He jackknifed up from the bed, pulling her behind him. Then he took her into her shower, made everything steamy, and taught her a few new tricks to match.
That was why it wasn’t until she’d made them both coffee that she noticed there was a certain grim cast to his face when he looked at her. A kind of unnerving resolve.
“Are you okay?” she asked. Brady studied her for a moment, but didn’t say anything, so she blundered ahead. “I know it’s been a year since your father died. Today.”
It shocked her how much time she could spend writhing around with him naked, shameless and filled with light and heat and joy, only to plummet straight back into awkwardness at moments like this.
“Yes,” Brady said after a moment that seemed to drag on far too long, his face unreadable. “It’s been a year.”
“How did you hear that he was gone?”
He looked faintly startled. Then he frowned down at the coffee mug in his hands. And she didn’t think he was going to tell her.
“It was a weird time for Gray to be calling me,” Brady finally said, surprising her. “These days, he’s in touch all the time about ranch things, but back then, he didn’t really call me at all. The last time he had was when Ty got stomped by that bull. I guess I already knew something was wrong.”
He blinked, and Amanda didn’t think he’d keep going.
But he did. “It had been a normal morning. I’d gone to the gym for my usual five a.m. class. I’d checked in with one of my partners about a deal. I was looking forward to a few good hours alone in my office to work up a couple of proposals. And then everything changed.”
Amanda made a soft noise of commiseration.
Brady shook his head. “He was dead. He’d gone out to the barn, and he hadn’t come in. I got in my car and started driving. I don’t think I really believed it, though. Amos was always much larger and meaner than life. I’m not sure the reality hit me until I was actually driving down from the mountains into Cold River. Maybe not until his funeral.”
Amanda didn’t say anything. She reached across the counter and slid her hand over his.
“No one’s ever asked me that before,” he said.
She didn’t think she was imagining the way he looked at her, as if she was precious to him. As if all of this was precious.
As if it was much, much more than a little education between friends.
Then again, maybe that was wishful thinking.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” She toyed with each one of his fingers, tracing the lines between them, and ignoring the voices clamoring inside her. “I’m sorry you were alone.”
“I wasn’t alone. I came back as soon as I heard. Obviously Gray and Becca were already here, and Ty showed up not long after.”
Amanda caught his gaze and held it. “That’s not the kind of news you should get when you’re alone.”
Brady looked back at her, then, the way he had a thousand times now, but this time, everything changed.
They were still sitting at her counter. Her hands were still on his. But his gaze was dark green, and troubled, and something in her thudded.
Long. Low.
And she would have sworn the same thing drummed deep in him.
She couldn’t recognize the look on his face when he drew his hand away. She didn’t see the man she knew in the way he looked away briefly, swallowing hard.
Amanda suddenly felt cold, as if there were a draft in her walls and the frosty fall morning was getting in. Her bones ached, and a terrible sort of weight rolled through her—but she would not break down into sobs. Not here. Not now.
“Get dressed,” Brady said, in a low voice that gave nothing away. “I want to show you something.”
Amanda didn’t know if it was foreboding or something else that kept her quiet, only that she couldn’t seem to form the words to argue. Whatever it was, she went and dressed, then took a little extra time with her hair. She threw in a few extra curls, because she was never going to be Hannah, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make an effort. Or an entrance, however small.
When she came back out of the bathroom, Brady was waiting there at the counter, every inch of him the cowboy he’d always been to her.
Oh sure, he’d spent those years down in Denver, but that didn’t make him a city slicker. No matter how hard he tried.
He was too comfortable with that Stetson, and the look on his face was so familiar to her that it might as well be part of the view. A part of Cold River itself and the land that marked them all. It was there on his brow. In the line of his jaw.
She wondered if the world would always stop the way it did when he shifted that gaze to her.
“Ready?”
“As ready as I can be to go off on a secret excursion that doesn’t seem to making you very happy.”
“Have you always been this mouthy?” Brady asked, and she felt better, then. Because there was a hint of the heat she preferred in his gaze. And that curve to his lips. “Or is this a recent thing?”
“I’ve always been me, if that’s what you mean. It’s not my fault you’ve been walking around with blinders on for years.”
“You mean when you were legitimately and legally underage? Those blinders?”
“I haven’t been underage in years.” She sniffed. “Though I do wonder why it is everybody is so afraid to get in a fight with my brothers when to my knowledge, they don’t get in fights at all. With anyone. They talk about it, sure, but any actual fighting? Never.”
“That’s called being a man,” Brady informed her, with great male arrogance. “If you run around getting in fights all the time, you’re a punk. If you don’t have to fight because you can intimidate other men into behaving themselves simply by standing there, you win.”
“You could also try not standing around, exuding violence.”
“You grew up on a ranch.” Brady shook his head at her, though his mouth was still curved in one corner. “You know how male animals act. Don’t be so surprised that humans are the same.”
“I like to think humans are little bit better than farm animals, what with their big brains and stuff. Don’t you?”
