Walker had come around to the passenger door while she took her survey and now appeared prepared to scoop her up again. She slowed him with an arm to his chest while she unhooked the seat belt, then quickly climbed down herself.
“Where are we?” she repeated.
“My place.”
“Your place?”
“Yep.”
“But...” She clamped down anything else. This was where his money had gone. Money earned in dusty arenas, amid the smells and sounds of courage and pain and adrenaline. He’d turned it into this. This piece of land swept fresh by the wind.
“It’s...it’s beautiful, Walker.”
He said nothing, and she risked a glance at his profile as he looked out over the valley. Behind his barriers, she recognized his pride and satisfaction.
He’d bought it, and he was building it. She guessed his hand had joined the logs into a house, his strength had raised the barn, his imagination had designed the corral.
“It’s a wonderful place,” she added. “And the view...” You could never feel closed in when you could look out and have the world at your feet like this.
“You can see Jeff and Mary’s place.” He sounded gruff, and she suspected it hid other emotions. “Down there, see?”
He pointed toward the valley. East and a little to the south. Shrunk by distance, but clearly recognizable. She also saw the twisting road they must have traveled to get here. A road reached by going straight along the main road after the drive to the Jeffrieses’ ranch branched south. So maybe it had been his headlights behind her the other night.
“My land stretches down to Jeff and Mary’s western border, then up the mountain almost to the top.”
“All this?” Her eyes opened wider.
“Yeah. It’s hard to tell from here, but there’s some flat around the south side of this old rock.” He pointed. A branch of the road continued around the curve of an outcropping. Through the trees, she caught a glimpse of open space.
“I haven’t been here enough to do much more than get the house and barn up, then keep them standing. But I’m running some stock with Mary and Jeff’s. And a few head of horses I’m hoping to breed. Maybe next year. Then I can—” He broke off. “C’mon, get inside. You don’t want to be standing out here listening to me and taking in the view.”
Oh, yes, she did. When he got that dreamy look in his eyes and that deep note in his voice, she could have listened to him forever. But he clearly had other ideas. He cupped her elbow, his big hand spreading warmth.
“This is ridiculous, Walker.” Her protest had less power than the breeze slipping around them. “I’m not really sick. I’m just not feeling great. I’m just—”
“I know what you’re just. And I know what to do about it.’’
He hustled her up broad wooden steps flanked by a pair of rather unhappy looking evergreens, across the planked porch, which held a trio of wooden rocking chairs, through the living room so fast she had no more than an impression of earth tones and a stone fireplace, and into a bedroom.
The room was almost painfully neat. A big, quilt-covered bed was centered on one white wall, facing a set of windows that looked east. She noticed a bookshelf, a dresser, a couple of area rugs, a bootjack by the hall door and two more doors. Living mostly out of a trailer or hotel room so many years had definitely taught Walker minimalism in decorating.
He opened one door to reveal a closet as neat as the room. With no fumbling, he pulled out a flat box and removed a heating pad.
“If there’s one thing old rodeo cowboys know, it’s heating pads.”
He aimed a dry grin somewhere over her left shoulder, moved quickly to the outlet next to the bed to plug in the pad, then disappeared momentarily beyond the other door. She heard water running. Must be the bathroom. Still, she stood stock-still in the middle of the room. He returned almost immediately with a glass of water in one hand; the other was closed in a fist.
“Here, take these.”
She looked blankly at the pair of pills he deposited in her palm.
“Won’t upset your stomach,” he assured her as he turned down the quilt and positioned the heating pad. “If there’s another thing old rodeo cowboys know, it’s painkillers.”
He straightened, and she swallowed the pills quickly. For a moment, they looked at each other. His face had gone still, and when he took the glass from her unresisting hand, the movement lacked his usual slow grace.
“C’mon,” he ordered, but he stopped short of taking her arm to guide her to the bed.
She sat on the bed, her initiative fogged by discomfort and a tremendous lethargy. He gruffly told her to take her boots off, and she complied. She also obeyed his gesture by pulling her stockinged feet up on the bed. On her own she curled around the warmth of the heating pad.
Coat came to the edge of the bed and surveyed her, as if assuring himself of her comfort, then headed out.
Walker issued one last command before pulling the hall door closed behind him. “Cover up.”
She did, pulling the quilt’s age-softened material around her chin. Its added warmth conspired with the heating pad, the pills, the quiet and, most of all, the permission to stop toughing it out, to bring relaxation to her cramping muscles and aching back. Her thoughts drifted.
Walker had been more awkward with her in the past few minutes than even in that first encounter in the rodeo office after a decade.
Could he be concerned about showing her his place? Clearly, he had a lot of himself invested in it. He seemed to be creating a haven here for himself. A place for tomorrow.
I don’t just live for today. I look to tomorrow. But I’ll be damned if I’ll break my back trying to prove it to you.
Was that why he hadn’t shown her this place before, the proof that he had looked to his future? Was that why he’d stopped himself when he’d been telling her his plans?
