A SHRILL WHISTLE BLASTED, and Jared exploded off the painted line on a practice field beside the Cade homestead. Peering through the dim, predawn light, he bolted to an old tractor tire, heaved it over, jumped inside it, then sprang out again and dashed to the rope ladder atop flattened grass. His feet weaved, in and out, as he navigated the rungs, and his heart bashed madly against his chest. Sweat dripped from his hair, trickled down his cheeks and slicked his steaming torso.
Clear of the rope, he blasted to a stack of hay bales, spun, reversed course, dodged around them, then repeated the maneuver when a second, then third group loomed. His cleats churned up the soft earth as he sprinted to the marked “end zone,” pushing his screaming muscles to keep working, despite the grueling workout he’d begun an hour and a half ago.
He slowed to a jog, then a walk, then a stop. Bent at the waist, he heaved air into his burning chest. He’d pushed himself hard today, and every part of his body felt broken, including his heart.
He blinked hard in the dawn light, allowing the events of the previous day to seep slowly into him. Amberley hadn’t let him drive her home and was blocking all his calls. It stung hard that he’d left her feeling confused and wounded. He hurt, too. And his head buzzed, his thoughts muddled. Grabbing the toe of his cleat, he pulled his heel up behind him and stretched.
Yesterday’s kiss had knocked him flat. Every emotion he’d ever had for her, ones he didn’t know he possessed, had bubbled to the surface. He loved Amberley, always had, always would. Only now those feelings felt deeper, fiercer, harder. Like he could conquer the world with just one hand as long as she held the other one.
Was he in love with her?
He’d never been in love before and didn’t know what it felt like. It’d be every kind of wrong to mess with Amberley’s heart while he tried figuring it out. Was he ready for a real relationship?
He’d never done anything by half. When he loved a woman, he’d love hard, with everything that he was, with all that he had. But what he had right now wasn’t much. Until he achieved his goal to return to a starting football position, reclaimed his hero status, he’d never have a worthy life to offer another, especially someone like Amberley.
“A minute forty,” his mother called, interrupting his thoughts as she hurried his way. “You shaved off six seconds!” The pinkening light gleamed on her silver hair and set her frameless lenses aglow. She wore a light pink sweater buttoned over a flowered house dress and white sneakers with a matching pink swoosh decal. “Very good.”
“Not good enough,” he muttered, twisting side to side, elongating his lats.
A soft hand fell on his shoulder. “You’re trying, honey. That’s what matters.”
He bent at the waist and touched his toes. “Dad wouldn’t agree.” Pa wanted a winner, a hero. The real world didn’t award points for effort.
“Your dad’s gone.”
“And now you’re dating Boyd Loveland,” he said as he straightened, instantly regretting the bitter words the moment they left his lips.
The corners of her mouth drooped and her brow furrowed. “We’re not seeing each other. Not anymore.”
“How come?” he asked, though he could guess. Without Boyd knowing, his children had blocked his mother’s number on his cell, and Jared and his siblings did the same to their mom, cutting off communication…phase one of the plan.
Phase two started next week.
Instead of answering, she whirled and marched away, her stride brisk, her shoulders hunched as if she faced a strong headwind. “What can I get you for breakfast?” she called over her shoulder.
“Eggs and bacon. But I can get it.”
In the distance, Mount Sopris’s bald top glittered, the rising sun peeking over its crest. Its first rays sliced through the chill, and pure air and dew-soaked grass brushed his calves as he followed his mother back to the homestead.
“Let me. Makes me feel useful.”
A sigh heaved out of him. Was waiting on him and his siblings all that gave Ma’s life purpose? She had her new grandson, plus her church group. She also chaired the annual garden gala. Those counted…but were they enough? There had to be other ways to fill her time besides Boyd Loveland.
“Alright, then,” he muttered, thinking hard, for the first time, about his mother’s life, or lack of one, outside of her children… “Much appreciated.”
Petey bounced up and nudged his wet nose into Jared’s hand. “Ready for more training, boy? Your test is coming up quick.”
“Was Amberley impressed with him?” The hem of his mother’s housecoat belled around her ankles as they mounted the rear porch steps. Petey streaked off after a chittering squirrel.
“I reckon.” He held the door for her, kicked off his dirt-crusted cleats and followed Ma into the kitchen.
She grabbed a frying pan from the wrought-iron rack above a large granite-topped island. “She seemed to leave awful quick yesterday.”
