“Hold on to Adana,” Tanner called out to Keira above the whine of the snow machine’s engine. “I’m going for broke.”
A long rope at the back of the machine was tied to the sled, and as he squeezed the throttle and the machine sped up across the open field, he heard Keira’s squeal. He looked behind him, through the spray of snow kicked up by the machine, and the sight of Keira’s laughing grin and Adana’s excitement made him laugh, as well. But he wasn’t looking ahead and the sled went off the trail he had made, veering sideways. Tanner immediately slowed down but it was too late. The sled wobbled then tipped, dumping Keira and Adana into the soft, fluffy snow.
Tanner hit the brakes and jumped off the machine, immediately ending up in snow almost to his thighs. By the time he got to the upturned sleigh, Keira was already on her feet, brushing snow off Adana, who, to Tanner’s surprise, was screeching with delight.
All Tanner could see of the bundled-up little girl were her eyes, wide with anticipation.
“Again,” she called out, her voice muffled by the snow-encrusted scarf. “Again!”
“Obviously she’s okay,” Tanner said as he brushed snow off Keira’s coat. “Are you?”
Snow clung to her eyelashes, stocking cap and mittens. But her eyes sparkled with a happiness he hadn’t seen since he came to the ranch.
“I’m fine,” she said as she set Adana on the now righted sled. “But I don’t think it’s fair that we got all covered with snow and you didn’t.”
And before Tanner could guess at what she was going to do, she gave him a quick shove. He tried to catch his balance, but he fell backward into the snow, looking up at the sky, silvery flakes fluttering down and melting on his face. Keira was laughing.
“That’s real funny,” he said, struggling to his feet, shivering as some snow melted and slithered down the back of his neck. “Hilarious.”
She must have seen the intent in his eyes. Squealing, she turned to grab Adana for protection, but Tanner hooked his arm around her waist before Keira could pick up the little girl. He swung her around, but Keira wasn’t going down without a fight. She grabbed him as he was about to toss her and they fell into the snow together, snow flying up around them.
Behind them Adana laughed her appreciation of their stunts.
“Well, I guess we’re even.” Keira laughed, trying to release herself from Tanner’s arms.
But they had gone too far off the track and were swamped in the deep snow. Tanner couldn’t get any purchase in the loose snow and Keira, lying beside him, couldn’t move.
They struggled, but each movement drew them deeper into the snow, like quicksand.
Still laughing, Tanner stopped his struggles, trying to figure out how to get out of there.
He blinked the snow out of his eyes and looked down at Keira, still trapped under him, his one arm buried in the snow beside her head, his other hand resting on her shoulder. She was grinning, two lumps of snow decorating her cheeks.
They lay still for a moment, the silence of the day falling like a blanket on them. Their eyes held. Tanner couldn’t look away. Her smile wavered and then her expression grew serious.
Slowly, giving her the opportunity to stop him, he lowered his head. She didn’t move. Didn’t stop him. He brought his cold lips to hers.
She lay utterly still, then moved toward him, holding the kiss. Keira’s arm came around his neck, pulling him closer. And the spark of hope that had been kindled by their shared kiss this morning grew to a steady glow.
The differences, the years apart, the arguments all faded away in this mutual kiss.
Adana’s burbling slowly eased into the moment and, reluctantly, Tanner pulled away.
“Guess we should get up,” Keira said, her voice breathless. But she didn’t move right away.
Tanner shot a look over his shoulder but Adana still sat on the sled, happily batting at some snow stuck to her mitten.
He shifted and finally managed to find solid ground. Or solid enough to stand up. Keira was sitting up now and he grabbed her hand, pulling her to her feet. She wobbled, then caught him by the arm.
Again their eyes met. Again Tanner felt as if the world had narrowed down to just the two of them. He didn’t want reality to intrude. He wanted to hang on to this moment forever.
But Adana needed them, and the snow that had been so magical just a few moments ago was slowly melting down the back of his neck.
“We should get going,” Keira said, her voice breathless.
Tanner kept his hold on her arm as they stumbled about in the deep snow, working their way to the track of the snow machine. Finally they could walk easier and Keira went directly to the sled, crouching down in front of Adana.
“You okay, monkey? Sorry for abandoning you like that.”
Tanner couldn’t keep his eyes off Keira with the little girl. Nor could he stop the nudge of melancholy at the sight. If his father hadn’t willed the ranch entirely to Alice when he died, if Tanner hadn’t had to go work in Sheridan and take on as many rodeos as he could...maybe they would have been married and had their own child by now.
The weight of all those “ifs” dropped like a stone on his heart as he realized how many things needed to be exactly right to maintain their relationship.
