She opened her mouth to call out a greeting but heard someone singing along in a surprisingly good baritone at the far end of the barn to a country music version of Nat King Cole’s song about chestnuts and open fires playing on a radio.
Who would have guessed the man had such a good voice? And that he sang to himself when he thought he was alone? She found it unexpected and charming and couldn’t do anything but follow the sound.
When she reached the stall where he was working, she found him brushing down a beautiful roan mare, who seemed to be enjoying his impromptu concert along with the attention.
Devin wanted to lean over the railing of the stall and just listen to him—okay, and watch, too, if she were honest—but that would be rude and voyeuristic of her. Right?
She cleared her throat and he immediately dropped the brush he was using on the horse and whirled around.
“Sorry!” she said. “I should have knocked or something.”
Color rose over his cheeks. “You just startled me, that’s all.”
“Didn’t you think there might be a chance I would want to stop by to say thanks?”
“I didn’t expect you to spy on me serenading my horse.”
“I only heard the part about children finding it hard to sleep tonight.” She smiled. “You have a great voice, Cole. You could have been a country music star yourself.”
She didn’t add that he had the hot, dangerous cowboy thing down without even trying. The women would have gone crazy over him.
He snorted. “Think I’ll stick to training horses, thanks. Anyway, you didn’t have to thank me for anything. We had a bargain.”
“You agreed to let my yoga class use your hot spring a few times. I never expected you to plow the road up to the hot spring or clear a path to the water or warm the changing hut with a cheerful fire.”
“It was no big deal.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and tapped the screen a few times. He must have been streaming to a speaker as the music turned off instantly.
“It was a very big deal to me,” she said softly. He looked up and for a moment, their gazes met.
The memory of that kiss suddenly seemed to spring to life between them. She caught her breath, remembering the taste of him, his silky hair beneath her fingers, the intoxicating feeling of being protected and safe in his arms.
In an instant, the barn seemed to become a secret, intimate place, alive with the rustle of hay, the creak of the old building shifting, a horse stamping somewhere down the line of stalls.
What would he do if she found an empty stall, dragged him to it and tugged him down into the hay?
She pushed away the crazy impulse. She hadn’t come down here to relive a few moments between them that never should have happened. She was here only to thank him for his kind gestures and to talk to him about the next time her yoga class would use his hot spring again.
“I mean it, Cole. Thank you for everything. When I saw the smoke coming out of the chimney of the warming hut, I was so touched, I almost burst into tears right there at the hot spring in front of everyone.”
* * *
AS LONG AS she stayed on that side of the wall around the stall, Cole figured he was safe.
He could do his best to ignore the damp hair curling in tendrils around her face and her soft skin, rosy from the cool air. “It was no big deal,” he said, “especially compared with everything you’ve done to help my kids. All that food, decorating the tree, helping with the kids when I had to run to Boise. I only wanted to repay my huge debt a little.”
“You made a good start today, cowboy.” A shaft of sunlight burst through the dusty row of windows high above them, slanting down to turn her hair copper and gold.
He wasn’t safe, no matter how many walls he kept between them. He hadn’t been safe since he walked into that emergency department with his baby sister and saw her walking toward them looking calm and competent and beautiful.
“I still have a ways to go.”
“Then you won’t mind if we come back, will you? I was thinking Monday afternoon. Would that work?”
He scanned through his mental calendar. He had a new horse coming in that morning but he should still have time to clear the road up to the hot spring for her. “That should work.”
“Thanks.”
That shaft of sunlight reflected gold against the back wall of the barn and caught her attention. She turned and looked at what he considered his wall of shame and he watched her eyes go wide.
“Wow. That’s some fancy rodeo bling you’ve got there.”
Every belt buckle, trophy or saddle he’d ever won hung on the back wall. She moved toward it for a closer look and spent several moments gazing at the display.
More embarrassed than he’d been even when she caught him singing, he left the stall and walked toward her, compelled to explain himself. “You’re probably thinking, what sort of arrogant SOB hangs up all his own awards so he can look at them every day.”
She sent him a sideways look. “Oh, is that what I was thinking? Funny, I thought I was being quite impressed at the skill and effort that must have gone into earning all this.”
He sighed. “If I had my way, I would have hauled them out to the landfill a long time ago, but they make a good conversation starter with clients.”
“Do they?”
“They seem to think this all means the person they’re trusting their horse to knows a thing or two. It’s only for business. Like I said, I’d like to toss it all in the trash.”
She frowned. “You’re not a little proud of what must have been years’ worth of accomplishments? I would think you’d get the same charge from looking at your trophies and things as I do whenever I catch sight of my medical school diploma—which, for the record, I hang proudly on the wall of my office for all to see. I don’t think that makes me an arrogant SOB, either.”
It was another reminder of the glaring chasm between them. She had graduated medical school, while he barely made it through two years of college on a college rodeo scholarship before he quit to compete on the professional circuit.
