by T. J. Kline
“I do need you, Clay. I always have.”
“JENNIFER, COME HERE.” Mike didn’t have to tell her he was disappointed in her. She could hear it loud and clear in his tone. “What is going on with you today?”
“I don’t know.”
She knew exactly what was going on. Her gaze slid over the cowboys on horseback who were waiting at the back gate of the arena for the next event to begin. Clay laughed with Scott, his hat pulled low on his forehead. His eyes met hers, and she looked away quickly. She had to get her head on straight. Having Clay at the rodeo was doing exactly what she had worried it would—distracting her, scattering her focus.
“You forgot the flag at the other end of the arena, you were late getting in before the calf roping, and now you lose your hat? Why don’t you just let the queen do the flag runs? You can head up to the announcer’s booth.”
Tears of frustration burned behind her eyelids. “No, I’m fine,” she insisted.
Mike followed the direction of her gaze as she looked toward Clay again. “No, you aren’t.” He laid a hand on her shoulder. “Go, take a break. Get some water or something. Have one of the boys take you to get your truck. Something.”
“I’m fine,” she repeated, hoping that saying it again would make it true.
“Jen, I hate to see you like this.” Mike had never tried to be her father, even after he’d accepted guardianship of Jen and her brothers. But even though he’d been more like their cool uncle, she could see the parental concern in his eyes.
“Then don’t hire him back, Mike. You know he’s going to bail on you again.”
Mike took a step backward. She could see her brutal honesty surprised him. “Jen, we need an experienced pickup man for Lancaster next weekend. I don’t have time to find someone else, and we both know Derek isn’t ready for something this serious.”
“Please, Mike,” she whispered, hating the weakness in her pleading. The longer Clay was around, the more danger to her heart.
“We don’t have a choice unless we want to cancel next week’s rodeo.” They both knew they couldn’t do that. Rodeo committees planned all year for these events, booking stock contractors at least twelve months in advance. “It’s only one week,” he promised.
Jen watched Mike walk away, hurrying back to the announcer’s booth, and she wondered if he wasn’t trying to escape. Without Silvie, their housekeeper and resident “mom” who had stayed behind to care for the ranch, Jen had no one who understood the emotional turmoil Clay caused in her. None of the men in her life were equipped to understand the confusing gamut of female emotions seeing him had woken. One minute she hated him, and the next she wanted to throw herself into his arms. She despised her weakness for wanting to be near him even as she loathed herself for pushing him away. How did you let go of the one person you wanted to hold onto the most?
She watched Clay working his event. He was majestic to watch on horseback. He looked like he was born to ride, moving with such fluidity that it could only be described as graceful, even if it wasn’t a manly term. There was nothing feminine about him. Well over six feet of sheer muscle mass, he lifted bronc riders onto the backs of their horses like they were rag dolls. Yet, despite his size and brute strength, she knew from experience how gentle he could be. His touch had never been anything but tender, treating her like she was made of delicate porcelain. Except for the one part of her he chose to break.
She turned away from the gate and hurried to her trailer. She might as well start getting things packed up to head back to the ranch after the rodeo. Scott and Derek could stay and close up the deal with the rodeo committee. She was heading home tonight, even if it meant driving solo. She wasn’t spending another night with Clay Graham on her couch if she could help it.
CLAY LOCKED THE door of the fifth-wheel as he came around from the front of the truck to where Mike was inspecting the back of the trailer. “Okay, the brake lights are fine. You’re ready to go,” Mike informed him.
“Whose bright idea was this again?” The broad smile that spread over Mike’s face left no answer necessary. Clay rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Jen’s made it pretty clear she doesn’t want anything to do with me at this point.”
Mike laughed at Clay. “You know Jen better than that by now. Give her a little time, and don’t push.” He grew serious for a moment. “She never stopped loving you, you know, but you really messed up when you left. You need to tell her why you did it. Don’t you think you owe her at least that?”
Clay caught the keys Mike tossed his way in midair. “No. No way.” He shook his head. “I’m not going to burden her with that.”
“They’re your family, Clay. A part of you. She’s not going to see it as a burden. If you would have just been honest in the first place, you’d never been in this position now.”
“I couldn’t tell her then, and I’m not going to now, so let it go, Mike.”
“If you don’t tell her the truth, you’ll never get her back,” the older man warned.
“I didn’t come here to get her back. I didn’t even come here to get my old job back.”
“Then why the hell did you come, Clay?” Mike took a step forward, standing toe-to-toe with him. Mike might think of Clay as family, but right now he was protecting the woman he’d raised as his daughter. “If you hurt her again . . . ”
“I’m not trying to hurt her, Mike.” Clay stepped back, letting the tension dissipate. He didn’t want to fight with Mike, but he was right. His presence was hurting Jen. He either needed to fix this situation or walk away and never look back. “I’ll make this right. I’ll tell her as much as I can.”
Mike shook his head in disbelief. “You can tell me or Scott, even Derek, but not her?”
“You guys won’t try to fix the situation or fix me. You and Scott understand that this is something I had to deal with, that I’m still dealing with. You won’t put yourselves into danger trying to help.”