Had her skepticism, born of their past, left him so wary that he didn’t trust her enough to tell her of his future?
Or was it simpler? Did he just choose not to let her into this part of his life?
Then why the hell did he bring me up here ? she demanded belligerently of herself.
He could have taken her to the Jeffrieses’ or left her to fend for herself in the office, instead of bringing her to his home and tucking her away in his bed.
Her hand smoothed over the seams of the quilt, the rhythm of the ripples under her hand soothing her, driving out the worries and questions. And she let them go. Slower her hand moved, slower. For a little while, she would let the worries go...just for now.
A new rhythm took over as her hand stilled. A sliding kind of creak that never quite finished. A homey sound. Reassuring. Of course—the answer came without her searching for it—one of the rocking chairs on the porch. One of the chairs that looked out across the distance.
I thought I’d find myself a porch and a rockin’ chair with a view of the mountains and tell everybody who’ll listen ‘bout my great career riding the bulls.
Had Walker found his porch and rocking chair? Was he ready to give up the life he’d lived for so long, that he’d loved more than her? Something pulled at her comfort, something that wasn’t physical at all.
If he’d changed so much, what did that do to the careful assumptions she’d operated under this summer? How could she dismiss the physical attraction to him, how could she explain her feelings for him as passion somehow left over from the past, if he wasn’t the same man?
* * *
HE’D BROUGHT HER here for the good of the rodeo, no other reason.
If she was too stubborn to see that she’d get more done long-term if she rested this afternoon than if she tried to push through the pain, then it was his responsibility to see she rested. She wouldn’t give the Park Rodeo her best, otherwise, and that’s all he wanted. The best for the rodeo.
He drained the last of the soft drink he’d stopped in the kitchen to pour and dropped into the rocker he always sat
in, plunking his booted feet onto the rail and bending his knees just the bit needed to set the rocker moving.
He certainly hadn’t brought her here because he’d wanted her to see his place, because he had any sort of wild ideas about her liking the house or the view or his dreams. He didn’t have anything to prove to her. He knew he’d learned to look to the future. He had no need for her to know it.
And he certainly hadn’t brought her here with the sort of impulsive optimism that had led him to take her to view the sunset. Optimism bought with her smile, and paid for by a painful reminder that she wasn’t his Kalli anymore. Not even for this summer.
No, he’d taken a glance at her pale skin, trembly hands and known what was called for—and it sure as hell wasn’t sitting at that desk trying to pretend pain wasn’t pain. It was getting into bed with a heating pad and somebody around to see she didn’t try sneaking back to the office.
It was easier to do that here. That was the reason he’d brought her here. The only reason.
It certainly had nothing to do with a foolish desire to have her to himself, even for a few hours, even with her asleep on his bed and him out here.
He envisioned her head on his pillow, hair spread loose, quilt warming the curves that he’d felt heating and flowing against his body in a dressing room in Lodge’s store, that he’d felt pulsing and shivering under his mouth for a few precious moments out at Sunset Rock.
Creak...Thud. He stopped the rocker and brought his feet back to earth.
He certainly hadn’t brought her here to torment himself with thoughts like that.
* * *
KALLI’S WEARY BODY won the battle over her uneasy mind, and she slept.
She woke once to find her way to the bathroom. The sound of a distant power tool had replaced that of the rocker, and she groggily wondered if Walker was adding to the corral.
The second time she woke, it was to quiet, and she realized the pain had gone. She shifted to her side and stretched, curving her back, then extending it, just for the pleasure of moving.
Then she saw the framed photograph propped against books on the top shelf next to the bed. She leveraged herself up against the pillows. The picture was in her hands before she was conscious of reaching for it. Her hands trembled a little.
A snapshot, grainy from being enlarged and faded from the years.
Walker looked down at her with that old smile, and she looked up at him with that old love. God, they’d been young. So young, and so damn naive.
And on her other side...Cory.
The smile as bright as sunlight on a champion’s gold buckle. The vitality so strong it reached out of a decade-old picture and stole her breath.
Clinically dead.
That’s what the doctors had told them. Not at first, when no one would tell them anything. But later, when Walker had threatened to tear the place apart if they didn’t tell him Cory’s condition, family or no family.
Clinically dead.
The shock, the grief. And the soul-leaching guilt for that one unguarded instant when she’d thanked God it wasn’t Walker.
Her head jerked up.
Walker stood inside the doorway, looking at her, his face expressionless. Why couldn’t she read him anymore? Why couldn’t she tell what he thought, felt?
“I, uh, saw this on the shelf.” She twisted away from his gaze, returning the framed picture to the exact spot where it had stood.
He didn’t answer, but he moved to the shelves and picked up the picture between his large hands, and staring down at it just as she had.
“Were you out working? What time is it? It must be getting late. We should get back to the rodeo grounds. Poor Roberta had the office alone all day. I’ve got to get back and give her a break.”
