“I’m not leaving my Porsche alone on the side of the road.” She could handle this. Could have handled walking back to town, but now that Vern was on the way, she was definitely back in control.
“It’s a car. Come on.”
“It’s a highly collectible car.”
“Not in Lockhardt.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “I’m not leaving.”
“And I can’t leave you here alone on the side of the road.”
“You just implied it was perfectly safe for my car to be left here.”
“You aren’t a car.”
“Glad you noticed.” Why was she baiting him? She didn’t want to talk about that night, and that was exactly where this conversation was heading if she didn’t stop.
“I notice a lot of things,” he said, leaning against the truck’s bumper as if settling in to wait with her. Vanessa knew she should tell him to go or make him so angry he refused to wait with her, but she couldn’t.
“Like what?” she asked before she could convince herself to start a fight with him.
Mat waited a moment, watching her. He folded his muscled arms across his chest, mimicking her stance, and crossed his booted feet at the ankle. The black cowboy hat shaded his eyes. All he needed was a long stalk of grass in his teeth, she thought, and he could be a model for Ralph Lauren.
“Like you cut your hair,” he said finally. Vanessa reached up to self-consciously swipe at her just-past-her-shoulders hair. The last time she’d been home her hair had hung half-way down her back. She swallowed. His gaze roved from her Nikes, up the black leggings and green tee to settle on her face. “It suits you.”
She knew he wasn’t just talking about her hair. She knew she shouldn’t care what he thought, but heat still blossomed in her stomach at the compliment.
“You look a lot more comfortable than when you’re wearing those power suits and Manolo Blahniks.”
“They’re Alexander McQueens.” And this was exactly why she needed her armor. She was too approachable in clothes like these.
“I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”
Or at all. The unsaid words hung heavy in the air and she wondered if it took all his willpower not to say them. Other than the night of Kathleen’s wedding, they’d never spoken more than a few words to one another. She’d noticed him around the barns — who wouldn’t? — but had never given him a thought until her entire world came crashing down around her ears.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” he finally added. Vanessa knew he was talking about both their tête-à-tête at the gas station and that night in the hayloft. She hugged her arms closer over her chest, as if that could keep his next words from stinging her, because sooner or later he’d say what everyone else did — that she didn’t belong here.
When she had no place else to go.
“Kathleen wanted the whole family home for the holidays. Her first with Jackson.” She shrugged, hoping he didn’t see through her lie. Kathleen might not object, too much, anyway. “Some kind of happy family, picture-taking extravaganza. You know how I like to have my picture taken.”
A grim expression crossed his face but before he could tell her what he thought of her, Vern arrived with his tow truck and a new tire. Mat grabbed his toolbox before Vern could exit and got to work.
“Bull Ball’s coming up soon,” Vern said, looking around as if desperate for conversation. “Bet you’re glad to be out of San Antonio for the holidays.”
Vanessa nodded and kept talking to Vern but her attention was on Mat, changing her tire.
He shouldn’t matter to her, none of this should matter. If Gillian taught her anything, it was to keep everything at the surface. Never let anything go too deep. If she’d come home yesterday, before that damn doctor changed her world with the baby news, none of this would be happening. The responsibility for another human life wouldn’t be on her radar. It would be so much simpler to ignore Mat.
Yeah, right.
Only the doctor had said it and her world changed in a heartbeat. She needed to change Mat’s life, for at least as long as it took to assure him she didn’t need him, just as soon as Vern left.
The old tire was off and the new one on in a flash. Mat rolled the flat to Vern’s truck and hefted it into the bed. A few bills exchanged hands — crap! She’d forgotten to pay the man — and then Vern was motoring back toward Lockhardt.
“What do I owe you for the tire?”
Mat shook his head as if that took care of the bill. “I don’t know why you’re here, but I know you well enough that coming home for the holidays isn’t it. And the Bull Ball isn’t until February. Which leaves … ” Hands in his pockets, he stood by the truck. “I don’t expect or want a repeat of that night.”
