Shelby slowed her truck to let a couple of white-tail deer cross in front of her, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. She’d been debating strategy all day long, talking herself in and out of various approaches to the situation with Ty, but regardless of what she tried to talk herself into, there seemed to be only one effective course of action—to confront matters head on. To take charge rather than waiting for something to happen.
Hiding out wasn’t going to give her any peace. If anything, it would make the ghosts of the past loom larger. Shelby didn’t need large ghosts hulking about. She wanted to get on with her life.
Besides, she was embarrassed by almost breaking down in front of him. That gave him a slight advantage.
So you take charge.
Shelby eased the truck forward after the last deer had cleared the fence and disappeared into the field on the opposite side, frowning to herself as a strategy took form.
Take charge. Go on the offensive. That was the last thing Ty would expect.
Tell him how things are going to be.
So what if the mere idea had made her palms sweat on the steering wheel? If she couldn’t do this, then it meant Ty still mattered in ways she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, accept.
She started to smile as she rounded the last corner before home.
She had her strategy.
Chapter Three
“You’re certain the best defense is a good offense?” Cassie Johnson, Shelby’s best friend, leaned closer as she spoke, looking as if Shelby had just suggested she’d like to jump off a bridge. They shared a small table at FlintWorks, which was getting crowded and a touch loud, despite the lovely open layout of the old train depot turned microbrewery.
“I know Ty and I’ll be dealing with him regardless. I may as well set the time and place.”
“High noon. Main street?”
That was what it felt like.
Cassie took a sip of her drink, then nodded at Shelby’s untouched glass. “Maybe you do need to talk to him, so that you can get on with your life. I’ve never seen wine sit in front of you for so long.”
Shelby raised the glass and took a healthy swallow, but she didn’t much enjoy the excellent cabernet that ran down her throat. Stupid nerves.
“Better,” Cassie said. “So you’re going to hunt him down and tell him how it’s going to be?”
“As soon as I figure out how to get hold of him.” Since her plan was only about twelve hours old, she hadn’t done any ground work. Instead she’d waited for her bar date with Cass to bounce the idea off her friend, formulate a strategy and then put it into action. “I heard a rumor that he’s staying at the Circle C.” She’d also heard he was looking for work. The grocery clerk had been a veritable well of helpful information earlier that day after she’d announced to Shelby that Ty was back in town. “Since Saturday is my half day, I figured I’d drive out to see him tomorrow.”
“Or you could stroll across the bar right now.”
Shelby’s heart jumped at her friend’s calm statement. Despite her resolve not to react to anything Ty-related, Shelby’s stomach tightened as she turned to follow Cassie’s gaze to the entryway, where her ex-everything stood surveying the place. He was wearing his hat, of course, a blue plaid shirt, and worn jeans that weren’t in any way tight, but somehow hinted at the hard muscles beneath the denim. Dark hair. Blue eyes. Crazy hot mouth. Oh, yeah. That was Ty.
He was so damned attractive that it hurt a little to look at him. He’d been hers, but he hadn’t. He hadn’t wanted another woman, but he’d wanted that damned rodeo and those damned silver buckles.
Well, he could have them and she hoped, in a very cliché way, they kept him warm at night. In fact, she wished they were keeping him warm at this very moment and that he wasn’t here, because she wasn’t yet ready to put her plan into action.
She turned back around, took another chug of wine, and got real with herself. If four years hadn’t made her feel ready, what good would another day do?
No good at all.
Shelby pushed her chair back. The amazing thing was she’d worn a dress tonight. And makeup. She might not be mentally prepared, but physically she was ready.
“Now?” Cassie asked in surprise.
“Now.” While they were in a public place, where it was so much easier to end a conversation. Besides, the quicker she acted, the more likely she was to hold the advantage. Ty wasn’t expecting her to approach him.
Cassie raised her glass in a tiny salute, then shook her long blond hair back over her shoulders. “I’ll be here when you’re finished.”
“Shouldn’t take long.”
She hoped.
*
Ty saw Shelby the instant she got to her feet. And she saw him.
She left her friend at the table and started navigating across the room toward him, weaving in and around people. She approached a narrow space between two guys and flashed a smile at them before slipping through, making Ty feel as if he’d been hit in the gut. It’d been too long since he’d seen her smile, and from the way her face once again settled into a coolly detached expression when she looked back at him, he didn’t think he’d be seeing it any time soon.
A guy standing at the bar reached out to touch her arm when she passed and Shelby stopped, pushed her long honey-brown hair back over her shoulder. It rippled down her back as she said a few words to him, then she nodded and once again zeroed in on Ty. He did her a favor and closed the distance between them before she’d taken too many more steps or been stopped by another guy.
As she came to a stop a few feet away from him, she smiled—for the benefit of the crowd, no doubt—because there was nothing close to a friendly expression in her eyes.
“Ty. I thought we might have a word.” She motioned toward a lone bar stool at the opposite end of the bar and, when he nodded his agreement, she turned and started moving.
