by Jeanne Allan
“I’m not getting involved in this.” Greeley strolled away before Allie could ask what she meant.
“Are mine,” came a determined voice from behind Allie.
She turned.
Zane crouched inches away, speaking to his daughter. The little girl clutched the bridal bouquet to her chest and shook her head. “Mine.”
He held out his hand. “No, they’re not. The flowers are for a big girl.”
“I’m a big girl.”
“They’re for a lady,” Zane amended. “Give these back to the bride, and we’ll go to a flower shop and buy you some flowers.”
“I caught ’em.”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
The little girl’s mouth wobbled. “I want ’em.”
Allie wanted to smile indulgently like everyone else watching the scene. The high color on Zane’s face told her he knew he and his daughter were the focus of attention. Not that that would stop him from doing what he thought was right. Zane Peters prided himself on doing what he thought was right.
He wrested the flowers from his daughter’s grasp and awkwardly wiped a tear from her cheek. “We can buy yellow flowers. You like yellow flowers.” Desperation edged his voice.
Red curls bounced as the little girl shook her head. “Don’t want yellow flowers. Want these.”
Without stopping to think, Allie leaned over and jerked the bouquet from Zane. Turning her back to him, she offered the flowers to the little girl. “Here. You caught them.”
The little girl put her hands behind her back. “Daddy said I can’t have ’em.”
Allie wanted nothing to do with Zane’s daughter, but the girl had caught the bouquet and should be allowed to keep it. Allie knelt on the floor. “Your daddy is a man, and men know nothing about weddings. Whoever catches the bouquet keeps it. It’s a rule, and I know your daddy doesn’t believe in breaking rules.” Allie coated the last sentence with deliberate mockery.
The little girl looked at the floor and shook her head. Her hands stayed behind her. “Daddy said flowers for a big lady.”
“I’m a big lady. May I have the flowers?”
The little girl hesitated, then nodded sadly.
“All right, if they are my flowers, I may give them to someone else, and I’m giving them to you.” Allie held out the bouquet, proving she could act with dignity and fairness, no matter the circumstances.
The little girl started to bring her hands forward, stopped and looked past Allie in her father’s direction. Then, smiling shyly, she accepted the bouquet and buried her face in a large lily. “Pretty.” She held the bouquet to Allie’s face. “Smell.”
Hoping compliance would make the child and her father go away, Allie sniffed.
“What do you say, Hannah?” Zane prompted.
“Thank you.”
Hannah. Unbelievable pain slashed through Allie. The child had been named after his grandmother. They’d planned to name their first daughter Hannah. This little girl could be, should be, Allie’s daughter. Allie’s throat ached with the effort not to cry, then hot, burning anger replaced the pain. He’d taken “their name” and used it for that woman’s daughter. Not that it mattered anymore. He didn’t matter anymore.
“Allie, aren’t you ready yet?”
Davy’s impatient voice rescued her. She smiled gratefully at him. “Ready and raring to go.”
The child’s hand tugging on her arm kept Allie from rising. “You his mommy?”
Allie shook her head as Davy pointed to Cheyenne and said proudly, “She’s my mom now. That makes Allie my aunt.”
“Whose mommy?” Zane’s daughter asked.
“I don’t have any children,” Allie said stiffly.
“How come? They playing with angels?”
“Let’s go, Hannah,” Zane said in a rough voice.
“But Daddy, maybe her kids know Mommy.”
Zane snatched up his daughter and walked away.
A hand gripped Allie’s shoulder. “You okay?” Worth asked.
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“Davy said you looked funny.”
“Davy thinks I look funny every time he sees me in a dress,” Allie said to her brother, trying to make a joke of it. “He says I look like a girl.” She mimicked the disgusted tone of Davy’s voice. “He wants me in jeans because I promised him we’d ride horses after the wedding. Where’d Davy go? He was in such a hurry to leave.”
“Last minute hugs and kisses from the bride and groom.”
Loud voices caught Allie’s attention. “They must be leav...” Her voice died as she spotted the cause of the commotion.
