Hannah had been using her body athletically as long as she could remember. Ty had taught her how to use it passionately. Joyfully.
He’d made her brand new.
And God, had she missed that.
“We can’t,” he said now.
The words took a moment to land. Especially because he was very clearly not joking.
Hannah blinked. “I can honestly say that’s a sentence I never expected to hear come from your mouth.”
The mouth in question curved. His thumbs moved on her shoulders, stroking up, then down, and it might have destroyed her, if she let it. She didn’t let it.
“This is some intense chemistry,” he said in that low, almost-careful voice. “It would be tempting to jump in headfirst. See how it played out.”
“Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing?”
The irony wasn’t lost on her that their positions were reversed, for once. That she was the one who wanted and needed and was prepared to argue for it. And he was the one holding back. It was almost poetic, really.
Hannah had always hated poetry.
“I believe you,” Ty said with that same quiet intent. “But I hurt you. And I can’t remember why or how. The only thing I do know is that I don’t intend to do it again.”
“That sounds very noble. Really it does. But—”
“I can’t promise you that I’ll get my memory back. I can’t tell you that I’ll figure out how to be the man I was, because I don’t know if that will ever happen. Or if that’s even a good thing. But I can promise you this.” His hands tightened around her shoulders. His dark green gaze was serious. “I will be a man you can trust, Hannah. I will honor you, and the vows we made. Until trusting me feels as easy as that kiss did.”
Hannah could hardly speak. She wasn’t sure she’d have been able to keep her balance if he hadn’t been holding her up.
“Ty…”
“And about those vows.” He sounded almost grim, then. “I didn’t know I was married.”
“Oh God,” she said, her stomach knotting up. “Please don’t feel you need to confess anything to me. I don’t want to know.”
Mama would say that was vintage Hannah. Sticking her head in the sand. Plugging up her ears and singing la la la while the world burned. As if any good could come of watching an inferno as it swallowed you whole.
“I have nothing to confess,” Ty told her, his dark gaze clear and his voice perfectly even. Steady. “You are the first woman I’ve even looked at since the accident.”
It matched with what Amanda had told her in the coffee shop. And it made Hannah’s heart warm. She shifted back onto her heels, breathing better as the knots in her belly loosened.
“I’m glad to hear that.” But she studied him a moment. “Though I don’t really understand how that’s possible. You told me that waiting as long as you did from the time we started talking to the night we got married was the longest dry spell of your life.”
The crook in the corner of his mouth deepened. “I can’t say I’ve ever been happier to be fully unable to comment on that.”
He reached out and ran a hand over her hair, the gesture as sweet as it was familiar.
She was so afraid to hope. But she loved him. Everything else was a work in progress. She had to believe that.
Not least because this was the man she had married. The character he played at the rodeo, happy-go-lucky Ty Everett, with that easy smile and an occasional dangerous edge to his drawl, was for strangers.
Here, with her, he had always been simply Ty. He had always been hers.
Tell him, something inside urged her. Now, before it turns into another terrible lie. And this time, making you the liar.
She couldn’t. It all felt too fragile. How many bombs could she drop on the man before he shattered completely?
But Hannah wasn’t trying to protect him.
The darker truth was that she could handle it if he didn’t believe her. She could handle it if he sent her away. She already had.
But if he did the same to Jack … If she told him he was a father and he reacted the way her own father had, refusing to see her, severing his parental rights, and disappearing without so much as a backward glance …
There was no coming back from that. She would never forgive it.
Not now that Jack was here, a little person in his own right, and a whole lot more to her than a positive pregnancy test and a series of missed periods.
Not again.
“We’re not at the rodeo anymore,” Ty said. “No one’s watching. No one needs me to be your cousin. So. Hannah Monroe Everett. How do you feel about trying this marriage on for size?”
* * *
“I don’t understand what that means,” Luanne said coolly, and Hannah could hear her frown through the phone. “It all sounds heartwarming, baby girl, it really does. But how exactly does trying it on for size equal a man living up to his responsibilities?”
“This is him doing that.” The more Hannah defended Ty to her mother, the more certain she felt about the whole thing. She was tempted to say so, but thought better of it, because Luanne would only come up with a new tactic. “He can’t man up to responsibilities he doesn’t know about. I told him we were married, and he believed me, even though he can’t remember any of it. And he instantly stepped up.”
She looked down at her hand and the ring that sparkled there. The ring she’d never gotten the chance to wear in public. The weight of it on her finger now felt a bit like she was tempting fate. Another tidbit she opted not to share with her mother.
“You’re not exactly hard on the eyes,” Luanne said. “What red-blooded man wouldn’t leap at the opportunity if you appeared out of nowhere, claiming you were his wife?”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, Mama.”
But Hannah couldn’t work up a head of steam the way she might have before. She understood her mother too well these days. Before Ty, before Jack, she’d viewed her mother’s laser focus on her every move as her personal cross to bear. And she hadn’t always borne it with good grace.