What the hell had he been thinking to kiss her the other night? She saved lives, while he could barely manage to keep his own together.
She was looking at him with far more admiration than he deserved. While some part of him wanted to bask in it, he knew that wouldn’t be fair, not when the reality was stark and ugly.
He gazed at a saddle he’d won for the all-around at some Montana event he guessed he must have competed in nine years ago. Case in point, right there. He had no clear memory of the competition, the horses he rode or why he’d placed so high in those particular events.
“I might have been more proud of what I accomplished on the circuit,” he said gruffly, not looking at her, “if I remembered half of it. Truth is, I was a drunk ass most of the time.”
The words seemed to seethe between them, harsh and ugly. She said nothing for a long moment, the silence broken only by the new green broke quarter horse he was set to start working with.
Finally he had to look at her, expecting revulsion. Instead, she was gazing at him with soft, steady compassion.
He wanted to lean into it, into her, and let her calm comfort wash over him. No. It didn’t belong there. Why would she be compassionate for someone who had made his own choices and suffered the consequences for it?
He hadn’t been making a joke. He had been the worst kind of selfish bastard, and it suddenly seemed fiercely important that she realize that.
“I shouldn’t be here at all,” he answered. “It’s some kind of damn miracle that I wasn’t killed somewhere along the line, either from some jealous boyfriend out for revenge or from breaking my neck falling off a horse because I had no business being up there while I was drunk off my ass. I was reckless and unbelievably
stupid in my twenties. While you were throwing yourself into medical school, preparing yourself for a life of taking care of other people, I was playing hard and beating my body and my soul into the ground, without a single thought to who I might hurt along the way. I don’t deserve any of this.”
She was silent again, and then she nudged her shoulder against his, just for a moment, a gesture of such support and compassion that he felt emotions choke his throat.
Too soon, she eased away. “You could look at it that way,” she said softly, “or you could hang your awards with honor and be proud that you’ve moved past that man you were and the mistakes he made and are now trying to make something different out of your life. You’re working hard to make this ranch a success, you’re helping your sister and her twins, you’re trying to do your best for your children. That speaks to me of courage and strength and character.”
Oh, it would be tempting to let himself believe the nice little picture she painted of him. He wanted to be that man, someone good and decent, but his gnarled past still wrapped around him like some kind of parasitic vine, choking the life out of him.
He couldn’t let her go on having this rosy image. He had to tell her the truth, even though the words tasted as sour as turned milk.
“I told you I had to go to Boise the other day to pick up some parts. That was partially true, but I had another appointment there, too. With my parole officer, which I have to do on a regular basis. I’m an ex-con, Doc. I served almost two years in prison, hard time, for assault with intent.”
He gazed at her, waiting for the shock and disgust he fully deserved. This was where she would run screaming out of the barn and stay far away from him and his kids.
Instead, he was the one shocked when she only gave a calm nod.
“I know,” she said.
He stared. “That’s bull! You didn’t know.”
She made a rueful face. “Okay, technically you’re right. I didn’t know-know. Not details, anyway. I’d heard the rumors only—that you’d had trouble with the law—but they came from a pretty reliable source. McKenzie heard it from one of our friends who is on the Haven Point police department. McKenzie didn’t know any specifics—she was just trying to warn me off.”
The idea of her sister and her friends talking about him to her was more than a little unsettling. “Why would your sister think you needed warning off?”
Her cheeks looked suddenly pink in the dim patches of sunlight coming in through the high windows. “She, um, knew I had been spending a little time here at Evergreen Springs helping out. The day I brought the kids to her store, she took me aside and told me you had a mysterious past. She wasn’t gossiping. She was just being her overprotective self.”
As she should be. He wasn’t the sort of man he would want his sister hanging around, even when she was only helping him out of a tight spot.
“Isn’t she your younger sister, though?” he asked. “I thought that ball usually rolled downhill.”
Her color rose a little higher. “Usually. Kenz worries about me far more than she should. But we were discussing your prison time. Assault with intent. It must have been serious if you served time for it. What happened?”
He might be a dumb cowboy but he didn’t miss the way she quickly changed the subject away from her sister. Something was up there, some mystery he had yet to figure out about Dr. Devin Shaw.
As much as he would have liked to turn the attention back to her and ask what she was hiding, he knew that would be the coward’s way out. She wanted to know what he had done and he couldn’t see any way to avoid telling her, straight up.
What a damn mess he had made of his life. Regret made a pretty miserable companion, especially when it followed him everywhere.
“It was a bar fight with another rodeo cowboy, somebody who outrode me in the arena earlier in the evening and took the purse. It was a big one, with a lot of qualifying points for the big dance in Las Vegas. The NFR, the pro-rodeo finals. We happened to hit the same shit-hole bar afterward and had words over a couple of drinks. The words turned into fists and the altercation spilled out into the parking lot. The prosecution said the whole thing was premeditated, said I purposely led him to my pickup truck, where I had a tire iron ready in the bed. Didn’t matter that he started the fight or used a broken bottle to give me this.”