Zane’s daughter was throwing a grade-A tantrum in her father’s arms. Hanging on to her bouquet with one hand, she used her other hand to cling to one of the stylized metal Art Nouveau pillars. Zane’s face turned the shade of cooked beets as onlookers tittered with laughter. The child drummed his side with her feet. “I want down,” she howled.
Setting his daughter on the floor, Zane grabbed in vain for her hand as she darted across the ballroom. The little girl skidded to a stop in front of Allie, still kneeling on the floor. Throwing her arms around Allie’s neck, Zane’s daughter pressed an enthusiastic kiss on Allie’s cheek. “Bye.” The little girl spun around and dashed back to her father, her childish voice floating across the ballroom. “I had to tell Allie bye.”
The rest of his life without Allie. How long must he pay? Hadn’t he been punished enough? Zane had had five long years to think about the answers to those questions. No punishment, no matter how severe or how long, could wipe out what he’d done. Allie’s face when he’d told her would forever haunt him.
He’d thought he’d reconciled himself to the devastation he’d wrought. Accepted that Allie would never be part of his life. The minute he saw her at Cheyenne’s wedding, he knew he’d been deluding himself.
The crazy idea came to him on the way home from the wedding. There must have been too much sugar in the wedding cake. Or else the smell of those damned flowers had rotted his brain.
For about the hundredth time, Zane picked up the telephone. And put it back down. If he drank, he’d pour himself a huge glass of courage. Except he no longer drank alcohol, and no one knew better than he that drinking made a man stupid, not brave.
At the wedding reception, Allie had avoided looking at him. Not that he was any great shakes to look at. An ordinary guy with black hair and a square jaw. Allie had never seemed to mind the ridiculous dent in his chin.
Smart about everything else, Allie had been stupid when it came to him. Stupid enough to love him. She wouldn’t be stupid enough to fall for his pitiful scheme. She wouldn’t believe it for a second. She wouldn’t do it.
He’d searched long and diligently for the right horse.
Zane rubbed one thumb over the other and eyed the phone. Think about the filly. Damn it, even if he’d royally screwed up his life, the filly deserved help. He’d call.
Allie would hang up on him.
Angrily he pushed the phone aside and rose. Allie roamed through his mind the way she used to roam around his family’s ranch. At the uncurtained window, he stared into the black night. Nights were the worst. Thinking about Allie. Remembering. Little things. Like the way she stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth when she concentrated. He used to tease her that one day she’d be on a horse, concentrating, and the horse would buck and she’d bite off the end of her tongue.
His body tensed with need. He wanted to nibble that tongue. Gently. Lovingly.
He’d thrown away that privilege. Thrown away love.
Horses moving in the home pasture caught his eye. The filly would be in the middle. She never let herself get isolated. The other horses were her protection. She didn’t trust men.
Allie could teach the filly to trust.
If he didn’t call, Allie couldn’t help the filly. He started to turn toward the phone, then stopped.
If he didn’t call, Allie c
ouldn’t say no. There was no reason for her to say yes and too many reasons for her to say no. If she said no...
Zane couldn’t remember when he hadn’t known Allie. At first she was merely one of Worth’s sisters. Then she’d turned sixteen, and he found himself falling in love with her. On Allie’s eighteenth birthday he asked her to marry him.
Allie’s mom asked them to wait. Mary Lassiter had married young. Beau Lassiter had been a rodeo cowboy, long on looks and charm, short on character. Beau had left Mary on her parents’ ranch when she became pregnant with Worth. After that, Mary stayed on the ranch while Beau rode the rodeo circuit. Whenever a bull stove him up, Beau would head to the ranch where Mary nursed him back to health. Then Beau returned to the bright lights, alone. More often than not, he left Mary pregnant.
With the help of her widowed father, Yancy Nichols, Mary had raised four kids. Greeley not even hers. No one ever heard a word of complaint from Mary. When Mary asked them to wait, Zane assumed she wanted Allie to be sure. Later he wondered if she’d seen something of Beau in him.
He was nothing like Beau Lassiter.
Hearing the lie, Zane felt like smashing his fist through the window.