“I don’t know.” Brady’s voice was darker, then. And the light in his eyes faded. “I’d like to believe that too, but there’s not a lot of evidence for that, is there? Look around.”
“I’m looking.”
But she was staring straight at him, and she could tell he didn’t like that. He pushed away from the counter and nodded toward the door. “Let’s go.”
You have to stop assuming that everything is on the brink of disaster, Amanda lectured herself as she followed him down the stairs outside into the shock of a bright Halloween morning, so cold that breathing in made her nose hurt.
But she was more focused on her heart. It was going a little crazy in her chest, and she was definitely holding her breath more than she should. And as much as she tried to tell herself it was because they were outside, in the daylight, daring anyone to happen by and notice them together here behind the Coyote, she was pretty sure her reaction had to do with the way Brady was holding himself. Tense and unhappy.
He never parked his truck out back because that would be as obvious as taking out an ad in the Longhorn Valley Tribune, so they had to hike it. Amanda was glad she hadn’t gone with her first instinct and put on the heels she wore to tend bar. Because it was a steep walk. And when wearing appropriate shoes like the ones she had on now, Amanda loved hiking. She loved climbing up towering things and tough hills to see what she could see from on top. She liked the peaceful trails that wound through the woods, the comforting cover of the trees standing tall around her, and the long shadows that whispered secrets and solitude.
Even today.
She climbed into the passenger seat, belted herself in, and sat there in that charged silence as Brady navigated his way out of the woods, back down to the road.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t have to go back to the ranch this morning,�
�� she said when she couldn’t take it any longer. “I thought that was the deal you made. Every morning, without fail. Or Gray wins.”
“I told him I wouldn’t be around this morning. It’s fine.”
“You say that like I don’t know your brothers. But I do.”
“They’ve backed off lately.” He flicked a look at her, then returned his attention to the road. “It won’t last, so I’m taking advantage of it while I can.”
Amanda puzzled over that as he drove across the bridge into town. That didn’t sound like the Everett brothers she knew. But she didn’t have time to really parse it through because Brady wasn’t heading toward any of the places she thought he might go. He didn’t take her to Mary Jo’s Diner. Or Cold River Coffee.
Instead, he turned down the street that led toward the courthouse. Then he kept going, winding around to a set of old barns and storage warehouses that had been used for a variety of different things over the past century or so, right there on the river. He pulled up in front of one and turned off his engine. It was a dark, weathered wood that looked inviting against the backdrop of trees that had been blazing gold earlier this fall.
Amanda had always loved these barns. They were a short walk from Main Street and had once been another bustling part of town. But she doubted very much that Brady would be so tense if he were taking her on a historic Cold River barn tour.
“This is beginning to feel like the opening of a horror movie,” she pointed out, trying to keep her voice light. “Deserted barns in a lonely part of town on Halloween … Can homicidal maniacs be far behind?”
“Come on,” Brady said, not responding to the horror movie crack. Which was worrisome. “I want to show you something.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
He was already climbing out of the truck, so she followed. He walked over and opened the door, then ushered her inside. It took her a minute to get her bearings. Because she’d always thought of the buildings down here as falling apart, or at least historic in the sense of being untouched for decades. But the shadowed interior they walked into didn’t smell like dust or disuse.
Brady flicked on some lights, another surprise. It turned out the barn was spacious and clean, as someone had taken the trouble to convert it from whatever it had been before to a lovely open space. Those weren’t holes in the roof up above, letting the light in. They were skylights. There were windows with darling shutters closed tight. And the great big barn doors on rollers that looked as if they’d been recently restored and finished.
Amanda forgot about how oddly Brady was behaving and took a few more steps inside. Barns made her happy. She liked them full of clever, spirited horses, but barring that, a repurposed barn got her all daydreamy. And this one didn’t smell like hay or livestock. It didn’t look like a lot of grubby work. It could so easily be something else. Something more in line with all those half-formed dreams of hers.
She sighed happily. “What is this place?”
“I’ve spent years thinking about what I would do if I ever had the opportunity to truly diversify Cold River Ranch,” Brady said. She looked back over her shoulder, and he was still standing there by the door, but he wasn’t looking around the barn. He was looking straight at her. “A few years ago, after Amos was a shade less hideous during Christmas than usual, I bought this place. I don’t know what I thought I would do with it, but I liked the idea that I had an investment in the town. And over the past year, I’ve been very slowly refurbishing it.”
“How could you do that without anyone knowing?”
“I didn’t want anyone to know.”
“You mean you didn’t want Gray or Ty to know.” But she couldn’t get worked up about the level of subterfuge that must have required, or the fact he hadn’t told her either. The space was too pretty. She smiled at him. “I’ll be honest, I’m surprised you thought about Cold River or your ranch at all while you were in the city. I’m going to remember that in December when you go back again.”
It cost her something to say that at all, much less in that cheerful way. The very idea made her want to double over and wail. But she did it.
Brady stared back at her. He did not smile in return.
