by Julia London
Creedy screwed up his face. “That woman would complain about the second coming of Christ,” he said, and spat out a wad of tobacco juice. But he shook hands on Rafe’s deal.
The next day, with a new fence post and yards of shiny barbed wire, Rafe worked on taking down the damaged section of the fence and putting up the new. He was happy to have something to do—he hadn’t been able to concentrate on studying for his last exam, not since he’d gone out to the springs with Hallie. Hell, he hadn’t been able to do much of anything but wander around sort of dumbfounded about that afternoon.
Had Hallie kissed him? Really kissed him? Or was it an accident, like she’d said? It had happened so quickly—a lifetime or a moment, he wasn’t really sure—but he was positive that there had been something real in that kiss.
He was annoyed with himself for obsessing over it like a lovesick kid. He was happy to have something to pound in the meantime.
He had an audience for his work—a line of bovines had gathered, hoping with their tiny bovine brains that Rafe had some hay with him. They stood like a jury, shoulder roast to shoulder roast, chewing their cud as he measured and cut barbed wire to be strung. Every now and then one or two of them would dip their heads to the grass that grew high along the fence line and chew for a while.
Rafe had been at work for about an hour when he paused to wipe his brow. When he did, he noticed someone lurching down the road, arms swinging out at odd angles. A jogger. As the person neared him, he realized it was Hallie. She stopped a few feet from him, wheezing for air. She put her hands to her back, then bent over, hands to knees, and wheezed more.
“I guess you started running,” Rafe said, amused and surprised by it.
“Had to,” she said breathlessly, still bent over. “My family is so sure I’m going to walk up to Granite Bluffs and dive headfirst over the side that I’ve got to at least give them the illusion that I’m trying to buck up.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Rafe said. “You would never dive off Granite Bluffs. Too messy.”
“Exactly,” she said, lifting up. “Maybe you could go around and explain to my mother that I’m going to be okay.”
He snorted. “Hard pass.”
Hallie laughed.
Damn. That smile. That heart-teasing smile. And those lips. Damn Hallie. Damn her for kissing him, for sparking that tiny flame of hope in him. It was going to take a tsunami to douse it.
“I may need to rethink this running thing,” she said, still breathing hard. “I’m so out of shape. And sore! I could hardly walk after we rode out to see the chickens. And may I just add,” she said, holding up a finger, “running is so much sweatier than I thought it would be.”
“You’re exerting more energy than you need to,” Rafe pointed out. “You should work on your form. A lot. Like, maybe go back and start over. No one should look like they’re running from the walking dead when out for a jog.”
“Oh, really? And who are you, José Bolt?”
“I think you mean Usain Bolt, and I’m just saying, maybe learn the correct form before you give it up altogether. It will make it easier.”
She rolled her eyes, and then ran the back of her hand under her chin. “Okay, like what?” she asked, gesturing for him to speak.
“Like, for starters, you were running hunched over. Can’t get air in your lungs that way. Tighten your transverse and stay erect.”
“My what?”
“Your transverse.”
She screwed up her face in a huh fashion.
Rafe whirled his hand in the general direction of her abdomen. She looked down and examined her clothes as if she thought she had splattered them with mud. Rafe couldn’t help himself—he put his hand on the flat of her belly just below her navel.
Hallie stared at his hand. “Oh, hey, I remember that now. I used it when I danced ballet.”
He dropped his hand and looked away from her. “I could teach you to run if you want.” The minute the words left his fool mouth, he immediately, instantly, wanted to kick himself. To offer to spend time with her was almost as stupid as touching her. He thought a kiss-not-a-kiss would cause him to obsess? That was just the tip of the iceberg.
“Are you implying my running is so bad I need lessons?” she asked with mock injury.
He made himself look at her. “I sure am.”
Hallie laughed with surprise. “You’re on, cowboy stud. Teach me how to run. I need to get my butt in shape. No more buckets of ice cream. Well, I don’t mean never, but you understand.”
He’d always appreciated that about Hallie—she didn’t get her feelings hurt very easily. Add that to the list of things he really liked about her.
Rafe picked up the barbed wire he’d just cut. “If you really want to do it, we can start this weekend.” Except that he was supposed to be in Chicago this weekend. Yeah, go ahead, Rafe—pour some gasoline on your little fire. “I mean, if you think you can handle it.”
She blew him a raspberry. “I can handle it. I’m up for anything you can show me because I am determined to get in shape, and who knows, maybe I’ll even dance again.” She suddenly rose up on her toes and twirled around.
A snake of heat ran down his spine. When he was a teen with a raging case of hormones, he used to spy on Hallie practicing her ballet. Once, he’d been working with the cowboys, storing hay at the top of the barn for winter. From his perch there he could see Hallie on the east lawn patio. From a distance, her dance was silent to him, but what he remembered was how elegant she was. Her graceful arms, her slender legs stretched long. Her torso remarkably flexible. She lifted one leg high overhead, her toes pointed, her arms curling up the leg. And then she let go, twirled around, and landed with her arms outstretched, one leg long behind her, and her back bent to such a degree that she was looking at the sky. “Why did you quit, anyway?” he asked curiously.
