Her Cowboy's Promise (Fly Creek)

by Jennifer Hoopes

  She ducked her head unable to look him in the face. “I thought you would order out and then, you know, stick it on your plates.”

  Adam barked with laughter. “No. When I say I’m going to cook for a woman, I mean it.”

  “So you do this kind of thing a lot?” She asked in jest, but the tightening in her stomach told a different story.

  “Umm, no. I don’t. Up until five months ago, I had a job that pretty much took all of my time.”

  Emily couldn’t hide her surprise. It was the first hint of his past, other than the ranch upbringing, that he let fall and from the catch in his voice, she knew it’d been a difficult, if not deliberate, choice.

  “I’m happy that you have the time now, and that I’m the recipient of your talent. At least I think. I’m assuming this stuff’s edible.”

  Adam arched an eyebrow. He grabbed a wooden spoon and dipped it in the sauté pan. Running it along the edge he cupped his other hand underneath as he brought it to her mouth. Flavors burst upon impact. Lemon, garlic, and cheese working together to coat her taste buds in heaven.

  “Is it edible?”

  She hummed. “I think I could take a bath in that.”

  Adam’s eyes darkened. “That could be arranged.”

  She swatted his arm and stepped away toward the table that was set. A bottle of wine sat in the center chilling. Everything screamed city boy, not big sky rancher. What had brought him to Fly Creek?

  “Do you mind if I pour?”

  He shook his head, concentrating on the shrimp on his cutting board. Emily poured a glass and wandered around the open space. No personal items were visible.

  Where was his stuff? Was it because he hadn’t had time or was it because he didn’t have anything? Or was it all upstairs in his private area? The more questions whirling around, the dizzier she got. What was Adam Conley really seeking and would learning about his past help her figure it out?

  “Find anything interesting?”

  She walked back into the kitchen. “Maybe.”

  Adam narrowed his gaze and smiled, his dimples doing what they did best, making her legs full of jelly.

  He set two plates on the table and held a chair out for her. Emily settled and he pushed her in, taking the seat across from her.

  She poured him a glass and waited.

  Adam looked up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I just wanted to thank you. Again. In case I forget to later.”

  He smiled. “It was entirely my pleasure.”

  Dinner was amazing. Crisp salad, fresh flaky bread that melted in your mouth, and a shrimp and crème pasta that had her groaning on more than one bite. They kept the conversation light, apparently each content to just enjoy the moment and the food.

  She helped him clear the table, and he put some water on to boil for tea. After setting her bag to soak, she turned and leaned against the counter. He stood opposite her by the fridge, his gaze ping-ponging around the cabin never quite meeting hers. He opened his mouth several times, and for the first time since perhaps the night she approached him, he looked nervous. She was right. Something had shifted between them.

  “Did you… I mean, would you like to sit out on the deck? It’s a perfect night for it, but I would understand if—”

  Emily warmed with his concern. She kissed his cheek. “I won’t know until I try.”

  Together they stepped out into the summer night. The sky was awash in stars, the moon just shy of being full. The first thing Emily heard was all the sounds. Frogs and crickets, the rush of the water with the occasional splash echoing across the lawn. She walked toward two rockers and noticed their unusual construction.

  “I love these. Where did you get them?”

  Adam stood by the doorway, everything about his stance hesitant and unsure. “I made them.”

  “You what?”

  He sighed and came over to her. “I made them. In addition to my rancher duties, I also do repairs and odd projects.” He took off his hat and hung it on the back of the rocker. “You don’t think Shelby hired me for my good looks, do you?”

  She ducked her head. “I would have.” Her finger traced a groove in the wood, the surface smooth to the touch. “Is that what you used to do? I mean after ranching. Build things?”

  “Not really. Honestly, it’s something I picked up as a kid. Something to get me away from my home life on the ranch.” He looked at her and paused.

  Emily bit back the twenty questions on the tip of her tongue. It was obvious he didn’t like talking about this part of himself. That he resented it in some way. She was afraid to break the memory he seemed to be stuck in. Like a buck startled back into the woods. But this was the information she needed to find a way forward. A way forward for both of them.

  Adam chuckled. “To be honest, until I came here, I hadn’t touched a tool or a piece of wood since I was eighteen. When I left my family.”

  “To do what?” she asked, the question quiet, lingering as if the answer was only the first thread in an ever unraveling sweater.

  He shook his head and sat in one of the rockers. She took the other and waited. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and met her curious gaze.

  “College first, then finance in New York.”

  She choked. “Like the whole suit and tie thing?”

  He smiled and nodded.

  Emily stared, unable to process such an abrupt change in life. New York City and finance were as completely opposite of his childhood as he could have gotten. He’d left ranching for the big city, but what about his family? She knew about his brother, but he said that was all he had left. Was that why he didn’t have any personal effects around? Any pictures? And the still unanswered question, the one he’d dodged several times already. Why come back to ranching and Fly Creek?

  “So you’ve been playing with people’s money all these years?”

  He sat back abruptly and shifted his gaze. “No. New York wasn’t what I expected it to be.”

  Of course it wasn’t.

