Hard Loving Cowboy

by A. J. Pine

  “Perfect. Everything’s out on the deck.” Jaden led the way and carefully gauged her reaction as she stepped through the door.

  Kate’s dark eyes widened when she saw the flowers on the table, but she didn’t mention them.

  They each took the same seat they’d sat in last night. The ambiance was different, though. Bright and warm and relaxed. Actually, scratch that. Kate’s bare shoulders looked tense.

  “Nothing like starting the day off with a good breakfast.” Jaden took the liberty of serving her pancakes and syrup, along with a helping of fruit and a few slices of bacon before he filled his own plate. She didn’t answer, but silence with Kate didn’t press into him like it did with some people. It was…easy.

  Bella wriggle-crawled her way underneath the very center of the table as though she couldn’t decide who would be most likely to drop her a crumb.

  Kate took a bite of the food and chewed slowly. “Wow.” Her face perked up. “These pancakes are incredible.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.” He tried one too. They were light and airy, exactly the way he remembered. “It’s my grandma’s recipe. She always whipped the egg whites forever. Then she would carefully fold them into the batter.”

  “They’re so fluffy.” Kate seemed fascinated, inspecting them as she cut another bite.

  “So this breakfast isn’t as painful as you thought.” He’d intended the words to make a point, and Kate seemed to take it in stride.

  “No. It’s not painful at all.” The first hints of a smile relaxed her face. “The food isn’t half bad. Way better than Honey Nut Cheerios. I’m glad I stayed.”

  Jaden set down his fork and held her gaze. “Only for the food?” Because he wasn’t enjoying the pancakes as much as he was enjoying sitting across from her, sharing breakfast with someone.

  “Not only because of the food,” she murmured with an unsure glance. “But…my life is a little complicated right now.”

  Join the club. He seemed to have secured a lifelong membership. “So is mine. That’s why it’s nice to have something uncomplicated. Dinner. Breakfast.” He needed that. Something normal. Another presence in his world. Conversation. He hadn’t realized how much he needed it until last night. For some reason, he found it so easy to be honest with Kate. “I like you. Spending time with you is…simple. And nothing in my life has been simple for a long time.”

  “I like you too.” Kate’s smile grew, finally resembling that quirk of her lips she’d shown off when he’d kissed her last night.

  “So let’s not complicate it,” he suggested. “Let’s have dinner while you’re in town. And breakfast. Maybe lunch once in a while. Whatever works.”

  “That sounds perfect.” She poured herself a glass of orange juice. “So what’s complicating your life right now?”

  A familiar tension crowded his gut. “Let’s make a pact not to talk about our complications.”

  Kate tilted her head as she studied him. “What are we going to talk about, then?”

  “Um…” Talking had never been one of his talents. “Our families?” That would be a short conversation on his part. “Funny stories from when we were growing up?” He had plenty of those. “But why don’t we start with our most embarrassing moments?” That should be good for a laugh, keep things light.

  Kate dropped her head, suddenly extremely interested in her food again. “Um…no thank you.”

  “Ohhh…you must have a good one.”

  “I hardly know you.” She hastily helped herself to more pancakes, drowning them in syrup. “Why would I tell you my most embarrassing moments?”

  “I think you’re being dramatic,” he teased. “I bet your most embarrassing moment isn’t even embarrassing.” She’d probably gotten toilet paper stuck to her shoe or something lame like that.

  “Oh, it went way past embarrassing,” she assured him. “It was humiliating.”

  “Now I have to know.” Jaden refilled his mug of coffee from the pitcher he’d brought out. Though for once he didn’t feel like he needed it. He’d slept better last night than he had in months. “I swear I won’t tell anyone else.”

  “Fine.” She left a dramatic pause. “My sophomore year of high school, I asked a boy to homecoming.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  Kate narrowed her eyes. “My friends convinced me I should decorate his car. So I skipped our last class and spent an hour covering his beloved Mustang in flowers and streamers and balloons and cute little signs.”

  “Uh-oh.” He had a feeling he knew where this was going.

  “Yeah.” She crossed her arms and leaned back. “So when the bell rang, the entire school walked out to the parking lot and there I was, sitting on the hood of Tommy’s car with a rose in my mouth and this huge, obnoxious, glittery sign asking him to go to the dance with me.”

  A laugh was brewing. He could feel it starting way down deep. Jaden held his breath so it wouldn’t come out.

  “When the guy came out and saw me,” she continued, “he was horrified. He kept yelling about his car. How could I touch his damn car?”

  “Ouch.” Don’t laugh. Whatever you do, don’t laugh. It was hard, though, considering she told the story in a way that made him picture every detail.

  “He said no, by the way. He said he wouldn’t even go to Taco Bell with me.”

  That did it. Jaden could no longer hold back. But at least she laughed too. “See? I told you it was humiliating. Now you have to make me feel better about myself and tell me yours.”

  “Right. A promise is a promise.” Even though his didn’t even compare to the scene she’d just detailed for him. “My most embarrassing moment was in high school too.” Wasn’t everyone’s? “I was in English class screwing around, being loud and obnoxious, and the teacher made me get up to apologize to the whole class.”

