She didn’t like the word humble or what it implied. The only time she’d actually felt humble was holding her newborn son in her arms and that was because, in her opinion, she was in the presence of a living, breathing miracle.
“I see things a little differently now,” she informed him.
Cole reached the front door, opened it and crossed the threshold.
For just a moment, she debated saying goodbye and closing the door after him, terminating the exchange before it went any further. But, for the most part, the evening had gone a lot better than she had thought it would. She wasn’t entirely ready to see it end just yet.
So she followed him out and then eased the door shut behind her.
Just before she did, she glanced one last time toward the living room. By now, not only was her son asleep, but her father appeared to be dozing, as well. She noticed that her father was given to dropping off when she least expected it. She fervently hoped it was just because he was recovering from the accident and not because he was wearing out.
Her father had always been a strong, vital man. He’d been her very first hero. She didn’t want to think of him any other way. Heroes didn’t wear out, they suffered temporary setbacks after being injured, she thought fiercely.
“Thank you for being so patient with Christopher,” she said as she joined Cole on the porch. “I know he can get to be a bit much.”
“Nothing to thank me for,” Cole told her honestly. “Kid’s a regular live wire.” He watched her and wondered how even she was going to handle this latest development. “I’ve got a feeling he’s going to be tough to keep up with in a few years.”
“A few years?” she echoed with a laugh, forgetting, for a moment, to feel tense. “Try now. Christopher is pure energy from morning until night. I was really surprised he conked out just now. And really, I mean it. Thanks for answering all his questions like that.”
Another adult would have lost patience and told the boy to go away and play. Christopher would have gone, but she knew it would have really hurt his feelings. He’d taken to Cole faster than she’d ever seen him take to anyone.
There’s a reason for that.
She shut out the voice, refusing to let it get to her.
“I know he took it to heart,” she told Cole. “I think it’s safe to say that you’ve just become his new hero.”
“He doesn’t interact much with his dad?” Cole asked.
Not until today.
The thought flashed through her mind. Ronnie did what she could to seal herself off, to lock away any stray, telltale emotion that could unwittingly betray her.
With a stoic voice, she said, “No.”
“Shame.” Cole shook his head. There were situations beyond his understanding. “His dad doesn’t know what he’s missing.”
“No,” she agreed. “He doesn’t.” She needed to change the subject before her guilty conscience got the better of her and had her confessing everything. And ruining everything. “This was nice. Tonight,” she explained when he looked at her quizzically—at the same time causing her stomach to knot itself up. “Thanks.”
The slight noise that escaped his lips sounded like an abbreviated laugh. “You keep thanking me for things you shouldn’t be thanking me for,” he told her. And then he paused to weigh his words, debating whether or not he wanted to commit to them. He decided to forge ahead. It wasn’t as if he had anything to lose. “It’s not like I exactly suffered through this tonight.”
Her eyes on his, she asked, “You didn’t?”
Was that her playing these games? Being coy? What had come over her? She’d always been blunt, honest, meeting every challenge head-on. What you saw was what you got, that was her. This was suddenly a different side—and she didn’t think she liked it. And yet, here she was, playing it.
“No,” he replied quietly, meeting her gaze with his own, “I didn’t.”
Damn it, she still had that power over him, he recognized to his dismay. The power to make him want to forsake everything else in his life just for the chance to spend time with her.
Not true, a voice in his head countered. If it was, you would have gone with her when she left town.
The thing of it was, in the end, he would have. But she had never given him that last chance. Never asked him one last time to come with her. After they’d made love, she’d just left, without a note, an explanation, nothing. Left and cut out his heart with a jagged seashell.
More than his heart had been wounded that day. His pride had been shredded. The latter he’d pieced together, vowing never to allow such vulnerability again. But here he was, thinking things he shouldn’t be, wanting what would only wind up being bad for him in the end.
He noticed that the moon was out, surrounded by a blanket of stars. So many that if he’d wanted to, he would have been hard-pressed to count the number. It was the kind of night that people fancied that they needed to have when they discovered love.
Not that it existed.
He felt fairly certain love was a myth. A myth just like unicorns and flying horses were myths. Just when you thought you had this “love” thing nailed down, it disappeared on you as if it hadn’t existed to begin with—mainly because it hadn’t.
But if he did believe in it, and it actually did exist, he knew he would have been moved to kiss Ronnie just now, even after everything that had gone down between them before.
The moonlight was kind to her, bathing her in soft, compelling light, stirring up his insides again. It was beginning to feel as if they were permanently set on spin cycle.
For a moment, he stood there, looking into her eyes, struggling to win a fight he didn’t want to win. A fight, nonetheless, he knew he had to win. Because he’d been down this road before and it had led him nowhere, except to frustration.
And a great deal of pain.
He didn’t want to revisit that. Once was more than enough.
Ronnie held her breath, feeling her heart hammering against her rib cage. Just feeling. And knowing she shouldn’t be letting herself feel anything.
My God, six years away and the second she was back, the second she saw him, she was his all over again. Crazy about him all over again. How insane was that?