Ty followed, nodding at a couple of people on the way. Old acquaintances that appeared surprised to see him there with Shelby. He didn’t slow down to talk, but instead kept his eyes on Shelby, letting his gaze slide down to the movement of her hips beneath the slick white fabric of the dress she wore, then bringing them back up to her face when she turned toward him before pulling out the barstool with one hand. Ty would have helped, but that would have meant getting close and instinct told him to keep his distance—at least until he knew what was going on.
The bartender, who was wearing the same overly bright blue shirt as the rest of the staff, with FlintWorks emblazoned across the front, took a quick sideways step to where Shelby had settled on the bar stool.
She smiled at him and nodded at her half-full glass of wine. “I’m good.”
The guy gave Ty an expectant look as he leaned on the bar next to Shelby. “I’ll have”—Ty frowned as he looked at the unfamiliar names on the tap handles—“your most popular draft.”
“Triple C coming up.”
Shelby’s skirt had slid a little further up her smooth thigh now that she was seated and Ty tried to remember when he’d last seen her in a dress. A wedding maybe? She cleared her throat and he brought his gaze back up to her face.
She took a cool sip of wine. “First of all, I apologize for overreacting when you came to the ranch. You surprised me.”
“Yeah. I kind of figured that. If I’d had your cell number, I would have called.” He gave her a humorless half-smile. “And then we never would have seen each other in person.”
“Probably not.” She set the glass down, but kept her hand on the stem. “Like I told you before, over is over.”
Ty let that one pass. If over was truly over, she wouldn’t have bothered to seek him out.
“I heard that you’ve found a place to live.”
“Kind of.” The bartender placed a perfectly poured mug in front of him, smiled, and moved on. They smiled a lot in this place. Whoever had trained the staff, had done a job of it.
“And that you’re looking for work.”
&nb
sp; “I am.” Ty took a drink, then gave an appreciative nod. Triple C was a decent brew.
“So you’re staying.” When he lifted his eyebrows at her blunt statement, Shelby have a small shrug. “You have no job, no family, no real place to live. You could have no job and no place to live pretty much anywhere. So why come back here?”
Her expression told him why he’d better not have come back.
Tough, Shelby. He’d played the game by her rules for four long years. Now he wanted to make some rules, set some parameters.
“I’ve got a couple of reasons.”
She tilted her head and her hair slid over her shoulder. Ty wanted very much to push it back into place, to feel the silky strands move through his fingers. And if he did that, she’d probably deck him.
“A couple of reasons?” The politely conversational tone was at odds with the hard look in her eyes.
“For one thing, this is my hometown. It’s the place I want to be.”
“In all your travels you never found another place?” She took a small sip of wine.
“Marietta has everything I want.”
She gave him a long look. “You know you don’t always get what you want, Ty.”
He smiled a little. “True, but a lot of times I do.”
Her hand tightened around the stem of the glass, but her gaze remained steady. “I better not be one of the reasons you came back.” She took another a slow sip, studying him over the top of the glass.
“And if you are?”
The wine came down fast. “Don’t waste your time, Ty. It won’t be good for either of us.”
“Maybe I’ve changed.”
“So have I, Ty. I no longer need you.”
“I don’t know that you ever needed me.”
She studied him for a moment, taking her time before answering. “Meaning that if I had, I would have come with you?” Her eyebrows lifted. “That goes two ways, Ty. You didn’t need me, either.”
That was where she was wrong. He had needed her, but he hadn’t been ready to settle down. Making things permanent at the ripe old age of twenty-four wouldn’t have worked, but he’d been a hair’s breadth away from doing just that, for her—until his dad had talked to him.
“We aren’t going to change the past.”
She smiled grimly. “Or build a future.”
“But maybe we can make a truce.”
She considered for a moment, studying her wine again with a slight frown. A guy moved up to the bar next to her, squeezing into too small of a space, causing Shelby to lean toward Ty, whose first instinct was to tell the guy to back off.
“Excuse me,” Shelby said to the oblivious asshole.
“Sorry,” the guy muttered without looking at her or giving up an inch of space. Ty took a step forward, but Shelby sent him a warning look. Not your fight.
His mouth tightened, but he stayed where he was as the bartender approached. “Hey, Wade,” he said. “Give the lady some room.”
Wade let out a loud sigh and grudgingly stepped back so the Shelby no longer had to lean to the side. Moments later he had his beer and lumbered off without another word.
“See,” Ty said. “Changed man. I didn’t do one thing to adjust his attitude.”
Shelby frowned at him. “Somehow I don’t think so. I think you just pick your fights better.” She looked across the room at the table where she’d been sitting when he came into the bar. Cassie Johnson sat there and she raised her chin in a little gesture of support. He was the enemy.
“You don’t need back up,” he said when Shelby turned her attention back to him.
Color crept into her smooth cheeks, but she didn’t deny that she’d been seeking moral support from her friend. He shifted his weight, turning his profile to her before looking at her again. “I understand that I hurt you, but things couldn’t have played out any other way back then.”
“Bull.”
“Okay. Maybe I could have stayed here… but maybe you could have come with me.” Shelby started slowly shaking her head and he allowed himself a faint smile, because the point was irrefutable. “You did what you had to do and I did what I had to do. It didn’t mean we didn’t care for one another.”
