She didn’t look at him, but even beneath the rough clothes that dwarfed her slender figure, he could tell she stiffened. “It’s a perfectly convenient mode of transportation,” she defended.
Sure. For people like him. He was a small-town rancher. She was the Amelia Fortune Chesterfield. And since the day she’d returned to England after her night dabbling with Quinn—after making him believe that she was going back to London only to attend to some royal duties and would quickly return to Horseback Hollow—she’d become one half of the engaged couple dubbed “Jamelia” by the media that dogged her steps.
Amelia Fortune Chesterfield was to marry James Banning in the most popular royal romance since the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Lord James Banning. A viscount, whatever the hell that was. A man who was her equal in wealth and family connections. A man who was slated for an even higher title, evidently, once Amelia was his wife. Earl something of something or other.
His sister had talked about it so many times, the facts ought to be tattooed on his brain.
His fingers strangled the steering wheel. “Wedding plans becoming so taxing that you had to run away from them?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.” He turned through the overhead arch bearing the iron Rocking-U sign and pressed harder on the gas. The highway was still a fair piece away, but once he hit that, it’d be smooth sailing. He’d leave her in capable medical hands and wash his hands of her, once and for all.
Somewhere inside his head, laughter mocked the notion. He’d been doing that so-called washing for the past two months and hadn’t gotten anywhere. There had to be something wrong with him that he couldn’t just file her away as a one-night stand where she belonged and be done with it.
“Please don’t take me to Lubbock,” she said huskily. “I don’t need a doctor. I just need some sleep. And some food.” She reached across as if she were going to touch his arm again, but curled her fingers into a fist instead, resting it on the console between their seats. “Drop me on the side of the road if you must. I’m begging you. Please, Quinn.”
He ground his molars together. Would he have had more resistance if she hadn’t said his name? “I’m not gonna drop you on the side of the damn road.”
He should take her to Jeanne’s. Recently discovered family or not, the woman was Amelia’s aunt. Jeanne would take her in. Even if it was the middle of the night.
He muttered an oath and pulled a U-turn there on the empty highway.
Maybe Amelia wouldn’t mind Jeanne’s questions, asked or unasked, but Quinn would. Particularly when he had unanswered questions of his own.
He didn’t look at her. “I’ll take you back to the Rocking-U. And then you can start talking.”
* * *
His voice was so hard.
His face so expressionless.
Amelia wrapped her arms around herself and tried to quell her trembling. She was so, so tired.
She’d foolishly thought that once she got back to Horseback Hollow, once she saw Quinn in person, everything would be all right.
She could explain. And he would understand.
He would take her in his arms, and everything would be perfect and as wonderful as it had been the night of her cousin Toby’s wedding. Quinn would know that there was only him. That there had only ever been him.
It had been the single thing keeping her going throughout the dreadful ordeal of getting to Horseback Hollow.
“You can start—” Quinn’s deep voice cut through her “—with explaining why you came to the Rocking-U at all.”
“I wanted to talk,” she whispered.
He gave her a long look. Animosity rolled off him in waves, a stark contrast to the tender warmth he’d shown her just six weeks earlier. “Yet so far you haven’t said anything new.”
She wanted to wring her hands. Such a silly, naive girl to think that her presence would be enough to make up for everything she hadn’t said that she should have. For everything she hadn’t done that she should have.
“What did Banning do? Disagree over china patterns? So you run away again to the States to bring him to heel? Your last trip here was pretty effective. Ended up with a royal engagement the second you got back home. Or maybe you’re just in the mood for one more final fling before the ‘I do’s’ get said.”
“I told you weeks ago that there’s no engagement,” she reminded carefully. After a week of the frantic telephone messages she’d left for him once she’d arrived in London, he’d finally returned her call. She’d tried to explain to him then about the media frenzy that had greeted her at the airport when she’d returned from Toby’s wedding.
Reporters shouting their congratulations on her engagement to James. Cameras flashing in her eyes. She’d been blindsided by the unwanted attention as much as she’d been blindsided by news of an engagement she and James had discussed, but had never agreed to.
He grunted derisively. “And I don’t believe you any more now than I did when you said it the first time. You came to Horseback Hollow two months ago and you had sex with the poor dumb cowboy who didn’t know enough to recognize things for what they were. Your little walk on the wild side, I guess, before settling down all nice and proper with the English earl.”
“James isn’t an earl yet.” Which was the furthest thing from what she wanted to say.
“I don’t give a damn what he is or isn’t.” He slowed to make the turn through the iron archway, but the tires still kicked out an angry, arching spit of gravel. “He’s your fiancé. That’s the only thing I have to know. And as good as you were in the sack, princess, I’m not interested in a repeat performance.”
She bit down on her tongue to keep from gasping and stared hard out the side window until the tears pushing behind her eyes subsided. They hadn’t ever made it to a “sack,” as he so crudely put it. They’d made love under the moonlight in a field of green, surrounded by trees, singing crickets and croaking frogs. She’d slept in his arms under the stars and wakened at dawn to chirping birds and his kisses.