“Oh, you know,” she said, with a flick of her wrist. “Life.”
Rafe arched a brow. That was not an answer. “Are you going to dance again?”
Her cheeks turned pink. She rubbed her nape. “Maybe. I don’t know. You’re nosy. What are you doing, anyway?” she asked, in a clear attempt to change the subject.
Rafe silently gestured to the fence.
One of the cows mooed.
“They got out again?”
“They got out again.”
She walked over to the fence and reached for the nose of one of the cows. That cow tried to lick her hand. A few of the other cows would have rolled their eyes if they could have, and sauntered away, moving down the fence in search of better grass.
“So guess what, I think I’ve figured a few things out. Want to hear?” she asked when the last cow ambled away from her to join the others.
“Sure,” Rafe said.
“I was thinking about Chris.”
Rafe almost groaned. Way to ruin a perfectly pleasant morning, Hallie. The last thing he wanted to hear about was that guy.
She kept her gaze on the cows as they moved away in a lazy line. “I figured out what Chris saw in me. And before you say anything, I am looking forward. I am just figuring out a few details first.”
Rafe said nothing, but he could easily name a dozen things the doc saw in her off the top of his head. Her ability to laugh at herself. Because she was so damn pretty. She was funny, she ran like an emu—
She turned around. “It was the money. Duh! And the Prince name. Get it? I was someone whose family could possibly build a wing of a hospital just for him someday. What he saw in me was opportunity.”
“Look, I don’t know the man,” Rafe said. Although he felt like he did. Hallie had talked enough about him that there were times Rafe felt like he was almost in the same room with them. “But I know you, and I’m sure he fell in love with you.” He said it emphatically, like a guy totally infatuated with her would say it. Or her
mother. He instantly feared he’d said too much.
But Hallie hadn’t seemed to notice. She was already shaking her head. “Nope. He started losing interest right after Dad died. The day George told us there wasn’t as much money as we’d thought,” she said, referring to the Prince family attorney, George Lowe. “Chris was there when George said we were going to have to tighten our belts, and that my wedding needed to be scaled back. And that, my friend, is when things began to change.”
This talk of her fiancé was agitating him. Rafe began to wrestle the rotted fence post that had to come out of the ground. “You think he cheated on you because he wanted a big wedding?”
“It wasn’t the wedding, it was what it represented. That’s when he stopped coming to Three Rivers. That’s when he said he was sooo busy with work. That morphed into maybe I shouldn’t come to Houston, because he would probably be working all weekend. He was working, all right, but not at the hospital. I think when he figured out the family fortune wasn’t quite the fortune he thought it was, he started to change.”
“Hallie—”
“I know what you’re going to say,” she said. “But I’m not complaining. I’m just saying. I honestly don’t care anymore, Rafe. I really, truly don’t. He broke my heart and I’m done with him. I just want to understand why he did, that’s all.” She traced her finger along a stretch of barbed wire, resting the pad of her finger on a barb.
Rafe couldn’t begin to guess what reason her fiancé had for cheating on her, other than he’d lost his mind. “Maybe that’s it, and maybe it’s not. All I know is that time has a way of making us see things in the way we need to see them in order to cope and move on.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder. “You really believe that?”
He didn’t know if he believed that or not. He thought about Casey, his buddy in the army. Casey had died in a freak accident in Afghanistan when his Humvee rolled over on a pitted dirt road. Rafe had been shocked and heartbroken. But he’d told himself that at least Casey hadn’t died in a hail of bullets, or been blown to bits by a bomb. “Yeah, maybe. Look at your dad. In the beginning, you could hardly breathe. But now you can look back and appreciate the sort of man he was. You can breathe again.”
“True,” she admitted.
“Look, all I know is that I don’t care if this dude is the preeminent heart surgeon in America. I think he’s a fucking idiot.”
Hallie’s eyes widened. She grinned. “I need you to follow me around all day and say things like that.”
In a heartbeat.
“You really are the best, Rafe.” Her smile was full of gratitude. “Thank you.”
“Just trying to help,” he muttered, and looked away. Because when he looked in Hallie’s eyes, his body thrummed with want and old desires, and he thought about that kiss, and he wanted to kiss her so bad that he ached.
He picked up the posthole digger and rammed it into the ground. He was startled by Hallie’s hand on his arm.
“Hey,” she said. “Are you all right?”
His gaze fell to her lips. “Fine.”
“Okay. Well, thanks for listening. Again,” she said with a playful roll of her eyes.
He could feel himself tensing. It was a natural instinct, preparing to fight or flee. He should flee, but for the second time that day, Rafe touched her. He brushed her hair back over her shoulder and said, “Will you stop thanking me, already? I’m starting to feel like your pastor.”
“Friends thank each other.”
“Friends just do for each other,” he said. “Here’s some friendly advice, which you’ve heard before because I’ve said it about a dozen times this week alone. Stop thinking about the doc. Start thinking about what you need and where you’re going from here.” He touched her cheek. “Find the thing that makes you want to get up every day, and forget the thing that wants to make you stay in bed. The earth’s going to keep turning, Hallie. You’re not going to be in the same place as you were yesterday or where you are today.”