He pointed to the jagged two-inch scar on the side of his head where the cut had nearly sliced off his ear.
“Because of those fifteen minutes out of my life, Rowdy Barnes had to quit the circuit. He had a broken arm, broken jaw and permanently lost sight out of his right eye.”
“Was it premeditated?” she asked in a level voice.
He shrugged. As far as he was concerned, this was the worst part. “I don’t know. Maybe. I was drunk off my ass. I don’t remember anything past the fifth whiskey that night. All the jury cared about was that he outrode me earlier in the arena and that he’d slept with my wife, which gave me ample motive, apparently, to take him out.”
Not that Rowdy Barnes had been the only one to sleep with Sharla. By the time Rowdy and Sharla hooked up, Cole had been past caring about anything his wife did. Their marriage had been over, but even then, he hadn’t been man enough to stop drinking so he could take care of his kids.
His arrest had done more to sober him up and drive home what he was doing to his life and the people left in it who somehow still loved him than a year in rehab ever could have done.
He had tried to make things right. He paid restitution, he had gone to rehab in jail awaiting his trial and sentencing, and then served his time and returned to Evergreen Springs a changed man.
No matter how hard he tried, though, he couldn’t change his past. It was like a huge, disgusting stain on a favorite shirt. He could wash it and wash it but some shadow still remained to remind him of all he had done.
“I’m an ex-con, alcoholic, washed-up rodeo cowboy and failure of a father. Your sister was right to warn you off, Doc.”
She studied him, her green eyes unreadable in the patchy, dusty sunbeams. “That’s a very impressive résumé. One that paints a grim picture of the man you used to be. But isn’t what really matters who you are now?”
“What if I can’t answer that yet? What if I’m still trying to figure it out?”
“I guess that makes you no different from the rest of us, then.”
She had a way about her, a calm comforting sense of peace he found even more appealing than that sexy mouth and the green eyes that reminded him of brand-new aspen leaves.
The kiss they had shared hadn’t been far from his thoughts since the other day. Now it seemed to blow up in his memory as if it had only just happened. He remembered each sigh, each whisper of breath, each taste and sensation.
He wanted to reach for her again, so badly he had to shove suddenly trembling hands into the pockets of his jeans.
He meant what he said. He didn’t know who he was yet. He was trying to be a good father, a caring brother, an honest, hardworking rancher. Did he have moments when he wanted a drink so badly he shook with it? Hell, yeah. But he wanted to be a decent man more—the kind of man who might one day be worthy of someone like Devin Shaw.
Because he couldn’t have her—and because he was starting to realize every moment he spent with her that he wanted her desperately—he spoke with a little more bite than he would have otherwise.
“What do you have to figure out? Seems to me you’re living the life, aren’t you? A young, beautiful, well-respected doctor with a busy practice. You’ve got it together.”
“I wish that were true, but everybody’s got stuff, Cole. Some of it might not be as obvious as a prison stint on your permanent record but nobody gets to walk through this world on a trail littered with rose petals. Thorny bushes, deep ravines, jagged glass. Everybody faces something.”
&nbs
p; “What about you?” he was compelled to ask. “What have you faced?”
She was quiet for a long moment, and he saw something flicker there, something dark and sad that made his chest ache.
“Medical school,” she finally answered. “It just about killed me.”
She said the words with a casualness that told him instantly she was covering up for something else. What had happened in her past to put those shadows there? Why was her sister so protective of her?
He had spilled his dark secret and had to admit it was like a little sharp spur rowel spinning in his chest to realize she wasn’t willing to do the same.
She suddenly looked at her watch. “It’s later than I thought. I need to go. I’m meeting my sister for dinner. Oh, and Letty mentioned she’ll be leaving at six.”
“Right. I should head up to the house.”
“How is she working out, by the way?”
“Great. She seems ideal. I just hope Jazmyn and Ty don’t scare her away.”
“She’s a tough cookie. Don’t worry. I think she’s more than a match for the two of them.”
“Well, thanks for facilitating it.”
“You’re welcome. And thanks again for making it easy for me to take my group to the hot spring. Everyone was so impressed. I think Eppie and Hazel Brewer would like to move in. What an amazing place, a mineral spring that not only is the perfect temperature but also comes along with a stunning view.”
“It’s really magical at night. You ought to come out sometime after dark.”
He regretted the offer as soon as he made it. Suddenly he could picture her sliding into the water, all lithe and curvy and sensuous. His body stirred even more, especially as he imagined being wrapped around her there, the stars thick and bright above them, the warm water and steam swirling and writhing around them as he lowered his mouth to hers, as he surged inside her.
“Oh,” she breathed. “That would be amazing.”
He almost groaned aloud but managed to focus on opening the door for her.
“I guess I’ll have to be content for now to come back on Monday afternoon. That’s the day that works best for my yoga group. Is that okay with you?”
Evergreen Springs Page 17