Kissed by a Cowboy

by Debra Clopton

  Cassidy’s throat clogged with aching emotion and she blinked back tears.

  Jarrod glanced at her and then looked closer. “What’s wrong?” he asked gently.

  She shook her head and looked away. She’d been robbed, too, she realized. Jarrod’s hand on her arm halted the horses in the yard. “What are you thinking about?”

  “My marriage. Jack robbed me of eight years of my life. I don’t even like to think back to any of those years. I feel like it was wasted time.”

  “I can see that. But, Cass, it’s time to move on.”

  She stared at him, and the pain deep inside, the anger she had to tamp down deep so it wouldn’t flood out of her, caused her stomach to hurt and her chest to tighten. And the headache she hadn’t had for days suddenly thumped hard. She rubbed her temple.

  Jarrod was off his horse in an instant, and before she knew what was happening he reached up, circled her waist with his arm, and lifted her from the horse and into his arms. And he held her there. Her pulse shot to the sky and she stared into his eyes, stunned by his actions and the electrifying way she connected to the concern in his gaze as his eyes dug deep into hers.

  Emotions tangled between them and she couldn’t breathe.

  His eyes dropped to her lips and then yanked back to her eyes. “I can’t stand to see you hurt,” he growled. “I can’t.”

  She believed him, and when something inside of her ripped, she struggled to hold it together.

  He dropped his forehead to hers. “Tell me what happened the day you were hit by that car.” He pulled back. “And don’t say it was nothing. I saw you that day at the clinic when you fell and Clara Lyn was freaking out. You didn’t want to talk about it and you didn’t tell the whole story.”

  She couldn’t think in his arms, though. “Put me down and I’ll tell you.”

  He set her on her feet and she moved away from him. She’d wanted him to kiss her. To continue holding her. She’d wanted . . . what she didn’t need. Telling him about her past was exactly what she needed to put the boundaries back in place. And that would keep her from letting down her guard.

  Jarrod hadn’t meant to hang on to her. He’d been angry talking about his dad as usual, but when he’d glanced at Cassidy his heart had almost ripped out at the pain he’d seen in her eyes. He’d had to dig deep. But then holding on to her he hadn’t wanted to let her go. He had to know what caused all that hurt inside of her.

  “I saw my ex with another woman. It wasn’t the first time. It was after he’d sworn once more—I don’t even remember how many times now—that he would never ever do it again. I had always believed him. Well, not exactly. I just stuck with him again and again, thinking this time he might have changed. But in reality I stuck with him because I just couldn’t accept the idea of divorce. That day when I saw him with someone else, I spun and ran. I didn’t look at the intersection. I just ran out in front of that car. We were separated at the time, and I had filed for divorce, but he’d been at me, trying to get me back. It was the oddest thing. He didn’t really want me but he didn’t want to let me go. My fear of being like my parents kept me confused and caused me to waffle on finalizing the breakup once and for all. I think that too was part of his game.”

  She stuffed her hands on her hips and scowled. “I don’t know exactly why he played the game, but I do know that a good, hard knock in the head was what I needed to wake me up. And that’s the truth.”

  He could barely control the scalding hot anger as it surged through him at her words, at the look on her face. “So he tried to get you back while he was continuing to cheat on you?”

  “Yes. Sick, huh? And then, after all that whining and begging he did, there I lay in that hospital in a coma. When I woke up the man was nowhere to be found. I’m sure he was with her.” She laughed bitterly. “Pretty stupid of me.”

  “Of him. Stupid of him.”

  She concentrated on petting Charity, then, taking the horse’s reins, she walked him to the barn. Jarrod led his horse and followed her.

  “That was it for me. I’m driving that rattletrap truck because I walked away from my eight-year marriage with almost nothing. It wasn’t worth the fight.”

  He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “After everything he put you through?”

  “I didn’t want to spend any more time negotiating, which was another stupid move on my part, not one I would recommend to most women or men who are in the same boat. At least by Texas law our assets were split down the middle, but he’d rung up so much debt—winin’ and dinin’ women is expensive, I found out. I’m positive he’d hidden assets somewhere, but it would have required a long fight for me to find them and I just wanted out.”

  “Understandable.” He looked at the ground.

  “Where does Charity go?” she asked in an impatient tone. He understood the feeling completely. He pointed to the second stall. She opened the latch and led her horse inside.

  He tied up his horse and quickly removed the saddle. His stomach knotted tight. He needed something to do, too, because he’d never wanted to punch a man’s lights out so bad in all of his life. Not even in his rowdy teen years. “The whole thing is perverted,” he gritted out as he dropped the saddle on the stand beside the stall.

  She laughed bitterly as she released the cinch and then slid off the saddle. She hadn’t forgotten what Pops taught her. “Tell me about it.” She pulled the saddle into her arms and carried it out of the stall and set it on the stand. “And now I have eight years of my life that are basically missing. Eight years just better lost than remembered.” She paused to look at him, her eyebrows knitted together over angry eyes. “Oh, they’re there, dadgumit. I just try hard not to think about them. They make me feel dirty, and so very foolish. It’s awful,” she drawled. “I wish . . . I wish that I’d awakened from that coma with the entire eight years lost to me.”