He wanted to blame Beau for what happened. Beau, whose irresponsible behavior had rushed his children into adulthood. Six years older than Allie, Zane had often told her she needed to lighten up, to live a little, but she’d been inflexible, and intolerant with youthful high spirits in others. In him.
No. He wouldn’t make excuses. The sole responsibility for what had happened belonged to one person. Zane Peters.
He shouldn’t have gone to Cheyenne’s wedding, but the temptation to see Allie, to speak to her, had been overwhelming. Watching her stand tall and slim beside her sister as Cheyenne said her vows, he’d ached to touch her. When he’d seen her smile at Hannah, he’d craved one of her smiles.
One look at her face told him she hadn’t forgiven him. If not for Hannah, he would have left.
She’d been kind to Hannah.
His daughter had rattled on about Allie all the way home. Zane had lost count of the things he regretted, but he’d never regretted Hannah. It wasn’t Hannah’s fault Allie hated him. He knew who to blame.
So did Allie. Allie would never blame Hannah, because she loved kids and animals.
She’d help the filly. Allie hated him, but she’d help the filly. And then, maybe... Taking a deep breath, Zane dialed.
At the sound of her voice, intense longing swept over him. He couldn’t speak.
Allie had polished the kitchen and bathroom, cleaned the cat box and walked Moonie so long the greyhound had practically sighed with relief when they’d returned to the condo. She’d washed windows, done her laundry, baked a loaf of bread and caught up on filing for C & A Enterprises, the small, specialized tour agency she and Cheyenne owned and operated. The night stretched endlessly before her.
She should have stayed in Hope Valley at the Double Nickel, the family ranch named for her great-great-grandparents. Or persuaded Davy to stay in Aspen with her instead of at the ranch. With Cheyenne gone, the condo had too many empty corners. Too much quiet. She needed a roommate. Someone who’d fill the silence. Silence led to thinking. And remembering. Allie didn’t want to remember.
As if she’d ever forget.
By the time she was ten, Allie knew every nuance of Zane Peters’s walk. She’d memorized his low-pitched laugh and his slow and easy way of talking. The way he’d drawled her name and called her honey had sent shivers down her spine. She’d teased him, telling him he was a Southern boy, not a true Westerner.
The accent came from his Texas-born mother. Dolly Peters had ridden the barrel-racing circuit where she’d become fast friends with Mary Lassiter, and like Mary, had married a rodeo cowboy. The difference was Buck Peters quit the rodeo and came home to his family’s ranch near Aspen. Buck and Dolly had moved to Texas when Dolly’s aged parents needed them, and now they operated the Texas ranch Dolly had inherited while Zane raised and trained horses and ran some cattle on the Colorado ranch.
Her thoughts always circled back to Zane. If Allie hadn’t agreed to her mother’s request to wait, she and Zane would have been married almost eight years now.
Or divorced.
Loving Zane hadn’t blinded her to his flaws. He had a reckless streak and took too many chances. Allie had been away at school, but reports filtered to her about his partying. She’d worried about him drinking too much and driving too fast on the curving mountain roads back to his ranch. Home on a holiday visit, she’d nagged him; he’d accused her of not trusting him and of asking friends to spy on him. The argument had escalated until she’d ripped off her engagement ring and shoved it in his shirt pocket. Told him to go away, that she’d never marry him.
If he’d apologized, begged her to take back the ring... He hadn’t. Without a word, he’d left her standing in front of the ranch house. She’d watched him tear out the gate and down the dirt road, driving so fast his truck fishtailed on the curves.
Her throat ached with angry, unshed tears. She didn’t want to think about Zane. The shock of his betrayal. The wrenching pain. The slow, agonizing realization that her life had drastically changed.
Resentment flared. He didn’t look like a man who’d suffered. He looked... She searched for an acceptable word. He looked well.
The phone rang sharply, startling her and providing welcome respite from unwanted, bitter memories. When she answered, silence greeted her. “Hello? Hello? I’m hanging up.”
“Don’t hang up, Allie. I’m calling about a horse.”