Sorrow and regret spiraled through him. Did they ever have a chance?
Maybe not then, but what about now?
The question taunted him. What had changed to make what was starting again between them possible?
He and Keira were older and wiser now, and not as foolishly optimistic. If things were beginning between them again, they would be entering this relationship with their eyes wide open.
But even as these thoughts were formulated, he knew she would have to answer questions about the six-year silence somewhere along the way.
He just hoped he would be happy with the answers.
* * *
Make eye contact. Keep your cool. Don’t back down like you always did.
Keira carefully laid out the wooden tiles on the Scrabble board, pluralizing the one Tanner had just laid out as well as landing on a double word score.
Adana was down for the night. Supper was over and the four adults were spending the evening together.
“That’s thirty-eight points,” she said triumphantly, totaling her score and scribbling it on the note pad. “Beat that, Tanner Fortier.”
“Wait a minute. Bators isn’t a word.” Tanner leaned forward in his chair, squinting at the letters Keira had just placed on the board.
“It is the pluralized form of people who hunt alligators using live fish. Bators.” Keira reached for the small velvet bag that held the rest of the letters she needed, trying to look confident and casual.
“I’ve never heard of that one,” her mother said, looking up from the scarf she was painstakingly knitting. Keira couldn’t understand why her mother had taken over the project from her. The neck brace made looking down awkward and it had taken Ellen hours to get even the little bit done she had. But she was smiling so it mustn’t have bother her too much.
“It’s not that well-known,” Keira returned.
“Don’t you have a dictionary?” Alice looked up from the photo album on her lap she was paging through. “You could look it up in there, Tanner.”
“We had a Scrabble dictionary but it was lost years ago.” In fact, Tanner had hid it one time when he and Keira were having a lively game of Scrabble the last time they had played and he was the one making up words.
And there it was again. That familiar ache at the thought of that more innocent time. Times when Tanner spent most every evening here to get away from the constant sniping between Alice and Cyrus.
“It would be in the dictionary,” Keira said, setting her new tiles on her slate. “Under the B’s.”
“So you’re really going with that?” Tanner challenged her. “I could do a search on my phone if I had it handy.”
“And if you would, you would find out that I’m right.” Keira held his gaze, trying not to grin.
“Okay. I see we’re playing with those rules.” He pursed his lips in concentration as he rearranged the tiles on his slate and Keira could see from the sudden gleam in his eye that he had an idea. He turned the board around on the turntable Keira’s father had made especially for playing Scrabble, then quickly laid out his tiles.
Keira tried to read his word upside down, but she couldn’t make it out.
“So that empties my slate and I get a triple word score, which gives me a total of...” He added up the numbers using his fingers like he always did. “A whopping one hundred and twenty-three points.” He angled his chin toward the score pad. “Write that down, Latigo Kid.”
Keira turned the board and smothered a laugh when she read his word. “Imsynct? What in the world does that mean?”
“It’s a group of young girls who do karaoke to boy band music.”
“I don’t believe you but I’ll have to give you fifty points just for creativity,” Keira said with a chuckle.
“Don’t need them,” Tanner said as he filled up his slate. “I’m taking you down without those pity points.”
As her laughter pealed out, their eyes met again. His gaze softened and his hand slid across the table and caught hers. As their fingers twined together Keira felt her life shifting into a familiar, wonderful place.
Could this happen? she wondered. Could they truly start over?
“Oh, my goodness, Tanner, look at these pictures,” Alice said, getting up from her chair, her attention on the photo album she was carrying. She set it down on the table beside them, her finger resting on a photo at the top of the page.
Had she done that on purpose? Had she seen Tanner take her hand? Her sudden interruption seemed rather timely.
Tanner withdrew his hand and dutifully looked at the album.
The picture was of the three of them. David, Tanner and Keira, all on horseback.
“Look how young you all were,” Alice said, a note of sorrow in her voice. “I don’t think David was much more than eight in this photo. Is that Hardisty he’s riding?”
Tanner shook his head. “No. Hardisty was just a colt then. I think that’s Babe.”
“Oh, that’s right. David raised her from a colt and trained her, as well.” Alice released a light sigh. “Didn’t Heather ride her once in one of her barrel racing competitions?”
“She did. I think she won,” Tanner said, gamely playing along.
Keira remembered the story differently, however. Tanner was the one who spent the most time training Babe and had done most of the difficult groundwork. By the time David took over, Babe was broke to ride with a saddle. He just did some of the finishing touches such as neck reining and teaching her to change leads and back up and ground tie.
“David had as much of a way with animals as he did with people.”
“That’s not saying much.” As soon as the words spilled out, Keira wished she could pull them back, bury them where they belonged. Especially when she caught Alice’s frown.
