She should have shelves of photos of her own. She should be feeling that love and pride. She should have a child now.
Hers and Luke’s.
Tears stung her eyes. She rested her hand on her stomach. It was flat now, but once it had been swollen from the baby she’d carried.
“Are you okay?”
She jumped. Again. Luke stood a few yards away from her, a towel tossed over one shoulder. Just as at the Longhorn’s bar, the space around her seemed to close in.
“I’m fine.” She rose from the couch. She began to shove her hands into her back pockets, winced as pain shot through her shoulder and thought better of the idea.
“You sure?” he asked. “You seem out of it.”
“I’m just...tired.”
“You were looking at the wall of fame. My daughter’s life in pictures.”
His smile made her eyes sting again. His words made her heart ache. She couldn’t talk about his baby. But she had to get through this conversation without letting him suspect she had something to hide. “She’s a pretty little girl.”
His smile widened to a grin that left her weak-kneed and wishing she’d stayed on the couch.
“I’ll accept that as a compliment. Mom says she takes after me more than she does my wife. You remember Jodi.”
She would never forget Jodi.
How could she, when Luke had begun dating the other girl so soon after they had split up. Learning that news had given her another reason to stay in Houston. Later, his marriage had only increased her desire to postpone any trips home.
“She was a couple of years ahead of me in school. But, yes, I remember her. From the cheering squad.” From the head cheerleader position, to be exact. The petite brunette with the perky ponytail had always made Carly, two years younger, feel as big as one of her brothers. In the photos, Jodi barely reached Luke’s well-developed biceps.
“You heard what happened?”
“Yes.” Jodi’s obsession over show jumping equaled the love Carly had once felt for barrel racing. During a competition, Jodi’s horse had thrown her. She had hit her head and, despite wearing a helmet, had suffered brain trauma that led to a coma. She didn’t recover. Savannah had told her the news the next time Carly had come home for a visit...when she had also learned Luke had been hired as the Roughneck’s ranch manager.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” She stumbled over the standard phrase, wanting to say so much more.
I’m sorry for the loss of your wife and the loss of our baby and for never even letting you know you were going to be a daddy.
His expression had gone blank, as if he had shut off his emotions. “I can’t imagine what it will be like for Rosie to grow up without knowing Jodi.” He eyed her. “You’d know, wouldn’t you? Although, at least you have some memories of your mama before she left. And your stepmom before she died.”
The words made her breath catch. After everything he’d gone through, and after all these years, he still remembered. She had told him about being abandoned as a child and, later, losing the stepmother she had just come to love.
But of course he would remember. He worked here on the ranch now, saw her family every day, and got along well with Jet and her stepbrothers, especially Jacob.
“Sometimes I think it’d be easier not to have any memories,” she admitted.
“I guess that’s true for a lot of life. But we don’t always get to do things the easy way, do we?”
He stepped closer. She stiffened so abruptly, pain from her shoulder shot down her arm. She didn’t know where he intended to go with that statement. She didn’t want to know why he kept walking toward her with that unreadable look on his face. Now was no time for a cozy chat about their past, if that was what he had in mind.
But when he halted in front of her, he said nothing, just stood looking down at her. She refused to look up. Instead, she watched his Adam’s apple move when he swallowed hard, then his shirtfront rise and fall with one heavy, sighing breath.
Time ticked on, until she couldn’t take the silence any longer. Couldn’t handle the suspense.
She glanced up. He was so close. Just as when they had talked at the bar, she would only need to lean forward to make contact with him.
She had been playing the wild girl then—or trying to—but inside, she’d felt too chicken to do what she’d wanted. To reach out and touch him. Now, she longed to do more than that, to kiss him and run her fingers through his hair and pretend she was eighteen years old again....
He looked as though he might have thoughts about returning to the past, too. But there was no way they could go back to the place...to the people...they were before.
Ruthlessly, she pushed aside her memories and desires, feeling too aware of all those baby photos staring at them, too conscious of his daughter sleeping just a few rooms away. Too troubled by the secret she couldn’t share.
Darn Luke.
She should have left here the moment she had gotten out of his truck. And she would have, if he hadn’t pulled up close enough to the back porch for Tammy to overhear them and come to the kitchen door. Well, Tammy was gone. She took a step back. “Time for me to get home.”
“I don’t think so.” He smiled. “Take off your shirt.”
* * *
LUKE WOULD HAVE given next week’s pay for a photo of Carly at that moment. He’d never seen her eyes open that wide or her face turn such an interesting shade of red.
Before she could explode, he said, “Hang on. I’m not propositioning you. That shoulder of yours needs some attention, and you’re getting it from me.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“Can you reach where it hurts?”
“What does that matter?” she demanded. “You can’t possibly think you’re—”
“What I think is, you’re sure as hell not going to get anyone at the main house to rub you down. Because you’re not going to tell them you’re injured. Are you?”