“And I thought I was clueless when it came to women,” Mike muttered. “She’s not trying to fix you; she’s trying to share a life with you. That means the good and bad, in either of your lives. Including your past.”
JEN STARED OUT the window, irritated that the macho chauvinist had insisted on driving. It was bad enough he was coming back to the ranch at all, but did he have to drive her truck too? She would much rather have driven home with Derek. Hell, she would have even driven one of the stock trailers if it would have kept her from sitting in the passenger seat next to Clay. And what in the world possessed Clay to let Derek drive his horses and rig back to the ranch tomorrow? The entire thing smelled like a setup, and she didn’t like it.
“So, whose idea was it for you to drive back to the ranch with me and leave your rig with Derek?”
“They wouldn’t tell me when I asked the same question.” He glanced in her direction and grinned. “My money is on Mike.”
“Or Scott,” she suggested.
He pointed a finger at her in agreement. “You’re probably right. Or they’re in cahoots.”
She arched her brow. “Cahoots? What are you, eighty? Who even says that?”
Maybe if they could talk about other things, other people, anything other than themselves and their past, this next week wouldn’t be a disaster, and the rest of this three-hour drive home would be bearable. Maybe if they could find some common ground of friendship, they could avoid the land mines their past relationship seemed to trigger.
Clay gave her a lopsided smile. “I’ve missed this. We used to joke around all the time.”
And there went any hope she held out for the next few hours. “Clay, don’t,” she warned.
“Don’t what? You know, you never let me explain.”
“Because you were kissing me, not explaining.”
She saw his gaze shift in her direction, settling briefly on her mouth before he turned back to the road. “You didn’t seem to mind.”
“Don’t mistake my apathy for enjoyment.” She was lying th
rough her teeth and they both knew it, but she wasn’t about to confess anything to him.
“Apathy, huh?” He glanced her way again, and she shifted nervously under his heated gaze. “So, if I were to—”
“Don’t go there. Find something else to talk about, or I’ll turn the radio on and sing at the top of my lungs.”
“Okay,” he said with a chuckle. “Anything but that.”
She knew he was kidding. It was common knowledge for anyone who’d spent time at the ranch that she loved country music, but she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. She didn’t care. She found pleasure in torturing those around her with her personal musical stylings, even if it was bad enough to send the barn cats into hiding.
This was the easy friendship she remembered between them, the relationship she regretted losing. She missed having him there to offer advice when Derek almost didn’t graduate high school because a teacher accused him of losing a textbook. She missed laughing with him when Scott screamed like a woman after Derek dropped a rope by the water trough in the corral, making it look like a snake. She missed crying on his shoulder when she woke from another nightmare where her mother was reaching out from the fiery crash. More than anything else, she missed the way he would stand behind her and wrap his arms around her, making her feel completely enveloped and safe, while he whispered into her ear how far and wide and forever his love was.
Regret and longing twined in her chest, wrapping around her lungs and making her feel like she couldn’t catch her breath. The playfulness of the moment was gone, lost again to her memories and the bitterness that always trailed closely behind. He seemed to sense the change in her and reached for the radio knob, in spite of his words.
“Wait.” Her hand reached out and covered his. Electricity seemed to jump from the connection, traveling up her arm and shocking her heart. “Just tell me why you left. No excuses. One minute you were there and we were happy, and the next you were gone. Why?”
Clay withdrew his hand from under her fingers as if her touch burned. “Are you sure you want to do this here? Now?” His gaze met hers for a brief moment before returning to the road, but she could see the honesty in his eyes. And the fear. “I can’t explain everything.”
He ran a hand over his face. “The first thing you need to know is that I loved you from the first moment I saw you, Jennifer.” When she didn’t say anything, he went on. “I planned on marrying you, on spending the rest of my life with you, but after you said yes, I realized how little I had to offer you.”
Clay shook his head. “I was only twenty-two, you were barely twenty, and you already had a family to take care of. I couldn’t support all of you, and I didn’t want to live off Mike’s charity.”
She interrupted him. “You think that’s what we’ve done?”
“No, I . . . damn it. That’s not what I meant.” He looked at the road, avoiding her questioning gaze. “You three have built this company with Mike, but I’m just the loser who would have been milking my wife’s hard work. I couldn’t do that.”
“Clay—”
“Hear me out. You deserved far more than I could ever offer you. I got scared you’d realize it, and I ran.”
She could hear the anguish in his voice. “You left because you thought you weren’t good enough for me? Clay, you never had to earn my love,” she whispered. “It was always yours.”
“I wanted to save you from making a mistake. And I had to close a few chapters of my life.”
She stared at him, silent for so long that he finally turned to look at her. As much as she wanted to believe him, her instinct told her he was holding back. He said there were some things he couldn’t explain. Couldn’t or wouldn’t, she wondered. This wasn’t making sense.
“I was old enough to tell you I loved you, to share my bed with you, but not to make the decision to marry you?”
“I don’t know how to explain what I was thinking. I thought you’d look back down the road and regret our life together, so I made the decision for you.” He reached for the front of his baseball cap and shifted the hat on his head. “In retrospect, I made a mistake, but at the time, I thought I was doing the right thing. I was protecting you.”
