Out by Ben’s barn, Caleb stood with one foot braced on the bottom rung of the fence.
No one had come racing after him, surrounding him, clamoring for his autograph, wanting to take his photo. He wasn’t the star of the show today, wasn’t even in the running. That didn’t quite fit his plan. But he couldn’t seem to do anything to change it.
Folks treated him as though he’d always been around.
Maybe he should never have left town.
The idea—and what went with it—froze him in his seat.
Would he really go back to that time and place if he could? Back before the rodeo and the buckle bunnies and the fall that had brought him down from a bull one last time? The fall that had ended his career permanently?
Back to when he was nothing but the son of the good-time girl of Flagman’s Folly, New Mexico?
He breathed in the good scent of the horses that stood in the corral, twitching their tails at annoying flies and occasionally neighing as if they were talking with him.
A much nicer conversation than the previous one he’d had, when the judge had gotten the last word by throwing out that accusation about his attitude when he was a teen.
He would have called the man on it—if he hadn’t been so taken aback over the rest of what the judge had told him.
He gripped the top fence rail as he recalled his first day back in town, when he’d stopped in at the Double S before going to find Tess. Then, Dori said the judge had contacted the hospital for news about his condition. Judge Baylor himself had confirmed that and more.
If he could believe everything the man had told him—
“Caleb?” Tess’s voice, sounding uncertain, interrupted his thoughts.
When he turned his head, he found her standing by the corner of the barn, looking as tentative as she’d sounded and as young and nervous as...as that time outside Gallup.
Almost subconsciously, his hands tightened on the rough wood. But a second later, she strode over to stand beside him and rested her hand on the rail with an assurance that somehow irritated him.
He couldn’t resist the chance to unsettle her. Maybe because he felt so ill at ease himself. “Miss me?” he asked, forcing a smile.
She frowned. “Let’s say I wondered where you’d gone off to. You seemed a little shell-shocked over what the judge told you.”
He laughed shortly. “And you didn’t hear the half of it.”
“What else did he have to say?”
Without thinking about it, he shrugged, then froze in position for a second. Exactly which shoulder did the judge think he had a chip on, anyway? “Nothing important. He likes to hear himself talk.”
“You really didn’t know he and Sam went to the hospital to see you?” The skin around her eyes crinkled as if she felt pain.
He had to look away. Inside the corral, a filly shook her head and snorted at a persistent fly.
“Never heard a thing about it. No big deal. I wasn’t in shape for visitors, anyhow.”
“I’m sorry for all your suffering,” she murmured.
It was the first time she’d come straight out with her sympathy. He wasn’t sure how to take it. Didn’t want to take it at all.
Could he accept the opportunity she seemed to be offering, the chance to tell her everything he’d gone through in those long months in the hospital and the even longer months in rehab?
No, he didn’t want sympathy. But the prospect of telling her what no one else knew, well, that was tempting.
He could tell her the things that bothered him most.
How close he’d come to dying.
And how sometimes, in the middle of the night when the pain ate at him and he fought taking his pills, how little the thought of that scared him.
He let go of the fence and shoved his hands in his back pockets. Took a deep breath and let it out an inch at a time.
“No big deal,” he said again. “I got through it.”
* * *
The setting sun cast a deep red tinge over the barren landscape around them. Running the back of her hand across her forehead in frustration, Tess scowled at the horizon and tried to ignore the man by her side.
They’d been together all day, something she certainly hadn’t been able to claim in the week following Ben Sawyer’s potluck. She’d spent most of her time asking herself the same question she had faced that day: where was Caleb? As hard as she tried to keep an eye on him, he somehow kept slipping from her grasp.
Between Aunt El’s social calendar and Roselynn’s list of odd jobs around the bed-and-breakfast, he stayed busier than she did. They’d barely had any time alone together. On the one hand, she counted herself lucky. On the other hand, his full schedule didn’t do anything to help her speed his departure.
She had finally put her foot down. Working around his additional social engagements, they’d managed to carve out some time during this second week to do what he’d supposedly come here for.
Part of her wondered whether her mom and Aunt El were solely to blame for everything. The other part of her suspected Caleb had purposely avoided being alone in her company.
At one point on the day of Ben’s potluck, when she had finally tracked Caleb down near the barn, she’d thought for a moment he was going to open up to her. Was going to give them the chance to get close again.
And damn her, despite all the reasons she shouldn’t even think about getting close to him, she wanted it.
