Once Upon a Cowboy

by Maggie McGinnis

  Jess looked up at the water, mesmerized by how it fell through the air. “This is nothing like the falls we rode to yesterday. How did I never know this was here?”

  Cole smiled. “We don’t show it to just anybody.”

  “Good.” Jess breathed deeply, the scent of pines and water filling her nose. “Can we get closer?”

  “Sure.” He dismounted, then came around to the left side of Sky Dancer, reaching up to help her down. She hesitated before she put her hand in his, scared that she would like the feel of him far too much.

  “Come on, cowgirl. I know you’re perfectly capable of dismounting on your own. I’m trying to be a gentleman here.”

  She slid her hand into his, and was inordinately relieved to feel a warm, comforting, protective heat. And when both feet were on the ground, she fully intended to pull her hand back, but nestled there in Cole’s, it felt—good. Good.

  It didn’t feel like running.

  Didn’t feel like panic.

  Didn’t feel like…fear.

  —

  “You’re hurting me, Billy.” Star tried to pull her hand out of Billy’s iron grip as he yanked her through the back entrance doors of the mall. “Please let go.”

  “Not a chance.”

  Star cringed when she saw the ugly sneer cross his face. Oh no. She’d made him crazy.

  Again.

  She tugged. “Seriously, you’re holding me too hard.”

  “Should have thought of that before you started flirting with that asshole back there.”

  “Flirting? That was Garrett! We’ve been friends for, like, ever. I wasn’t flirting, I swear. We were just talking.”

  Billy continued to tug her through the parking lot as Star tried to stop him. “Come on, Billy. Let’s go back inside.”

  “No.” He pulled harder, and she squeaked in pain. “You have any idea how that looked to my guys in there?”

  “You’re overreacting, Billy. I was just talking to him. He’s just a friend!”

  “Looked like I ain’t got control over my woman, that’s how it looked.”

  Star felt a prickly steel rod lodge itself in her gut. Control over his woman?

  “I think maybe we need to have a little talk about what flirting looks like, Star. Seems you and me don’t necessarily agree.”

  Star’s stomach clenched at the words little talk. And now she knew why he’d parked so far away from the door. Tonight he needed a punching bag, and he’d manufactured himself a reason to make her it. She had about thirty seconds left before they reached his car—thirty seconds to plead her case and try to calm him down.

  She hated the person she was about to become, hated the pleading noises that were about to come out of her mouth, but his hand was huge, iron-like around her wrist. No way was he going to let her go. He knew she’d run.

  “I’m sorry, Billy. I didn’t mean to make you mad. Come on. Let’s go back in.”

  “No.”

  “Ow!” Star felt tears prick as he squeezed her hand harder. “You’re hurting me.” She hated how her voice sounded, hated the begging.

  She should have known not to stop and talk to Garrett tonight. Should have known Billy was watching, even though she’d thought he was all the way across the mall with his buddies.

  Should have known she’d pay.

  He opened the passenger door in an oddly gentleman-like fashion, handing her in almost gently. He closed the door quietly, and for a moment, she had hope. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe he wasn’t as mad as he looked. Maybe it would be all right.

  The next morning, she woke up on the back steps of her mother’s trailer, head pounding, hair a tangled mess. Wincing as she straightened up, she felt her ribs, counting.

  Later that evening he’d shown up at the door, a bouquet of wildflowers in his hand, tears in his eyes. The apologies flowed. The promises leaked out in a hoarse, hurt voice.

  And when he’d put out his arms—when he’d gathered her to his chest, petting her hair like she was a fragile kitten—she’d forgiven him.

  And she’d apologized.

  She’d apologized.

  —

  “You okay?” Cole looked down at her, his eyebrows drawing together.

  Jess swallowed, nodded, trying to knock the memories away and focus on Cole. “I’m okay.”