The years were supposed to bring wisdom, but all they seemed to bring, at least in her case, was age. Nothing more.
Still she stood there, willing him to take that last step. To take hold of her shoulders or lean over her and just do it.
Just kiss her.
Please, she silently begged.
The moment stretched out between them, until it threatened to snap.
Chapter Eight
What the hell was he thinking? Was he really that much of a glutton for punishment?
Kissing Ronnie would just take him down that same old road again—even more than he’d already gone. But even taking all that into consideration, that she was scrambling up his insides again, at least he had a fighting chance of getting over her once more if he didn’t give in to temptation.
If he kissed her, he’d be a goner. Any immunity that he might have hoped to build up would instantly vanish. Taking a deliberate step away from Ronnie, he touched his fingers to his hat, politely tipping it as if she were any other one of Redemption’s citizens and not the woman who had permanently vivisected his heart.
How could one woman manage to turn everything in his life on its ear this way? he couldn’t help wondering for what seemed to him to be the umpteenth time.
Cole had no more of an answer this time around than he’d had the first time he’d wondered about this—the first time he realized that he was in love with her. Even back then his very strong self-preservation streak warned him not to. Not to love Ronnie. Because loving someone made you vulnerable. It gave them a power over you that no mortal should have. A power they could so easily abuse. Just the way Ronnie had, however unwittingly.
It wasn’t fair, Cole thought. But then, he already knew that.
“I’ll see yo
u around, Ronnie,” he told her. “Call if you need anything.” And with that, he got into his truck and drove away.
Call if you need anything. His voice echoed the parting sentence in her brain. Yes, I need something, she thought, as exasperated as she was frustrated. I needed you to make the first move. I needed you to do it so I could pretend it was all out of my hands.
Disappointment seeped into her bones as she stood there, watching Cole’s truck disappear into the all-consuming darkness.
Damn it, what was she asking for? To be sucked back into that wild roller-coaster ride? Didn’t she have enough to deal with? Just exactly how much did she think she was up to handling? Running the ranch, looking after her father and Christopher, checking in on Wayne and now taking Juanita’s place. Even a superheroine had her limits, right?
Adding to her already spirit-breaking load by renewing her affair with Cole would be nothing short of disastrous because it wouldn’t be romantic and wonderful; it would be like trying to cross a tightrope on one foot. She’d be holding her breath the entire time, waiting for him to stumble across the truth—and then when he fi nally did, he would wind up hating her for the rest of both of their lives.
She knew she would in his place, if he’d kept something this huge from her.
Chilled, Ronnie ran her hands along her arms, trying to chase the feeling away. It wasn’t the kind of chill to respond to friction.
Ronnie reminded herself that she had to get up early tomorrow to get started on what seemed like an endless mountain of tasks. There was no time to linger, being lovesick and shadowboxing with regrets for things passed. That stagecoach had left town a long time ago.
Drawing in a very shaky breath, Ronnie turned on her heel and walked back into the house.
STANDING CALF-DEEP IN FRESH straw, Ronnie paused to wipe away yet another wave of sweat from her brow. She couldn’t seem to stop perspiring.
Like yesterday and the day before, she’d been up since before dawn, working first in the stalls, then out in the corral, eventually working her way back into the house and the books that needed updating and balancing.
But right now, she was entrenched in mucking out the stalls.
She’d forgotten, happily, what that was like. Forgotten what it felt like—and especially what it smelled like—to clean out the hay and everything it contained within each horse’s stall before putting down fresh straw for them.
She’d also forgotten what it was like to get up an hour before even God woke up in order to get a jump start on the day. But she had to get up at four if she had a prayer of getting to the long list of chores that were waiting to be done.
To her way of thinking, she was attempting to replace not just her brother but her father, as well. Amos McCloud might be up and about, but she wanted him to do nothing except concentrate on getting well. She couldn’t afford him suffering a relapse and winding up in the hospital. Though she wasn’t about to tell him to his face, the man wasn’t as strong as he used to be.
Damn, but her hands were aching from holding on to the pitchfork so tightly. Ronnie looked down at her palm. No wonder her hands hurt, she thought ruefully. She was forming calluses.
She looked at her other palm. If anything, it was even worse.
“Great, just what I wanted. Hands like a weather-beaten ranch hand,” she muttered in disgust and with maybe just a smattering of self-pity.
“That’s why the good Lord invented gloves. To keep a woman’s hands softer.”
The female voice made her jump. Swinging around, Ronnie found herself looking into the round, almost angelic face of Midge James.
Cole’s mother. What was she doing here?
Ronnie swept back her hair from her face. There was absolutely nothing she could tuck, smooth or dust away in order to make herself presentable, she thought self-consciously.
“Mrs. James, I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t hear you coming in.”
“Small wonder,” the woman observed, amused. “You’re moving so fast, that pitchfork you were holding was almost humming like a tuning fork. And please,” the older woman requested, coming closer, “at this point you can call me Midge. Hearing ‘Mrs. James’ always has me looking over my shoulder, expecting to see my late husband’s mother standing behind me, scowling and passing judgment. I wasn’t her favorite person,” she confided.