Now, she understood. She heard the fear in it. More than that, the resolve. Her mother couldn’t change the world to keep Hannah safe. She couldn’t protect Hannah from the things she’d suffered. So Luanne had done her best to change Hannah so that she’d stay safe no matter what the world threw her way.
Hannah got it. She really did.
“You think I don’t understand, but I do,” Mama was saying. “You’re not the first woman alive to fall in love. And it’s no small thing that he can’t remember marrying you, but wants to hold onto his wedding vows anyway. But what is playing house with him going to accomplish?”
Hannah looked out the window of the bed-and-breakfast there on Main Street. The summer afternoon was bright and golden, warming up the brick buildings and making the flowers fairly burst with color. And Ty waited for her down there, leaning against the side of his truck like a cowboy fantasy come to life. The sun danced over him, making love to his jeans and boots, the T-shirt that showed off every inch of the lean, mouthwatering torso she’d finally touched again, and his swoon-worthy square jaw beneath his tipped down cowboy hat.
He looked lazy. At his ease. Perfectly content to while away a summer afternoon down there.
But Hannah knew he was waiting. For her. And no matter how languidly he thumbed his hat to the folks who passed by and greeted him, he was coiled tight.
Because the real Ty was all that wild intensity hidden right there beneath the picture of laziness incarnate. Hannah had always gotten a thrill out of getting to be the one who saw the truth behind his mask. Today was no different.
“I wouldn’t call it playing house, exactly,” she told her mother, hoping she sounded thoughtful and pious instead of muddled up with lust and longing. “And obviously, it can’t go on for too long. I don’t actually like being away from Jack, you know.”
“I never said you did.”
“Not in so many words,
no.”
“Hannah Leigh, I am not going to argue with you about what you think I said. I have no doubt at all that you love this baby boy. But you wouldn’t be the first woman in the world who let a man confuse her some on that issue.”
“I’m not confused.”
“Then why didn’t you tell him he has a son? If he’s the man you want to believe he is, ready and willing to jump feet first into every responsibility you lay before him, he’s not going to thank you for keeping that to yourself.”
As usual, Luanne managed to stick her fingers directly into the tender, painful center of Hannah’s worst fears.
“I’m not going to tell you what I’m doing is right, because I don’t know if it is,” she said after a moment, when she was sure she could keep her voice steady. “I can only do what I think is right under the circumstances.”
“I can’t bring myself to understand—”
“Mama. Stop.”
Hannah wasn’t sure she’d ever used that tone with her mother before. A stark command with no pleading in it at all. She hardly knew where it came from. Even more astonishing, it worked. Luanne actually fell silent.
It was such a shock, Hannah almost apologized.
“You never got a second chance,” she said quietly instead. “And I’m so sorry for that. But I need to take the one I’ve been given.”
She hated herself, deeply, when she heard the small sound her mother made, then. A tiny, hurt sort of gasp. Hannah squeezed her eyes shut and made herself keep going.
“You’re not saying anything to me that I haven’t already said to myself, believe me. But there wasn’t a single moment in my relationship with Ty when we weren’t sneaking around. And maybe that’s all we ever were to each other. A dirty little secret. I don’t want to believe that, but I need to know. Because I can’t bear the idea of throwing Jack into something that’s only going to fall apart. And badly.” She took a deep breath. “Can you let me do that? Will you?”
Luanne was quiet for a long time.
Hannah waited. She stood at the window, her fingertips on the glass, and prayed she was doing the right thing. For all her big talk, she was terrified that her mother was right and she was being stupid, again. And on a grander scale than before.
Ty wanted to give their marriage a shot. He wanted to give it—them—a chance.
I want another shot at a honeymoon. He’d been driving back down the hill, and she’d been trying her best not to sound as excited at the prospect as she was. Or maybe she was terrified. She still couldn’t tell the difference. Without any sneaking around or pretending this time.
And yet also, apparently, without sex, she had replied dryly. Yay?
The look he’d given her was filled with a dark amusement she’d felt like heat and longing, everywhere. You’ll live. We’ll get to know each other. We’ll put in real time. Win/win.
Hannah could certainly use a win.
Especially when it was Jack on the line this time.
“Jack is safe with me,” her mother said at last, and if there was emotion there in her voice, she’d managed to smooth it out some. Hannah knew better than to mention it. “If you truly believe this is the way to build our boy the family he deserves, I support it.”
It wasn’t until they ended the call that she understood how important it was to her to have her mother’s blessing this time. How very different that made her feel.
Like a grown woman making her own choices, not an adolescent rebelling against her mother’s rules.
She looked around her room, making sure she’d packed up everything. Then she carried her bags down the stairs and tossed them into her pickup out back. She pulled around onto Main Street and came to a stop behind Ty. She watched as he gathered himself up, threw her a look she couldn’t quite read—but found she could feel just fine—as he went to climb into his truck, and then started down the street toward the river.
Hannah followed him all the way out to Cold River Ranch.