  Good God, was she going completely nuts? She’d locked away all of these memories for so many years that she’d thought maybe they’d left her for good. But now? Ever since the phone call, they just kept creeping in. For so many years, she’d lived as Jess Alcott, radiating peace and calm. But apparently she’d been faking all of it, even when she’d believed she wasn’t. Even as she taught others how to breathe through their tension, how to focus inward and heal themselves, her own demons were brewing just under the surface, threatening to boil over.

  She shook her head, trying to tamp down the flashback and concentrate on Cole. He was looking at her with his forehead furrowed, like he didn’t believe her I’m okay any more than she did.

  “Jess? Looked like you saw a ghost. You sure you’re okay?”

  Jess rolled her shoulders, trying to shake off the shivers that wanted to envelop her entire body. “Yes. I’m good. Tired, I think.”

  His eyes were intense as he watched her face, and she expected her fight-or-flight reflex to take over, as it usually did when someone got too close. Instead, though, her feet stayed firmly planted, and even more miraculously, so did her hand, still gloved in his.

  “Want to walk over to the waterfall?” His voice was soft, gentle.

  She nodded. “I’d love to.”

  They strolled, hand in hand, and the rushing of the water got louder as they got closer to where it flew over the cliff toward them, and into the huge pool at the bottom. At the edge of the pool, Cole let go of her hand and bent down.

  “Come over here. You have to feel the water.”

  Jess stepped toward him, crouching to run her fingers over the surface of the water. She expected it to be cool, clear, refreshing, but she looked up in surprise when she realized it was almost as warm as bath water.

  “Hot springs underneath.” Cole pointed to a couple of spots in the pool. “See the bubbles?”

  She nodded, crouching lower to immerse her hands. “This is so beautiful.”

  “Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” He tipped his head. “Betcha don’t have anything like this back in Boston.”

  “No.” She shook her head, swirling her fingers in the water. “We just have a big silly ocean.”

  “Touché.” He pointed at the pool. “Be careful how long you touch that water.”

  “Why?” She pulled her hands out, shaking the drops off.

  “There’s an ancient legend surrounding these falls.”

  “Uh-oh. Is this where the wolves drink? Are they going to descend from the hills now and take me away to live with the pack?”

  He laughed. “No. It’s not that kind of legend.”

  “I’m going to be eaten by the wolves?”

  “Probably more likely, yes. But no.” He shook his head. “That’s not it, either.”

  “Okay, then I totally know what it is.” Jess made a show of drying every drop of water from her skin. “Now that I’ve touched the magical pool, I’ll fall madly in love with the next man I see?”

  This time Cole’s laugh came straight from his belly. “Exactly. That’s exactly the legend I was going to tell you.”

  “Liar.”

  “Maybe.” He paused, went quiet, and she could almost hear him raising his eyebrows comically. “So why won’t you look at me?”

  “No reason.” She leaned back down and reached her fingers into the water. “If I touch it again, does it erase the curse?”

  “Curse? What woman in her right mind views falling in love as a curse?”

  Jess swished her hand in the warm water. “Ha. More than you’d think, cowboy.” She stood up and spun slowly, eyes on the moon, then on the pool of water, where awesome
power from above met mystical power from below. “I’ve never seen anything like this. I would much rather have fallen in this water this afternoon.”

  “If you had, you’d probably never have wanted to get out.”

  “Can you swim in it?” The pool stretched for thirty feet or so, end to end, but she couldn’t tell how deep it was.

  “Why?” He winked. “Do you want to?”

  Hmm. Get naked in a hot spring with the most gorgeous man on earth? In the middle of a moonlit wilderness so beautiful it almost hurt to look at it?

  She cleared her throat carefully. “Maybe sometime when I have an actual swimsuit on. I’ve gone through two outfits today already.”

  “Clothing would be optional.” He winked, and her entire body responded.

  Dammit.

  “Do you—ever show this to the guests?” She fought to regain control over this feeling of—desire that threatened to make her do something stupid.