Vanessa kept her eyes level with his. She would not break. She. Would. Not. This was exactly what she expected. He didn’t want her. Okay.
“Me, either.”
He nodded once. “Good. I think you were right, by the way. Businesslike. See you back at the ranch, Miss Witte.” He emphasized her name, and that only made Vanessa feel foolish. Mat climbed into the big, black truck and waited. For her, Vanessa realized. He was waiting to follow her home. Make sure she got there safe and sound.
Her heart tinged a little at the thought even as her mind filled with annoyance. She hadn’t made the best return to Lockhardt, but he needn’t treat her like a complete idiot.
She sank into the butter-soft leather seat of her Porsche and released the breath she hadn’t realized she been holding.
It would be simpler this way. She would tell him about the baby, tell him she didn’t want anything from him, and then disappear off his radar for good. She would get back to her life in San Antonio or maybe make a full break and get out of Texas altogether.
Vanessa liked the idea of a fresh start for herself and the baby.
She turned the wheel of her car and pulled back onto the road, heading back to Lockhardt. She didn’t need Mat following her home. She’d just drive for a little while. Vanessa inhaled deeply. She was alone. Just the way she needed to be.
• • •
Mat pulled away from Vanessa’s Porsche, wondering what else could go wrong with his life lately. He was no saint. Vanessa hadn’t been his first, but she was the last. Since that night, he hadn’t been able to look at another woman, and that wasn’t like him. Especially when the woman in question was exactly the kind of woman he liked to avoid.
Fashionable. City girl. Privileged.
Why wasn’t she spending this quarter’s dividends at some mall in Austin or San Antonio? Sexy drivers and their pretty, little Porsches didn’t belong on his road. Even if said sexy driver looked better in workout clothes than she ever did walking on red carpets or attending benefit luncheons.
Okay, he didn’t technically own the road. He didn’t own anything here, so far. That was the draw of Lockhardt. He wasn’t known for anything.
Mat Barnes, cowboy. Ranch foreman. From the moment he arrived five years before, all anyone knew was that he was Guillermo’s nephew and had worked on a ranch in New Mexico. He hadn’t, not really. The “ranch” was physical therapy rehab, where he’d received treatment after the accident and made a clean break from his past in California, his knowledge of ranching picked up from Gui when he visited as a kid. No one knew the tabloid fodder and he planned to keep it that way.
He’d done a good job so far. He kept his hair longer, no excessive drinking, no fast cars. No dating socialites and Hollywood starlets. He used his mother’s maiden name, Barnes, instead of the family name. Even if he bought the McIntyre place, he wasn’t planning on running his own cattle. He liked working for Mitchum. He just needed a little more space of his own.
Mat rubbed a hand over the back of his neck as if that could erase Vanessa Witte f
rom his mind. Not hardly. Not when he could feel her skin against his more than two months after their one-and-only night stand.
He turned off the blacktop highway and onto the long lane to the ranch, determined to put Vanessa out of his mind. A flash in his rearview mirror taunted him. Vanessa. The Porsche fishtailed as she sped around him on the loose gravel. Pushing his buttons even when she didn’t know it. Mat’s heart rate sped up, too. Didn’t she know how reckless it was to hit the gas on gravel?
Mat breathed deeply. She wasn’t his problem. Sleeping with her once did not obligate him to protect her for the rest of her life. Let her family pick up whatever pieces brought her back to the ranch this time. He wasn’t going there. He had no intention of digging up the roots he’d planted here to find another place to be anonymous. To be Mat, not Matias Barnes, heir to the Barnes Software fortune.
The Porsche slid to a stop in the lane between the garage and the road to the feed barn, effectively blocking his way. Mat sighed, but didn’t bother rolling down his window or honking for her to move. As always, Vanessa was oblivious to anything except what she wanted.