She plucked at the neckline of her peasant blouse, pulling the soft fabric away from her in an effort to cool herself. The air had become much too warm for comfort. Or maybe she felt overheated because Caleb stood much too close.
“That’s enough sightseeing for today,” she said abruptly. “It’s getting late.”
“Sounds good to me.” He started toward his rented pickup truck.
She followed, stopping just short of muttering under her breath. What she’d really meant was, she didn’t have the energy—or the patience—to keep playing the role of tour guide.
She desperately needed a day off from everything and everyone. A day away from the long list of grievances about her life.
Her situation with Nate had gotten worse than ever. She had done nothing to earn Dana’s faith in her ability to make a sale to Caleb. She hadn’t even come within a mile of getting him to make a preliminary offer.
Every chance she could, she had taken him around the state, showing him the available ranches and acreages on her listing. Every one of which he had found reasons to turn down.
Every one of which brought them in closer and closer to the outskirts of Flagman’s Folly.
When she reached the truck, he opened the passenger door for her. She stood beside him, hesitating. She needed to make a sale. To get him out of town, away from Nate. Pushing a stray lock of hair from her forehead, she fought to keep the frustration from her voice. “You haven’t seen anything yet that interests you?”
“I wouldn’t exactly say that.” He grinned down at her.
“Very funny. Too bad I couldn’t hold your interest.” The minute she’d spoken, she wished she hadn’t.
But wishing wouldn’t bring the words back, any more than longing for Caleb had brought him home to her. Ten years too late didn’t count.
Besides, he hadn’t returned to town for her, anyway.
His grin faded, but he continued to look down at her, his green eyes sparkling like sunshine on glass. “Tess—”
“Never mind.”
Her cheeks burning, she stepped up into his truck and let him close the door behind her. As he walked around to the driver’s side, she waved her hands furiously, hoping to cool her face. Maybe he’d think her flush had come from the setting sun.
He’d insisted on bringing the truck these past few days. Knowing the price of gas and the amount of territory she planned to cover, she hadn’t said a word. Why couldn’t she have held her tongue a minute ago, too?
And she’d thought Dana was the chatty one!
When he opened the driver’s door, she clenched her hands into fists and dropped them to her sides. Breath held, she waited for him to start the truck. He didn’t. Instead, he turned to her.
Her throat tightened, trapping the air in her chest.
He exhaled heavily, as if he’d held his breath, too. “You don’t know how much I wish things had been different.”
“Wishing doesn’t get you anywhere.” Hadn’t she just acknowledged that? “And I don’t want to talk about the past.”
“You haven’t made that hard for me to figure out.”
“You didn’t make things easy for me by leaving.” Mentally chastising herself, she turned her head away. Why couldn’t she stop blurting out the wrong things?
He reached up to touch her cheek, so gently she could barely feel his knuckle against her skin. Still, she flinched. But he’d managed to get her to face him again. Just as he’d succeeded in setting off her anger once more, stirring up the resentment that had bubbled inside her for days now. For years.
“I tried to see you before I left town,” he said.
As if she could believe that. “Did you?”
“Yeah, I did. Went by your house to tell you goodbye. That made the second and last time I ever saw your granddaddy, when I rang the bell and he came to the door and said you were out.”
She wouldn’t have gotten any word he’d left for her. But she had to know. “Did you...leave a message?”
“Not likely, when he shut the door in my face.” His voice had hardened. “Besides, what was I going to say? He didn’t know about us.”
“He did, once I got back from Gallup,” she said grimly. “He told me I was wasting my time chasing after you.” She wouldn’t tell Caleb a single detail about how her life had gone after that. Not for a million-dollar sale.
“He was right.”
She stared, unable to speak. Unable to believe how much his words had hurt.
“Where were you going to get with me, Tess? Nowhere. You knew that well enough not to tell folks about us. You knew the way everyone looked down on me. I was the poorest kid in town.”
Understanding washed through her. Compassion, too. He’d directed those hurtful words at himself, not at her. “No,” she protested. “That wasn’t why I didn’t tell anyone. It didn’t matter to me how much money you had.”
“Whatever the reason, I don’t blame you. Folks didn’t want to bother with someone like me, with a mama no one could be proud of. Without a daddy even willing to give me his name.”
At his last words, she clutched the armrest by her side. He was hitting much too close to home, if only he knew it. And she was coming much too near to doing something she should never do—telling him what was in her heart. In their history.
She could see the pain in his face, could hear it in his voice. She had to will herself to remain still and not reach out to him.