  “I never thought of it like that. You really got a raw deal, Cass. You didn’t deserve that. You really didn’t. But you need to let it go. I can see it’s tearing you up.”

  She pinned glittering eyes on him. “I can tell you the same thing about your dad.”

  “Point taken. But I can tell you again that your ex wins the award for the dumbest man alive for letting you go.”

  Her expression hardened. “He didn’t let me go. He fought hard to keep me, on his terms. Like I said, he had numerous flings, affairs, and flirtations for years and I stayed. It’s so humiliating to look back on now. He used so many mind games to keep me, like ‘I can’t live without you.’ Yeah, right. But there I was, afraid I was like my parents. The thought of adding divorcée to my identity killed me. I was floundering between fear and the need to cut the toxic ties when I was hit by the car. I seriously can’t stand this angry person living deep down inside of me.”

  He saw the pain and anger flashing in her eyes. “It’s his loss, you know. How long has it been?”

  Pushing her to talk about her ex was crazy, but Jarrod couldn’t help it and he couldn’t explain it either.

  “No,” she grimaced. “The divorce was final three months ago, but as I said, we’d been separated for a year, living in separate houses, and for longer than that emotionally. You’re right, I should have divorced him a long time before I finally walked out. But I was the one to leave in the end. I truly didn’t want to continue my parents’ cycle, but I had tried everything.”

  She reached into the bucket and grabbed a brush, then slipped through the gate and began brushing down Charity. She brushed for a moment, then pointed the brush at him. “And biblically too, there was that . . .” She swung back, working briskly but carefully. “I went to counseling by myself trying to fix my marriage. Can you believe that? I learned quickly that one person can’t save a marriage. It takes two, both wanting it to change. All he wanted me for was to manipulate and control. But to love and be faithful was too much to ask of him.” Her shoulders slumped and she dropped her forehead to the horse’s shoulder, her hand resting on it
s neck. “I was such a fool.”

  Jarrod forced himself to keep his cool. No matter what she said, to stay with her ex through all of that, she’d loved him. Surely she couldn’t have let him treat her so callously if she hadn’t. Jarrod couldn’t believe even as much as she despised divorce that her fear of that outcome could have held her.

  “Do you still love him?” He couldn’t help asking, though the thought made him sick.

  She spun toward him, her eyes and mouth twisted with disgust and horror. “No. Are you kidding me? My love for Jack, if I ever really had any, died long ago. A person can take only so much before love dies. I was there out of duty, obligation maybe to the vows I took before God. And to stop the cycle of divorce in my family.”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “I have to work hard not to hate him. Believe me, I’m not that good either. I try to live a good life, but my faith is a little ragged at the moment. I can’t love unconditionally. My actions don’t seem to show that because I didn’t follow through with the divorce immediately, but it’s the truth.” She shuddered and turned back to her horse, gave a few more swipes, then just stood there. “Me being a fool wasn’t about love but about staying there too long.”

  He moved to stand beside her and covered her hand with his, stilling the brushing. “I’m glad you’re starting over. Cass, no one could hold something so awful against you. You deserve better.”

  She glanced at him. “All I want now is peace. I’ve learned my lesson finally and I’ll never ever have to go through this again. I’m never taking vows again. I’ll never have to weigh the merit of the vow ‘for better or worse.’ I’m done.”

  The pain and conviction in her words gripped him. “That’s pretty harsh.”

  Her shoulders slumped. “It might be harsh, but now you know what kind of emotional junk I lived through. This, talking about it, thinking about it, brings it out of the darkness where I shoved it. It makes me feel like I’m reliving it all over again.”

  He scowled now. “Maybe talking about it is good for you. And believe me, I know about deep, dark anger. I have some of that shoved into the corners too. Sometimes you have to let things go. And while we’re on that topic, your parents’ mistakes, remember only they know why they were not able to stay in a relationship. You had solid reasons for walking away.”

  This conversation had gone way out of bounds.

  “Did I? I took a vow that in the end I couldn’t live with.”

  He didn’t like how hard she was being on herself. “So you’re telling me the Lord would require you to stay in that sort of marriage? I don’t believe that. If you want to get into a debate about it, I believe the Lord understood that when trust is broken, sometimes a relationship is irrevocably damaged. I certainly don’t believe the person who was wronged in the relationship should be the one to suffer and have to live with all the junk created by the other party. I just don’t believe he’d hold that against you. And verses in the Bible back that up. I think in Ephesians or Corinthians. You made a mistake, Cass. Nowhere near breaking your parents’ records either.” His blood pressure was in outer space.

  And she was turning a deep rose, either from anger or embarrassment. “I was to blame too. I had very poor judgment.” She winced. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, so to speak.”

  “Hogwash. So you’re saying because my dad happened to be a lying, gambling jerk who tossed his own dad and everything he’d worked for to the wolves to supply his selfish addiction that I should give up because I’m going to be just like him?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I’m not saying that.”

