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Meg didn’t have a lot to say when she showed up at the corrals the next morning. That worked, because Jason didn’t know what to say. Last night she’d been buzzed and things had gotten out of hand, as they tended to do when she was around.
What was it about her that made her his kryptonite?
He knew what he should have done—he should have walked away, yet he hadn’t. He didn’t regret the moment, but this morning, he wondered if he was going to regret the aftermath. But so far...no aftermath. It was as if it hadn’t happened.
She gave him a brief smile and pushed the hair that had escaped her long braid back from her forehead. “Which one will we start with?”
“Gus. We’ll have Hank at the ready.”
“Sounds good.”
She yawned as she spoke and while Jason caught Gus, he saw her rolling her neck as if it was sore. Must have been one hell of a time dancing. Cody, thankfully oblivious to what had happened between him and Meg the previous evening, had filled him in on all the fun he’d missed. Jason was actually glad he’d missed it. He didn’t know how much he would have enjoyed watching other guys drool over Meg.
“You feeling all right?” he asked her after she rolled her shoulders yet again.
She blinked at him. “Of course.”
“Just checking.”
“I’m fine.” She gave a small sniff before adding, “A little hungover, maybe, but nothing I can’t handle. I’m sure the aspirin will kick in any minute.”
“We can hold off until after lunch.”
She scowled at him. “I’m fine,” she repeated. She pulled the saddle off the fence and after Jason smoothed the blanket onto the colt’s back, tossed it into place. “You know, just because I don’t party a lot, it doesn’t mean I haven’t.”
“I don’t know...didn’t seem like you were holding your liquor all that well last night.”
Her expression blanked out, but she didn’t come close to backing off. “Are you talking about me kissing you?”
Okay. Apparently they were not going to skirt the issue. “Yeah. I’d say that was what I’m talking about.”
“I might have initiated, but you met me halfway. And you were stone-cold sober.”
“Of course I met you halfway. I never once said I didn’t find you attractive.”
She put her hands on her hips. “But you don’t want to, do you?”
“What am I supposed to say here, Meg?”
She took a step forward, putting them chest to chest, and he somehow managed to hold his ground. “It’s not what you say...it’s what you don’t say.”
“I’ve always been honest with you.”
“The stuff that comes out of your mouth, yes. It’s the stuff that doesn’t that concerns me.” She took a step back then, dusted her hands off and turned toward Gus. “Guess we better get going.”
That was it?
She’d said her piece and now it was business as usual?
Business it was. A few minutes later she mounted Gus and started riding him around the round pen with the halter. The colt had adjusted to the shock of having a predator on his back and tomorrow they’d bridle him. Meg pulled him to a stop. Gus obliged nicely.
“This one’s ready for the bridle,” she said as she dismounted. She led the horse to the rail and started untacking him. She really was all about business as usual. He, on the other hand, was still turning a lot of shit over in his head.
They worked their way through Hank, Ike and Jake, Meg riding each of them around the round pen with a halter and rope, preparing them to be ridden with a snaffle bit. After Kenny, the horse Meg was currently guiding around the pen, Jason planned to take a break and then put Albert in the bridle.
The paint gelding loped easily around the pen and just as Jason was about to call a halt, a loud bang near the barn startled the colt. He jumped sideways, toward the rail, and Meg’s boot hit the upright, which in turn made the fence clatter. The colt shied and bucked a couple of times before Meg pulled his head around, making it impossible for him to hump up.
“Move him forward,” Jason said, even though he would have preferred to tell her to get the hell off the animal. Her mouth tightened, telling him that she knew exactly what to do as she urged the colt forward, putting her free hand on the pommel for safe measure as they neared the horse-eating place where her boot had hit the rails. Before he could shy, she gave the colt a firm nudge, sending him past the danger zone before he could think about shying again. After several more circles in both directions, she stopped the horse and stroked his neck.
“Near miss,” Meg said after dismounting.
“We’ll work him again later today.”
She gave a nod, coiling the rope she held. “What time do you want me back?”
