by Karen Rock
“I think it’s because I wasn’t a boy.”
“But that wasn’t your fault!” Indignation crossed Emma’s tearstained face as she emerged to crowd closer to Jewel.
Jewel nodded. Emma was right. Being born a girl wasn’t something to apologize for...so why had she spent her entire life blaming herself for it? Her brothers might be bigger and stronger, but she had just as much grit and determination. Even if her father didn’t value those qualities in her didn’t mean she shouldn’t value them in herself. Just like Heath sang: it wasn’t about how other people saw her, it was about how she saw herself.
“No, it wasn’t my fault.” Jewel stroked Emma’s soft hair. “That’s why it’s important not to let other people control how you feel about yourself.” She brushed away the tear rolling down Emma’s cheek, feeling like a complete fraud. She’d never followed that logic before.
Before now, she amended. The next mirror she passed, she wouldn’t ask if she was the toughest of them all, she’d ask herself. Her opinion mattered most.
“So I decide if I’m good?”
Jewel held out her arms and Emma laid her head on Jewel’s chest. “Yes. And that you’re smart, and capable, and pretty.”
Emma lifted her head. “Pa says pretty doesn’t matter. Character does.”
Jewel nodded, liking Daryl even more for being such a good father. “He’s right.”
“I think you’re pretty.” Emma skimmed a finger over Jewel’s cheeks. “All your freckles...it’s like you’re coated in fairy dust.”
A throat cleared behind them, and Jewel glanced over her shoulder to meet Heath’s eyes. His intense expression turned them a deep, unfathomable blue. “Javi and some of your other guests are leaving.”
The girl bounded to her feet. “I’ve got to hug my cousin!” With a whoop, she practically catapulted down the stairs.
“That was a nice speech.” Heath moved closer, near enough to smell the homespun scent of his bar soap and the fresh pine scent of his clothesline-dried shirt.
Her toes curled in her boots. “I hope it helped.”
“It did.”
They exchanged smiles, then Jewel dropped her eyes, flustered.
“I heard what you said about your father.”
“Oh.” She shuffled her feet, feeling disloyal. “I was just trying to help Emma.”
“I could never please my mother either.”
She studied the dark fan of his lashes on his cheeks, the twist of his hands before he stuffed them in his pockets. “Your sister called you the mom whisperer.”
Heath hung his head. “She’d always wanted to be a musician, and she blamed us for trapping her here in Carbondale. When I played songs with her, I could help her forget...”
“Forget what?”
“How much she resented us.”
“I’m sure she loved you.”
“If she did—” Heath voice cracked. He cleared his throat and began again. “If she did, she never would have killed herself to escape us.”
“Don’t say that...”
“I haven’t. Not before.”
“Why say it now?”
He shoved his hair from his eyes and peered down at her. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s like you said. The Loveland rules don’t apply with you. Maybe none of them do.” He cupped her face and her breath stalled. Was she finally about to have her first kiss? “You’re different, Jewel. Not like anyone I’ve ever met before and if I was free...”
“Yes?” she prompted when he stopped, her heart beating out of her chest.
He released a breath and his hands dropped to his sides. “Forget it. We’d better get back to the party for Emma.”
She nodded and watched his broad shoulders disappear down the stairwell, knowing she’d forget none of this shattering moment of connection between them.
With a hand slapped over her face, she paced, a strangled noise gargling in the back of her throat. She would have kissed Heath...even though he wasn’t free.
She’d been raised better than that.
Just because she was starting to have feelings for Heath—and yes, she’d cowgirl up and admit it—he was taken.
Off-limits.
She peeked over the rail and watched as Heath handed out the party favor bags to the departing children. He’d be a good parent one day.
Would she? She’d never imagined herself in a motherly role before interacting with the children today. Helping Emma had filled Jewel with warm satisfaction. Maybe she had a maternal side after all. Was she wrong to discount marriage and a family as her future?