  Cole shook his head. “No. Some things we like to keep to ourselves. Decker and I found this way back when we were kids. You’d have thought we’d discovered Mars or something, the way we came flying back to the house to tell Ma. She let us think we’d discovered it until we were teenagers, I think. Finally she fessed up that she’d come galloping through the same hills at our age, just dying to tell someone she’d found Heaven.”

  Jess looked around, breathing in the piney air, feeling the spray of the waterfall land softly on her face. “I can’t believe you and Decker got to grow up practically on horseback, roaming these mountains and meadows.”

  “Well, there was an awful lot of hard work that went with the galloping, but yeah. It’s pretty much paradise out here.” His face got serious. “Well, it was. For a while, anyway.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it sound like everything was perfect. I know it—wasn’t.” Jess’s stomach tightened as she thought about Cole’s father, about his penchant for whisky and women, in that order. About how he’d stuck Decker in a rattletrap Chevy and pointed him off the ranch after their little sister had drowned. About how Cole and Ma had just about had to sell their own hides to fend off the bank when they realized he’d put up the ranch as collateral on a high-roller weekend in Vegas, then run his truck into a tree at ninety miles an hour, looking to leave it all behind.

  “I know you didn’t.” Cole took off his hat and spun it thoughtfully. “What about you? You’ve been coming out here for two years, and I don’t think I even know where you grew up.”

  “Oh, my growing-up years were hardly as exciting as yours. You’d be bored.” Her stomach flipped at his question. No way was she going down that road tonight. She’d been enjoying a few minutes of not thinking about that road.

  “Doubt it. I’m curious, really. I can hear a trace of a southern accent when you talk. Are you a Mississippi girl at heart?”

  “South Carolina. Just outside of Charleston.” On the way wrong side of the tracks. 37 Breezy Meadow Trailer Park, to be precise.

  Cole looked at her, waiting for more, but she couldn’t find the words she usually used when she got this question. Over the years she’d developed a pat answer that glossed over details and managed to shut down further lines of questioning in one fell swoop. The key was delivering it with that sweet southern smile she’d seen her mother use for all those years.

  But for some reason, she wasn’t able to call up her standard phrases, wasn’t able to summon up that hide-everything smile and give him the answers that had kept everybody fooled for thirteen years and counting.

  Saying them to Cole felt like—lying.

  He waited for one more beat, then seemed to realize she wasn’t going to elaborate. “Okay, let me guess.” He cocked his head, appraising her comically. “You grew up in one of those plantation houses with more rooms than people, and lawns the size of football stadiums. You play a normal girl, but actually you’re a cotton magnate?”

  Jess sputtered a laugh, shaking her head. Oh, lordy, if he only knew how wrong he was.

  “No? Okay, no plantation house. Does that mean no servants? Because I can definitely see servants in your past.”

  She laughed again. “No servants, no.”

  “But horses, definitely. You ride like you’ve been doing it forever. So a horse farm. Huge racehorse–training facility breeding Derby champions?”

  “Nope. Rode in college. Just had a good teacher.”

  “You’re a mystery, Jess.”

  “I’m just a regular gal, Cole. Grew up in a regular town in a regular house with regular people. I wish I had a more interesting story, but there it is.”

  Right.

  “There’s nothing regular about you, hon.” He paused for a moment, then reached up a hand to touch her jaw, startling her. She backed up quickly, almost tripping.

  He pulled away quickly, surprise in his eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s okay. I’m sorry. You—surprised me.”

  She cursed internally as concern creased his forehead. Would she ever, ever be able to see a man’s hand coming toward her face and not duck?

  Cole studied her for a long moment, then reached out his hand toward hers, but didn’t touch her. She watched his hand—strong, calloused, warm—and longed to hide hers inside it, just for a little while.

  His voice was soft when he finally spoke.

  “What happened to you, Jess?”

  Chapter 11

  “You ever heard Jess talk about her past?” The next morning, Cole tightened the girth on Moon Gypsy’s saddle and pulled down the stirrups. He and Decker were getting the horses ready for this morning’s adult trail ride, but he was having a hard time focusing on the job at hand, given the fact that he’d been up half the night trying to figure out why his almost-touch last night had turned Jess all deer-in-the-headlights.

