“ARE YOU TWO all set for the night?”
At Daryl’s question, Heath dropped another log on the fire, turned and followed his brother’s gaze to Jewel. A brisk scraping sound rose as she scrubbed the cast-iron skillet in the trickling stream. The sweet scent of their dessert, a berry cobbler, lingered in the twilight while the bulky shapes of the cattle meandered in the purpling gloom.
“Fine.” Heath brushed the dirt from his jeans, his movements jerky, stiff. For the past week, he’d been confused and furious with himself for kissing Jewel and betraying Kelsey. Tough as it was, he’d done his best to distance himself from Jewel, until now…
Daryl lifted one thick eyebrow. “Fine, huh?”
Heath nodded fast.
“So why are you acting funny?”
“I’m not.” As he and Jewel had wandered deeper into backcountry, laboring to save the herd and ranch, it’d been nearly impossible to avoid her. Try as he might, he thought of their kiss nonstop, his wish to repeat it followed by a full lashing of guilt. He’d betrayed Kelsey and trifled with Jewel’s heart—an unforgivable act. For a person who considered himself a peacekeeper, he’d done his share of stirring up trouble.
“You’re wearing one of your Sunday shirts.”
Heath glanced down, astonished. “Must have grabbed it in a hurry.”
“Um-hum.” Daryl’s eyes narrowed. “And you’re smelling like you used one of those shower gels instead of plain bar soap.”
“Gets pretty odorous up here.”
“Ain’t heard you complain about it before.”
Heath shoved his hands in his pockets. “What are you getting at, dude?”
“Are you okay being alone with Jewel tonight? Those coyotes might have moved off, or I could ask Jewel to sit with the kids if LeAnne’s gone out while I stay here with you instead.”
“I’m fine being alone with her. She’s just a ranch hand.”
Daryl’s piercing blue eyes called Heath out for a liar. Jewel was much more than that. They’d grown closer as they’d worked together, traversing the property to higher ground in search of a consistent, elusive water supply.
Too close.
And now they’d spend an entire night alone together—something he’d managed to avoid since their kiss.
“Just a ranch hand,” Daryl echoed before swinging himself into his saddle. “Now how come I don’t believe that?”
“Overactive imagination?”
“Nah.” Daryl retrieved his flask, drank a long gulp, then tucked it back in his saddlebag. “All I need is these.” He pointed at his eyes, then swung his fingers between Heath and an approaching Jewel. “Night, Jewel.”
“Night, Daryl,” she called. When Daryl trotted away, she turned to Heath. “What was up with the eye pointing?”
“Nervous tic.” Heath shook out his bedroll and laid it on the soft, grassy soil. It’d been a relief to discover this still-green pasture. While not lush, it had enough water and forage to keep the herd going for a few days if they stretched it. After that, things only got tougher. The next watering spot was a steady four-hour climb the weaker cattle might not make.
“Never saw him do it before.” Jewel unrolled her bedding, then sat, cross-legged, on the shiny outer material. “What’s he nervous about?”
“The coyotes,” Heath blurted. There. Lie number two. Jewel was turning him into a dishonest person in more ways than one.
Jewel pointed to the rifle she’d retrieved with her sleep gear. “If we didn’t scare them enough earlier, we’ll give ’em a good reminder tonight.”
“Their pack’s been following us for weeks.” Heath grabbed the guitar case strapped to Destiny’s saddle, opened it and pulled out his acoustic. “And growing bolder.”
“They see some easy pickings. The cattle are getting weaker.” Jewel yanked out the elastic bands on the ends of her braids and loosened her plaits.
Heath sat and strummed a D chord. “Not much we can do about it unless we reach an agreement at Friday’s arbitration.”
Jewel snorted. “Those mosquitoes have a better chance.” She pointed to the bats swooping through the sky, gulping down the insects stirring the warm air. They’d appeared after the rainfall and seemed to be making up for lost time by swarming anything that moved.
“Or we could just drive the herd to the Crystal River ourselves.”
“Is that why you kissed me?”
Heath’s fingers froze on the strings. When he lifted his eyes, Jewel’s stricken expression pierced him through. “I kissed you because I wanted to, not to get something.”
“You said it was wrong.”
“It was, but it doesn’t change how much I wanted to kiss you.”
“Do you still?”
“So, we’re going there, huh?”
“Pretty much.”
He began playing Darius Rucker’s “Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It.” The notes floated on the still, dry air, his music speaking for him.
