Tougher in Texas

by Kari Lynn Dell

  “Ignore me as long as you want,” Analise said. “I won’t go away.”

  “What about you and Cruz?” he asked, trying to throw her off the trail.

  “We’re going to keep in touch…until one or both of us stops feeling like making the effort.” She shrugged one shoulder, bare beneath the skinny strap of what looked to Cole like a black feed sack. “If it was meant to be more, it wouldn’t have been so easy to leave it at that. Unlike you and Shawnee.”

  Another shard of pain sliced through him. Shawnee had never pretended there could be a happily ever after for them. That was all Cole. His screwed-up head and his idiot heart, latching on and refusing to listen to reason. Because he was good with his hands. Hadn’t she told him so? He’d been convinced he could put all of her pieces back together, one by one. Fix the damage Ace and that damn disease had done.

  But he couldn’t give her back what was gone forever.

  He made that last, impossible fold in the gum wrapper and ground it onto the arm of his chair. Instead of better, he made it worse, peeling away the thin foil, baring a ragged patch of white. He swore silently.

  “It’s not that simple,” he told Analise.

  She gave him a long, implacable look. “It can be. You just have to decide what matters most.”

  A car came zooming down the highway, whipped around the corner and into their driveway, its abrupt halt sending puffs of dust into the air. Alarm rippled through the crowd as Tori kicked the door open, vaulted out, and slammed it behind her. Delon and Joe hustled over as she bore down on Cole.

  Her normally cool eyes were spitting sparks. “She dumped me!”

  Cole stared up at her, confounded. Who? What?

  “Shawnee?” Delon asked.

  “Of course, Shawnee. You think there’s some other woman I sneak around with behind your back?”

  “No, I just don’t understand…” Delon frowned, baffled. “She doesn’t want to rope with you anymore? Or be friends at all?”

  “Both. She says it’s for our own good,” Tori snarled. “So we don’t have to worry our little heads if—oh, excuse me, when she gets cancer again. Like we’re all too feeble to cope, while she goes around pretending she’s so tough—”

  “She’s not pretending,” Cole said.

  A dozen sets of eyes locked on him. The guests had gone quiet, and the family had gathered around to see what the kerfuffle was about. Even the music had stopped, the better for all of them to eavesdrop. Cole sank deeper in his chair, as if he could squeeze between the slats and crawl off through the grass.

  “No?” Tori challenged. “Then why is she running scared?”

  “Of what?” Cole asked.

  “You. Me.” She made a wide, sweeping gesture to include the entire crowd. “Anyone she might slip up and actually start to care about.”

  Delon laid a careful hand on her shoulder, as if he was afraid she might bite. “Give her a few days—”

  “Not an option. She’s leaving tomorrow for upstate New York and some job Brady offered her. I came to tell him.” Tori jabbed a finger at Cole. “If you were planning to stop moping around at some point, you’re gonna have to do it before morning.”

  New York? Brady? The words bounced around inside Cole’s head, refusing to sink in.

  Tori turned on her heel and strode back toward her car.

  Delon scrambled after her. “Where are you going?”

  “Home. To call my sister. Elizabeth is one of the top cancer researchers in the world. What she doesn’t know, her friends do.” She paused, turned, and flashed a smile so filled with icy determination Cole felt his testicles retract in reflex. “I don’t care if I have to drag Shawnee into clinical trials by that damn hair of hers, I’m gonna make sure the bitch lives to be ninety.”

  They all watched her slam back into her car, wheel around, and gun the engine, spattering the driveway with gravel. No one spoke until she had disappeared over the rise.

  “If Elizabeth is anything like Tori…” Miz Iris glanced at Delon. “What do you think?”

  He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “If I was Shawnee, I’d start saving up for a real long retirement.”