Sure, she’d lose some of her independence, but what she’d gain, she sensed, might be far more fulfilling.
Especially with a man who didn’t want to change her.
Someone like Heath. A man promised to another woman...
CHAPTER NINE
HEATH STUDIED THE Scrabble tiles nearly filling the board and plunked down an O and a P with a shrug. It was his best option. Or so he guessed. With the fetching redhead beside him, ready to pounce on his every move, who could focus? Despite the soothing, honeysuckle-scented air filtering through the window screens, and the bullfrogs serenading the balmy night, his body felt like an overwound clock. Awareness stiffened his joints and raised the small hairs on his arms.
“Op?” Jewel’s petite nose wrinkled. Wearing a light blue tank top revealing toned arms and a trim waist, her burnished hair flowing around her freckled shoulders, she’d never looked prettier. Or maybe he was coming around to her kind of pretty?
He fought the urge to run his fingers through her waves, teasing them apart. “Op is short for operation.”
“Hey, I’m not trying to talk you out of it.” Then she chuckled and placed S and T before his OP.
“Fine. You got me.” Heath’s gaze dropped to her beautiful mouth, as rosy as her freckles, then lifted to her sparkling brown eyes. The relentless desire to be her first kiss had already cost him countless hours of sleep. What would she taste like? Spicy and sweet, like a Fireball candy...one of his favorites? “But I’m still ahead.”
“And I’m not finished.” With a flourish, she added a B, A, N and K, using all but one of her remaining tiles. Then she sat back on the couch, her expression triumphant, arms folded across her chest.
“Stopbank?” He summed up the points. Eighty-one—which put her in the lead. Whoever lost tonight had to ride in the rear of the herd tomorrow, a long, lonely day. “That’s not a word.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Are you challenging me?”
“Heck, yeah.”
She passed him the dictionary. “You’ll lose your turn when you find out I’m right.”
“You’ll lose those points when I prove you’re wrong.” With quick flicks of his fingers, he turned to the S section, scanned down the page then stopped.
Stopbank.
A levee.
Exactly what he needed to stop his building feelings for Jewel. With time running out this summer, a wedding date decision waiting at its end, along with a looming courtroom family showdown, he had to rein in his emotions. They threatened everyone and everything in their path.
“What’s it say?” Jewel crowded close, and his fingers curled around the book binding at her fresh, clean scent. It was like breathing in sunshine after a spring rain.
“Says you’re wrong.”
“Liar!” She lunged for the book. When he held it aloft, her momentum carried her forward, tumbling them down to the couch.
The book dropped from his nerveless fingers. Neither seemed to notice as they stared into each other’s eyes, their mouths a whisper apart.
“Jewel,” he groaned, cupping the back of her head. Her soft hair tickled his cheeks as it fell around them like a velvet curtain.
Her dark eyes glazed. “Heath—”
“Yoo-h
oo!”
Jewel scrambled backward at Kelsey’s call. Heath bolted to his feet so fast he upended the board.
“What are you up to?” Kelsey’s heels clicked on the wooden floor once she strode inside. “I’ve been calling your landline, but you haven’t—” At the sight of Jewel, smoothing down her hair with a shaking hand, Kelsey jerked to a stop.
Heath rose and glanced at the empty phone cradle. “One of the kids at the party must have knocked it over.” He pressed a perfunctory kiss to Kelsey’s raised cheek, searched the floor for the phone and replaced it.
“And you didn’t notice?” Kelsey lifted a fingernail to her mouth, as if to gnaw on it, then shoved both hands in her pockets.
“I was beating him at Scrabble.” Jewel crouched to pick up the pieces. “You know men. They’re only focused on winning.”
“I had you until that last move,” Heath protested, joining her in retrieving the tiles.
“Dream on.” Jewel grinned, and he laughed, unable to help himself. She always made him laugh...when he didn’t want to hold her tight and kiss her until they both lost their minds.