“Gray and Ty have finally agreed to let me run wild and do whatever I want with a piece of the ranch,” Brady said. Or really, threw down into the space between them. “I’m not leaving in December. If I’m going to make it work, I’ll be here a good, long while.”
There was too much noise in her head and her pulse was too fast and she didn’t believe it. She couldn’t have heard that right. It was too close to exactly what she wanted.
“You’re diversifying the ranch into a barn in town?” she asked. Very carefully, because that didn’t sound right and it was important she understand.
“It’s yours.”
That made even less sense. “Mine?”
Brady’s gaze was darker than usual. Much darker. “You should open your farm stand, Amanda. Here.”
“But…” She didn’t know what she was protesting, so she stopped.
“You’re wasting your time at the Coyote. And I don’t think you want to spend the rest of your life at Cold River Coffee.”
“I love Cold River Coffee.”
“You have great ideas, and better still, you didn’t come here from somewhere else to try to inflict them on people. You’re a hometown girl, and people like that. You’ll convince them to sell their things through you, and it will be everything you wanted it to be. A celebration of Cold River. Isn’t that what you called it?”
Her pulse was still going wild and this didn’t feel right, not when he was looking at her like they were at the scene of an accident. “Wait. You want to give me a barn? Because you don’t like that I bartend?”
Brady blew out a breath, but the intensity of his stare didn’t change at all.
“I’m giving you a barn because I want you to have the life you deserve. The life you dream about. You think you have to throw yourself into making mistakes for that happen. But you don’t.” And his voice got ragged, then. “You shouldn’t waste yourself, Amanda.”
There was sunlight beaming down from above, but it seemed far away. And all the sunshine in the world couldn’t change the look on Brady’s face. Or the way it ricocheted inside Amanda’s chest. And hurt where it hit.
Her mouth was too dry. “This is starting to seem less about my desire to sell artisan jams made by my friend’s mother and a little more about you.”
The panicked dryness in her mouth turned into a matching tightness in her throat when he looked away. And a hard knot in her belly when he returned that dark gaze of his to her.
“You’re the kind of woman a man dreams of marrying,” Brady said, and he sounded … desolate. “If a man dreams of marrying, that is.”
And she got it then.
Like a kick to the stomach.
“Let me guess.” Her own voice sounded fuzzy, and she couldn’t tell if she was hearing all that dryness or if the noise in her head was so loud, it was tricking her into thinking she sounded like that. Of course, none of that mattered. Not when her heart was breaking. “That’s not you.”
“That’s never going to be me, Amanda.” Brady didn’t look away. He didn’t relent. “I’m never going to be that man. I couldn’t if I tried.”
17
Amanda was holding herself very, very still. She felt brittle, like another blast of the air from outside might crack her into pieces. And she didn’t know which hurt more, the tightness in her throat or the brick in her belly. Maybe neither one mattered.
Not when he was looking at her like that, his words still hanging there between them. With a finality that she was afraid might actually wreck her.
She tried to clear her throat. “Am I supposed to be distracted from the fact you’re breaking up with me because you’re dangling a barn over my head? Like a carrot?”
“I’m not breaking up with you. You can’t break up with someone when you�
�re not together.” His gaze seemed even darker then, when that shouldn’t have been possible. “You asked me to perform a service, and I did that. And now this has to end.”
“Why now?” Her heart was beating so hard, it was alarming. She was afraid it would burst straight out of her chest. It took her a moment to realize that it wasn’t a sob trapped in there this time. It was temper. “You don’t suppose it has anything to do with it being the one-year anniversary of your father’s death, do you?”
“Maybe it does.”
That was a surprise. Brady crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall, though she hoped he didn’t think he was fooling her into imagining that he was relaxed.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about my old man and the actual legacy he left behind him.” Brady’s jaw worked, and it seemed like a lifetime ago that she’d sat in her bed and run her fingers over the breathtaking line of it, consumed with how best to love him. “It seemed like Gray and Ty worked it all out. But I’m not like them. I never have been. My father spent most of his time trying to beat them down, but he didn’t waste his time on me. I know why, now. Some people are irredeemable. He was one. I’m another.”
“I don’t believe anyone is irredeemable, Brady. Especially not you.”
“You’re my best friend’s little sister.” Brady bit off the words like they were the kind of curse that led to the homicidal maniacs she’d mentioned earlier. “I was sitting at a table with him the other night, and all I could think about was you.”
“You might think that’s a bad thing, but I don’t.”
His eyes blazed. “It’s only a matter of time before sneaking off in a crowded bar like we did at the Broken Wheel gets noticed. And then what?”
“I’m not the one who wants to sneak around, Brady. I don’t care if they know.”
“This can never last.” His eyes blazed again, but it was a cold fire. “You need to understand that. You can’t date me. Even if I dated, which I don’t, it couldn’t be you.”
If she let it, that would knock her over. She concentrated on that kick of temper inside her instead. “Because you’re obsessed with my brothers. I have to admit, I expected better from you. Like maybe you’d address the real issue.”
The Last Real Cowboy Page 23