  He’d also been trying to figure out what had possessed him to seek her out at midnight and take her to one of the most magical places on the ranch, but right now that concern was taking second place.

  “Not really, no.” Decker draped Chance’s reins over the top rail of the corral, then turned his attention on Cole. “Why?”

  “Ever heard Kyla talk about it?”

  “Not that I can think of. I know Jess is southern. Went to school with Kyla and Hayley in Boston. I think that’s all I know.”

  “Huh.” Cole tied Moon Gypsy, then pulled Sienna’s bridle to get her saddled.

  “Why the sudden curiosity about her past?” Decker’s eyebrows went up, amused.

  Cole shrugged, not sure how much to tell Decker about either their ride to the falls, or the resulting chill that had left him wondering. He’d been up for hours thinking about the way she’d ducked away from his hand, like she’d expected he was going to hit her.

  It made him sick to wonder if somebody had.

  “I don’t know, Decker. Something just seems—off. She’s always had that yogi-calm thing going on, but she’s—different this time. She’s edgy, jumpy. Feels like something happened. Maybe it’s not her past at all. Maybe it’s recent. I don’t know.”

  “Maybe she’s actually interested in you. Maybe you’re making her nervous. Have you thought of that?”

  Cole shook his head. “It’s not that kind of nerves.”

  Decker looked like he was going to say something flippant, but held back at the last second. “Want me to ask Kyla?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just imagining things. You remember that filly we got from over in Billings? Back when we were too young to know we were too young to train her?”

  “Dad just about shot the guy who’d had his hands on her.” Decker nodded. “You comparing Jess to a filly?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know. It’s almost like she’s scared.” He turned to head back toward the stable to get the last two horses.

  Decker fell into step with him when he was halfway there. “I’ll talk to Kyla if you want.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll let you know. Maybe it’s no
thing.”

  Decker continued anyway. “Doubt it. Not if you’re picking up on something. Y’know, Cole. There’s nobody west of the Mississippi who’s better with a hurt horse than you. Never know. Those skills could come in handy with a hurt woman, too.”

  As Decker headed down to the other end of the stable to get Chance, Cole paused in the doorway. Maybe Decker had a point. Jess’s eyes last night had given off those same sparks he’d seen before with horses. The fear had practically vibrated off from her body as he’d reached for her, and her feet had been poised to run, though he wasn’t even sure she realized it.

  Something had hurt her, and he was dead afraid it was something big. But when? Why had he never noticed?

  Was she just really good at hiding it? Or was he just clueless?

  He shook his head again. He didn’t know what had happened, but he was damn sure he was going to find out.

  And then he was going to do his best to fix it.

  —

  Jess waited nervously at the corral gate, praying that the kids would descend before Cole came back out of the stable. She’d welcome their chaos if it prevented her from being alone with him right now. She’d tried to convince Kyla to assign her to something besides kid duty with Cole this morning, but when Kyla was on a mission, there was no deterring her.

  Jess thought back to last night, playing the hours through her head. She and Cole had ridden home from the waterfall in a false state of lightness, Cole making inane conversation the entire way, trying—she knew—to put her back at ease. She hated that she’d made him feel guilty, but her instincts had taken over when she’d seen his hand coming toward her.

  For years, she’d ducked. Or tried to. And since she’d broken free of Smugglers’ Gully, she’d never let anyone close again. She’d had an ice queen rep in college that had suited her just fine, and since then had been perfectly happy to go it alone—perfectly happy building a new life as Jessalyn Alcott.

  She had her studio, her sunny apartment, good friends—and not a man in sight. And that had been just fine. She’d finally gotten to the point where she didn’t think about her past every day. She’d finally gotten to the point where she could scan the freezer section of the grocery store without having her eyes land firmly on the kind of peas she’d held against her ribs so often.