“Guess that’s my answer?” Jewel asked when he finished the song.
“This isn’t easy for me.”
“You think it’s easy for me?” Jewel jumped to her feet and pointed down at him. Her loose hair flamed around her face as bright as the fire. “You’re the last person I want to care about!”
His mouth dropped open. “You care about me?”
She whirled around, her back hunched. “Forget it.”
“I will not!” He laid down his guitar and stalked toward her. Irritating cowgirl. She never quit trying to call the shots.
He stepped in front of her, angling his head left, then right, until he caught her eye. “Talk to me, Jewel.”
“I got nothing more to say.”
“Maybe I do.”
“Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.” She began to walk off again, her momentum checked when he dodged in front of her.
“You darn well will hear it!” he shouted, surprising himself. “Maybe I care about you, too!”
Instead of looking happy about his declaration, Jewel shoved him hard in the chest, catching him off guard so he tumbled backward and landed on the seat of his Wranglers. “What was that for?”
One side of her tense mouth lifted. “The ‘maybe’ part.”
“Fine.” He extended his hand and she tugged him to his feet. He was amused at her cheek and determination to drag the truth from him. “There is no ‘maybe’ part. I do care. I just can’t do anything about it.”
Jewel’s shoulders drooped. “Because of Kelsey.”
“Because of lots of things.” He stared into Jewel’s heart-shaped face, smudged from the days’ work, the circles under her eyes from lack of sleep, and marveled. How had he won the affection of such a tough, tenacious big-hearted cowgirl? They argued more than they got along, and he hadn’t kept the peace with her the way he did with other women. In fact, he’d been downright antagonistic at times. Maybe that was a truer, more honest side of him. Jewel made him see himself, and his relationships, in a whole new light.
Before now, he’d always considered love a conditional emotion. A transaction. If he made someone’s life easy, they’d care about him. It’d never occurred to him someone might have feelings for him based on who he was, not what he did for them…and considering he was a broke range boss on a nearly bankrupt ranch, he wasn’t much.
What could he offer Jewel, even if she was the one?
“Besides.” He rubbed the back of his tense neck. “You never want to settle down. Unless that’s changed?”
Jewel’s mouth worked before she shook her head. “I don’t know what I want anymore.” The cresting moon illuminated the high color in her cheeks. Sympathy for her welled. She was turned inside out, just like him. “Guess we’re a pair.”
“Guess so.” But what kind of a pair? Work partners or more? Were their feelings born of proximity or rooted in something deeper?
Heath laced his fingers in hers. “Come back to the fire. We’ll talk about anything else and forget about—” he gestured between them “—this.” Although he knew he wouldn’t forget. Jewel cared about him and he cared for her, another complication to his already-difficult summer…but darned if it felt like a negative even if it was confusing as all get-out.
“Anything?”
He nodded, a sinking sensation settling heavy in his gut.
They wandered back to the sleeping bags and scooched to the ends closest to the crackling fire. When Jewel didn’t speak, he picked up his guitar and played one of his originals, a tune about the roads he’d never know, the paths he’d never follow. As his fingers slid and pressed, he glanced up and met Jewel’s eyes, her expression as rapt and fierce as the night he’d spied her in the Silver Spurs crowd.
When he finished, she asked, “What was the opportunity Clint chastised you for not taking?”
Heath shrugged, picking chords.
“You can say anything out here,” Jewel persisted. “No one’ll hear but me, and I won’t repeat it.” She crossed her heart. “Scout’s honor.”
Heath studied Jewel, wondering if he dared open up and trust her. Something in her steady brown eyes assured him.
“A Nashville producer offered me a tryout a couple weeks ago, but I had to turn it down when Cole hurt his arm. Otherwise Pa would have canceled his honeymoon.”
“Did you ask them to reschedule?”
“Nah. Kelsey gave me until the end of the summer to set a date and begin planning the wedding. There wouldn’t be enough time to give Nashville a real try before that to prove we could make a life there together.”
“Tell Kelsey to wait. You have a gift, Heath. You’re a darn fool if you don’t take risks or put yourself first.”
“That’s selfish.”
“It’s honest.” A lock of Jewel’s hair swung forward with the force of her answer, and he couldn’t resist slipping it back behind her ear, his fingers lingering on the silky tress. “You have to chase your dreams.” Her voice trembled slightly.
If only it were that easy. He lost himself in Jewel’s eyes for a moment, glimpsing another path, other dreams, then yanked his thoughts to a halt. If he kept going, who knew where he or Jewel would end up? He respected her too much to lead her astray. “Okay. My turn.”