It had been magical.
“It was six weeks ago,” she whispered.
He still managed to hear. “Six. Eight. Whatever it was, it no longer matters to me. You want to screw around with a cowboy, do it on someone else’s ranch.”
She snapped her head around, looking at him. Even though it was dark as pitch, and the only light came from the glow of his pickup truck’s instrument panel, she still knew every inch of his face. Every detail. From the dark brown hair springing thickly back from his sun-bronzed forehead to the spiky lashes surrounding his hazel eyes to his angular jaw. She knew his quiet smile. The easy way he held his tall, muscular body.
“Don’t do that,” she said sharply. “Don’t cheapen what we had.”
“What we had, princess—” he drew out the word in a mocking British accent “—was a one-night stand. And the next day, you returned to the loving arms of your intended. Poor bastard. Does he know what he’s getting?” He pulled to a stop in front of a modestly sized two-storied house and turned off the engine. “Or maybe he doesn’t care. Maybe he’s just happy to merge one highfalutin’ family with another and fidelity doesn’t matter one little bit.”
“He’s not my fiancé!”
“And that’s what you came all the way here to talk about,” he said skeptically. “To claim that he’s not your fiancé? While every newspaper and trashy tabloid in print, every gossipy website that exists, is dissecting the great ‘Jamelia’ romance. If he’s not your fiancé, why the hell aren’t there any quotes from you saying that? Everything else about the two of you has been chronicled across the world. Seems to me there have been plenty of opportunities for you to state otherwise.” He stared into her face for a long moment, then shook his head and shoved open his truck door. “We had this same conversation two months ago on the
phone.” His voice was flat. “Should have saved yourself a ten-hour flight in coach.” He slammed the door shut and started walking toward the house.
“Six weeks ago,” she whispered again
But of course he didn’t hear her this time.
Chapter Two
Amelia finally got out of the truck and headed slowly toward him. Quinn watched only long enough to assure himself that she wasn’t going to collapse again, before he turned toward the house once more. He wanted her in his home about as much as he wanted holes drilled into his head.
It was hard enough to forget about her when she’d never stepped foot in his place. Now she was going to do just that. And his need to keep her out of his thoughts was going to become even more impossible.
He shoved open the front door and waited for her to finish crossing the gravel drive. Her dark hair gleamed in the moonlight, reminding him of the last time. Only then the long strands had been fanned out around her head, and her face bathed in ecstasy.
He clenched his teeth and looked at the scuffed toes of his leather boots. The second she crossed the threshold, he moved away. “Close the door behind you.”
His steps sounded hollow on the wood floor as he headed through the house to the kitchen at the back and he heard the soft latch of the front door closing behind him.
He slapped his palm against the wall switch, flooding the kitchen with unforgiving light, and grabbed the plastic-wrapped loaf of bread from where he’d last tossed it on the counter. He yanked open a drawer, grabbed a knife, slammed the drawer shut and yanked open the fridge. Pulled a few things out and slammed that door shut, too.
None of it helped.
She was still in his damned house.
Another woman he’d let himself believe in.
Didn’t matter that he knew he was to blame for that particular situation. He’d barely known Amelia. And he’d known his ex-wife, Carrie, for years. Yet he’d made the same mistake with them both.
Trusting that he was the one.
The only one.
He carelessly swiped mayonnaise on the two slices of bread, slapped a slice of cheese on top, followed by a jumble of deli-sliced turkey.
Every cell he possessed knew the minute Amelia stepped into the kitchen behind him, though she didn’t make a sound. She was as ghostly quiet as she was ghostly pale.
He dropped the other slice of bread on top of the turkey and managed not to smash it down out of sheer frustration. He tossed the knife in the sink next to his elbow and it clattered noisily.
He turned and faced her, choking down the urge to take her shoulders and urge her into a chair.
She looked worse than ill.
The shadows under her eyes were nearly purple. The oversize shirt—an uglier color than the contents of his youngest nephew’s diaper the last time he’d been stuck changing it—had slipped down one of her shoulders and her collarbone stuck out too sharp against her pale skin.
It wasn’t just a day of traveling—by means he damn sure knew she wasn’t used to—taking its toll.
“What the hell have you done to yourself?”
Her colorless lips parted slightly. She stared up at him and her eyes—dark, dark brown and enormous in her small triangular face—shimmered wetly. “You’re so angry,” she whispered.
Angry didn’t begin to cover it. He was pissed as hell. Frustrated beyond belief. And completely disillusioned with his judgment where women were concerned.
Especially this woman, because dammit all to hell, there was still a part of him that wanted to believe in her. Believe the things she’d said that night. Believe the things she’d made him feel that night.
And he knew better.
“I should have taken you to the hospital,” he said flatly. “Have you had the flu or something?” God forbid she was suffering anything worse.