Pushing back the quilt, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, but before she could stand, he replaced the photo, turned and walked out.
She sat very still, as if moving might send the emotions welling up in her over some invisible edge.
Relief, that’s what she must be feeling. How could she possibly have wanted Walker to stay in the room and talk about that other time, that long-ago grief? How could she possibly be hurt that he had turned away from her? Again. How could she possibly want to put her arms around him and comfort him against the pain he’d never shown her?
Slowly, she rose and walked to the bathroom, not sure how long she’d sat on the bed. With great care, she washed her face, wiping away any trace of tears, and finger-combed her hair into some order.
She hung up the washcloth she’d used, straightened the bed, tucking the quilt in, then drew in a strengthening breath and headed out of the room.
Walker was not in the house. Nor on the porch. Using a hand to shield her eyes from the afternoon glare, she studied the nearly complete corral. Not there, either. That left only the barn.
She spotted him as soon as she walked past the wide-open double doors, and was glad he hadn’t heard her approach. He worked saddle soap into a strip of leather, sitting on a bale of hay by the narrower side door that opened into the corral, his back propped by the stall wall behind him. Coat sprawled at his feet. The horse in the nearby stall hung a companionable head over the half-door, contemplating Walker’s handiwork.
Diffused light surrounded him, picking out the glint of silver in his hair, casting the strong bones of his downcast face into a pen-and-ink drawing of pure line.
Kalli looked at him and let herself see the man he’d become. Stripped of the shadows and shades cast by their past.
A good man.
A man who lived by loyalty and honesty and responsibility. He had a way with animals—always had. These past weeks, she’d seen he also had a way with people. Because they recognized they could trust Walker Riley. He was a man of his word.
She almost smiled at that thought. It sounded so old-fashioned. Her friends back East, even the ones who lived by it, would shy away from articulating the code that way. But not Walker. He’d say it straight out, with no self-consciousness.
Yes, the boy she’d once loved with all her heart had become a good man. A man any woman would find sexy as hell. And a man filled with secrets.
“Walker, talk to me about Cory.”
His hands stilled, but he didn’t look up, and she wondered if he had already been aware of her presence.
“Walker...” She didn’t know how to ask this of him, or why it seemed so important now. “Please, Walker.”
Kalli wasn’t sure if he would ignore her plea.
The leather strip disappeared in his clenched fist for an instant, then his grip loosened and he smoothed the piece absently.
“I still miss him.” He spoke so low, she drew closer. His hands started moving on the leather again, broad fingers stroking and kneading the saddle soap into every pore and crevice. “Sometimes, heading to the next rodeo, driving late at night or trying to catch some sleep in some airport, I’ll think I can hear him talking to me. Just the way he used to.” He paused a beat. “Remember?”
“I remember.” Wedged securely between two sets of broad shoulders, driving through darkness sometimes cozy and sometimes magical, with nonsense or philosophy floating through the small pickup’s cab, The mood exultant or restrained depending on the previous stop, but always hopeful for the next one.
“Cory was half in love with you himself, you know.”
She smiled slightly. Cory had done everything Walker had, so that was no surprise. Though his love had been strictly—sweetly—platonic, while the love between Walker and her... “I knew. And I loved him the same way.”
“It was all a long time ago.”
He intended to close the door on their past. A chill ran through her, followed by a flame. No. No! She wouldn’t let him do that. It was all she had of him, and she wouldn’t let it go.
The thought left her slightly unsteady against the stall door, pretending a fumbling stroke at the horse’s soft nose, trying to regain her equilibrium, at least physical
ly. Her emotional balance might never return.
“But there’s something I got to know, Kalli.”
She froze, waiting, dreading, but unable to stop what was to come.
“Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you had been pregnant? Do you ever think maybe then you would have stayed?”
Chapter Seven
* * *
“PREGNANT?” SHE WHISPERED , not ready to face the second part of what he’d said.
“Carrying my baby,” he said roughly, still focused on the bit of leather in his hands. “That time you were late. The week before...”
The week before Cory Lloyd had been killed in the rodeo arena, riding bulls. Competing with his best friend in the world, Walker Riley.
She drew in a breath, hoping it would steady her. But it only allowed a muffled sob to escape, and Walker looked at her for the first time.
He was on his feet, before her in an instant. The leather slipped to the dusty floor of the barn, forgotten, as he swore under his breath, wiped his hands on his jeans, then took her face between his hands.
“God, Kalli, don’t cry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. Not ever.”
He wiped away the trail of moisture with the side of his thumb, the rough skin softened by the infinite gentleness in the touch.
“It’s okay, Walker. It’s okay. It’s just that I didn’t know... I didn’t know...”
“You didn’t know what, Kalli?”
Within his hold, she shook her head.
“I thought— I didn’t think you’d even remember that. It was just a few days. And...and you didn’t want a baby.”
“Didn’t want a baby,” he repeated woodenly.
“I thought you were glad when it turned out I wasn’t pregnant.”
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