  Adam continued. “I moved to Chicago and worked for a bank in the agricultural industry, helping farmers with loans.”

  That seemed more like a blend of his upbringing and education. “Why did you leave?” And come here.

  “Because I couldn’t do it anymore. Too many of them reminded me of my father. They were robbing Peter to pay Paul. Destroying their families in the process. Liquor on their breaths and I bet scores of women in their past.” He closed his eyes and his shoulders rose in tension, white knuckles gripping the sides of the rocker. “I couldn’t be the one to help destroy these people, these families anymore.”

  Emily’s heart broke for this man. For his lost childhood. For his years searching and running from a way of life when it was a person to blame. A person that drove the problem. And she knew, at this moment, he still didn’t see that. So why?

  “Why did you move here? Why come back to ranching? To the memories.”

  She waited but he was closing up. Hitting the point where talking about his past, and by now it was obvious he had one, became too much. Maybe this was the opening she needed. The one she’d been looking for. If she took the lead, trusted him with everything, then maybe he would return the trust.

  As she glanced out over the darkened yard, the river not visible but still audible, she smiled. It was fitting that she would be beside the water as she relayed her past to someone who was helping her get her future.

  “I’m from Pennsylvania.”

  Adam’s mouthed dropped open, his eyes rapidly scanning her face. She had no idea what he was looking for, but she didn’t care. She’d taken the first step. Time for everything else to follow.

  “I moved here three years ago after…after an accident.”

  “Emily, you don’t—”

  She reached across the small table between the rockers and placed her hand on top of his. “I want to. But even more important, I need to.”

  He swallowed hard and nodded. Adam rever
sed the position of their hands and squeezed.

  “The accident took the life of someone. Someone I loved, or maybe still love to this day, and there are times I think I’ll never forgive myself for surviving. In fact, for the past three years I’ve felt that way.” She closed her eyes, the confession too potent to divulge while looking at him. “But I don’t want to anymore.”

  The words poured out of Emily. The canoe ride on the river. Drew taking off his life vest so he could remove his shirt. The canoe tipping and spilling them into the rough current, dangerous after days of rain. Her searching for him but eventually pulled to shore. Their dog finding her way as well. The search and rescue. Days of combing the river.

  “They never found the body,” she whispered. “I never got to say good-bye to him.”

  She told him about their dog going missing the next day and never being found. She talked about losing her job and fleeing west to Fly Creek. How to this day she still could not set foot in any body of water.

  “Can you see why I went off over Mel’s canoe trip? I know it’s irrational. People are on water all the time and most of them never have an ounce of trouble. But…”

  “But you care about Peyton and Mel.”

  She nodded. God, she did care about them. She may barely know them, but they had already slipped into that potential I-want-to-know-them-more-please-don’t-let-anything-happen-to-them category. And joining them was the man across from her.

  …

  Between the lump in Adam’s throat and the dead feeling in the pit of his stomach, he couldn’t manage a single word. She’d done it. She’d opened up to him, spilled her guts, acknowledged her fear and taken the final step toward truly living again. And he was about to destroy it. But there were things he wanted to know. Things that seemed important that he wouldn’t get to ask her once she left.

  He swallowed several times before he could speak. “I’m sorry. Words that are inadequate, but I do understand loss. Your loss.” That was true on so many levels. He’d lost Drew, too. Drew had been a part of his life since he’d had a life. Had he ever allowed himself to grieve? He shook his head. “I don’t know what’s worse. Lingering deaths, where people slowly and systematically fall apart.” He watched his mother die that way for years thanks to his father and his self-destructive ways. “Or abrupt losses that leave us with so many unanswered questions.”

  She managed a small smile. “I don’t know the answer, as I’ve never faced the first kind.” She gripped his hand tighter. “I’m guessing you have and I’m sorry. Maybe neither’s worse. Maybe they’re both horrible in their own way, but the ways they alter us, leave their mark on us…perhaps that’s where the difference and the depth of horribleness resides?”

  Adam couldn’t breathe. She’d managed to sum up something he hadn’t known was eating away at him. He’d run from his home, his parents because he couldn’t stand by and watch his mom become nothing. He couldn’t stand the town whispering and pitying him and Levi and their mother, and yet do nothing. He’d tried to reason with her. But when he left, he’d abandoned her, hadn’t he? Was that the mark her subsequent death left on him? Had he buried and hated the ranch and his home and even small towns because they reminded him that he’d been just as much to blame as anyone else? Was he letting his past control his future as much as Emily was? Why had he really run? Why had Emily?

  “Why Fly Creek?” It seemed selfish to ask her when he’d purposely avoided answering the same question, but it was the one thing he didn’t know. The one unknown in the triangle that was Drew, Emily, and Adam.