“Huh?”
“To ask you anything.”
She sucked on her bottom lip. “I don’t know about anything.”
“That was the deal.”
She drew in a deep breath, and he held his. “Okay. Fine.”
“Back when we were ten, at the 4-H exhibit, why were you crying?”
A log popped in the silence while bullfrogs in the brush called to one another. Jewel didn’t speak, but a tortured, pinched look crept across her face.
“It had something to do with your father,” Heath prompted.
She turned away and spoke to the mountainside. “He didn’t congratulate me on my blue ribbon.”
“Maybe he was busy. Didn’t notice.”
“That’s the point. He never noticed me.” Her hair slid over her cheeks as she angled her head his way again and large eyes were as dark as the sky…darker as they lacked the glimmering stars. “All he cared about were his sons. No matter how well I rode or roped or shot, he never saw me. Growing up, I kept thinking if I could be as big and tall and tough as them, then my father would love me like he did my brothers…but no matter how hard I tried, I was like the shrub in the forest—he couldn’t see me for the trees.”
A band tightened around Heath’s chest as understanding dawned. “So that’s why.”
“Why what?”
“Why you pretend you don’t care what others think.”
“I’m not pretending!”
“Yes, you are, because if you weren’t, you wouldn’t be trying to prove you’re as good as or better than everyone all the time—to me, to your brothers, maybe even to a father who’s passed on…but what about living life as if you’ve got nothing to prove except to yourself?”
“I am.” Her half shout startled a pair of doves from some nearby brush. They winged to a nearby tree in a panicked flap.
“You’re not. Are you acting like you don’t care what others think because you’re independent? Or are you wanting to be independent because of what others made you believe about yourself?”
“I’m the only one I can depend on,” she said, speaking the words so quietly he wasn’t sure she’d said them at first.
“Why’s that?”
There was another long stretch of silence, and then she said, “I won’t be weak. My father hated weak people.”
“Depending on others isn’t a weakness.” He cupped her shoulders, then slid his hands down the length of her arms, stopping to twine his fingers in hers. “I wish you’d trust me—depend on me—more.”
She jerked back. “Why should I? You’re about to marry Kelsey.”
“Even though I haven’t settled things with Kelsey, you and I can still be friends.” “
Her eyes rounded, brightening slightly. “Oh, really?”
“Yes.”
“Either way—” she lay down and stared skyward “—I’ll never rely on anyone.”
“Because they’ll let you down like your father?”
She squeezed her eyes shut, and her chest stilled as if she held her breath.
“I’m sure he loved you.”
“The day he died, he asked to speak to each of his children.” Her voice was soft, almost inaudible.
“What did he say to you?”
“Nothing.” Tears seeped from beneath her lashes, and he ached, knowing how much those tears, her confessions, cost her.
“Were you too late?”
“No.” When she opened her glittering eyes, they swam with pain. “He never asked for me. Even then, I didn’t matter.”
“Jewel.” Heath’s heart turned over heavily for the forsaken daughter, the girl who’d fought and failed to win her father’s affection. He set down his guitar, stretched out beside her and pressed his forehead to hers.
“It doesn’t matter.”
She started to look away, but he placed his fingers on her cheeks, stopping her. “It matters. You felt rejected.”
“Don’t tell me how I felt.”
He lifted his hand and pushed her long hair away from her face so he could see her better. “Then tell me how you felt.”
“I felt unworthy. Unlovable!” she cried, and he gathered her close, pressing her cheek to his thudding heart.
“You’re anything but unlovable.” He moved his hand to her chin and gently raised her head to kiss her forehead. Never had he spoken truer words. They poured from his heart without filter. Like a tornado, Jewel uprooted his life and twisted his emotions, sending him in a disorienting spiral.
He was falling for Jewel. Did he love her?
“The only person who ever really loved me was Jesse.” Her body tensed up and a sad quietness overcame her, thick like fog.
He moved one hand to the back of her head, guiding her face to his chest, and wrapped his other around her hand. “He was the closest to you in age?”
“Justin was three minutes older than Jesse, but age didn’t have much to do with it. Jesse was like me…an outsider. He wasn’t much for cowboying, though, so Pa didn’t pay him much mind, either. He was my best friend.” Her voice caught, and he brushed the damp from her cheek. “After he died, I was lost. Once I heard you singing, my heart beat again.”
