The Cowboy She Never Forgot

by Cheryl Biggs

  “The ranch?” Dee said, her eyes wide. “But why? We’re not done here.”

  “Well, he evidently is,” Cody snarled, turning and stalking back to the trailer.

  Kate stood by the Snack Shack. She’d thought Shane would be at his horse’s stall, but he wasn’t there, or at the pens, or the publicity house. She hadn’t quite screwed up enough courage to go to his trailer yet.

  “Really something about Josh Lawyler, huh, Kate?” Tim Norris said, walking up to her and grabbing the coffee urn on the counter. “Never would have thought it of the kid. Kinda liked him myself, though he is a bit rough around the edges.”

  “Oh, uh, yeah,” Kate said absently, her gaze scanning the grounds in the hopes of spotting Shane.

  Tim smiled. “So, you and Shane getting back together?”

  “I, umm—”

  “Hey, Norris!”

  Kate and Tim both turned to look at the woman sticking her head out of the registration trailer’s door. “You’ve got a phone call in here from New Mexico. Someone named Molly says your kid wants to say hi.”

  Surprised, Kate looked at Tim to find him smiling, his eyes bright.

  “Damn. I was about to give up on her ever returning my calls,” he said, more to himself than to Kate, and took off at a jog for the trailer.

  Kate watched him run for the trailer, and remembered the rumor Jim Hodges had told her, about Molly Sumner and the suspected father of her child. But it hadn’t been Shane, it was Tim.

  She hobbled away from the arena area and toward Shane’s trailer, her determination growing with each passing minute. She loved Shane Larrabee and wasn’t going to lose him again if there was anything she could do about it. If he wasn’t at the trailer, she’d wait. She didn’t care if she had to sit on his stoop all night or tie herself to his bumper and ride halfway to kingdom come like that to get him to listen. If he wanted nothing to do with her after she said her piece, then fine. She’d wish him happiness—with Dee Brant if that was the case—then go home and cry her eyes out, and damn herself for the rest of her life for being such a stubborn idiot. But she wasn’t going anywhere until she talked to him.

  A light was on in the trailer. Kate felt a spurt of renewed optimism, then it deserted her again when she noticed Shane’s truck was gone.

  “Maybe his brother took it,” she mumbled hopefully. She paused in front of the door, biting her lip. Her insides were fluttering, her entire body was trembling, and she was scared out of her wits. What if he refused to open the door for her? What if he opened it, saw it was her, and slammed it in her face? What if he just told her he never wanted to see her again? That he didn’t love her?

  She swallowed hard. She could spend the rest of her life playing “what if,” but it wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Taking a deep breath, and calling up whatever courage she had left, Kate rapped a fist against the small window set into the door. “Shane? It’s Kate. I need to talk to you.” She knocked again. “Shane?”

  The door opened and Dee Brant looked down at her, eyes blazing with disdain. “What do you want?”

  Kate stared at the woman, a hundred questions going through her mind, jealousy flaring in her heart. “I—need to talk with Shane.”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Where—” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat. “Do you know where I can find him?”

  “No,” Dee snapped.

  Kate could feel the woman’s anger like a blast of fire, flaring out to slap her. She stiffened against it, letting her own give her strength. “Look, I’m sorry for intruding,” she said, her voice calm, even, and laced with a no-nonsense tone. “Is Cody here?”

  Dee’s eyes narrowed. “No, he’s down at the arena.”

  Kate remembered that Shane’s truck was gone. Had he left Reno? Her heart pounded frantically. She looked back up at the other woman, then thought better of asking her. At least he hadn’t taken Dee with him. She nodded and turned away. Maybe Cody would tell her where Shane had gone.

  “Why don’t you just leave Shane alone?” Dee called after her.

  Kate turned, not really surprised at the woman’s outburst, or the anger in her voice. After all, if she was involved with Shane, as it appeared she was or at least had been, she was probably as eaten up inside with jealousy of Kate, as Kate was of her.

  “You’re no good for him, Kate Morgan,” Dee snapped, jumping down from the trailer. “All you’ve ever done is make him miserable, so why don’t you just leave him alone?”