When she said nothing, he held up the jar of ointment he had taken from the bathroom cabinet. “I thought not. So I’ll ask you again, can you reach?”
“No. But I don’t need to put anything on my shoulder.”
“Carly. What are you afraid of?”
“Nothing.”
“Then prove it. It’s not like you’ve got something I’ve never seen. Or never touched.” He raised the jar to her eye level. “Come on. It’ll be harmless.” Even as he said the word, a sliver of doubt stabbed him. Touching Carly could never be harmless.
Somehow, he would have to find a way to forget about his craving. He’d focus instead on his guilt over goading her into riding that bull.
She didn’t need to say a word. Her wrinkled brow, narrowed eyes and tight lips all shouted her reluctance to have him touch her. But the fact she hadn’t punched him or run screaming from the room told him she was hurting more than she wanted to admit. He moved in for the verbal kill. “If you’re planning to push your daddy around in his wheelchair, the last thing you want is to be sidelined by a frozen shoulder.”
That got her.
She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “Okay. Fine. Turn around.”
He laughed. “That’s my line, isn’t it? How do you expect me to reach you from that position?”
“Turn around.”
Smiling, he obeyed, looking toward the curio cabinet across the room. How would she take it if she knew the cabinet’s mirrored interior showed her reflection as she unbuttoned her flashy shirt?
Probably not well at all.
Nice as the view might have been, he tore his gaze away. No worries. His memories replaced the real-time vision with another guaranteed to keep him satisfied: the sight of Carly kneeling with him on the blanket-lined bed of his truck, allowing him the pleasure of taking
off her shirt.
“All right.”
The words startled him back to the present.
He turned to her, the jar of ointment clutched tight.
She held her unbuttoned shirt together in front of her. A lacy pink bra peeked out from beneath one edge of the fabric. The scent of perfume wafted from her warmed skin. A softness around her mouth said she might be recalling that night in the truck, too.
A hard weight suddenly pressed against his zipper.
“Yeah.” He swallowed. “Okay, your turn.” He gestured for her to face away from him.
She had taken her right arm out of the sleeve and left the fabric draped over her shoulder. He swallowed again, harder this time. Then he reached out to slide the blouse away, revealing lightly tanned skin just as perfect as it had been when she was a teen. He could already feel the smoothness.
As he opened the jar, his hands shook. “This’ll be cold at first,” he warned.
She reached up to sweep her hair across her good shoulder. “Just get it over with. Please.”
Seconds after he touched her, he found himself in trouble. Big trouble. His fingertips tingled, and not solely from the ointment. Almost subconsciously, he shuffled forward, telling himself he needed a better angle. A hell of a lie there, for someone who prided himself on his truthfulness. But concern about her shoulder had retreated to somewhere in the back of his mind, taken over by the pure excitement of being near her again. By the desire to get even closer.
As he rubbed the cream over the curve of her shoulder, she tilted her head, exposing the side of her neck. His own experiences gave him the reason for her movement. Chances were, after all this time with an untreated injury, the pain had traveled. And damn, his hands wanted to travel, too, over every curve and—
Right. As if he didn’t have enough problems. Swallowing a curse, he forced himself to focus. “Having trouble with your neck, too?”
“Some.”
He moved his hand slowly along the muscle from her shoulder to the base of her head. Her low moan vibrated deep inside him.
“Feel good?” he murmured.
“Mmm.”
His fingertips grazed her hair. He fought to keep from sliding his hand across her other shoulder, down through the mass of blond waves and around a generous curve of pink lace. After a deep, steadying breath, he said, “You probably should’ve had therapy right after your fall.” She said nothing. She would never admit he was right. “Have you had anyone at all treating this shoulder for you?”
“No.”
At her admission, he had a sudden, hopeful thought.
Carly had been the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen, bar none, and her looks had only gotten better over time. In the years they’d been apart, there wasn’t a chance in hell that someone this hot had never dated. Had never had another lover.
But he wanted to believe that, since her fall a month earlier, he was the only man who had touched her like this.
He cupped his hand on the back of her neck. She turned her head, all the invitation—or all the excuse—he needed to move around to stand in front of her.
With his thumb, he massaged her neck and watched as her blue eyes began to glisten. The tense set of her shoulders said she was reining herself in, trying not to respond. But the gleam in her eyes and the look on her face told him another story. He’d seen that expression earlier tonight, too, when they’d stood close together in the crush at the saloon.
Hell, he’d caught that same look on his own face in the mirror over the bar.
When they had left the Longhorn, getting this close to Carly again had been the very last thing he’d wanted.
Now, it was all he could think about.
“What happened to harmless?” she whispered.
“You happened.” He smiled. “No problem with a little kiss, is there?”
“A little kiss,” she repeated. Her eyes narrowed. “And then what? We just go back to where we left off that summer we were together?”