Heath’s arms tightened around Jewel. Her words struck him like the first press of a finger to a keyboard, sending a pulse, a vibration, through him.
“That’s why you shouldn’t give up singing.” She leaned her forehead against him for a moment and then looked up again. “You touch people’s lives…like mine.”
“I learned that young. Playing music with my mother kept her calm.” His heart tossed in his chest, caught in the storm of his emotions. “She had mental health and addiction issues. I was the only one who could distract her.”
“You were her favorite.”
“It wasn’t a good thing.” Heath’s cheek slid over the side of Jewel’s head as he inhaled the faint remnants of her shampoo. “My childhood was all about keeping the peace. Soothing her, catering to her.”
“No wonder.”
“No wonder what?”
“You never learned it’s okay to put yourself first sometimes.”
“I did once. At Cole’s sixteenth birthday. He asked Ma to stay away because he was afraid she’d embarrass him in front of his friends. It set her off. I’d never seen her so bad. Crying, ranting, then she got quiet. Too quiet. She just lay down and looked up at the ceiling. She wouldn’t talk to me. Look at me.” He paused as the words, the memory, echoed in his mind. They bounced off his brain before falling down the hole into his heart to slowly leak into his gut, eating at him. “I should have stayed with her, but I really wanted to go to the party.”
“I don’t blame you.” Jewel pulled back and peered up at him. “You were a kid.”
“While I was having fun at the bonfire, she left her room and walked to the pool.” His throat felt as if it was closing off. “And drowned herself.”
Jewel’s hand lifted, and her fingers sifted through his hair. “That’s horrible.”
Not trusting himself to speak again, he nodded. His head swam, and dark spots clouded his vision. In the distance, a lone coyote yipped while the cattle rustled through the tall grass, seeking a resting spot.
“It was horrible of me,” he whispered, then leaned his cheek into her palm, comforted, somehow, by the strength of her hands, the calluses that bore witness to a hard life, one tested like his. “I could have prevented it.”
“Maybe you could have stopped her that time…but she wanted to kill herself.” Jewel’s lashes fluttered shut briefly, then reopened. “If not that night, then another. You can’t blame yourself for someone else’s actions.”
“Putting myself first led to tragedy.” He exhaled deeply, rubbing a hand along his jaw.
“That was a fluke.”
“It was confirmation.” His voice cracked. “Always put others’ needs ahead of my own.”
“That’s crazy.” She thumped him hard in the chest, as if performing CPR. Was she trying to save his life? “You love music. If you only did it for your mother, you would have stopped playing long ago.”
“After her suicide, music was how I coped. It held me together when my family fell apart.” His eyes drifted from hers to stare into the gloom. “When I sing it sends every trouble and worry I have to the wind.”
“Which is why you can’t just give it up to please Kelsey or anyone else.” She turned her hand under his, so their palms touched, and their eyes shifted from their joined hands to slowly meeting each other in the dim light. “In the end, you only regret the chances you didn’t take. Someone wise told me to live my life as if I only had to prove it to myself.”
“Wise, huh?” One side of his mouth lifted as he considered the advice he’d given her.
“Very wise,” she said through a yawn.
In the silence, her body gradually relaxed against his, her breathing growing regular. In a moment, he’d let her go, but not yet. Not when it felt too good, too right, to keep her close.
He rested his chin atop her head, feeling as though he held the most precious thing in the world. A truth-speaking, tough-talking cowgirl with a heart as big as Mount Sopris. It shone right out of her like a spotlight.
Jewel.
He couldn’t deny the bond between them anymore. Unlike Kelsey, who’d always shut down his music ambitions, Jewel had taken a keen interest from the start. She stopped chattering when he played, listened closely, her eyes glistening, her tough outer shell gone. She was the first person in his life to see how much music really meant to him.
Should he consider her advice and travel to Nashville when things quieted down on the ranch? If he did, that’d mean postponing setting the wedding date and planning it as Kelsey expected, and delay starting the secure, lucrative job that’d also save his family’s ranch. It’d also mean leaving Jewel, a complicated woman he had no right to care about. If they got together, it’d throw everyone’s life in disarray, upsetting Kelsey, his family and her family.
The advice Jewel had thrown back in his face, to live his life for himself, returned to him. She had a point…
And possibly, his heart.
Did his life belong to him or was it a selfish thought destined to lead down another dark road?
You only regret the chances you didn’t take, Jewel had said.
Was Jewel a chance he’d regret not taking?