  She drew her knees up and let go of his hand to wrap her arms around them. “It’s going to sound silly, but at the time it seemed like a sign, the only thing that made sense.” Emily turned her head to look at him, resting her cheek on her knee. “Drew wanted to open a dude ranch. One like Sky Lake. He’d talked and talked about it with me, how nothing was like living surrounded by mountains and water and horses. How showing people that kind of life would bring satisfaction he couldn’t describe. He’d told me that he used to think that kind of life was a dead end. Hard work leading to more work with no equal compensation in return, but that the more he got away from it in the city, the more he craved it. Knew it was what his soul needed. After his death, I found the pamphlet for Sky Lake and…”

  Adam didn’t finish her sentence. They both knew why she’d come here. He shifted in the rocker, unable to look at her. Not from disgust or even jealousy, but because her confession didn’t fit the picture of his life the past twelve years. Didn’t fit into the person he’d thought he was over the past twelve years. The person he thought Drew was. Drew had hated the ranch and small town life as much as he. They’d spent hours talking about why it sucked and how they would escape and never look back.

  Betrayal tightened his chest. Drew had not only looked back, he’d planned to come back. Something he never shared with Adam. Did he think Adam wouldn’t understand? Well, he would have been right. He didn’t understand. He didn’t understand anything anymore. His whole adult life, the foundation he built it upon was washing away leaving him with a crumbly base and no idea what to form it into.

  He felt Emily looking at him, and when he met her gaze, he knew he could love her. Knew she was a woman whose strength moved mountains, who had overcome grief and helped bring his future into focus.

  He had to tell her. Now was the time. She needed to know his connection to her. His promise to Drew. It was the only way they stood the smallest chance of a future together. And he would tell her everything. Her fear of water, even now evident by the tell–tale jumps she showed each time a splash echoed up the lawn, proved she needed to know. But he had to make sure she knew that whatever else Drew may have been lying about, his love for her was true. Drew’s love for her was what fueled his promise and brought Adam into her life to take care of her.

  And he wanted to take care of her. God, he wanted to take care of her for as long as she would have him. She’d dug herself out of a self-imposed exile and did so on her own, with very little nudging. That woman was worth his undivided attention.

  But as soon as he spoke, her eyes, which looked at him with such raw honesty and emotion, would turn cold and flat. She would retreat. But he could no longer keep it a secret. He wanted more from her, and if he ever had a chance in hell to make it work despite all the hurdles they faced, he would have to put all the cards on the table. Leaving him to play to win with the deck stacked against him.

  “Emily, I need—”

  “Shhh. The only thing you need to do right now is take me inside and hold me. Spend the night in my arms. Draw support from one another. Tomorrow we can talk more.”

  Tell her. Stop being selfish and focus on her.

  Instead, Adam stood and reached for her hand. She gave it readily and he tugged her to him. She was right. They could talk in the morning. Tonight might be his last night in her arms, and his last chance to call upon the emotional connection they had. One brought about by a shared loss but strengthened by the people they were and the people they wanted to become. Would it be enough in the morning? He didn’t know, but he would do everything he could to make sure Emily White didn’t leave here tomorrow to crawl back into her solitary bubble.

  He led her through the French doors and up the stairs to the loft, cutting lights off as they went. Two large skylights bathed his room in moonlight and cast a filtered glow about the room. He led her straight to his bed and stopped. Cupping her face, his thumbs caressed her cheeks and then he placed his lips lightly on hers.

  “Whatever you need from me, I’ll give.”

  She smiled. “Just your arms and hands holding me. Keeping me safe.”

  They lay down side by side and Adam gathered her up. Her head was pillowed on his chest, and her fingers spread across his heart. He dropped a kiss on her hair. If only this was how it could be. Him protecting her, holding her, keeping all the bad stuff away.

  Just before drifting off, Emily whispered, “I
want you to stay in Fly Creek.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Emily stretched, the sheets shifting along her skin and reminding her that she was beautifully naked. Last night. My God, the night was a blend of remembering her past and focusing on the future. Adam provided hope. His touches reverent, his caresses full of care and concern. He treated her like she was a rare piece of art and yet made her feel confident enough to stand on her own two feet.

  I love him.

  The joyous thought settled into her heart, mending the organ she thought destroyed three years ago. She didn’t know how it would work, what their future might entail, but hearing his story last night gave her more insight. Information on how to get him to realize that it wasn’t small town and ranching that propelled him aimlessly through life; it was his father and their history together.

  Emily rolled to face Adam only to find the bed empty. Rubbing her hand along his pillow, cold to the touch, she found a piece of paper. She sat up, clutching the sheet to her chest, and read the message left for her.

  Storm overnight took out some fences. Down the road at the paddock on the river.

  Be back soon. Adam.

  Smiling, she held the note to her chest and tried to bring order to the emotions filtering through her. Should she leave? Wait him out? Go see him in his element? Maybe watching him would help her argument that he was running from his dad, not ranching per se.

  Decision made, she jumped out of bed and threw on some leggings and a tunic. Pulling on her turquoise and orange boots, she bounced down the stairs feeling lighter than she had in years. This was happening. She was firmly planted on the happiness road, and it was all because of Adam Conley.

  She stepped onto the porch and took a deep breath, the morning crisp and the sun already high, prepared to heat them up in no time. Adam said the paddock by the river and the river ran behind his house so surely it wouldn’t be too hard to find. She just hoped Adam wasn’t in the water. She may have made numerous strides, but she hadn’t quite cleared that hurdle.