  Chuckles and murmurs rippled through the crowd and they began to disperse, wandering back to the food table for another slice of pie, or the cooler for another beer. Only Joe and Analise lingered. Joe gave her a pointed look. She scowled, but stomped off while Joe pulled up a lawn chair and settled in beside Cole. No comment. No questions. Just there, in case.

  Leaving. New York.

  Tori was right. Cole had been indulging himself, taking the time to sort his feelings into safe little boxes. Grief here. Lust there. Affection over in this corner. And in that one…he took a quick peek, then slammed the lid, but the emotion inside kept swelling, refusing to be locked away. Everything he wanted to feel some day. Fatherly pride. The soul-altering love for a child. His child.

  But never, ever Shawnee’s child. He didn’t know if he could let go of that dream to reach for another. And he had to know. He couldn’t give her anything less than complete acceptance. If she would take it.

  “Does it still hurt?” he asked.

  Joe started. “What?”

  “Dick Browning had his stroke less than a year after you left Oregon.” Cole pulled out another piece of gum, turned it between his fingers, then slid it back into the pack. “If you’d stayed, he would’ve made you a partner in Browning Rodeo instead of turning it over to his kid. Do you ever regret coming to Texas instead?”

  “Those are two different questions.” Joe gazed out over the dusty plains beyond the oasis that was Miz Iris’s yard. “I will never stop missing Oregon, the same way you would never stop missing this place, no matter where you went or for how long. It’s in here.” Joe pressed his palm flat over his heart. Then he searched out Violet, who was watching them intently from across the lawn, and what Cole saw in his eyes was so deep, so true, it was almost painful to witness. “But regrets? None.”

  And in that single look, Cole found his answer. There was no decision to be made because there wouldn’t be another woman. No children. Shawnee was his one and only shot at getting this right. If he lost her, he would just keep folding in and in, until no one could reach him ever again.

  He couldn’t lose her. But how could he make her stay? “If Violet hadn’t come after you, would you have come back?”

  “I don’t know.” Joe dipped his chin and worried a barbed wire scratch on his wrist. “I’d like to say yes—I imagine Wyatt would’ve found some way to make me—but on my own? I’m not sure I could have convinced myself that I deserved this.”

  Cole nodded slowly, thought for a while longer, then stood up and started for his pickup.

  “Cole?”

  He paused, half-turning to look at Joe.

  “You probably can’t stop her from leaving, but it’s not because she doesn’t love you and want to be with you. Make sure she knows she can always come back.”

  “Okay,” Cole said.

  As if it was as easy as that.

  Chapter 43

  Shawnee could not make one more decision.

  She stared at the heap of stuff piled on the kitchen table, and her brain refused to compute what to do with it. For two days, every move she’d made had required a choice. Did she pack this, or that? Close the checking account she’d had since high school to open a new one in New York? Get her oil changed now, or at her uncle’s shop during her stopover in Kansas, even though the pickup would be five hundred miles past due when she got there?

  And now, this.

  She plopped down in a chair, too tired to even scowl at the mess on the table. Half-eaten boxes of cereal, open bags of pasta, plastic tubs of flour and sugar, a jar with two lonely dill pickles floating in the brine, a barely used squirt bottle of ketchup—all the odds and ends from her cu
pboards and refrigerator that she hadn’t been able to donate anywhere. It seemed wrong to throw it all away, but she had no one to give it to. If she’d been thinking, she would’ve unloaded the leftovers on Tori before…

  She squeezed her eyes shut tight, as if she could wring that whole conversation out of her brain.

  As if she’d needed to be told. Yes, Shawnee was scared. Every minute of every waking hour, at some level. On the good days, when she was busy with her horse or roping, that level was eight floors below the basement of her subconscious. The fear was always there, though, with one finger poised over the up button for the express elevator to the surface.

  But that hope is the enemy line was pure bullshit.

  Shawnee had plenty of hope. Every time she rode into the arena, she hoped her partner would turn the steer in the money, and she’d do her part by roping both feet. She hoped Sooner would keep improving, so he’d be good enough to sell by the end of the year. She hoped she could live up to Brady’s expectations.