  Before Kate could think of a response, Dee turned and stalked toward the arena.

  “Don’t mind her,” Cody said, chuckling and rubbing a hand across his jaw as he walked up behind Kate. “Damned little spitfire’s spoiled rotten and always has been way too outspoken for everybody’s good.”

  Kate turned to him. “I imagine she feels she has a nght in this instance.”

  “Dee would speak out for Shane and me whether she had a right or not,” Cody said, a wide smile pulling at his handsome face. “I’ll tell you though, I thank heaven about a hundred times a day that we only have one little sister. Two of them would put me in an early grave.”

  “Sister?” Kate echoed, staring at him in disbelief. The shock of that information hit her like a boulder between the eyes. At the same time, it sent such a rush of relief flowing through her she nearly swayed off her crutches. She grabbed for the side of the trailer, but didn’t take her gaze off of Cody. “Dee is your sister? Really? Your sister?”

  Cody nodded. “Yeah. Who’d you think she...” His eyes suddenly lit with realization. “Wait a minute. Don’t tell me you thought...?”

  Kate blushed.

  Cody grinned knowingly. “Yeah, you did.”

  “Of course I knew Shane had a little sister—but I thought her name was Diane—and Dee’s name is Brant,” Kate said, as if in her own defense.

  He nodded. “Yeah. After our parents died, we were taken in by an aunt and uncle. Me and Shane were older, but Dee—we all call her Dee for short—was just a baby, so they’re the only parents she’s ever known. She took their name, and she doesn’t make a big thing of being our sister because she wants to make it on the circuit on her own, not because she’s a Larrabee.”

  Kate felt foolish, happy, relieved, anxious and more desperate than ever to talk to Shane. She should have realized, but the only time Shane had ever talked of his sister he’d called her Diane, and Kate remembered how Shane had said she always wanted to be an actress. Kate had never thought for one minute that Dee the barrel racer could be Diane the would-be actress. But she should have known that Shane wouldn’t play with someone’s feelings, that he wasn’t the type to make love to her, then a few hours later turn his affections toward another woman. “Cody, do you know where Shane is?”

  He shrugged. “He packed up a little while ago and peeled out of here. I think he’s heading back to Colorado.”

  Stunned, she rigidly held her tears back as an unshouted protest filled her mind, and emptiness her heart. Colorado. Her anguish almost overcame her sense of control, but she held on. She was too late. Shane was gone.

  The urge to speed out onto the freeway and try to find him was almost more than she could resist. But she didn’t know which way he’d gone. What if he didn’t go straight to Colorado? What if Cody was wrong, and he was going somewhere else?

  An hour later she pulled into her own driveway. He was gone. The words kept echoing through her mind, taunting, merciless. She walked into the house. It seemed unusually quiet, unusually empty. Flapjack jumped onto the sofa next to her as Kate sat down, but she was in no mood for company or solace and the cat soon left her to curl up on a nearby chair.

  Exhaustion swept over her swiftly, pulling her into sleep without her even knowing it. Several hours later she woke as Flapjack’s purring rumbled in her ear. She opened her eyes to a ball of fur curled up beside her head.

  Kate sat up, momentarily disoriented. Then everything rushed in on her as she watched sunlight move
over the landscape outside, and creep into the room through the undraped French doors. Shane was gone. Twice she had put her career before their love. She had rejected him, lied to him, and deceived him, and now that she realized how wrong she’d been, it was most likely too late.

  The misery of what she’d done gnawed at her, reminded her that she would feel it inside her, like a cold blanket around her heart, for the rest of her life.

  She closed her eyes and yielded to the sobs that had been building inside her ever since Cody had said Shane was gone. A hot river of tears poured down her cheeks. She saw Shane in her mind, the hurt and anger that had been in his eyes the night he realized she’d lied to him and was still a cop. And she saw him as he’d looked at her only a few hours ago, after her struggle with Josh.