He pulled the truck onto the grass to maneuver around the car and then backed in to the loading dock. Halfway through the off-load of grain sacks, sweat ran in little rivers over his face and down his back. He usually called in a few other hands to unload this much feed, but he needed the exercise. Needed something to concentrate on besides dark hair, ice-blue eyes and a pretty smile.
Something — and someone — besides Vanessa Witte.
Lifting another sack, he vowed not to think about her or that night. Not while she was back. Not when she left. Not at all. He knew all about the kind of trouble women like Vanessa brought into his life and he didn’t want it. Not this time.
The back of his neck prickled with awareness and he looked up. Vanessa watched him from across the yard. He wiped one arm over his brow and looked back. She turned quickly to head into the house.
The question was, if Vanessa was back for round two, could he tell her no?
Chapter Three
Vanessa watched Mat exit the main barn on a tall, dappled gray horse and start north to the cattle acreage. He’d seen her at a near-bottom yesterday and then caught her watching him outside the barn. If she weren’t careful, he would start believing she was back for another hayloft hula and then they’d be in real trouble. Because she wasn’t sure she could tell him no.
So there was no chance he’d catch her, she watched from behind a lacy, pink curtain that made her stomach roll. Twenty-four hours in this room and it wasn’t just the pregnancy making her nauseated. Pink walls, pink satin-sheeted canopy bed, French Provincial dresser and desk she’d insisted be painted the same bold pink. God, what a pretentious teenager she’d been.
Some would say the pretentious hadn’t worn off, she’d just developed better taste in her twenties.
The room hadn’t changed at all since she’d moved out at twenty-one, five years before. The year she’d married Paul and made the biggest mistake of her life.
Posters of the Backstreet Boys and Leonardo DiCaprio hung on the inside of the closet door, so visitors would see only her impeccable taste. Yeah, right. Breaking up the sea of pink were a few Monet prints, in golden frames, of course. If she dug into the closet, those boots would be there — purple suede and black leather with a silver-cross cutout on either side. The boots she knew all the other girls would want.
The boots she knew her father, Nathaniel, and grandfather, Mitchum, would hate.
Her three beauty queen crowns were in another corner, where she’d hidden them when Paul told her beauty queens were bubble-headed nymphomaniacs who shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce.
Mat guided the horse through a gate, dismounted, shut the gate, and remounted. She imagined she could see his biceps straining under his jacket and sighed. She remembered too well how his arms felt around her. Shouldn’t he be in the ranch office, doing paperwork?
She had no idea what drove a man whose job was to supervise and order people around to dig in and actually do the work, too. He was an enigma to her.
That enigmatic part was probably why she’d wound up in his bed that night. Everything she knew about him was wrapped up in the ranch: he was quiet, he worked hard, Mitchum trusted him to run the cattle. He was the great-nephew of Guillermo, the ranch cook, and that alone should have stopped her. So why didn’t it?
Stop it, Van. Daydreaming about Mat Barnes won’t solve anything.
Vanessa pushed the curtain back into place. She couldn’t stand around all day staring at Mat when she needed to have an actual conversation with him. The night before she’d gotten in and collapsed onto her bed without a thought to unpacking or dinner or saying hello to anyone. Guillermo must have brought her things to the room at some point because cases lined the walls. Unpack and change, first. It only took a few minutes to hang her dresses in the closet and realize she didn’t have a single thing to wear. She couldn’t go to the barns wearing a designer gown and shoes, no matter how the clothes made her feel. Okay, designer jeans it was, then.
She pulled the old boots from the corner of the closet — no need to risk flats or her running shoes to the barn mess — paired them with new jeans, tee, and a denim jacket. She would find something to do outside until Mat returned. Then they could talk.
Vanessa saw her father from a distance. Nathaniel froze and sent her a half-wave before he ducked into an outbuilding, clearly not wanting the father/daughter reunion talk just now. Just as well. Vanessa wasn’t up for yet another alcohol-soaked conversation with her father. Not yet, anyway.