“You are so good at the supportive-friend-after-a-breakup thing. But you must think I’m a hopeless case.”
“Not for a minute,” he said. “I just think you’re going to have to dig a little deeper to figure out what your passion is, because it’s not going to miraculously show up on your doorstep.”
“Right,” she said, nodding. “You’re so right. It’s starting to get annoying.” She smiled. She poked him in the chest. “You’re pretty damn smart, Rafe.”
“That’s right, I’m a freaking genius,” he said, and put the digger between them. “That’s why I’m out here digging postholes.”
“I know how you must love that, so I’ll leave you alone.” She started backing away from him. “I still have your shirt from Sunday. I’ll run it over to you sometime this week.”
“Not until I teach you how to run. I’ll text you. I mean, if you’re serious about taking it up.”
“Of course I am. How hard can it be?” She turned and began to lope back down the road.
Rafe shook his head as he watched her. That emu had no idea how hard it was going to be. “Straighten up!” he yelled after her. “Shorten your stride!”
He heard her laughter float up, and she responded with a girlie fist pump as she carried on that he found utterly goofy and charming.
Well, he’d done it. He’d figured out a way to put himself in her orbit. Part of him screamed idiot—he wasn’t getting away from that kiss. He’d just put hope into a situation where hope had no business being.
Another, entirely masculine part of him was stoked. He wanted to be with her and near her, and if being a coach was how he had to do it, so be it. At least it was something to do other than stare longingly at her.
He would have to text Jason and let him know he couldn’t make it this weekend, because that’s how pathetic this thing inside him was—he was going to blow off the future he was trying to build under the pretense of teaching Hallie how to hold herself while she ran.
For the second time in a matter of days, he considered what a chump he was, pining after the one girl he’d never get. He struck the digger into the ground with such force that it reverberated through him.
Chapter Eight
Hallie did not take Rafe’s advice about her running form or the actual “moving on” with her life. At least not initially.
She wanted to move on. But it wasn’t as easy as it sounded. So that evening she made herself predictably miserable by scrolling through her Instagram account. Through all those pictures of a happy bride-to-be, basking in the glow of affection from Chris, all of it manufactured for her page. She was one of those people, who had spent the last two or three years constructing her high-society life in pictures, carefully choosing the perfect photos that showcased her perfect, enviable life. Pictures of her and Chris and craft cocktails on the beach. With her bridesmaids in the bridal salon, where she coyly pressed a finger to her mouth, as if to suggest that she shared a secret with everyone who saw the photo of one of the many gowns she considered. Pictures of gourmet dining and sunsets and engagement rings and shoes.
Hallie had over twenty thousand followers, thanks to the announcement of her engagement in Bridal Guide magazine last year.
When she realized what a following she’d developed, she began to reach beyond the pretty life she’d constructed, where there was no mention of her father’s death, no hint of a scaled-back wedding, not a whisper of trouble with Chris. She’d combed the internet for pictures of what she’d like to have at her wedding, like the floral arrangements suspended over a dining table with a two-word caption: Should I? That one had earned over a thousand likes and half as much in comments.
She was not a narcissist—or at least she didn’t think so. She had been playing the part that she was supposed to play in Chris’s view of the world. Starring Hallie Prince as the fiancée, the soon-to-be wife, the g
irl who has it all together! The girl who has taste and class and time to post on Instagram!
She couldn’t believe she’d fallen for his stupid platitudes, the ones that lured her into agreeing to marry him. You’re the woman of my dreams, Hallie. I never knew I could feel this way before I met you, Hallie. I’ve been waiting for you all my life, Hallie.
“Barf,” she muttered. He’d said those things, but he hadn’t acted those things, he had not acted his part, and she should have questioned it a lot sooner than she did. The signs that should have raised doubts had been everywhere. She couldn’t count how many times she’d felt in the way of his busy life. But she’d excused him because he was a surgeon, and she was a failed dancer. She’d wanted him to come to Three Rivers, particularly after her father had died and they needed to rally around the home base, but Chris always had an excuse. “I’m covered up at work,” he’d say. “Come to Houston.” Of course he was covered up with work. His services were in demand. He had lives to save!
But when she arrived in Houston, how many times had she found a note in his condo that said he was working a late shift, or he’d meet her and hurry her off to dinner because he had to get up at the crack of dawn? And yet, he could find time during the week to play golf or take his boat out on the Gulf.
Hallie couldn’t blame Chris. She blamed herself for falling for it. She’d allowed herself to be swallowed whole by his expectations and, she had to admit, her family’s expectations. She had lost herself in that, but then again, she’d never really found herself. After she’d washed out of ballet in such a humiliating fashion, she’d gone along with what everyone thought she ought to do. She was supposed to be a society wife, so she’d prepared for it, because what else was there for her? She was supposed to be the person to show up at charity functions and award dinners, to make sure the doorman was tipped at the end of the year, to schedule Chris’s vacations, host his dinner parties, wash his dirty underwear. That was all anyone had expected of her.
That’s all she’d expected of herself.