  She hoped she hadn’t cursed herself by making promises that could extend clear into next fall.

  She hoped—Lord, how she hoped—that she hadn’t done any permanent damage to Cole. Her goal had always been to leave any man at least as good, if not better, than when she’d found him. Please, God, don’t let Cole be the exception. She didn’t want to be the reason that when the right woman did come along—her breath hitched at the stab of pain—he refused to take another chance. She should have told him…what?

  I love you, you big idiot. Now go find someone who can give you what you need.

  Yep. She’d fallen in love with Cole Jacobs, of all the damn people. It was so ridiculous, she laughed out loud. An ugly, rasping sound, echoing around the barren apartment. If the two of them hadn’t been so impossible, he couldn’t have snuck up on her. It was Cole, for crying out loud. What danger could there possibly be? And then there he was, taking up all the space inside her head, in her chest, so there didn’t seem to be enough room to breathe anymore and her heart felt squashed.

  And now all she had was leftovers. Literally.

  She kicked the table leg and clamped her mouth tight against another of those gross, sobby laughs. If it weren’t for this table full of crap, she could load up the horses and leave right now. She’d have to camp in the trailer tonight anyway, since all of her bedding was packed. She wouldn’t sleep tonight unless she tranqued herself into oblivion. Why waste a perfectly good pill when she could just climb behind the wheel and drive until she was too tired to keep going? Out of here. Out of Texas.

  Away from Cole, so she didn’t show up some horrible night, begging on his doorstep.

  With a sudden burst of anger, she heaved out of the chair, grabbed the last empty box, and shoveled everything from the table into it. She’d just…just…cram it in the trailer somewhere. Gran could always use extra groceries. If any of the cold stuff went bad, she’d toss it out along the way. Lighten her load as she went.

  Who knew—by the time she left Kansas, she might not feel like her bones were made of lead.

  She jumped at the heavy thud on her front door. Her heart felt as if the fist had made direct contact. She knew that knock. For an insane moment, she couldn’t decide whether to fling herself toward the door or out her bedroom window. Luckily—for her bones, at least, since her apartment was above the barn—common sense elbowed aside the panic. Every light was on and her rig was parked out front. Kinda tough to pretend she wasn’t home.

  Thud! “Shawnee?”

  She drew a breath, braced herself as best she could, and opened the door. And was still staggered by the sight of him. The sheer size of him, blocking the sun and the sky and every single brain wave. At the rodeos everything was bigger than life. The stock. The arenas. The grandstands. Cole hadn’t seemed quite so massive by comparison. But here…she just stared at him, too overwhelmed to make words.

  He braced a hand on each side of the doorframe as if to block her exit. “You’re going to New York.”

  His voice gave no clue as to how he felt about the news.

  “And…what?” she asked, dredging up some sass. “You wanted to be sure I was actually leaving the state?”

  His expression didn’t shift one iota. “I’ll be here.”

  “No shit.” She squinted at him, trying to extrapolate some kind of meaning from his statement. “And you needed to tell me this because…”

  “For you,” he said. “I’ll be here for you.”

  Her laugh was sharp with disbelief. “Keepin’ the porch light on?”

  “Yes.”

  Was he drunk? She leaned closer to sniff, but only caught a hint of mint gum. “I’m not even gonna ask if you’re insane, because we both know that’s a slippery slope.” Then a thought struck her—the same one that had been sneaking around, whispering impossibilities into her ear. “Oh hell. I suppose you’ve decided that if I can’t pop out a few kids, we could adopt instead. Well, forget it. I can’t make that kind of commitment, and even if I could, who would want me raising their kids?”

  “Me.” He didn’t even hesitate. “They’d be tough, and ballsy, and know how to handle a horse.”

  She snorted to cover the spurt of warmth. “Well, that’ll get ’em into Harvard for sure. Sorry, but I’m not mama material.”