“Just not enough, right?”
He moved a half step closer as a group of people squeezed into the area behind him and a guy accidentally elbowed him. “Maybe I cared too much to screw up your life while I dealt with the issues in mine.” Shelby’s chin rose, but he continued before she could speak. “Maybe I did what was best for both of us.”
“Or maybe what was best for you.”
“And maybe that was four fucking years ago and we’ve both changed.” He leaned even closer then, so that the guy jostling him from behind wouldn’t get every word. He would have asked her to leave the bar to talk in the parking lot, but had a very strong feeling that she wouldn’t go. She wanted the crowd. “I was too young to settle down. I had things to do. Stuff to prove. Yes, I could have stayed, but we wouldn’t have made it.” And it was so damned hard to get those words out. Ty did not, as a rule, talk about the things that ate at him.
“So the end result is the same, Ty. We’re not together.”
She spoke coolly, but Ty read the tension in her expression. She was pissed as hell at him, but she was not indifferent. And that was a good thing, because indifference would have killed him. Anger he could deal with.
“So you’re telling me that all hope is dead.”
“You killed it when you left.”
The guy behind Ty bumped into him yet again, this time almost pushing him into Shelby’s lap. She jerked her upper body back, her breath catching as Ty regained his balance and took his hand off her thigh.
“Are you sure it’s dead?” Because she was most definitely reacting to him.
She gave him a delicate sneer. “You have an ego, Ty. I’ll give you that. I wanted to talk with you tonight to set things straight, and I wanted people to see me do it, so they will stop telling me you’re back in town.” She slid off the barstool and raised her chin so that she could hold his gaze. “For the record, we are not getting back together, and if that hadn’t been your intentions, then I misread the situation and I apologize.”
“You didn’t misread.” Not one bit. “And you’ve made your feelings on the matter damned clear.”
“I’m glad we understand each other.”
“We don’t.” He stated the simple truth.
Jostling guy hit him again and Ty gave him a quick elbow without breaking his gaze with Shelby and the man gave a low grunt. A guy could only take so much.
“Ty… I don’t want to feel uncomfortable in my own town. If we see each other, we’ll be civil. Right?”
“Pretend friends.”
Her jaw muscles tightened. “If that’s what you want. Eventually it’ll feel more… normal… when we run into one another.”
Dream on.
Ty didn’t dare say the words out loud. “Then I guess I’ll see you around.”
She gave him a tight smile before edging her way by him. “Yes. I guess you will.”
*
Only one light was on in her house when Shelby arrived home much earlier than anticipated. After talking with Ty, she figured she had two choices—stay out, get drunk, and go home with Cassie, or man up and deal with her maddening conversation stone cold sober. Drunk was tempting, but she’d be dealing regardless, so why start with a headache and cotton mouth the next morning?
Shelby let herself into the house as quietly as possible, on the off chance that Gramps was sleeping in his chair. He wasn’t. She hung her keys on the hook near the door and slipped out of her shoes.
Gramps was a bona fide night owl. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in bed before eleven and wondered if it was cause of concern. He had looked tired when he’d come into the house just before she left, but there was that flu bug going around… or maybe age was finally catching up with him. It happened—even to seemingly ageless guys like
Les O’Connor.
There was no light coming out from under her grandfather’s door when she crept down the hall to the bathroom. She would have loved to have unwound in front of the television, watched something mindless, but she decided to go to bed and not sleep instead.
Crazy how she felt as if she had to unwind after drinks, but that was exactly how she felt. On edge. Nerves taut.
Damn Ty Harding.
And damn her fool hormones.
Mine, mine, mine. They’d shouted every time he’d gotten close.
Not yours anymore, ladies, because we’re not going to put ourselves through that again. It hurt like hell to want someone from the depths of her being and have them simply walk away. Yes, he was back, but Shelby wasn’t about to settle for being the consolation prize. Ty’s career was over and now he needed a home, a job. A pair of loving arms…
Her lips curled as she cranked on the water.
Not my arms, bud. She’d meant every word she’d said tonight… except that part about being friends. She didn’t think she could do that, even for the sake of peace and harmony, but she’d said she’d try to fake it and she would.
Shelby scrubbed off her makeup and pushed her hair back from her face with wet hands. Life had been so simple until Ty drove back onto the ranch. So very simple.
If he was going to stay in Marietta, she was going to have to get used to seeing him. Get over this feeling that he was invading her turf—even if it was her turf because when he’d left, he’d essentially forfeited it to her.
He knows that. He’s trying to fix it.
Shelby didn’t want things fixed. She wanted back the life she’d had three days ago—a Ty-free life.
*
The next morning, Gramps beat Shelby out of bed, which wasn’t unusual despite the fact that she usually went to bed before him. What was out unusual was the stiff way in which he moved across the kitchen, coffee cup in hand. He set the cup on the old Formica table and eased himself down into the chair, grimacing a little as he settled. His expression froze when he saw Shelby in the doorway frowning at him.
Catch Me, Cowboy Page 3