Her lashes lowered and she reached out a visibly unsteady hand for one of the wood chairs situated around his small, square table. But she only braced herself; she didn’t sit. “I haven’t been sick. I told you, I just need food and a little rest.”
“A little?” He snorted and nudged her down onto the chair seat. A nudge is all it took, too, because her legs folded way too easily. He would have termed it collapsing, except she did even that with grace.
As soon as she was sitting, he took his hand away, curling his fingers against his palm.
Whether to squeeze away the feel of her fragile shoulder, or to hold on to it, he wasn’t sure.
And that just pissed him off even more.
He grabbed the sandwich, and ignoring every bit of manners his mom had ever tried to teach him, plopped it on the bare table surface in front of her. No napkin. No plate.
If she wanted to toy around with a cowboy, she’d better learn there weren’t going to be any niceties. He almost wished he chewed, because the notion of spitting tobacco juice out just then was stupidly appealing.
She, of course, not-a-princess that she was, ignored his cavalier behavior and turned her knees beneath the table, sitting with a straight back despite her obvious exhaustion. Then she picked up the sandwich with as much care as if it were crustless, cut into fancy shapes and served up on priceless silver. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
He wanted to slam his head against a wall.
Every curse he knew filled his head, all of them directed right at his own miserable hide. He grimly pulled a sturdy white plate from the cupboard and set it on the table. He didn’t have napkins, but he tore a paper towel off the roll, folded it in half and set it next to the plate. Then, feeling her big brown eyes following him, he grabbed a clean glass and filled it with cold tap water. She was surely used to the stuff that came in fancy tall bottles, but there was no better water around than what came from the Rocking-U well. Aside from water, he had milk and beer. He wasn’t sure the milk wasn’t sour by now, and she definitely wasn’t the type to drink beer.
“Thank you,” she said again, after taking a long sip of the water. “I don’t mean to put you to any trouble.”
He folded his arms across his chest and dragged his gaze away from the soft glisten of moisture lingering on her full, lower lip. “Shouldn’t have gotten on the airplane, then.” Much less a bus.
She looked away.
For about the tenth time since he’d found her hiding in his barn, he felt like he’d kicked a kitten. Then ground his boot heel down on top of it for good measure.
“Eat.” He sounded abrupt and didn’t care. “I’ll get a bed ready for you.”
She nodded, still not looking at him. “Thank—” Her voice broke off for a moment. “You,” she finished faintly.
That politeness of hers would be the end of him.
He left the kitchen with embarrassing haste and stomped up the stairs to the room at the end of the hall. He stopped in the doorway and stared at the bed.
It was the only one in the house.
It was his.
“You’re a freaking idiot,” he muttered to himself as he crossed the room and yanked the white sheets that were twisted and tangled and as much off the bed as they were on into some semblance of order. He’d have changed the sheets if he owned more than one set.
Once she was gone, he’d have to burn the damn things and buy different ones. For that matter, he might as well replace the whole bed. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since learning she’d gotten engaged to that other guy within hours of leaving his arms. He was pretty sure that sleeping was only going to get harder from here on out.
He realized he was strangling his pillow between his fists, and slapped it down on the bed.
It was summertime, so he hadn’t personally been bothering with much more than a sheet, but he unearthed the quilt that his mother had made for him years earlier from where he’d hidden it away in the closet
after Carrie left him, and spread it out on top of the sheets. It smelled vaguely of mothballs, but it was better than nothing.
Then he shoved the ragged paperback book he’d been reading from the top of the nightstand into the drawer, effectively removing the only personal item in sight, and left the room.
He went back downstairs.
She was still sitting at the table in his kitchen, her back straight as a ruler, her elbows nowhere near the table. She’d finished the sandwich, though, and was folding the paper towel into intricate shapes. Not for the first time, he eyed her slender fingers, bare of rings, and reminded himself that the absence of a diamond ring didn’t mean anything.
When she heard him, she stood. “I should go to Aunt Jeanne’s.”
“Yes.” He wasn’t going to lie. She’d already done enough of that for them both. “But it’s after midnight. No point in ruining someone else’s night’s sleep, too. And since Horseback Hollow isn’t blessed with any motels, much less an establishment up to your standards,” he added even though she was too cultured to say so, “you’re stuck with what I have.” He eyed her. “Bedroom’s upstairs. Do you have enough stuffing left in you to make it up them, or do I need to put you over my shoulder?”
Her ghostly pale face took on a little color at that. “I’m not a sack of feed,” she said, almost crisply, and headed past him through the doorway.
His house wasn’t large. The staircase was right there to the left of the front door and his grandmother’s piano. She headed straight to it, closed her slender fingers over the wood banister and started up. The ugly shirt she wore hung over her hips, midway down the thighs of her baggy jeans.
He still had to look away from the sway of her hips as she took the steps. “Room’s at the end of the hall,” he said after her. “Bathroom’s next to it.”
Manners might have had him escorting her up there.
Self-preservation kept him standing right where he was.
“Yell if you need something,” he added gruffly.
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