspaper facedown onto her comforter.
“I need to get the bobby pins.” Kayla went into the bathroom they shared in the sprawling log house on the Circle D, the same ranch house they’d lived in all their lives. The bathroom connected their individual bedrooms. It had double sinks and enough counter space for two women to keep all the cosmetics and accessories they could need. Their brothers had dubbed their mini suite “the girls’ wing” years ago, and they’d kept away even after the fiercely pink Keep Out signs had been outgrown.
Kristen and each of her siblings had inherited land within the Circle D. Her brother Jonah, who had the advantage of being an architect, had designed and built a log cabin on his share, but Kristen and Kayla still lived in the girls’ wing of the main ranch house. Owning land was not the same thing as having the money to build a house on the land.
Someday, she’d build her own house. Maybe someday would arrive when Ryan did.
“Okay, let’s do this.” Kayla returned to toss a card of bobby pins onto the newspaper. She plopped herself down behind Kristen and picked up the comb again.
Kristen moved the bobby pins to read the back page. An ad for next year’s rodeo season taunted her. This year’s season was already over. June, July and August were the touring months in the northwest for the professional rodeo, summer months that had come and gone.
Where was Ryan?
She wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t come knocking on her door in July. He’d told her that he had commitments to keep. He’d said it with regret, but people were relying on him. Rodeo riders signed contracts at the beginning of the season, after all, and contracts had to be honored.
The entire month of August, she’d hoped the tour would bring him back her way, close enough to visit her between rodeos. She’d looked up schedules and wondered which towns he was choosing to compete in, but no one named Ryan Michaels appeared in any of the events within a day’s drive of Rust Creek Falls. Although she ached to see him again, she hadn’t been too worried. The bigger rodeos with the bigger prize money were in the cities farther away. In September, when the season was over, he would come.
Every day in September, she’d dressed with care. Every single day, because every day had been the day Ryan might return.
But now, somehow, it was October.
Without warning, tears stung her eyes, an ambush she couldn’t defend against, a sign that she was losing her faith in Ryan. She hated these odd moments where the voice of doubt would suddenly seem to be the voice of reason. Face the facts: he’s not coming back.
She sniffed the tears back. She would pummel that voice into silence.
“Am I hurting you?” Kayla asked. “I’m so sorry. I’m just trying to get all these tangles out.”
“It’s okay,” Kristen mumbled, too cowardly to admit the truth. Of all the people on the planet, Kayla was the last one who’d chastise her for holding on to her cowboy dream, but Kayla could look at a calendar and see what everyone else saw. Kristen liked to believe that Kayla looked at her with empathy…but that look was getting darned close to pity.
If Kayla looked at her with real pity, that would mean no one, not even Kristen’s twin, believed that she’d mattered to Ryan as much as he’d mattered to her.
He’s coming back. Even if he was too stubborn to see how many check marks were in the plus column, he wants me. He’ll try to talk me into moving to wherever he chose to settle down. He’s coming back.
In the meantime, she wasn’t being entirely open and honest with Kayla, for the first time in their lives. She was acting, pretending that she wasn’t eaten up with worry over Ryan, going entire weeks without mentioning his name, just to avoid that final, hope-killing look of pity.
“This is going to look so good on you.” Kayla held up a picture of a beautiful ice skater from a Victorian Christmas card. Kayla’s mission was to make Kristen’s hair look just like the Victorian ideal of feminine beauty, because Kristen was auditioning for a role in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. The play would open Thanksgiving weekend at one of the theaters in Kalispell, and Kristen fervently hoped it would open with her in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge’s former fiancée.
The thought of returning to the stage revived her sagging spirits. There were boards to be trod, greasepaint to be smelled and shows that had to go on. The theater was her passion, and although the principal at the high school wouldn’t let her direct an after-school drama club, she wasn’t going to give up something she loved any longer.
In July and August and September, as she’d relived every second of her time with Ryan, one moment that had nothing to do with love had kept running through her head. It must be frustrating to have gotten that college degree and then not use it. She’d majored in theater because she loved the theater. She had talent. She was trained. And most of all, she missed it. The lack of a theater in Rust Creek Falls might be her own check mark in the minus column, but the fact that the city of Kalispell was within commuting distance was a plus she intended to use.
Today, she was going to pursue something that made her happy. After Kayla finished making her look like a Victorian sweetheart, Kristen was going to drive the forty-five minutes to Kalispell and kill that audition. It was time to get a job doing what she loved.
She had Ryan to thank for inspiring her. She’d thank him in person, when he came to see her. It was October, so now he would come.
* * *
“Listen to this.”
Kristen set down her half-empty cup and plopped her chin in her hand, prepared to listen to her sister.
“‘Sunday, N
ovember first. The Power of the Punch has claimed another love match. During the fateful Fourth of July wedding of Braden and Jennifer Traub, Brad Crawford appeared to many to be impervious to the potent properties of the now-infamous punch, but the Rambler asserts that had he not partaken, or more to the point, if his fellow poker players had not partaken of the punch, then he would not have won the piece of property that included his prospective bride.’”
“How can you read that column?” Kristen asked. “It’s torture.”
Kayla frowned at her over the edge of the newspaper. “It is not. You just don’t like it because you’re never mentioned in it. You ought to be happy about that.”
Of all the things Kristen felt, happiness was not one of them. Oh, sure, she’d been pursuing it. She’d landed that role in the play. She’d even managed to move out of her childhood home.
It wasn’t enough.
She pushed her coffee cup away. At least she felt some pride that it was her own coffee cup, and she was sitting at her own kitchen table in her own house. Kayla had stopped in to share her first Sunday morning brunch in Kristen’s new home.
Well, it was sort of her new home. Jonah had bought a block of five Victorian homes after the flood. They’d been dirt cheap, because no one else had dared to attempt to rehab century-old houses. Jonah had turned the home on the corner lot into his architectural firm’s office. The other four houses were works in progress, and Kristen was going to be part of that progress.
She was proud of her new job in the Christmas play, but the commute from the ranch to Kalispell was over an hour and a half, round trip. The ranch was north of Rust Creek Falls, but Jonah’s houses were on the south edge of town, close to the highway to Kalispell. Living here saved her hours and hours of driving every week.
She couldn’t pay Jonah much rent. Regional theater was run mostly on donations and volunteers. She was lucky that her role paid anything at all, but it worked out to less than minimum wage when she counted up her hours. Living here was her second job. Instead of rent, she’d agreed to scrape and sand and repaint the interior of the house for Jonah while she lived in it.
