by Karen Rock
“Pa should have had more sense in the first place,” Daryl muttered under his breath.
“What’d you say?” Justin bristled, spoiling for a fight.
Daryl leaned forward, chin jutting. “I said—”
Jared slapped a hand on the table, and the glasses jumped. “Enough. We got plenty to do keeping our parents apart without fighting each other. We’re on the same side—for now.”
“Guess hell has frozen over,” Justin grumbled.
“They could wind up hitched if we don’t stop them,” Jewel mumbled around a mouthful of peanuts.
“That’d make us brother and sister,” Heath observed, his eyes on Jewel.
A collective groan rose from the group, all except Jewel, whose bad swallow ended in a coughing fit.
“Everyone set on the details? You Lovelands sure are good at forgetting things.” Justin’s black eyes glinted. Beneath the table, Jared spied his hands clenching and unclenching atop his legs.
“Like?” growled Daryl.
“The whereabouts of the fifty-carat sapphire your great-great-great-great-granddaddy stole from us,” Jewel huffed, red-faced but recovered. “That’s a start.”
“How about the water rights yours stole from us?” Heath interjected, one side of his mouth curling up.
Roseanne, their waitress, stopped by the table, interrupting the standoff.
“Can I get you fellas anything else?”
“And lady.” Heath nodded over at Jewel, who turned a violent shade of purple.
“No, thanks, darlin’.” Jared pulled out his wallet and handed her enough cash to settle the tab along with a generous tip.
“I’ve got this.” Maverick waved a fistful of green.
Roseanne wavered until Jared ducked his head and shot her a slow, lazy smile from beneath the brim of his hat.
Her crazy-long lashes batted as she beamed back, nodded, then scooted away.
“Thanks, darlin’,” he called after her, eying a seething Maverick.
“How about some pool?” Maverick challenged once the rest of the crew grabbed their keys and headed for the door. “Wouldn’t mind taking some more money off you tonight.”
“You got lucky last time,” Jared replied automatically, scanning the tables for his friends. Lane and Red waved him over.
“I could have beaten you blindfolded,” Maverick taunted.
Jared stopped in his tracks, an idea occurring that might solve Amberley’s trust issue after all.
“Meet me here tomorrow night.” He jerked his chin up at Maverick, his statement more a command than a request. “I’ll do you one better.”
* * *
“IF I BEAT Maverick Loveland at pool, I win your half ownership in Harley?”
Jared tucked Amberley’s hand into the crook of his arm as he led her across the pool hall’s parking lot the following night. He’d worn cologne, she thought, inhaling the familiar spicy scent, her pulse jumping.
“And if you lose,” Jared drawled, “Harley stays on Spirit Ranch.”
Their boots splashed through puddles created from last night’s rainstorm. The humidity had broken, leaving the air clean, crisp and smelling of freshly turned earth. A smudge of white glowed down from the dark, sparkling sky. Somewhere in the distance, a car door slammed and laughter floated from what sounded like a large group arriving at the local dive.
Little chills ran up her spine. She hadn’t been out in public, other than the doctor’s office and the ranch, since her diagnosis. No doubt there’d be plenty of whispers and pity-filled stares in her direction. What would they be thinking? Saying?
Poor Amberley, she could hear them cluck. Can’t do a thing for herself anymore.
She used to be something once...now she ain’t nothing much...
She shook her head to stop the voices, especially the last one that’d sounded too much like her father.
As if reading her thoughts, Jared squeezed her hand. He leaned down and murmured “You look beautiful” into her ear.
A rush of air escaped her. “No flirting.”
Was she being hypocritical? Considering she’d driven her mother crazy donning tons of outfits, asking for detailed descriptions, she’d wanted to look good for Jared. Plain and simple.
“Just making a factual observation, ma’am.” He must have tipped his hat since the brown of it lowered over his brow momentarily.
She rolled her eyes. “Ma’am, huh?”
“You said you didn’t like darlin’.”
“I like it better than being called the same thing as my grandma.”
“Then darlin’ it is,” he drawled, sounding completely unrepentant.
Despite her nerves, her lips curved. “You’re incorrigible.”
“I prefer tenacious. Less old cuss, more cowboy.”
“Real cowboys don’t call themselves cowboys.”
Jared laughed and pulled her closer. His solid warmth lit a golden glow that radiated through her chest, filling the space behind her ribs. She’d avoided him around the ranch for most of the day, but when he’d approached her with this outrageous chance to win back his stake in Harley, she’d agreed to meet him.
Anything for Harley, she thought, even taking a crazy bet she had little chance of winning. It’d be humiliating to lose in front of people who’d once looked up to her, respected her, but she had to try.
They must have reached the door because Jared paused and suddenly a rectangle of light, and a boot-stomping honky-tonk tune, spilled into the night.
“After you.”
“Can we go in together?”
She didn’t want to wobble inside looking lost and blind, a fallen champion.
Jared swept an arm around her and firmly led her into the pool hall. His sure grip kept her from stumbling as he steered her though the maze of crowded tables she only barely glimpsed.