  “Then you need to get past this.” The horses nickered around them, reminding him that they were standing in the barn. Looking at her, he understood that everything that had come before in his life wasn’t important in the context of the future he wanted with her. The realization caused him to feel lightheaded.

  “Cassidy, from this point on, nothing behind you matters. You’ve taken a step to a new future, so let the past go. Let the anger go.”

  He stepped close and took her by the shoulders. “Cass, if you keep that mind-set, then I don’t stand a chance of proving to you that I made the biggest mistake of my life nine years ago. That night I kissed you, then ran like a scared pup. I should have grabbed hold of you and never let you go.”

  She inhaled a sharp breath.

  He tugged her a step closer to him. “If I’d done that then you wouldn’t be standing here in all this pain. Cass, I want a shot at showing you that I—”

  “Stop.” She spoke while softly trying to yank away from him. He held her firmly, unable to let go.

  “Cass, we need a shot as adults to see what we could be together.” He pulled her close, cupped her face with one hand and caressed her cheek with the pad of his thumb. And then he lowered his lips to hers.

  19

  Jarrod’s lips claimed Cassidy’s with the firm pressure of a man who knew what he wanted. Her knees went weak. Cassidy melted against him, as if all the years between the first kiss and now had vaporized and only this was left. His hands moved to hold her close, and his mouth worked over hers with passion that drew a response from her just as passionate.

  She was breathless when he lifted his head from hers, a dazed look in his eyes as he stared into hers. And then he kissed her again, and she could not pull away, though warning bells were ringing in her ears. Her arms went around him and she clung to him as joy sang through her.

  “You’re an incredible woman, Cass,” he murmured against her lips. “I have wanted to kiss you from the moment you opened the door last night before dinner at the house.”

  Cassidy’s hand rested on his heart and she let the world slowly stop spinning. What was she doing? She couldn’t step into another emotional situation. The way her heart was thundering, and looking into Jarrod’s eyes, she knew she might not be able to survive an inevitable breakup with him.

  She shook her head. She’d already opened up too much with him.

  Exposed the rawness of her heart, her soul.

  “I can’t do this. I can’t.” Pushing out of his arms, she stalked from the barn and into the brilliant sunlight. It burned through the fog of her muddled brain and clarity shone through once more.

  Her cheeks burned from the embarrassment of flooding Jarrod with her failure of a past and then falling into his arms. She was mortified—and miffed.

  With Jack, she’d been a victim of her own making. And she had vowed to never, ever do that again. She knew that with Jarrod she was far more vulnerable than she’d ever been with Jack.

  “Cassidy, hold up.” He caught her and took her arm, turning her. “You’re just going to walk away?”

  “That’s what you did the last time you kissed me.”

  He grimaced. “That was a mistake.”

  “And this kiss wasn’t? I just told you my whole sordid past. And that I’m not ever doing this again.” She waved a hand. “I wasn’t just saying that. I am not going through that ever again.”

  “Cass, I was young and that kiss scared the daylights out of me and I ran. But I’m not like that jerk. I would never hurt you like that.”

  “Don’t, Jarrod. I can’t do this.”

  Silence stretched between them as the heat of the day set in and hung around them.

  He held her gaze, his jaw tense as the moments passed.

  “Fine. For now. Let’s go catch some rustlers.” He strode past her up the steps and to the back door. He pulled the door open and held it for her, his expression grim.

  Fine. She was angry too. Anger was good. It put a wedge between them. She didn’t move at first. But they’d never get back to where they’d been earlier if she didn’t. She followed him up the steps and moved past him into his home. His scent, leather and spicy, clung to her, and she had to yank her thoughts away from thinking about how good the cowboy smelled as she passed him. Angry, she reminded herself.

  Here she’d told him every awful detail of her
past, something she’d never told anyone. And then she’d kissed the man like there was no tomorrow.

  Absolutely nothing about the experience made her feel better. The kissing, yes. Momentarily. But not airing her dirty laundry. And he’d thought it would help. The awful memories had not only given her an awful headache; they had made her vulnerable and weakened her resolve to be strong.

  She halted in the hallway so he could lead the way to wherever they were going. She would just have to let the kiss slide away and hopefully be forgotten.

  She had to salvage her pride somehow.

  “Do you live here alone?” She said the first thing that popped into her brain.

  He didn’t say anything for a moment, and she wondered if he’d let them get back on steady ground again.

  At last, with a look of impatience he ran a hand through his short hair. “Yeah, Cass. I live here alone. For several years I lived in the small cabin Pops built on the property. Since I’m not one to spend a lot of time indoors—and not one who enjoys the sound of four walls saying nothing—I never needed much space. But after Mom and Dad died, this place was just sitting here. I’ve always liked it so I moved in.” He was leading her through the den that was filled with brightly colored throws and dark furniture that had probably been his mother’s decorating. She couldn’t imagine Jarrod going shopping.

  “I wasn’t exactly sure how I’d handle it since, as you know, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind about things at that point. But I’ve done all right. And the cattle portion of the ranch was over here so it just made sense.”