It was going on eleven. “Noon.”
She gave him a long look, appeared to be on the brink of saying something, then instead turned and walked toward the house, leaving him to stew in his thoughts.
He wasn’t in the mood for stewing. “Meg!”
She looked at him over her shoulder. He knew better, but he started walking toward her anyway. “I think I’ll put Brandon on the paint.”
She stared at him. And then, instead of asking why, as he expected, she said, “Stop doing this, Jason.”
“What?”
“I don’t need to be protected from myself or you or a colt that I’m perfectly capable of riding.”
“I don’t want to see you hurt.”
She shoved her hands in her back pockets, lifting her chest as she faced off with him. “You keep saying that, but you know what? This isn’t all about you and what you want.”
“I’m talking about the colt.”
“And I’m talking about us. We have a connection. It might be only physical, and do you know what? I don’t see anything wrong with that, as long as we’re on the same page, which we weren’t two years ago, because one of us refused to talk.”
He nodded, his mouth tight.
“Here’s the thing—I am responsible for me. If I want to have a wild string of one-night stands with some hot...I don’t know...bull rider...or someone...then I will. If I feel myself starting to get into dangerous territory, I’ll back off. I’ll make my own decisions about what is or isn’t right for me.”
Jason started to speak, but Meg interrupted him. She was on a roll and apparently she was going to get everything out before some salient point escaped her.
“I might be the middle child, I might not seek conflict, but that doesn’t mean I can’t deal with it.” She pulled a hand out of her pocket and jabbed a finger at him. “Stop trying to protect me. It’s not working.” She dropped her hand, shifted her weight. “Now, if you’re trying to protect yourself, cool. But say so. Don’t put it on me.”
“Jason!”
They turned to see Brandon trotting toward them, breathing hard. “Cody’s mare is having a hard time of it.”
“Shit,” he and Meg said in unison. They exchanged a look before taking off after Brandon, and damned if he could interpret what that look meant. But they weren’t done talking, because he took issue with her theory that he might be protecting himself. If there was anyone who’d grown up in an environment guaranteed to make a person bulletproof, it was him.
The mare was down when they got to the straw-filled pen.
“Cody had to go to town and asked me to keep an eye on her. The feet are showing, she’s been straining for quite a while now and...nothing.”
The mare’s head came up as Jason let himself into the pen, but it almost instantly went back down. She was sweating and breathing heavily, the whites of her eyes showing.
He let out a breath. “Get me a halter. We’re going to get her up.”
Jason haltered the mare and together, he, Brandon and Meg got the mare onto her feet. The feet disappeared back into the birth canal and Jason started walking the mare in a slow circle.
“You called the vet, right?”
“Just before I got you. Couldn’t get through. It’s the weekend, you know.”
Jason glanced over at Meg. “Ever deal with something like this?”
She shook her head.
“Me either. I’m hoping that the foal will reposition itself with the help of gravity, maybe get that shoulder forward enough to proceed normally.”
A few minutes later Jason stopped walking and the mare went back down. It didn’t take long for the feet to show again, but this time one extended a good six inches past the other.
“I think we lucked out,” he said, shifting his weight so that their arms touched. Meg eased away without looking at him. A few seconds later the little nose appeared between the legs and Jason let out a relieved breath. “I think we’re okay.”
Better than okay. Two minutes later the foal slipped out onto the straw and Mama raised her head to see her baby, nickering softy. Jason stepped in to tear the sac away from the nostrils, then moved back as the foal took its first breath.
“Nice work,” Meg said.
Brandon was grinning widely as Jason made his way back out of the pen. “I’ll remember that for the future.”
“It’s not always that easy.”
“But this time it was,” the kid pointed out.
“Yeah,” Jason admitted softly, “this time it was.”
Meg told herself that now that the foal was safely on the ground, she should get back to work—whatever that work may be. Right now, it was whatever took her out of Jason’s sphere so that she could think a few things through.
But she couldn’t stop watching the newborn foal. He was ridiculously cute.