“Uh-huh,” he murmured, noncommittal. After grabbing eggs, bacon and a bottle of orange juice from the fridge, he joined her at the island.
His mother cracked an egg and dropped it into a bowl. A thick white square of paper, his brother Jack and Dani’s wedding invitation, dated just a week away, rested on the brown-and-white-speckled surface. It struck him suddenly that Jack would no longer just be his brother, he’d be Dani’s husband, and someday, a father, too. A strange yearning opened inside him, the wanting for something previously unknowable. The same sensation that came over him whenever he witnessed James cuddling with Sofia and Javi.
A family.
A love of his own.
Was he ready for all of that with Amberley?
After dropping eggshells in the garbage, his mother turned. “Did she like the training rink?”
“Seemed to.” He perched on a stool, picked up his cell and scrolled through a screen of baseball stats.
“Jared William Cade.”
Hearing his full name spoken by his mother meant only one thing. Trouble. He lowered his phone quickly.
“I’m talking to you.”
“I’m listening.”
Her elbow jerked as she whisked the eggs, her steady gaze on him. “What’s going on with you and Amberley?”
Shoot. “Nothing. Want me to put on the bacon?”
She nodded. “You two fighting?”
He flicked on the stovetop, placed a pan on the front burner, then peeled back the top of the package. A smoky, apple wood scent rose from the cured meat. “I’m not.”
His mother clucked. “What’d you do?”
His lips burned as the memory of the kiss returned, so real he could taste and feel Amberley, sweet and spice.
“K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”
Javi sashayed in the kitchen wearing Batman pajamas. “I saw them, Grandma!”
“Javi!” Sofia smoothed his tangled dark hair from his face. “You didn’t brush your teeth yet.” She met Jared’s eye. “Sorry. Kids and their imaginations…”
He didn’t need a mirror to know red now stained his cheeks. If Javi knew, then James knew…
“Well. It’s about time,” his mother exclaimed once they were alone again. She elbowed him out of the way and set another pan on the stove.
A bacon slice dropped from his numb hand, landing half in, half out of the skillet. “What?”
“You and Amberley are made for each other.”
He placed ten more slices in the fryer, mulling that over. “How do you know if you’re in love?”
A sizzling sound rose as his mother poured the eggs into her pan. “It’s more a feeling than a knowing.”
Small bubbles appeared around the edges of the bacon, and he nudged them with the fork. How did he feel? He saw her face each time he closed his eyes. She haunted his thoughts, made him wish to do grand and wonderful things in her name, made him want to be a man who deserved to be by her side.
But would those feelings last forever?
He had no experience with permanent and wouldn’t start something he couldn’t see right through to the death-us-do-part end. Heroes didn’t fail their women, and he didn’t have a crystal ball telling him if he and Amberley would make it.
“How’d you feel about Pa?”
Bacon fat splatted in the silence as she stirred the eggs. “Comfortable,” she said after a moment. “Like I’d been lost and just found my way home.”
He turned the darkening strips. “Doesn’t sound exciting.”
“It doesn’t have to be. It just has to feel right.”
“James said you dated Boyd Loveland in high school.”
Her spatula scraped the side of her pan. “True.”
“Did that feel right, too?”
“I thought so.”
“What about now?” He clamped his lips together. He shouldn’t be encouraging her to talk about a man they needed her to forget.
“I thought…maybe…” She slid the eggs onto two plates and he added bacon. “Guess I’ll never know.”
Glasses in hand, he joined her back at the island. “Why’s that?”
A twinge of guilt turned his stomach, and he pushed the eggs around on his plate with his fork. He knew why she’d never know…he and the Loveland gang wouldn’t let them.
“He hasn’t called in a week. I guess I’m just an old fool for having a young woman’s dream.” Her stool scraped back as she stood. “I’m not as hungry as I thought. Just leave the dishes in the sink for me when you’re done, honey.”
He watched her slumped shoulders as she retreated to her room, and his heart squeezed. His mother wasn’t an old fool. He grabbed her cell phone, unblocked Boyd’s number and slid it back next to her purse before he changed his mind.
He speared his fork in his eggs and shoved a big bite into his mouth. Suddenly ravenous, he chewed furiously, in a hurry to get to Spirit Ranch and Amberley.
His mother deserved a chance to figure out her feelings.
And so did he.
* * *
AMBERLEY SWAYED ATOP Harley later that afternoon as he followed the string of horses traveling on Spirit Ranch’s beginner trail. The sunlight warmed her skin, and the weight around her shoulders drifted away momentarily as she lost herself in the moment.