He stiffened but managed to keep his hand resting lightly on the back of her neck. He rubbed that tight muscle again. “No. We can’t go back. We’re different people now.”
“What makes you so sure you want to kiss the woman I turned out to be?” She tried to toss off the question, but her voice shook.
Going with his first thought would probably get him slapped. He opted for the second. “Maybe that’s part of starting fresh and going forward.”
“You wish.”
He smiled. “The act’s not working.”
“Neither is your seduction...if that’s what this is.”
Frowning, he took his hand from her neck. “What the hell—?”
“Now I think it’s really time for me to go. But I’ll need to be prepared. What did you say to your mother?”
“Huh? What did I say about what?”
“Me.” She cleared her throat. “Us.”
“Just that we met at the Longhorn and I gave you a ride back to the ranch.”
Dead silence.
He tried again. “If you mean ‘us’ from years ago, I never said anything to anyone. You asked me not to, remember?” He didn’t have to think hard to recall that day or how her face had looked when she’d made that request.
Emotionless. Empty.
Just the way he had felt at hearing it.
“You didn’t want anyone to find out I even knew you.” He’d gone through that before, time and time again. As a kid and as a teen. With folks he’d once called his friends.
“It wasn’t that—”
“It was. And it seems like you still care only about what someone else would think. I can’t say you’ve got the wrong idea.” Finally coming to his senses, he stepped back an arm’s length from her, shaking his head. Maybe the distance would keep him from acting like a fool again.
Carly might wonder what his mom would think. He had a lot more than that to concern him. He had both his mother and his daughter to care for. And Carly’s father to worry about.
Forget getting fired. That would be only the first of a long list of his troubles.
Brock Baron’s influence spread the length and breadth of Texas and far beyond. Crossing a boss who held that much power could get a man blacklisted from ranching. Could have him working a pipeline in Alaska, nowhere near his mother or child.
“You’re right,” he said. “This was a bad idea. It wouldn’t be harmless at all.”
“No, it wouldn’t.” She looked away. “And we’ve already got enough regrets.”
Chapter Six
After taking a helluva long time to get to sleep, Luke woke up feeling like a new man again, forgetting all about his conversation with Carly. Forgetting what it had felt like to be so close to her again...
Well, all right, maybe he hadn’t forgotten what had happened last evening. But by this morning, he had gotten himself back on track again and put his priorities in order.
“You ready for a walk, Rosie?”
He lifted his daughter from the carrier in the backseat of his truck and settled her hat more firmly around her ears.
“Pftt,” she said, grabbing the brim of his Stetson.
“Yeah, I know. You’d rather have a hat like Daddy’s. But yours is even better for keeping you covered from the sun.”
Though that sun was still low in the sky, he wasn’t taking any chances with his girl. “Hang in there. We’ll only be out here for a few minutes. Just long enough for Daddy to check the fencing.”
Rosie settled in his arms. He stood there for a minute, watching her take in their surroundings. They were only a couple of miles from the main ranch house on the Roughneck. Still, there wasn’t much in view nearby but dry scrub and drier land. A long fence line guarded the edge of an arroyo. And, off in th
e distance, a range of mountains, like a row of guards themselves, stood shoulder to shoulder to wait for that rising sun.
It always amazed him to see how Rosie observed a new environment, gazing around as if everything she saw was yet another new miracle.
She was the miracle in his world, the one who made his life worth living. How he’d ever gotten along without her, he would never know.
He gave her a quick hug as he carried her closer to the fence line to make his inspection.
Recent heavy rains from the west had washed away a chunk of soil already loosened by a few of the more curious calves. “My boys were right to report this, Rosie. We need to get the fence fixed. We don’t want the animals getting caught in here, do we?” The gap was big enough to trap any calves who might feel even more adventurous.
And, dang it, that thought brought Carly to the front of his mind again. “Some animals just like doing things in their own way. Some people, too. Like Carly Baron.” Carly had sure nailed it when she’d talked about never liking to do the expected. Just one of the things that had attracted him to her—and it had been the start of a long, long list.
Judging by the way his stomach had flipped when he’d set eyes on her again less than a week ago, for the first time in years, that attraction hadn’t lessened any.
His bad luck.
“You haven’t had the pleasure of meeting Carly yet, have you? Though I’m not positive how much of a pleasure it would be.”
Rosie laughed. She couldn’t have picked up on his ironic tone. She didn’t know what all the words meant. She just liked hearing his voice. So he talked.
“Now, you listen to me. When you grow up, don’t you be getting crazy ideas in your head.” Going off to earn a college degree was one thing. He still couldn’t understand how Carly could have stayed in Houston and not come home.
He strapped Rosie into her carrier again and tapped her gently on the nose. “You stick with your ol’ daddy and don’t go running off, you hear?”
The way Carly had.
Knowing she could take care of herself, she called it.
I learned how to live on my own. That’s something no one can take away from me.
The Texan's Little Secret Page 6