“Amberley!” someone cried to her right, and Jared halted. “It’s me. Brianne. From school. You look so—so—”
Amberley gritted her teeth. Brianne, a notorious gossip, lived, ate and breathed drama.
“Beautiful?” Jared supplied. He leaned down and brushed a lingering kiss on Amberley’s cheek.
She felt her heartbeat everywhere, right down to her fingertips.
“So y’all are together, now?” Brianne gasped. Amberley could practically hear the woman’s brain teletyping the message she’d eagerly broadcast to the community.
She opened her mouth to refute Brianne’s claim, but Jared jumped in first.
“We’ll just leave y’all guessing on that for now.”
He swept Amberley away and she held in a chuckle at his deft handling of the town’s one-woman rumor mill.
Gratitude for her friend rose. Jared just made the story of her appearance about a possible romance instead of her pathetic fall from grace. Like always, he had her back.
Until this roadblock with selling Harley...
She had to win Jared’s stake. Her dim vision flickered over the area where the pool tables were. They blurred and jumped, rectangular shapes stretching into green and brown smears of color. Despair wrapped around her heart and squeezed.
If she couldn’t bring the table into focus, how would she play on one and beat Maverick Loveland? Notoriously skilled at just about everything, Maverick was one of the few people to give Jared a run for his money.
They stopped and Amberley slid her fingers on the sleek edge of a pool table.
“Hey, Amberley,” she heard Maverick say. “Nice seeing you.”
“You won’t say that after she beats you,” Jared said beside her.
“Thought I was playing you,” Maverick replied, his voice cool and unruffled like all Lovelands, such a stark contrast to the passionate, rowdy Cades.
Jared nudged what felt like a pool stick and a cube of ch
alk into her hand.
“Nope. You said you could beat me blindfolded. I want to see if you can beat Amberley blindfolded.”
“But she’s—” Maverick cleared his throat, clearly struggling to be tactful. “She can’t—”
“Afraid you might get beaten by a blind girl?” Amberley challenged, keeping her voice light, to help a faltering Maverick. Then something amazing happened. A flare of adrenaline spiked inside at the prospect of a real competition, a feeling she hadn’t had in a long, long time. It felt good.
Jared lifted her free hand and high-fived it.
“How’s this going to work?” Maverick asked.
“Tie this bandanna around your eyes and pick someone to guide you as you play,” Jared said. “I’m Amberley’s partner.”
Her mouth dropped open in surprise. Jared helping her? If she won, she’d win his stake in Harley. He’d be working against his own interests.
“Daryl!” Maverick shouted above the din of chattering patrons and a blaring country-rock tune.
“I’ll signal where the ball is and you’ll sink it,” Jared said in her ear as she chalked the end of her stick.
“That easy, huh?”
“You’re a winner, Amberley. Maverick won’t know what hit him.”
She laughed, the remembered joy of working with Jared when they competed swelling her heart to bursting.
“Heads or tails, Amberley?” Daryl asked, joining them.
“Heads.”
“Tails, it is,” Daryl called a moment later.
Nerves fluttered in Amberley’s stomach as the crack of a ball smashing into others sounded. She squinted at the table, but the mangle of colors jumped and spun.
“Did I get one in?” Maverick asked.
“Nah. Pretty pathetic, dude,” Daryl said. “Amberley, stripes or solids?”
“S-stripes.” She pressed her shaking lips together. She didn’t have to see to feel the collective weight of the patrons’ gazes on her. She hated losing and was about to go down in flames.
“You’ve got this, Amberley,” Jared urged in that fired-up voice they’d always used to hype each other up. “There’s a striped yellow about three inches from the corner pocket diagonal to you. The cue ball’s in front of it. Can you see it?”
She shook her head. This wasn’t going to work. She’d lose the game, lose the last of her dignity and, worst of all, lose the chance to sell Harley so he could have the opportunity to be a champion.
Jared reached over her and put his hand on top of the one that gripped the cue. He then positioned the fingers of her other hand on the wood before lightly gripping her wrist. To Amberley’s dismay, her face became warm and her heart did strange things. She wasn’t sure if it had sped up to a single hum, or if it just wasn’t beating anymore.
“Close your eyes,” Jared urged, letting her go. “Picture it.”
She mashed her eyes shut and tried imagining the shot the same way Jared helped Emily “see” her flight to the sun. She envisioned the yellow-striped ball resting on the green felt. Three inches from the corner. White cue ball nearly touching it. Her jaw set. Now or never.
Cowgirl up.
Brow knitted, she aimed the cue where she pictured the white ball. The pole slid easily between her fingers as she steadied her hand on the felt surface of the table.
Not too hard, she cautioned herself, easing her grip on the pole slightly and adjusting it to keep it level. With a lurch of her arm, she jabbed the rod forward.
The hard crack of ball meeting ball sounded. The crowd whooped.
“Nice!” Jared crowed.
Elation nearly lifted her off her feet.
“Now don’t get cocky,” Jared warned, bringing her back down to earth the way he did during competitions. Positivity. Steadiness. Focus. They were experts at that and with each other. Who knew her better than Jared? No one save her mother.
And your father! piped up the angel on one shoulder.