Carbondale in summer was the most beautiful place on earth. With her eyes closed, she pictured the scene her senses relayed. Songbirds flitted overhead, calling out their territory. A soft breeze carried the sweet smell of wildflowers and rustled the leaves of cottonwood trees arching overhead.
When she opened her eyes, she peered at the smears of sunlight filtering through the canopy. Harley threw his head back and opened his mouth in a huge yawn that mirrored her boredom. With the reins loose in her hand, Harley on autopilot, she felt more like a burden than a rider. What a difference a day made. The exhilarating rush of yesterday’s barrel racing practice, followed by a shattering kiss, looped in her brain.
Bitter heat rose inside. She’d acted a fool to fling herself at Jared. What had she been thinking? Doing? She should have known he’d get squirrely when she pinned him down about a relationship. Yet she’d gone ahead and done it anyway.
You wanted to know, soothed the angel on one shoulder.
You looked like an idiot, bit out the devil on the other, savage, sulking.
Her shoulders slumped and her head dipped. For once her vision loss worked to her advantage. She couldn’t see Jared, riding in the lead. It’d been easy to avoid catching sight of him for much of today’s therapy session. Whatever expression he wore, she didn’t want to see it: pity, regret and, worst of all, concern. She’d done her best to pretend she didn’t want him anymore. She would just have to pretend hard enough to make it come true.
The trees must have thinned because she could hear Crystal River where it raked over the shallows to her right. The tangy smell of horsehair crept into her nostrils. She bent down and patted Harley’s velvet-soft neck.
“Sorry, boy,” she whispered, and he bobbed his head, shaking the silky strands of his mane over her hand. This morning, he’d greeted her with a high-pitched whinny, raring to go, she supposed, back to the practice rink. Now she’d ruined not only her chances, but his, as well. That hurt worse.
The hard edge of a folded-up flier dug inside her pocket.
The ERA Premier touring group was pleased to announce tryouts in Denver next month, her mother had read out loud over breakfast.
Four weeks.
If she hadn’t messed up with Jared, she could be training for it. Maybe she didn’t have much of a chance, but it would have been a shot. Now, she’d lost her friend, her heart and this opportunity.
For her and for Harley.
“Everyone pull up in the clearing,” she heard Jared shout up ahead.
A moment later, the brown-green of the trees parted as she passed through them, and the open field surrounded her in an explosion of space and green grass and blue sky. She swung down from the saddle and waited for someone to guide her to a tie-up spot for Harley.
“Want me to take him?” she heard Maverick ask.
Her gaze traveled up, up and up to reach where his face must be. Corn-fed and stalk-high, her mother always said about the Loveland boys.
“I’d appreciate it, thanks.”
After accompanying Maverick and securing Harley beneath a copse of trees, she groped forward and helped a few of the other children. Their happy chatter eased the strain inside her, and she found herself smiling when one of them thrust what felt like a bouquet in her hands.
“For me?” she buried her nose in the fragrant flowers. Honeysuckle. Her favorite. And not easy to find.
“It’s from Jared.” Emily giggled. Then Amberley noticed the tall, broad-shouldered shape behind the child’s wheelchair.
“Please tell him thanks,” she said, keeping her voice steady despite her jumpy heart. Flowers? Why? What did they mean?
“Jared,” Emily twisted around and shouted, “Amberley says thanks.”
He chuckled. “I heard.”
“There you are!” a woman exclaimed, Emily’s mother if Amberley recalled the voice correctly. “The peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are going fast. Best hurry.”
A moment later she found herself alone with Jared. Her lungs expanded, dragging in the subtle spice of his cologne.
“Can we talk?”
She shook her head. “You said everything yesterday.”
“Not everything. Would you hear me out? Please?”
She wanted to sink through the ground and escape this agonizing moment. No doubt he’d prepared one of the gentlemanly breakup talks he gave infatuated ladies. Jared embodied old-school cowboy cordiality. He couldn’t bear to hurt a woman, and now she’d become just another one to let down gently.
Her back teeth clamped together.
Fine. Get her done, then.
“I’m listening.” She leaned against the tree behind her, and its rough bark scraped through her T-shirt. In the distance, the children shrieked and the horses nickered quietly to one another beneath the cool shade trees.
“I was wrong.”