“Heath. I’d like to talk to you.” Kelsey’s voice emerged tight. High. The sound of a steaming tea kettle about to blow.
Jewel dropped the last piece in the box, jammed on the cover, then fell back onto the couch. She jutted her chin. “Don’t mind me.”
“Alone.” Kelsey’s lips wobbled slightly before she clamped them tight.
“Let’s sit on the porch swing.” Heath tugged her outside, wishing, oddly, to reassure Jewel. Her tough expression had shattered when he’d reached for Kelsey’s hand, the color leaching from her face. Even her freckles faded to beige.
Something panged inside him. What would he reassure her of? That he cared for her, not Kelsey?
Insane.
Yet he might have kissed her if not for Kelsey’s interruption. It made him the worst kind of man. Disloyal. Dishonest. A cheater...
The floorboards creaked as they crossed to the wicker swing. When they sat, it swung backward with a tinny rattle of its metal chains. The silence between them was as hard and brittle as glass.
“Aren’t you going to say something?” Kelsey crossed a knee over the other, and her heel swung. “Like, ‘I’m glad to see you’ and ‘My, don’t you look pretty.’”
He shifted, his stomach churning. “You surprised me. I didn’t know you were coming over.”
Weak, Loveland. Weak.
Kelsey pursed her bright pink mouth. He didn’t have to use his imagination to know it’d taste of chalky makeup. “I need an invitation to see you?”
“When you didn’t come to Emma’s party, I assumed...”
She plopped her purse in her lap, pulled it open, and yanked out a small, brightly wrapped gift box. “The engravers didn’t have it ready in time, and I didn’t want to show up empty-handed. Plus, the food bank ran short on diapers, so I had to run to the store and buy a trunk load.” She shoved the present at him. “Tell Emma it’s one of a kind.”
“I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.” Kelsey...always so generous. Although presents didn’t matter as much as being there for loved ones...like a soon-to-be-niece once—if?—they married. The fundamental difference in their values, his for family and hers for money and appearances, yawned wider than ever.
“And...” Kelsey prompted, smoothing a hand over her sleek hair. The complicated half up, half down style practically screamed “don’t touch.”
“You do look pretty.”
He heard a strangled exclamation from inside the house and glimpsed Jewel stalking across the living room to disappear upstairs. A tearing sensation ripped through his chest. He wanted to chase after Jewel... and he wanted to reassure Kelsey he wouldn’t disappoint her.
What do you want?
He ignored the internal question and tore his gaze from the house to peer at Kelsey.
The corners of her mouth pulled downward. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”
“I didn’t expect you,” he said again, avoiding the question. “And you never come here because of the drive.”
“How else am I going to see you? You’re spending too much time at the ranch.”
When she reached for his hand, he grabbed a lighter instead, flicked it on and touched its flame to a citronella candle. “I’m working.”
“Didn’t look like work in there.” Kelsey’s brows lowered. “Maybe you’d rather play board games with that prickly cowgirl.”
“There’s more to Jewel than meets the eye,” he insisted, thinking of how kind she’d been to Emma at the party, how open and vulnerable.
“You’re defending her over me?” Kelsey sucked in a raspy breath.
“Of course not,” he denied, more to keep the peace than anything else. Strange how Kelsey’s feminine softness hid an inner hardness whereas Jewel’s tough-as-nails exterior shielded a tender side. It aroused his protective instincts. “Look. You just surprised me.”
“I didn’t plan on coming until the other night.”
His eyes stung at the acrid smoke rising from the candle beside him. “The other night?”
“At Silver Spurs.”
Heath planted his toe on the porch planks and set the swing in motion, like he and his siblings had done when they were kids. Pa had always warned them they’d go flying off the porch, but that’d just made them swing harder to see if he was right. What he’d give to sail straight over Mount Sopris, clean up to the moon, above the gravity of his life. Free. “What’s that got to do with you stopping over?”
