They looked like they belonged together—like they all belonged together—and she knew she had to escape.
What a fool she had been to think she could handle seeing him tonight without falling apart. She had spent three weeks trying to get through each day without thinking about him more than once every five minutes. Of course the shock of seeing him would be an assault to her senses, especially surrounded by all the trappings of the most romantic day of the year.
How was she going to get through this? They lived in a small, tight-knit community and were bound to bump in to each other occasionally. Would it get easier in time or would her heart continue to pound out of her chest and her pulse rate skyrocket every time she saw him?
What could she do? She wasn’t sure she had the strength to endure seeing him every week or even every month, not if it made her feel as if her heart were being sliced open again and again.
Yet she couldn’t leave. She had a job here, a business that was booming now that people in town knew how Steve had tried to blacken her reputation. She and Dylan had a life now, and she couldn’t walk away from that.
She blew out another breath. She could handle this. She was a strong and capable woman who could do anything she set her mind to.
Except stop loving Matthew Harte.
The door at her back was suddenly thrust out, and for one terrible moment she was afraid he had followed her outside. To her vast relief, Sarah McKenzie peeked her pretty blond head out the door.
“Ellie! I was wondering where you ran off to.”
“I just needed a little air.” A vast understatement. If she’d been any more breathless watching Matt dance with her little girl, she would have needed to yank old Bessie Johnson’s portable oxygen tank right out from under her and steal a few puffs.
Concern darkened the schoolteacher’s brown eyes. “Everything okay?”
“Sure.” Ellie managed a smile. “I’ve been running all night and I just needed a breather.”
“That’s why I came to find you. I had to tell you what a fantastic job you and Matt did organizing this evening. I’ve had so many comments from people telling me it’s the best carnival they’ve ever attended, and they can’t remember having such a good time.”
“I’m glad people are enjoying themselves.”
“And the bottom line is that we’ve already raised twice what we were expecting for tonight! The school library will have more books than shelf space now.”
Ellie smiled. “Maybe next year you can raise enough money to build a whole new library.”
“I hope you’ll help us again next year. You and Matt both.”
Sure. When monkeys fly out of my ears. “Let’s get through tonight before we worry about next year.”
“Well, I just wanted you to know how good you have been for Salt River. This town needed shaking up. I’m so glad you’re staying—we would all miss you very much if you left.”
After Sarah slipped inside the school, Ellie stood looking at the rugged mountains glowing in the pale moonlight and thinking about what she had said. If she had given anything to the town, she had received it all back and then some.
She thought of all the people she had come to care about in the months since she had come to Wyoming. Sarah. SueAnn. The rest of the friends she had made on the carnival committee, and the people—some perfect strangers—who had rallied around her after Dylan’s kidnapping, bringing food and offers of help and comfort beyond measure.
Her life would have been so much poorer without all of them.
She stared at the mountains as the truth she had refused to see finally slammed into her.
She needed them. All of them.
How stupid she had been. She thought she was so damned independent, so self-sufficient. But she would have crumbled into nothing after Dylan was taken if not for the people of Salt River she had come to love.
She had been trying so hard to stand on her own two feet that she never realized she would have fallen over long ago if it hadn’t been for the people around her providing quiet, unquestioning support.
The door pushed open behind her once more, and she thought it would be Sarah again or one of the other committee members. She turned with a teary smile that fell away instantly at the sight of Matt standing in the open doorway, looking strong and solid and wonderful.
Her heart began a painful fluttering in her chest when she thought of how she had wounded him by rejecting the incredible gift of his love.
He had been right. She had pushed him away because she was afraid of needing, of trusting. It had all been for nothing, though. She had needed him from the very beginning, his slow smile, his strength, his love. Especially his love.
She had just been too stubborn to admit it.
Tears choked her again and she suddenly knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he would never hurt her. He would protect her heart like he had tried to protect her body that day in Steve’s office, by placing himself in front of anything that threatened her.
“Hi,” she whispered.
He continued to study her, his beautiful, hard face as still as the mountains, and for one terrible moment she was afraid that her epiphany had come too late. That she had lost any chance she might have had.
Then she saw his eyes.
They looked at her with hurt and hunger and a vast, aching tenderness, and she forgot to breathe.
“It’s frigid out here,” he finally said. “Come inside. Are you crazy?”
A tear slid down her nose, and she quickly swiped at it before it could freeze there. “Yeah. Yeah, I am. Completely crazy. I must be or I wouldn’t be so miserable right now.”
He said nothing, just continued watching her, and she gathered up that courage he seemed to think she had in spades and took a step forward. “I’m sorry, Matt. I’m so sorry.”
He stared at her for several seconds, blue eyes wide with disbelief, then she was in his arms. Her heart exploded with joy as he kissed her, his mouth fierce and demanding.
“I have to say this,” she said, when she could think straight again. She pulled away and wrapped her cold hands around the warmth of his fingers. “You were right the other night. I didn’t want to let you help me, to let you inside. I think I knew even from the beginning that you would have the power to destroy me if I let you.”
“I never would,” he murmured.
“I know. I should have realized it then, but I’m afraid I don’t have much experience with this whole love thing.”
His eyes turned wary suddenly, and she realized she had never given him the words. “I love you, Matt,” she said softly. “I love the way you smile at your daughter and the way you take care of your horses and the way you hold me like you never want to let me go. I love you fiercely and I hate so much that I hurt you.”
Emotions blazed out of his blue eyes. “I’m tough. I’ll survive. Just don’t do it again, okay?”
Another tear slipped down her cheek. “I won’t. I swear it.”
His thumb traced the pathway of that lone tear. “Dylan says you never cry.”
She sniffed. “See all the bad habits you’re making me develop?”
A soft laugh rumbled out of him, then his face grew serious. “I want everything, Ellie,” he warned. “Marriage, kids, the whole thing. I won’t settle for less. Are you ready for that?”
She thought of a future with him, of making a home together among these mountains she loved, of raising their daughters together—and maybe adding a few sons along the way with their father’s eyes and his strength and his smile.
She couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful. In answer, she lifted her mouth to his and wrapped her arms tightly around him.
His exultant laugh rang out through the cold February night. “Come on. Let’s go inside where it’s warm and tell the girls. Hell, let’s tell the whole world.”
She went still in his arms, suddenly horrified. “Oh, no. The girls.”
He shrugged. “What’s the problem? This
is what they wanted all along. They figured out we belonged together months before we did.”
“That’s what I mean.” She groaned again. “They are going to be completely insufferable when they find out how well their devious little plan worked.”
He winced. “Good point. So what do we do about it?”
“I don’t think there’s anything we can do, just accept the fact that our nine-year-old daughters are smarter than either of us.”
“That’s a terrifying thought.”
“Get used to it, Harte. I have a feeling the two of them are going to make our life extremely interesting.”
His smile soaked through her, filling every empty corner of her heart with sweet, healing peace. “I can’t wait,” he murmured.
She smiled and took the hand he offered. “Neither can I, Matt. Neither can I.”
ISBN: 978-1-4268-6274-8
THE VALENTINE TWO-STEP
Copyright © 2002 by RaeAnne Thayne
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*Outlaw Hartes
The Valentine Two-Step Page 22