Cody pulled into the driveway just as the colt started making his first attempts to struggle to his feet. Brandon waved an arm, and the truck had barely come to a stop before Cody was out of it and running across the driveway.
He skidded to a stop next to Jason, grinning widely as he caught sight of the tiny buckskin baby. “I’m a dad.”
“It’s a colt,” Jason said.
“Just what I wanted.”
The foal set both front feet on the ground in front of him, his long legs buckled at an awkward angle, then gave a mighty heave, almost making it up onto all fours before collapsing back into the straw.
“It was a tough birth,” Brandon said matter-of-factly.
Cody gave him a startled look and Brandon filled him in on what had happened.
Cody turned to Jason. “I owe you. Thanks for the quick thinking.”
Jason started to reply when Brandon gestured for them to be quiet and watch. The baby positioned himself once again and this time made it to his feet and stood quivering on all fours before he took a wobbly step toward his mother. His front feet started to buckle, but he stepped again, regained his balance and fell against his mother’s side. The mare turned her head to nuzzle his little withers and nudge him back to where his first meal was waiting. The colt tottered back and after several failed attempts finally figured out how to latch on.
Cody patted the fence with a satisfied nod. “The beer’s on me.”
It was Saturday—a half-day in theory—and beer was a legitimate option, but Meg shook her head. “I’ll take a rain check. Thanks anyway.”
“Oh, yeah. Last night,” Cody said with a wicked grin. “I forgot.”
“Not because of last night. I have a couple of things I need to do. I’ll toast your new baby later.”
She headed toward the corrals and had just made it around the corner of the barn when Jason caught up with her.
“We’re not done.”
She turned on him. “You want to talk?”
His gray gaze was intense as he said, “I want you clear on the fact that I was never protecting myself.”
She stared at him. “Then you left me because you weren’t feeling it? Or because things weren’t working between us?”
“Things couldn’t work between us.”
“Couldn’t and weren’t are two different things.”
“Trust me on this,” he said from between his teeth. “They couldn’t work.”
“For reasons you’re not sharing.”
“It’s my private business.”
And there wasn’t much she could say to argue with that. But she could hazard a few guesses. “Are you wanted by the law?”
His mouth tightened and he gave his head a shake.
“Dread disease? Really bad habits?” She’d wondered about the dread disease thing and felt a small rush of relief when he once again shook his head.
“Meg...”
She shifted her weight. “As to the colt.” He frowned at the sudden change of subject. “You’re the trainer. You put whoever you want on him for whatever reason you want—protective or otherwise. But do not carry that attitude over to you and me.”
“You and me?”
“Stop protecting me. More than that, stop projecting on me.”
“Projecting—”
“Making my decisions for me. Deciding you know what’s best.” She abruptly folded her arms and asked, “Do you want me to keep riding colts with you?”
“I think it would be better if we kept our distance. This peer and colleague thing...isn’t working.”
“Well, we better find a way to make it work. I’m not leaving the ranch because of you.” He was the reason she came. He would not be the reason she left. She enjoyed working for her cousins, getting to know them. Bringing the family branches closer together.
She looked him up and down. “I told myself when I came to this ranch, that the last thing I wanted was to get back together with you. That all I wanted was to prove a few things to myself and to you. And then...” She swallowed, gathered her faltering courage and put herself out there. “Then I realized that this didn’t feel done, this thing between us.”
“It’s done.”
She gave her head a weary shake. She didn’t feel crushed by his words, because she knew they weren’t true. “I don’t know what the deal is, Jason. Whether you’re afraid of feeling or afraid of failing, but I think whatever it is, you are projecting your fears onto me. And when you make decisions for me, you are disrespecting me. And I won’t have it.”
She would at that moment have paid a million bucks to know what was going on in his head. His jaw shifted sideways and she knew there were words he wanted to say, but instead he clamped his mouth shut. Typical.
“I care for you. I think you care for me. And I think you’re doing us a big disservice by making all the decisions for both of us without talking. For letting your fears, whatever they may be, take over.”