“David was a kind young man with many friends,” Alice replied with an injured tone.
Keira forced a smile, wondering if she could try to pass her comment off as a joke to ease the tension. But she was tired of hearing how wonderful David was when, in fact, he was anything but.
“He had lots of friends, but he was no angel,” Keira said quietly.
Alice picked up the photo album and straightened, holding it against her as if using it for protection. “I realize that, but he was a good boy. And he was my son.”
“I’m sorry,” Keira murmured.
Her apology was automatic and it felt like dust in her mouth. Her heart twisted in her chest and she suddenly felt claustrophobic.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she muttered. “I forgot I have to get some work done in the office.”
She ignored Tanner’s frown and Alice’s pinched look as she got up from the table, restraining herself from rushing through the living room to the sanctuary of her father’s office. She didn’t have anything to do there but she needed to get away from Alice.
The room was dark and empty and as she dropped into the chair behind the desk she felt the weight of the past few years drop onto her shoulders, as well. She turned the chair to look out the window but all she saw was her vague reflection in the darkened glass and the glow from the doorway. She had forgotten to close the door and could hear the murmur of conversation from the living room.
She knew her sudden departure would generate a flood of questions but she was getting tired of how Alice constantly brought David into every moment she spent with Tanner. It was as if she was reminding Keira of her brief relationship with David.
Would David always be there? Would he always be hovering in the background, a shadowy reminder of the years she and Tanner had lost?
She thought all of that would have died with David, but apparently not.
She shivered a moment; suddenly bone-weary, sadness washed over her as she pulled her legs up against her chest. She and Tanner had lost so much.
“You okay?” Tanner spoke quietly from the doorway, but it still made her heart jump.
She looked up and saw Tanner’s shadowy reflection in the window.
“Yeah. I’m fine,” she said, turning around, hoping she sounded more offhand than she felt.
Tanner walked into the darkened office, his hands shoved in the front pockets of his pants, shoulders hunched like he always did when he wasn’t sure of her mood, his features shadowed except for the glint of his eyes.
“You don’t seem fine. Was it what my mother said about David that bothered you?”
Confused sorrow coiled through her and knew she couldn’t get away with evading the topic. “I just wish your mother would leave David dead and buried,” she finally said.
“What do you mean?”
“We were having such a fun time, you and me, just like we used to, and she has to ruin things with her photo album and her stories and her distorted view of David.” She stopped, hearing the rising anger in her voice.
Tanner came around the desk, caught her hands and, as she lowered her feet to the floor, gently pulled her upright. Then he turned, sat in the chair himself and pulled her onto his lap.
“Your hands are freezing,” he said, slipping his arms around her.
Keira leaned into his embrace, allowing herself this moment of support and strength. It had been so long, she thought, laying her head on Tanner’s shoulder.
“I think it bothers Alice to see us together,” Tanner said finally. “Maybe she thought you deserved someone like David more than someone like me.”
Keira caught Tanner’s face between the palms of her hands. “Don’t even let that sinister thought land in your brain,” she said, tightening her hands in an effort to emphasize her point. “Ever.”
“To tell you the truth, it may have landed but it didn’t take root.” He gave her a smile, his teeth a flash of white in the soft darkness of the office, his eyes shining in the light coming from the door. He stroked her hair back from her face and his smile slipped away. “Trouble was, I never felt like I deserved you, either.”
“It was the other way around,” she said quietly.
Thankfully Tanner didn’t ask her to elaborate and instead he moved his hand to her back, making gentle circles with the palm of his hand. Just like he used to.
Keira allowed herself this moment of just being close to him with no one else around. Finally she curled her hand behind Tanner’s neck and lowered her head to his shoulder, easing out a contented sigh. “I don’t want to talk about Alice. Or David,” she said as she closed her eyes, treasuring this moment as his arms tightened around her. “I just want to be us. You and me. Right now.”
“I like that idea,” Tanner said, resting his cheek on her head. His chest lifted as he drew in a long, deep breath. “I missed this. I missed us.”
His last three words dove into her soul and for a moment she had to fight tears back. “I missed us, too.”
She felt Tanner tense ever so slightly, as if he wanted to ask something more, but then, thankfully, he simply leaned back, rocking her gently. They sat in the dark silence, letting the moment lengthen.
Then Tanner drew his head back and cupped her face. He smiled down at her and then, once again, kissed her. “Did I ever tell you how beautiful you are?” he asked.
“Not for a while.”
He grew serious. “Lot of water under the bridge,” he said quietly. “One of these days we’ll catch up.”
His words held a promise of a future but at the same time she felt a shiver of premonition. One of these days she’d have to tell him.
But would he believe her?