Allie’s brain went blank, rendering her incapable of uttering a word.
“I have this filly who needs help. She’s a good-looking two-year-old who’s been mistreated. I’ve watched her in the pasture, and she’s quick and smart. She might make a good little cow pony for Hannah in a few years. I don’t think there’s an ounce of vice in her, but she’s terrified of people. I’d like you to work with her. I’m willing to pay whatever you want.”
The uncharacteristic fast-paced flow of words told her how nervous Zane was. Let him be nervous. She was hanging up.
“She needs you,” Zane said quickly, as if reading Allie’s mind. “A man goes near her, she gets the shimmering shakes so bad, her hide’s going to fall off. I can’t use her, and even if Hannah would let me, I can’t sell her. It’s not the filly’s fault she learned to distrust men.”
“No, it takes a man to teach a female that men are the lowest of scum.”
A stark silence met her bitter retort before Zane asked, “Will you help the filly?”
“No.”
“You didn’t used to hold an owner’s behavior against an animal,” he said evenly.
Allie wanted to scream he’d destroyed the person she used to be. She said nothing, wrapping the phone cord so tightly around her fist, her fingers ached.
“So much for all your animal-rescue rhetoric.”
How dare he try to shame her into helping him?
“Don’t worry. Your friends won’t find out from me you refused to help an animal in need.”
Allie yanked the phone cord tighter around her fingers. His subtle blackmail wouldn’t work. Zane could call any number of people to help him with a horse. She had a tour business to run.
Amber strolled into the living room and jumped lightly up onto Allie’s lap. Curling into a furry ball, the three-legged cat gave Allie an unblinking yellow-eyed stare. Allie had found the cat abandoned and half-dead beside the highway.
Zane exhaled loudly. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”
Stroking Amber’s neck, Allie knew she couldn’t ignore the filly’s plight. “I’m taking a family with a blind child up Independence Pass tomorrow to the Braille trail and to the ghost town of Independence. I won’t be able to get to the Double Nickel until after four. That gives you plenty of time to trailer the filly over to Hope Valley and be gone.”
“I’m not trailering her anywhere. She went
crazy coming here. Luckily she didn’t injure herself, but I’m not putting her through that again. I’ll move her to the round pen by the barn.”
Allie didn’t want to go anywhere near Zane’s ranch. She didn’t want to see Zane again. Amber rolled on her back, presenting her stomach for Allie to rub. The cat bore no resemblance to the pitiful near-skeleton Allie had brought home from the veterinarian’s office. Then, Amber had lashed out in a fear-crazed fury at every kind overture.
Taking a deep breath, Allie buried her fingers in Amber’s fur. “I’ll look at her tomorrow, but I’m not making any promises. There’s no reason for you to be there. I’ll call you with my answer.” Allie put down the phone. She’d leave a message on his answering machine. After she found someone else to work with the filly.
Even with Amber’s contented purring, thirty minutes passed before Allie quit shaking.
CHAPTER TWO
INCREDIBLY stupid didn’t begin to describe Allie driving to Zane Peters’s ranch. Ahead of her tourists in a rented vehicle rubbernecked at the palatial homes while the September sunlight sparkled off the creek rushing beside the road. Two deer stood motionless in a mowed field watching a flock of magpies erupt into the sky. The black-and-white birds circled to land on a dead stag high up the ridge. Clumps of aspen trees splashed the hillside with gold.
Curves of the road and breaks in the trees provided glimpses of the Elk Mountains. Normally the sight of the rugged peaks raised Allie’s spirits and brought her peace. Not today. Not when she couldn’t quit wondering why Zane Peters had telephoned her. Not that his reasons mattered. She’d agreed to see the horse for the horse’s sake. Not to renew any kind of relationship with Zane.
Allie had dressed to make that point perfectly clear, digging the stained, worn jeans from the dirty clothes hamper. Moonie had slept on her shirt, an ancient one of Worth’s.
Driving slowly into the ranch yard, Allie parked by the barn. She had no intention of going anywhere near the house.
The horse in the round pen dashed to the far side where she stood stiffly facing Allie.