“At least leaving got me away from everyone’s pity. And worse.” He spoke so quietly, she could barely hear him.
“People knew your mother...slept around. And yes, some of them pitied you, Caleb,” she said, her throat so tight she had to whisper the words. “Some of them thought less of you, too. But not everyone.”
“Did you?”
She shook her head.
He looked at her, his eyes gleaming even in the now-dusky light. “If that’s so, then maybe we ought to go back to where we were.”
Her throat tightened another notch. What was he saying? That he’d had wishes about their relationship, too? Regrets about how it had ended? No. She couldn’t let herself believe in that. Things could go just as wrong again as they had years ago, and now she had so much more to lose.
Still, she couldn’t stop herself from blurting, “Back—” she had to clear her throat and fight to keep her tone neutral when she was racing out of control inside “—to the last time I saw you, you mean?”
“No, to where we left off before I went away. We had good times together. We had fun.”
We had a baby.
No, she couldn’t say that. He’d tossed out an apology not long ago, one she couldn’t accept. Just as now she couldn’t let him so high-handedly toss aside what they did have when they were together. “We had more than fun.”
“Yeah, we did. I was getting to that.” He paused, looked away for a moment, then brought his gaze back to hers. “I’d have come back home again, too. But you told me you were getting married—”
“And I’m sure you didn’t stay lonely too long.”
He gave her a half smile. “You are thinking about the last time you saw me, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not.” She swallowed her rising panic. “I’m just...just wondering how things went for you after that. I know you found fame and fortune, but did you learn a lot from the rodeo life? Did you enjoy moving from place to place, living on the road?” She was babbling, but anything was better than letting the conversation head in the direction he’d been taking it. “Did you like all those girls hanging on you?”
She swallowed a groan. That wasn’t where she’d meant to head, at all.
And darn him, this time he laughed outright.
“Buckle bunnies are part of rodeo. No living without them.”
Just what did that mean?
Better not to ask. Probably better not to open her mouth again. Ever.
Still, she couldn’t stop her surge of anger. He had seen right through her. Her thoughts had focused on the day she had tracked him down.
And the girls hanging on to his arms.
Irritation spilled out of her. “You certainly didn’t feel hounded by your groupies back then!”
His eyes glinted. From the last rays of the sun as it made its way to the horizon? Or from more amusement he couldn’t hide?
“No need to get in an uproar over it,” he said. “Those girls were just wanting to hitch their wagons to the nearest star.”
She exhaled forcefully. “Well, let me tell you something. I have never thought of you as ‘Caleb Cantrell, rodeo star.’ And I don’t plan to start thinking that way now.”
“You don’t?”
She’d responded honestly and openly, not stopping to analyze a thing. If she’d thought twice, she might have held back, knowing her words would have to upset him. Yet the expression on his face now looked anything but upset.
The look in his eyes made her head swim. She had to tear her gaze away.
And at that moment, with that brief loss of contact, in that tiny little window of time when she let down her guard and allowed her true feelings to show, she realized she’d contributed to her own undoing.
Before she could react, Caleb slipped his hand behind her head and gently urged her to turn toward him again. When she did, she found his face close to hers, their mouths only inches apart.
She tensed her hands, planning...wanting...needing to push him away. But after the past weeks of nerves stretched to the breaking point and the past ten years of unfulfilled wishes and destroyed dreams, she needed this just as much.
The chance to kiss Caleb.
No.
The chance to have Caleb kiss her, to let him realize what he had done and how he had hurt her and everything he had missed—and then the best chance of all, for her to tell him to kiss off.
That’s what she needed.
But instead of moving forward as she expected, he leaned back. And brushed his finger teasingly along her skin just above the elastic neckline of her peasant blouse. Her heart began to pound.
Again, he did the unexpected. Instead of touching her mouth with his, he dipped his head. He brushed his warm lips against the fluttering pulse point below her ear, slid his finger beneath the elastic and eased the neckline aside to travel a path along her collarbone. She traveled, too, back to the time he’d discovered that very sensitive place on her body. The first time she’d known about it herself.
The reminder made her freeze in place.
And now, finally, his eyes dark and glittering, he leaned close and kissed her. The weight and heat of his mouth against hers made her heart race even faster.
She raised her hands to his chest, longing only to pull him against her, to relive the closeness they’d once shared. But the knowledge of what had happened between them then—what she had to prevent him from discovering now—told her she couldn’t cuddle against him. Couldn’t risk letting him take her into his arms. She had to push herself away from him.
But could she?