  “He loves me,” she said, suddenly sitting up. She’d seen it in his eyes, felt it in his touch when he’d made love to her. Pushing off the couch, Kate hopped into her bedroom and, dragging a suitcase from the closet, began throwing clothes into it. Her first stop would be the arena, to get directions to the ranch from Cody. Then she would catch a flight to Denver.

  Shane was halfway to Salt Lake City before he finally realized he was going the wrong way.

  To keep from thinking about Kate, he’d begun to focus on other things. First, what he planned to do to the ranch, the stock he was going to buy. Then he’d tried to envision how he wanted to remodel the house, and maybe buy a new trailer, if he decided to stay on the circuit for another year. That thought brought him around to remembering what had happened to Skip. He’d stopped off at a gas station and phoned the hospital for news of Skip’s condition, and he’d learned it was still too soon to say.

  He hoped the Legend would make it, but life didn’t come with any guarantees.

  Suddenly, the truth of that insight hit him full force, nearly knocking the wind out of him.

  His profession didn’t come with any guarantees. It was just as dangerous as Kate’s, just as unpredictable and deadly, yet she had never once asked him to give it up.

  “Yes!” He slammed a fist down on the seat. How in blazes had he ever gotten through thirty-one years of life being so stupid? He pulled off the freeway at the next exit. His body felt bone weary, a little sore from riding bulls and sitting in his pickup the last two hours, but suddenly he’d never felt more alive. He grabbed a cup of coffee at a fast-food restaurant, then pulled back onto the freeway, in the opposite direction than he’d been going.

  “I want you with me always, for all my rides and all my wins. I want you with me every day and every night.” He held the box up before her and flipped open its lid. “Marry me, Red.”

  She reached out and touched the ring. Tears filled her eyes and spilled onto her cheeks, then she shook her head and, pushing the box away from her, stepped out of his embrace.

  “You know I can’t,” she whispered softly, she looked up at him. “Not unless...”

  Shane shook his head. “I won’t have a cop for a wife, Kate. Give it up and marry me, or we’re through.”

  He’d been a fool. There had been an empty hole in him for three years, but he’d denied it, pretending it didn’t exist, making up excuse after excuse when the emptiness refused to let him ignore it. He didn’t want to go through the rest of his life that way, feeling that nothingness inside him that he knew now only Kate could assuage.

  Images of her continued to fill his mind: the way the moonlight touched her hair and turned it to shimmering threads of fire, the way tiny gold flecks of color always danced within her blue-green eyes, the way her lips always begged him to kiss them, and the mere touch of her hand to his could incite a riot of desire within him and turn his blood to flame.

  Her love could fill the void he had carried around inside of him since the moment he’d walked away from her three years ago. But her rejection would mean he’d have it within him forever.

  How could he have not realized Kate Morgan was everything he wanted in life? That she represented everything he’d ever dreamed of? She was the woman he loved more than anything; the woman he wanted for his wife and the mother of his children. She was the one he wanted to wake up to every morning, and fall asleep beside every night, to laugh with, cry with, and grow old with. She was the woman he wanted to hold tenderly, passionately, in his arms for all time, and love until the day he breathed his last breath.

  And because of his fear, his foolish pride and plain, bullheaded stupidity, he might have lost her.

  Three cups of coffee and two hours later, Shane pulled up in front of the pawn shop where he’d hocked the ring he’d bought Kate three years ago. It was nearly two in the morning, but the place was still open, its garish lights shining brightly, people milling about the counters, some there to sell, others to buy. Like the casinos, a lot of the pawn shops in Reno never closed.

  Shane breathed a sigh of relief to see the ring still there. Handing the clerk the pawn ticket, and the money, he slid the small, velvet-covered box into his pocket and left the store, hoping he wouldn’t be bringing the ring back in a few hours.

  Within twenty minutes he was across the road from her ranch house. A pale light glowed in one window. Otherwise the house was dark.

  A car he didn’t recognize sat in the driveway, but Kate’s Cherokee was nowhere in sight.

  Apprehension seized him. What if someone else was here with her? He played with the small velvet-covered box, rolling it around in his hand. The thought of her being with another man, standing within the circle of his arms, kissing him, loving him, tore at Shane’s insides. He steeled himself against the feelings and fought to squelch them. It didn’t matter who was here, he had to talk to Kate, had to tell her how wrong he’d been, how much he loved her, and he had to do it right now.