By the time they made it down that bumpy dirt road, the late afternoon was inching into evening. Ty pulled his truck into the yard, and Hannah parked beside him.
She tried to ignore the butterflies in her belly that had gotten wilder with every mile, especially when she saw the ranch no longer looked deserted. There were a handful of other vehicles parked here and there around the yard. As she opened her door, she could hear the telltale signs of habitation all around her. Water running in the ranch house. Horses in the barn.
“I’m not sure this was a good idea,” she said nervously, walking to meet Ty at the back of her truck. “Maybe you should have talked to your family first. Prepared them.”
“What preparation would work in a situation like this?”
“I don’t know. Any? What are you going to say?”
“I’m not planning to tell them that I can’t remember you, if that’s what you mean. I’m not getting into that.”
The implications of that sunk in. Hannah scowled up at him.
“You’re going to … what? Announce you’ve been married all this time, but I was somewhere else, and here I am? No explanation?”
He gazed back at her mildly enough, but that was an expression she did know. Pure, implacable steel dressed up in a seemingly easygoing package. Ty at his most maddening.
Hannah should have known he didn’t plan to explain a thing.
“You do realize they’re going to think that I abandoned you in your time of need. That I turned my back on you when you were broken and only showed up now because you’re competing again next month. That I only want you for the glory.”
“I don’t care what they think.” He studied her for a minute. “And they don’t know I’m competing.”
“What? Why else would you be training?”
“Ranch work is rodeo training all by itself, the rest looks like more physical therapy. And I don’t make a habit out of sitting around explaining myself.”
“Don’t you suspect they might notice it when you disappear and then, magically, show up on television again?”
“I’ll deal with that then.”
“There are advertisements for your one-night stand with destiny in every rodeo magazine I’ve even glanced at these past few months. What makes you think they don’t already know?”
“Great. I don’t have to tell them myself if they already know.”
That she wanted to scream felt good. Familiar in a comfortable sort of way. Of course, she also just … wanted to scream.
“Ty. Come on. This approach isn’t going to work. With your event or with me.”
“I don’t know what they’re going to think about you, and I don’t care,” Ty said gruffly. “If you want to tell them where you’ve been for the past eighteen months, be my guest. I didn’t think that was what you wanted.”
“It isn’t. Not yet.”
“If you don’t fill in the gaps, Hannah, people might do it for you. I can’t help that. But what do you care what they think?” His shrug was expansive. “I don’t. Like I said.”
Hannah looked toward the ranch house, the butterflies inside her turning into something a lot less cute. And she didn’t quite believe he was as nonchalant as he sounded.
“Come on now,” Ty said, a lighter note in that drawl of his. “You’re a rodeo queen. You must have handled all kinds of crowds all over the circuit. What are a few family dynamics next to that?”
It was all about weighing bad options, wasn’t it? If Hannah wanted to be open about the fact that she and Ty were married while waiting to see if the relationship was a safe space for her child, then she couldn’t complain about the stories people told to explain her absence from Ty’s life until now.
Even though this really wasn’t how she’d pictured meeting his family for the first time.
“Okay,” she said, because she wasn’t a coward. Not yet. “Fine. I’m ready if you are.”
Ty nodded, a look of satisfaction and approval moving over his face. That lit a fuse in her, mak
ing her body hum. Then his hand closed around hers, and that felt the way it always did. As if they could take on the world.
Or if not the world, a few relatives.
He led her into the ranch house, through the back door that fed directly into the kitchen, where the pregnant woman Hannah had seen in the coffeehouse was bustling around at the stove.
There was a very pretty younger girl with dark, glossy hair setting the table. A man who looked a lot like Ty was kicked back in a chair at the table. An older man, clearly also related to both men, stood in the arched doorway leading to the rest of the house, looking fresh from a shower.
Every single one of them stopped whatever they’d been doing. And stared.
They all looked at Ty, then at her. Then down to where their hands were clasped tight together.
No one spoke.
For what seemed to Hannah like approximately seven thousand years.
“You should have told me you were bringing a guest for dinner, Ty,” the pregnant woman said, sounding perfectly pleasant. She exchanged a quick glance with the stern-looking man in the doorway, then nodded toward the girl at the table. “Becca, why don’t you set another place?”
“This is Hannah,” Ty said, sounding almost obnoxiously calm. As if he couldn’t read the room. Or like he’d said moments ago, didn’t care. But his hand was hard and warm around hers. And Hannah had decided to do this, come what may. “And she’s not a guest. She’s my wife.”
11
Ty thought it went well, all things considered.
He didn’t know how something like this was supposed to go. Given he had never come home with a woman before—much less a wife—he could only compare it to his memories of childhood. Always a dicey proposition.
As in most things, anything that wasn’t a scene out of the Life of Amos Everett was a success in his book. By that measure, the whole evening went like a dream. There were no tears. No raised voices. There was no crockery smashed into smithereens on the kitchen floor and no further holes in the walls.
Cold Heart, Warm Cowboy Page 14