She dropped her crossed arms. That didn’t sound like a “let you down gently” speech. She lifted her head and tried focusing on his face. He’d swept off his hat. She discerned that much. As for the rest, his exterior remained as mysterious as the inside.
“Wrong about?” she prompted.
“Us. Look. Yesterday, well, I wasn’t expecting that kiss…”
The swish-hiss of Harley’s tail, slapping at a fly, snapped in the clear, dry air.
“You think I planned on it?”
Heat crept up her neck at his silence. Of course he’d believe that. Practically every red-blooded, single female in the county schemed to nail down Jared Cade. But she wasn’t one of them…or she hadn’t used to be.
“I’m hungry, Jared. If you don’t mind, I’d like to grab lunch before we head back.”
His strong hands slid into hers, halting her. “I have feelings for you,” he blurted.
She went cold and hot at once. “What kind of feelings?”
“Kind of sickish, sometimes.”
She yanked her hands free. “Sick? I make you sick?”
“No. It’s just. Aw. Shoot. What I mean is lately, whenever you’re near, my heart pounds so hard it hurts. And my stomach jumps and twists.”
“And that’s a good thing?” She had never felt so feverish, so incapable of efficiently gathering her thoughts. What did he mean?
A warm rush of air escaped him. Then—“I never felt this way around a woman before. Swear.”
Oh.
The petals of her heart unfolded. If she affected him unlike any other gal, she must be special, right?
Then the memory of Jared’s indecision yesterday, his rejection, returned in a stinging rush. Jared needed to prove he wanted her for certain, for the long haul, before she’d risk opening up to him again.
“I should be pleased you’re nauseous around me?”
“You’re not making this easy on me.” Jared trailed a finger down the side of her face.
She eased away. His touch lingered on her skin and made her insides giddy. “Why should I? Because everyone else does?”
Widening her stance, she planted her hands on her hips and squared off in his direction. “I always thought we were the lucky ones, people who achieved things easily, champions others admired, but now, now I don’t see it that way,” she said. “There’s something special about working hard for something, giving it everything you’ve got even when you don’t think you’ve got a chance, because then it’s not about the win, it’s about the effort, which, I’m discovering, is more important.”
The blur of movement suggested he shook his head. He didn’t get it. For the very first time since her disability, she actually felt a little sorry for Jared. They were no longer kindred spirits.
“Amberley, please,” he pleaded, his voice as raw as a bruise. “I’ve got two left feet and a swollen tongue around you lately. Nothing I say or do comes out right. I don’t know if we’re coming or going, but I know I want to find out. Give me a chance.”
He framed her face with his hands then leaned over and kissed her. Thoroughly, sweetly, wonderfully. For a moment, everything stilled: her breath, movement, her heart. The world, possibly.
“No!”
She shoved his chest.
“No?” His eyelashes blinked rapidly, brushing against her temple.
“It’s not that easy.” Her breathing slowly returned to normal, though her heart still pumped overtime. “You don’t get to decide when and where and how.”
“But I thought…”
“If you want me, you’re going to have to work for me.” She ducked under his arm and strode forward with her arms reaching for the tree she glimpsed in front of her. She mustn’t stumble or fall. Time to declare her independence. Stand tall. When she reached the tree, she rested her boots on its protruding roots and raised her chin.
Jared advanced. “We care about each other. Why make this complicated?”
“Because I deserve to be wooed. Chased. Convinced. And you don’t get to know if you’ll win in the end.”
She didn’t have to see to imagine his mouth dropping open, his brows meeting over his nose. Had a woman ever talked this way to Jared before? She doubted it. Or if they had, he’d have moved on quickly.
Well. So be it.
“Woo you?”
She would have laughed at his utter bewilderment if not for the emotion jittering inside. Did Jared even know how to woo a woman? They usually chased him. It’d be interesting to see him try. For the first time since her vision loss, she felt like her old self…no, better than that. She’d been tested by adversity and respected herself now more than she did after winning any of her world championships. Jared, on the other hand, had never had to struggle for a thing in his life, and it showed.
“I deserve it,” she continued, “just like any woman.” Her lack of vision didn’t make her less than others.
A tense silence descended and beads of perspiration rose on her forehead as she waited for him to speak. Maybe she’d scared him away…and maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing, no matter what her aching heart told her. She didn’t need a man who wouldn’t move mountains to win her heart.
“You deserve everything,” he breathed, sliding his fingers down the length of her arm.
“Then show me.”
“How?”
She yanked the flier out of her pocket and held it out. “Let’s start here.”