  Chapter 13

  A loud noise startled Kate. She nearly jumped out of her skin, and whirled around so fast she lost her balance and fell onto the suitcase she had laid open on her bed. Pushing aside a tumble of clothes and shoes, and jerking her arm from the hanger it had plunged through when she fell, she pushed herself carefully back up, grumbling softly and holding her injured foot off the floor.

  Flapjack leaped onto the bed and into her suitcase, immediately starting to knead one of her best shirts.

  “No,” Kate snapped, picking him up and plopping him unceremoniously onto the bed. “Naughty boy.”

  Silence surrounded her and she paused, listening. Had that been someone at the front door? Or an accident out on the road? She glanced at her watch. A little early for anyone to be at her door, or on the winding mountain road. Maybe it was a summer thunderstorm rolling in. When no further sound rumbled through the house, she turned back to her packing. The plane didn’t leave for several more hours, so she had plenty of time to get to the airport. She grabbed her crutches and hobbled toward the hall, deciding to make herself a cup of coffee before leaving.

  She was halfway down the dark hallway when the sound came again. Someone was banging on her door. Kate stopped and stared at the door, illuminated by the pale glow of a nightlight in the foyer. It was four in the morning. Who could it possibly be at this hour?

  “Kate?” Shane yelled.

  Her heart nearly stopped. Shane? Her breath stalled. She was dreaming. She had to be. Shane was on his way to Colorado.

  “Kate, it’s Shane. Open the door.” His fist slammed against the paneled wood again. “Kate?”

  Flapjack scooted past her, as if on his way to open the door himself.

  “Oh, please,” Kate said, breathlessly, as she hobbled to the door as fast as she could, “please don’t let this be a dream.” She fumbled with the chain and it took several tries to get it off, but at last she pulled the door open, still afraid she would wake up any second to find herself back on the sofa with tears streaming down her face.

  “Kate.” Shane pulled her roughly, almost violently into his arms, sweeping her from her feet and pressing her body tightly against his. “God, I was afraid you might be gone somewhere.
When you didn’t answer I...”

  Her crutches clattered to the tile floor as her arms went around his shoulders and she sank into his embrace, welcoming it as she welcomed air to her lungs.

  “I’ve been such a fool.” His lips captured hers in a kiss that sent shivers of desire routing her senses and fueling all her hopes and dreams.

  The heat that erupted within him at her touch was a welcome scalding that went through his flesh and straight to his soul, chasing away the cold that had lain there for so long.

  His lips rained kisses on her face, then found her mouth again. This time his kiss was slow and easy as he savored the softness of her mouth, tasted the sweet honey of her lips, reveled in the promise of her touch, her arms around his neck, and let his hopes soar.

  It was Kate who pulled away, hating herself for doing it, but knowing that she had to. She looked up and into his eyes. “I thought you were gone.”

  “I was.”

  “I was packing when you knocked.”

  Fear seized him. He’d blown it.

  “I was coming after you.”

  Fighting back the swell of emotion that threatened to engulf him, Shane gathered her into his arms and swept her effortlessly off her feet and carried her out to the patio. “I think we need to talk.”

  Kate looked up at him as he set her down on the cushioned chaise longue. “Shane, tonight when we caught Josh Lawyler, I wasn’t there for that, for the job. I’d gone to the arena to tell you I was wrong.”

  He looked at her for a long moment before touching her cheek with the back of his fingers, a caressing touch that sent shivers through her. “You are an ever-changing mystery to me, Red.”

  “I don’t want to be a mystery to you,” she said, swallowing back a sob. “I want—”

  He pressed a finger tenderly to her lips, stopping her words.

  She pulled it away, needing to tell him, needing to make him understand why she’d said no to him three years ago, needing to make him understand that she knew she’d been wrong. “Listen to me, Shane. When I was eight years old my mother committed suicide.” Her gaze held strong to his. “I didn’t know she was dying. I overheard her arguing with my father and thought—”