He only cared about you when you won, groused the devil on the other.
She ignored the voices within. “Where’s my next shot?”
Jared described two possibilities.
“Which is the easiest?”
“That’s your call.”
She opened her mouth to object, to ask for more help, then shut it and nodded instead, striving to portray serenity. Confidence. In reality, something slow and unsettling was happening to her body: she was seeing tiny black dots, her head was featherlight, her palms were clammy and her heart was beating hard.
Jared was right. She needed to call the shots, not just here but in all areas of her life. For the next few minutes she sank one ball after another, each eliciting claps of approval from the growing crowd surrounding them.
“This next one’s tricky. You’ve only got a bank shot.” Jared described the angles and position, and she closed her eyes to picture it.
Leaning down, she jerked the stick forward and heard it gently knock into a ball.
A groan rose from the group.
Shoot. Humiliation stung her, but not as badly as she’d feared. After watching the kids at Spirit Ranch fight to overcome their challenges, she now understood the dignity, the strength in simply trying, in moving forward, no matter how far you got. Effort mattered more than winning.
“Sorry, Amberley.” Jared’s hand settled warm and firm on her shoulder.
“I’ll get it next time,” she vowed.
“Not a doubt in my mind,” he said, and his confidence built hers as it always had.
“You’re up, Mav,” she heard Daryl say, followed by a string of directions.
“Describe the table to me.”
She listened closely to Jared’s narration of the balls remaining on the table. Their relative positions swam in her mind’s eye. A jolt snapped through her. She could see it. She could see the whole thing without even looking.
After a couple of clarifying questions, Maverick sank his first ball, then missed the next.
“Your turn, Amberley.”
She and Jared fell into a rhythm, and in short order she dispatched all but the eight ball.
“This is it for the win, Amberley!” Jared wrapped an arm around her and gave her a quick squeeze that fogged her brain for a second. Why did he have to feel so good and why did she have to notice it?
She lined up her stick and imagined the spot on the side of the table she needed to hit with the cue.
“How close is that eight ball again?”
“About five inches and just to the left of the second pocket.”
Tendrils of hair stuck to her damp forehead and she wiped first one palm, then the other on her jeans.
Please, please make this for Harley...
“Go for it, Amberley!” she heard someone say. A woman.
“You’ve got it, girl!” hollered an unidentified cowboy.
“Yeah!” roared another.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and lifted her chin. It’d been a long time since anyone had cheered for her, and it felt darn good.
Closing her eyes to blot out the distorted world, she relied on the picture Jared wove and struck the cue.
A rip-roaring holler nearly tore the roof off the pool hall. Jared caught her around the waist and twirled her until she lost her breath and pounded on his broad chest.
He let her down gently but kept a possessive arm curled around her waist. He pressed something crisp—paper—in her hand.
“A hundred dollars,” she heard Maverick say. “You earned it. Sure kicked the pants off me.”
“And you said you’d have beaten me blindfolded,” Jared taunted.
She could practically hear the shrug in Maverick’s voice as he said, “Still believe that to be true. Losing to Miss James here, now, that was a revelation.”
“Didn’t sur
prise me,” Jared said, stout. “Amberley’s a champion through and through.”
The crowd agreed with loud, lusty cheers.
Amberley waved the money. “How about a round on me?”
An hour later, she and Jared exited the pool hall, laughing. She placed a hand to her aching cheek from smiling so long. Her cell rang.
She hit the answer button in the position she’d been taught, and her mother’s voice came over the speaker. “Honey, the town board meeting’s running late. Would you mind staying at the bar a bit longer?”
“I can see her home,” Jared assured her. “If it’s alright with Amberley.”
“Fine by me.”
“Oh. Mr. Jenkens asked me about Harley,” her mother continued. “He’s wanting to know if you’re still selling him. His granddaughter’s interested. A talented racer by the sound of it.”
“I won a pool game tonight,” she heard herself say, avoiding the question.
Why was she stalling?
“Pool? How?”
“Jared talked me through it.” She leaned her head on his broad shoulder and smiled up in the direction of his face. Once again, they’d made a good team. She’d trusted him, and just as he always vowed, he hadn’t let her down. Should she trust his crazy idea to get her and Harley back into competitive barrel racing?
“I’ll be,” her mother murmured, then, “So about Harley...”
Working with the children this week showed her that her life still had a purpose. Tonight proved her career might not be over either.
She’d never know unless she tried.
“Tell Mr. Jenkens...” She hesitated and Jared seemed to freeze beside her. “Tell him, Harley’s not for sale.”
Jared let out a wild whoop and danced some kind of crazy jig.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, cowboy,” she teased after she finished her call. “You still lost your bet.”
Jared quieted, cupped her face and leaned down to rest his forehead against hers. His warm breath rushed across her lips.
“Did I?”
Chapter Nine
“CAN I OPEN my eyes now? It’s not like I can see anyway,” Amberley groused, more intrigued than annoyed by Jared’s silence on today’s mysterious outing. Since their winning pool game two days ago, Jared had been acting cagey and furtive, hurrying to some unnamed mission after therapy sessions.