In Jason’s experience, bad confrontations ended in blood. So why had Meg’s calmly voiced, bloodless condemnation left him feeling so shitty?
Because she’d made damn good points. This was all about his fears. His fear of hurting her. His fear of failing her. His fear of bringing the shit in his life into hers.
And he’d been unable to own up to it. To voice the truth to her.
Was he guilty of assuming she couldn’t deal with his truths? No...he didn’t want her to have to deal, even if he was close to admitting that he’d underestimated her. The woman he’d fallen for two years ago had been a charming mix of sweetness and strength. She bent for the sake of finding a middle ground, choosing her battles carefully—a strategy her younger sister, Jo, had never embraced. She had backbone, but waited until she was backed into a corner to show it. And, more often than not, she figured out how to avoid the corner.
He’d never dreamed that her backbone was made of titanium.
This new Meg, the one who stood up to him, the one who refused to back down without telling him exactly what she thought, this Meg who wasn’t so much about a middle ground as a battleground, was even more intriguing than the old. And more dangerous.
So what now?
The sane thing to do was to let things lie. To wait out her time on the ranch.
To continue living the lie when she’d already guessed the truth. He wasn’t over her.
And he had disrespected her by making decisions with no explanations. By simply riding off into the sunset and expecting her to accept it. He needed to do something about that.
Like being honest with both himself and her. Pretending there was nothing between them wasn’t going to work. If he was honest, then maybe they could hammer out an arrangement so that the next two months weren’t a living hell.
He was getting pretty damned tired of the living-hell thing.
The thought brought a grim smile to his face as he leaned back in the chair and propped a knee on the oak table. They needed to work things out in a calm, colleague-like way. Be honest. Discuss what they were and were not capable of.
He scrubbed his hands over his face.
Did that stuff really work? Not in his family, but maybe in other instances...? He didn’t have a lot to work with, but he could learn. Right? What was the worst that could happen?
Getting shot down in flames?
Spiraling into an endless void of emotions?
Shit. He really was afraid of feeling. And he needed to come to terms with that. The problem was that he didn’t know how to do that.
Early that evening, close to dusk, he heard an engine start and glanced out his window in time to see Meg’s truck heading down the driveway. No one else followed, so it wasn’t a group thing. Meg was going to town on her own.
Jason stepped back from the window. Debated.
After telling himself what he should do half a dozen times, he ignored his own advice and headed for his truck. Maybe he needed to confront the truth. See Meg out on the town, having fun with guys who didn’t have a boatload of baggage. Maybe that would convince him that things were better off as they were. That he needed to continue to stand fast.
Half an hour later he was in Marietta and almost immediately spotted Meg’s truck in the FlintWorks parking lot.
Was she alone?
This was the part where he had to suck it up and prepare to face her sharing a table with some guy—like say, Josh McIntosh, who was the only bull rider he knew of in the general vicinity—and she had specifically mentioned a bull rider. If she was with him, then he’d have his solitary beer and go home. If she wasn’t...stupid thought. Meg wasn’t the type to sit at a bar alone.
Jason got out of the truck, made his way across the lot, opened the door to the establishment, and the first thing he saw was Meg sitting at the bar. Alone. He stopped just inside the door, taking stock of the situation. She was focused on the icy drink in front of her, dressed in dark jeans and a shoulder-baring red shirt, her shiny brown hair spilling down her back in waves. One side was clipped back, showing off a sparkly earring, and the other side fell over her shoulder. She looked good. Make that great. Was she waiting for someone?
She had to be.
The thought made his stomach tighten. He forced himself to move forward, crossing the almost empty room to where she sat. She glanced up as he approached, making no effort to hide her surprise at seeing him.
“I want to talk.” He was rewarded with a suspicious look—which he fully deserved. “If you have a few minutes.” Before whoever arrives.
Meg continued to frown, as if looking for the catch, but before she could say anything, a bright voice from behind him asked, “Hey...are you hitting on my cousin?”
Jason turned to see Whitney Alexander standing on the serving side of the bar, wearing a bright blue shirt emblazoned with the FlintWorks logo, a questioning look on her face. Meg had way too many protective cousins.