“I’m not buying this, Clay. I want to, believe me. What do you mean, ‘protecting me’?”
He shifted his eyes back to the road, refusing to meet hers again. “I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
“The truth.” She rubbed her hands along the top of her thighs, trying to work out the details in her mind. “Even if what you’re telling me is true, why did you call Scott and Mike? Why didn’t you ever return my calls? Why did you stay away so long?” She turned to face him, her hand at the back of the seat next to his shoulder. “Why did you come back now?”
The muscle in his jaw was ticking. She could see that wall rising up again, spreading the chasm between them and making her wonder if the gap was too wide to ever bridge.
“Clay, you wanted a chance to explain, so explain. I want to know, please.”
He barely glanced her way, but she didn’t miss the way his hands gripped the steering wheel, turning his knuckles white. Or the way his nostrils flared and his lips pinched together. Without saying another word, he reached forward and turned on the radio, effectively cutting off any further discussion and any hope she had for understanding what had gone wrong.
Chapter Five
JEN WOKE THE next morning to silence in the kitchen downstairs. Usually the cacophony of her brothers and Mike and any of the crew who snuck in to be fed by Silvie was enough to wake the dead. She glanced at her nightstand, wondering if she had overslept, but the clock simply blinked back at her, indicating that they’d lost power at some point after she’d fallen asleep last night. She flung the blankets back and jumped from the bed, hurrying to grab her cell phone from the dresser against the wall. If the sun filtering through her window was any indication, it was after eight, and she needed to get started grooming the horses before the boys arrived this afternoon.
She glanced at the phone. How in the world had she managed to sleep until nine? The horses must be starving by now. She rushed through her morning routine, only taking a quick swipe through her tresses with the brush before pulling her hair under a baseball cap and tossing on an old T-shirt with a comfortable pair of jeans. She slid her feet into her worn Ropers, hurrying down the stairs and into the kitchen.
“I already fed them.” Clay sat at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of coffee, his legs crossed casually at the ankles.
“Uh, thanks?”
“Is that a question?” He quirked a brow as he took another sip of the brew. “I just started a fresh pot. Silvie headed into town to the grocery store before everyone comes home this afternoon.” He pushed the chair in front of him out with his foot. “Sit, I’ll fix you something for breakfast.”
She wanted to sit, to pretend that this was what they did every day, like any normal couple. But they weren’t a regular couple anymore. He’d turned his back on that normalcy. He’d even rejected her offer of forgiveness yesterday. If only he would explain. Then they could move forward, past this stubborn stalemate, into some semblance of tolerance.
Irritation at his blasé attitude burned in her chest as she moved toward the cabinet and reached for a travel mug, ignoring the chair. “I have work to do today. You know, horses to be ridden and groomed, and stalls to clean before the boys get home. But by all means, you should feel free to put your feet up and relax until they get home today.” She grabbed a piece of fruit from the bowl Silvie kept filled on the kitchen table and clipped the lid over the top of her mug before waltzing out the back door.
She didn’t have time to bicker with him today, but, oh, how the thought of the two of them, alone on the ranch, made an unwelcome sizzle of excitement spiral to parts of her long ignored.
CLAY WATCHED HER go, cursing himself for his stupidity. What the hell was wrong with him? He should have just told her the truth yesterday when she asked. His p
ride was going to ruin every good thing in his life, just like it always had. Jen would have understood the need to take care of family; she’d been doing it for years with her brothers. What she wouldn’t understand was his need to leave again, to keep her safe from his past.
He walked to the back door and watched her head for the barn. Clay thought about following her for a second, but he’d never seen Jen like this before. Maybe Mike was right: he needed to be careful not to push her too much, but he wasn’t about to let her get too far from his sight.
“I’ll clean the stalls. Just go ahead and work the horses,” he called after her. He saw her raise a hand in acknowledgment.
There was nothing friendly in her gesture, nothing to give him any hope that they might be able to rebuild their friendship. At least she didn’t flip me the bird.
He wasn’t sure why it even mattered, since he wasn’t staying. Mike had asked him to stay for a week until Jake returned, so unless he wanted to marry the woman and put the whole family in jeopardy, he was just making it harder on both of them when it came time for him to leave.
Marry her? Where had that thought come from?
Jen had no intention of being in the same room as him right now, let alone marrying him. He’d had his chance, and he’d tossed it away.
Clay wandered onto the porch, watching Jen as she walked through the aisleway of the barn. Damn, that woman could stir him in ways no other could. She might be a tomboy, but beneath her rough-and-tumble exterior, she was all soft femininity. She’d always worked as hard as any of the men on the ranch, probably even harder. He remembered nights when she’d helped both Scott and Derek with their homework before heading back out to groom the animals after sending the boys off to bed. While they attended school, she’d worked her butt off on the ranch, sacrificing her own education to make sure they both got degrees. She hadn’t taken the role of mothering them lightly. Nor had she slacked off on becoming a shrewd businesswoman. So far, she’d marketed their company better than any of them, helping the business grow from a small-town contractor to an elaborate, full-scale operation, with several full-time employees on the crew.