Resting the pitchfork against the side of the stall, Ronnie moved forward through the fresh mounds of straw she’d just set down. She took a deep breath and smiled at the woman, still wondering what she was doing here. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Lord, no.” Midge laughed, waving away the mere suggestion of putting the younger woman out. “The way I hear it, you’ve got more than enough to do right now. But there is something that I can do for you,” the woman added cheerfully.
Ronnie had no idea where this was going, or what Cole’s mother was talking about, but she was more than a little grateful for the excuse to grab a momentary respite from what she was doing.
“And that is?” she coaxed, recalling that Cole’s mother had always had a tendency to go the long way around when telling a story.
This time, apparently, would be no different. “Cole told me that your housekeeper, Juanita, had a family emergency to tend to.”
Ronnie nodded, hoping to egg the woman along. “Juanita’s sister needed an operation, so Juanita went to help out with the kids.”
Was Cole’s mother here to suggest the name of another housekeeper? If she was, the woman could have saved herself a trip. Her father was not about to allow a stranger to come live in his house. The story went that it had taken him a full year to get used to Juanita living with them and she knew how his mind worked. Her father would feel he was being extremely disloyal to Juanita if he allowed someone to come in to take her place, even temporarily.
Just as he’d felt he was being disloyal to his wife for bringing Juanita into the house all those years ago. Only his late sister-in-law Katie’s badgering had managed to convince him that this was the only way he could continue working his ranch and still be fair to his two motherless children.
“If you’ve got someone in mind to help out at the house,” Ronnie told Cole’s mother, anticipating her answer, “I’m afraid you’ve come all this way for nothing. My father’s a wonderful man but he’s not exactly the picture of hospitality when it comes to letting someone come live in his house.”
“Oh, I think he’d be amenable to this,” Midge replied, and then her eyes—they looked so much like Cole’s, Ronnie couldn’t help thinking—seemed to all but laugh on their own. “I’ve already been to the house. I went ahead and made a few meals for the three of you and took the liberty of putting them into the refrigerator for you.” As if anticipating Ronnie’s reaction, the woman quickly added, “I’ve got a few spare hours so I thought I’d help you out.”
“Thank you,” she said with genuine feeling. “But I really can’t impose on you like that.” She didn’t want anyone thinking she couldn’t take care of her own. Or that the McClouds needed help.
“You’re not imposing. I’m volunteering. There’s a big difference,” the woman pointed out with confidence. “Besides, I’ve already gotten started. I just wanted to come out and let you know I was here.”
This just didn’t seem right to her. This wasn’t the woman’s problem, it was hers to handle. “Mrs. James—”
“Midge,” the older woman corrected patiently, then added, “Please.”
“Midge,” Ronnie repeated, doing her best to be agreeable and to not let Cole’s mother see how awkward she felt about calling her by her first name. “I can’t let you do this.”
Gathering herself together, Midge made her pitch. “Veronica, I have much too much time on my hands. I really need to feel useful. Cole’s so self-sufficient it’s painful. Besides, his place is as big as a matchbox. Cleaning it takes half an hour—moving slowly. My own place is so clean you could eat off the floors if you had a mind t
o,” she allowed with a touch of pride that shone through. “I’ve got a very good man—Will Jeffers—running the ranch and there’s just not that much for me to do. If a body’s not being useful, they start to dry up. I don’t want to dry up, Veronica.”
Ronnie sighed. She had no choice but to give in. “I wouldn’t want to be responsible for you drying up,” she said as solemnly as she could manage.
Midge laughed. “Good girl. I’ve got lunch waiting for you whenever you feel like taking a little break,” she told Ronnie, retreating from the stall. And then she paused, as if suddenly remembering something. “Oh, by the way, that boy of yours—”
The very breath in Ronnie’s lungs turned solid. Did Cole’s mother suspect? Did she see something in Christopher’s face that made her think of Cole when he was that age? For the most part, Ronnie felt that the boy looked like her, but every so often, she saw traces of his dad in him. Did Cole’s mother see it?
She already had an excuse ready for that, that all little boys tended to look alike at his age. But she knew that it was a flimsy excuse at best.
“Yes?” Ronnie asked, bracing herself for the worst to happen.
“He’s just about the cutest little guy I’ve ever seen,” Midge told her. “And so polite,” she marveled. Smiling at Ronnie she added, “He’s a great credit to his mom.”
Relief was all but overwhelming as it washed over her. Ronnie was barely aware of nodding.
“Christopher’s a great little guy,” she agreed. “And smart as anything.” She took great pride in that. Picking up the pitchfork again, she said, “I’ll be there in a little while.”
Midge nodded. “I’ll come after you if you’re not,” the older woman promised. “You’re not going to do anyone any good if you wind up working yourself half to death and fainting from hunger, you know.”
Cole hadn’t inherited any of his mother’s penchant for exaggerating, she thought.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ronnie replied. The other woman began to walk away, back to the house. “And Mrs.— Midge,” she corrected herself at the last minute, calling after Cole’s mother.
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