“Apologizing to her.”
Whitney’s eyebrows lifted as she met Meg’s startled gaze. Then Meg gave a slight nod and pulled her drink a little closer, leaning down to sip through the straw. Whitney cocked her head at Jason. “What are you drinking?”
“Triple C.”
Whitney filled a mug and set it in front of the empty stool next to Meg and he took a seat, half-turning to face her. “I get what you’re saying,” he said, figuring he had to start somewhere. She stirred her drink, giving him time to find words. “It’s not over between us.”
“No,” she agreed. “It’s not.”
“But I don’t know what to do about it.”
“You’re here.”
“It was either that or go crazy pacing the cabin.” He sipped his beer. “The living room is three paces long, four paces wide.”
“Ah.” She nodded at her drink. “I can’t pace. My cousins will hear me.”
“Have you wanted to?” The question wasn’t all that easy to get out, because he didn’t usually do this—talk about how to deal with, well, anything. He simply dealt. Or kept others from having to deal.
She shot him a look that answered his question without speaking a word. Yes. She’d wanted to pace. Why? Because of him.
“I accept your apology,” she said.
He nodded and focused on his beer. Good. Good. Now what? “I don’t talk about shit.”
He heard her soft choke of laughter, but when he turned toward her, her expression held little amusement. It was more like...empathy. “So, you’ve got to be feeling kind of desperate to even be here.”
“You think?”
She reached out and set her hand on his thigh, surprising him. “I’m not going to ask you why you’re so protective. And I’m not going to hammer you on feelings.”
“Like you’ve been doing?”
“Guilty.” She didn’t look all that repentant as she pulled her hand from his thigh and picked up the straw in her drink, jabbed it into the ice. “I’ve been doing some thinking myself. About capabilities and gut reactions.”
“And...?”
“No easy answers, Jason.”
He pulled his beer closer. “I was afraid of that.”
She gave a soft snort and he gave her a sidelong glance. “I just want to be kept in the loop. I want to be part of the decisions...even if I may not understand all the reasons behind them.”
The door to the place opened and Jason glanced over to see Josh McIntosh amble in with Ty and Shelby Harding. Ty and Shelby took seats at a small table, but Josh stayed just inside the door, scanning the room.
“Is he looking for you?” Jason asked, kind of hating the guy at that moment.
Meg gave him a surprised look. “Why would you think that?”
He shrugged a casual shoulder. “You’re the one who mentioned bull riders and one-nighters.”
Something flashed in her eyes. Something he couldn’t quite identify. “Would you care?” she asked softly.
“That’s the hell of it. Yeah. I would care.” She blinked at him and he sensed she needed more. So he gave it to her—gave her the truth that she said she wanted. “I don’t want you doing one-nighters with bull riders...not when you could be doing them with me.”
Meg’s straw stopped mid-stab and she slowly met his gaze. “Big admission.”
His heart was beating a slow rhythm against his ribs. “A true one.”
She let go of the straw and turned on the stool to face him, settling both hands in her lap. “What are you going to do about it?”
What, indeed? He swallowed dryly. “Confer with you and come up with a joint decision?” She started to smile and he had to fight the urge to lean in and claim that sexy, sweet mouth. His voice was a little huskier when he asked, “What are you going to do?”
She leaned closer, looping a hand around his neck as she pulled his mouth down to hers, her warm lips lingering on his before she eased back. “That,” she murmured. “And Josh isn’t looking for me.”
“Good to know.” He wrapped his fingers around her upper arm, bringing her back for one more kiss before releasing her and allowing some space between them.
“Are you still feeling torn between what you think you should do...and what you want to do?”
“Maybe a little,” he conceded in the name of honesty.
“Go with what you want to do,” she murmured.
He let out a breath and leaned back. Whitney stood several yards away, watching them, ready for Meg to give her some kind of ‘help me’ signal. “You want to go or stay?”
She met his gaze dead on. “I want to go.”