“I thought Jewel might need reminding you’re taken.”
He tipped his head to the side. “Jewel?”
“She’s got it bad for you. She has for a long, long time.”
His heart stopped, along with the rest of the world it seemed, as he absorbed her words. “No, she doesn’t.”
“You’re blind. She used to moon over you when you were in 4-H together. And I saw the way she looked at you on stage.”
“She likes my music.” The swing whooshed faster now so their feet rose, weightless, before plunging to earth again.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He swallowed back the accusations hurling themselves against his gritted teeth. “Just what I said.”
“Are you saying I don’t like your music?”
“You want me to quit.”
“I want you to grow up,” Kelsey countered. “And please stop rocking the swing. You’re making me motion sick.”
When Heath obliged, Kelsey continued. “Do you want to be one of those pathetic middle-aged men singing in honky-tonks, pretending they’re young?”
“I am young.”
“Almost thirty isn’t young.” She patted his leg.
He pulled away, brushing at her hand like a persistent fly. “Dreams have a life span?”
“Aren’t I your dream?” Kelsey cried. “Having a family, a life with me?”
He opened his mouth, but only silent confusion emerged. He did want a family, a wife, but did he want them with Kelsey? They’d gotten engaged so young. He’d planned to grow old with her, but instead it seemed as though they were growing apart.
“If you’re not careful, you’re going to lose everything.” Her eyes swept over his house, then down to the barns and fenced-in pastures. “And I mean everything.”
“Is that a threat?” Anger cracked through him, like the first tentative step on a newly frozen pond.
“No.” Kelsey’s head drooped for a moment before she stood and strode away. When she reached the stairs, she paused and gripped the balustrade. “It’s an observation. Loveland Hills is going under unless you find the cash to catch up on your mortgage payments.”
The swing rocked as he propelled himself from it. “You want the ranch to go under to free me up to be with
you.”
“How can you accuse me of that?” Kelsey stormed. “Don’t you know me anymore?”
When he didn’t answer, she flung herself down the steps and into her sports car. It purred to life, low and heavy, like the growl of a predatory cat in the dark.
“Kelsey!” He strode after her, then stopped when she reversed into a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. The car yanked to a halt beside him, and the window slid down.
“Do you still love me?” Her tortured eyes met his.
“Yes,” he insisted. But was he in love with her?
She closed her eyes and nodded. “I don’t know what I would have done if you’d answered differently,” she whispered. The glass rose, and she peeled off down the road.
Heath’s clenched jaw ached as he watched her vehicle disappear into the night. Even if he wanted out of his engagement, how could he end it without hurting her? They’d meant so much to each other once. She didn’t deserve to be jilted after waiting ten years for him.
But would he make her happy if he wasn’t happy himself?
Lately, he’d only felt at peace riding the range, working alongside Jewel. She was tart-tongued and prickly, not sweet-smelling and soft like Kelsey. In fact, most times she was downright dusty and smelly...but from hard work. Honest work. Work he admired. Despite being no friend to his family, Jewel gave everything she had to the cattle drive, all except going against her brothers’ wishes to cross the old easement.
Maybe her kind of help didn’t have the potential to save the ranch the way Kelsey’s cash influx could, but he valued it more. Did she labor on Loveland Hills because it was her nature, a promise to her mother, their bet—or...did Jewel have a crush on him like Kelsey suggested?
A strong hand clapped him, hard, on the shoulder. “Women.”
Heath turned to study Daryl. The silvery moonlight seemed to deepen the lines around his mouth, dragging down the corners. “LeAnne okay?”
“Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t cure,” Daryl said gruffly as they mounted the stairs. “And some Tylenol.”
Heath hid his wince, knowing Daryl wouldn’t want his pity.
“How about you and Kelsey?” Daryl asked once they were inside. He grabbed a knife, unwrapped Emma’s birthday cake and cut a couple of generous slices. “She left in a hurry.”