  “Okay.”

  What? He was giving up, just like that? Not likely. He probably figured he could wear her down. “You’re not gonna change my mind.”

  “That’s okay. If I can’t have both, I choose you.”

  She blinked, stunned, then glared at him. “I’m leaving, remember? And you’re staying.”

  He nodded gravely. “Right here. Anytime you need me. Any reason. Flat tire. Sick horse. Friend. Lover. Fix your toilet. Whatever.”

  She laughed. How could she not? Only Cole would put love somewhere on a list between colic and plumbing.

  Only Cole.

  “I told you, marriage and family isn’t in my cards.” She made her voice cold, so it couldn’t be mistaken for a whine. “And before you go spouting off about how it can all end at any minute for any one of us and nobody knows better than you…well, I’m sorry for your loss and all, but it’s not the same.”

  “I know. I want you anyway.” He had that look. The one that said he was ready to bust through fences and tear down walls to get his way.

  She stepped back, shaking her head. “No. You want me now. But eventually you’ll realize it wasn’t worth everything you gave up and you’ll hate me for it.”

  “I’m not Ace.” He gave her a long, steady stare that she couldn’t refuse to meet, if only for an instant. “I make my own choices and I stand by them. And I want you.”

  Damn him. He had to quit saying that. Suddenly furious, she cupped a hand under each boob and shoved them up for inspection. “And what about when these are gone? What’s left then?”

  “All the important stuff,” he said, so certain she wanted to punch him. “I’m gonna fall apart too, you know. My belly will get bigger and my ass will shrink up to nothing. Happens to all the Jacobs men. Are you gonna quit me then?”

  “Of course not.” Then she slapped herself upside the head, realizing the trap he’d laid for her. “I mean, I wouldn’t. If we were gonna stick together.”

  “I am sticking.”

  Agh! It was like talking to a rock. “What if I never come back from New York?”

  “That’d be a damn shame. We’ll probably never find anything this good again.”

  “Because I’m not looking.” But she’d stumbled over him anyway. Just one more way life had decided to torture her. And now he stood there making the two of them sound like a perfectly rational choice. Holding a match to a candle she’d snuffed out years ago.

  The one called hope, Tori’s voice mocked.

  Shawnee cursed, words she normally reserved for Ace and idi
ot drivers. “How can you be so calm about this?”

  “Do you want me to come unglued? Because I can.” And buried in the deep rumble of his voice, she heard a note of desperation.

  Finally, finally, she let herself really look at him. His eyes were dilated and the knuckles of the hand clenched on the doorframe were bone white. His chest rose and fell with deep, deliberate breaths. The kind she took when she was fighting off the anxiety demons. They were both holding on by a thread, and it was a dead heat whose was gonna snap first. And then…well, God help them.

  She closed her eyes. Shook her head. “Don’t do this to us, Cole. You’re only making it harder.”

  “I love you,” he said. “It can’t get much worse than that.”

  She choked out a laugh. “That’s the first thing you’ve said that made any sense.” She could feel the tears coming. Damned if she’d make them both suffer through that, too. She blew out a shaky sigh. “Do you really want to know what I want?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. I want to know that you’re going to move on.”

  He started to open his mouth. She gave her head a quick shake and stepped up to put her hands on his shoulders. Those broad shoulders that would be so easy to lean on. She slid her hands down, her breath catching at the piercing pleasure of touching him one last time. Then she slid her arms around him and hugged him so hard that if it had been anyone else, she might have cracked a rib. In the process of letting go, she ducked under his arm and out the door. “And I really, really need you to go.”

  “Shawnee—”

  Halfway down the exterior staircase, she stopped to glance past him into the apartment. “While you’re at it, take that box of crap on the kitchen table with you.”

  * * *

  Cole left. It was what she wanted, and there was nothing more to say. He loved her. He was ninety percent sure she loved him. And she was leaving.