Kathleen exited the horse barn, a monstrous, white structure that looked like it could hold a small city inside, looking like Hollywood’s version of a cowgirl: faded jeans, worn boots, denim jacket, brown cowboy hat over her head. Not all that different from Vanessa’s own clothes, but Kathleen seemed to wear them better. The graveled track between the barn and the horse therapy pool might as well be a red carpet with Kathleen and her horse as the stars of the show.
Kathleen waved and grinned when she spotted Vanessa and the horse she led perked his ears. Was this Jester, one of the rescues, or another horse? Vanessa realized, for the hundredth time, just how little she knew about her family or their businesses.
She wanted to know. But how to ask? Before she could figure it out, Kathleen dropped the rein from her hand and hugged Vanessa.
“You’re back early. I was going to barge into your room after dinner last night but Gui told me you were sleeping.” Vanessa stepped away from her sister and saw concern on her face. “We didn’t think we’d see you until late January.”
Vanessa shrugged. “San Antonio was … ” Was what? Did Vanessa really want Kathleen to know how lonely she’d been? How the thought of seeing and being ignored by her old friends terrified her?
Definitely not. “Boring,” she decided. “Boring and filled with too many tourists.” She shrugged. “The website could use an overhaul, anyway.” Why did it have to be so hard talking to her own sister?
“Well, I’m glad you’re home, whatever the reason. We’re trimming the tree tonight. Jackson has this crazy idea to mix all the decorations up on one giant tree. He and Grandfather are in town now, trying to find one big enough. Want to help?”
Help trim the tree? Gillian didn’t go for big, holiday decorations. Her idea of a fun Christmas was to fly off to somewhere warm with a beach. And the three trees at the ranch were so precisely decorated each year, thanks to Monica’s mother’s spreadsheets, Vanessa was certain she would mess them up and had ignored the event. Jackson’s idea to mish-mash everything sounded perfect, though.
Vanessa nodded. “If you’re sure you don’t want this to be a you and Jackson thing.”
“It’s your home, Van, of course you should join in.” Kathleen twisted her mouth. “I’m glad you’re b
ack, but I have to finish with Big Boy here. Let’s catch up over dinner.”Kathleen squeezed Vanessa in another hug. Her sister happy to see her? Another reason to be speechless.
They were quiet for a moment. Vanessa racked her mind for a conversational thread but nothing came to mind. The horse snorted and she flinched away from the big beast.
Kathleen patted the horse’s nose. “See you at dinner, love the boots, by the way,” she called over her shoulder.
Vanessa smiled. They were great boots, even if she’d bought them to make a silly, teenaged point. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad back here, that weird moment aside. Kathleen and Monica had developed a bond over the previous summer. Was it too much to ask that she be included in their sisterly circle? She continued on to the feed barn, and immediately realized her mistake. She had no clue what to do here or where anything was kept. She sighed and turned — straight into Mat’s chest.
He threw his arms around her and for just a minute, Vanessa wished he held her because he wanted to, not because of instinct. She shoved the thought away, telling herself it was a silly, left over sexual response. Less than six months into the divorce, she wasn’t ready for a new relationship. Especially not with a baby on the way.
Right, the baby. No time like the present.
“Mat, I, um — ” Didn’t expect to see him here? Get real, Van, he’s the foreman. Of course he would be in the barn. “I’m sorry.” She recovered, barely, and stepped away from him when all she wanted was to sink into him. Again.
“If you’re looking for your car, it’s in the garage.”
Vanessa’s instinct was to turn and run, as far and as fast from Mat Barnes as possible. To never have this conversation. The old Vanessa wouldn’t say a word.
And that pushed her to move forward.
“I know where my car is, Mat. I thought we should talk … ”
He waved a hand, stopping her mid-sentence. “Talking won’t change what happened. Unless … ” He cocked his eyebrows.
Texas Wishes: The Complete Series Page 19