  “I have a hard time seeing you as loud and obnoxious.”

  “Oh, trust me.” Before a couple of months ago, he’d been a lot more outgoing. He’d always preferred to think of it as extroverted and friendly rather than obnoxious. “Anyway, in front of the whole class, Miss Tolbert said, ‘You come up to the front of the room right now and tell the class you’re sexy. I mean sorry!’” He mimicked the old woman’s voice for effect.

  Kate did not look amused. “That’s it? You’re telling me that the most embarrassing moment of your life has to do with you being hot?”

  Yeah, he had a feeling she wouldn’t be impressed. “Miss Tolbert was a hundred years old. And that’s all anyone could talk about for weeks. You should’ve heard the rumors that went around about us.”

  “I’m sorry.” She shook her head, her sleek black hair swooshing around her shoulders. “That doesn’t count as an embarrassing moment.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it probably made you a legend in your school,” she grumbled. “It sounds to me like that was Miss Tolbert’s most embarrassing moment, not yours.”

  Jaden laughed. “I never thought of it that way.” But the woman had a point. “If it makes you feel better, I would’ve gone to homecoming with you.”

  “Right.” She made a show of rolling her eyes. “Sure.”

  “Why don’t you believe me?” Seriously. He would’ve killed to go to homecoming with someone as intriguing as Kate Livingston.

  “You were this big-time snowboarder jock, and I was a newspaper nerd.” She huffed. “I highly doubt you would’ve gone to homecoming with me.”

  “Maybe I would’ve surprised you,” he said, eyeing her lips. The same way he’d surprised her last night…

  “You’ve definitely accomplished that, Jay.” Kate stared into his eyes with a slow smile. “I think it’s fair to say I’ve never been more surprised by someone in my life.”

  Chapter Seven

  Today’s the day, Bella.” Kate uttered a heart-cleansing sigh and gazed at the dog, who sat with her ears perked in rapt attention in the passenger seat of the borrowed Subaru. They’d been sitting in Jay’s driveway fo
r ten minutes, but Kate hadn’t been able to get out and face the man.

  “I have to tell him.” Time was running out. Over the last week, Gregor had called and texted roughly twenty times, asking how the story was going, checking in to see if she’d finished a draft yet. She’d been putting him off, telling him that Jay had been extra busy so she hadn’t collected all the facts yet. Which hadn’t been a complete lie. Jay had been extra busy this week. She’d simply neglected to tell Gregor that Jay had been busy with her.

  Since he’d made her breakfast that morning, they’d settled into something of a routine. She would arrive at the house around eight to pick up Bella, and Jay would make her breakfast before she and the dog went about their day. At five, she’d bring Bella back to the house and either pick up dinner on the way or cook something on the grill. They’d sit out on the back deck under the stars, wrapped in blankets while the fire flickered between them, and entertain each other with stories late into the night. He hadn’t told her anything about the accident yet, but that was okay because there was so much more to him.

  He’d told her about being raised by his grandma, who took over the ranch when her husband died in his early forties, about how she was a better shot than any of the men in the county, about how he hadn’t heard from his dad since his sixth birthday, and how his mom moved around the country in an old Airstream trailer, sometimes sending him postcards from wherever she happened to be living at the moment.

  Kate had told Jaden things too. She’d told him about the time she’d done an undercover investigation on the recycling efforts at her middle school. It turned out they weren’t recycling at all. At the end of the day, everything from the recycling bin got dumped into the garbage, and she’d exposed their deception in the center spread of their extracurricular newspaper.

  She’d told him about how, when she’d declared writing as her major in college, her parents, along with her brother and sister, had staged an intervention dinner where they took turns telling her all of the reasons she would fail to find a career. Then she’d told him how her family had been all too happy to reiterate those reasons, along with a hearty round of I told you so, when she couldn’t find a job.

  Those were the real Kate Livingston stories. The ones that hid behind the happy smile. The ones that made her who she was. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d shared them with anyone else.

  By day three, breakfast had turned into one big flirt fest, with Jaden teasing her and touching her a lot, placing his hand on the small of her back or brushing her hair over her shoulder when she pretended to be offended by one of his jokes. Dinner had turned into rushing through the food part to get to the make-out portion of the evening, where they’d lie entwined on the couch, kissing with an intensity that seemed to grow stronger every day.

  “God, how am I going to tell him?” It would ruin the alternate reality they’d created together. With him, she suspected, escaping from horrible memories about the accident, and her finally allowed to simply be Kate. Not a screwup in her family’s eyes or an outdoorsy badass in her colleagues’ eyes. It had been strange at first, being herself, but she’d started to love the feeling.

  Bella yawned with a squeak and curled up in the seat as if she figured they’d be there awhile. Oh, how Kate wished they could be, that she could put this off a little bit long—

  The front door of the house opened, and Jay stepped out, looking like an enticing cross between a cowboy and a mountain man in his boots, jeans, and a threadbare gray T-shirt. Even from this distance, his smile summoned hers as he slowly walked to the car.

  “Hi,” Kate called through the open window. It sounded more like a dreamy sigh than a greeting. Heart thudding in her throat, she scrambled to let Bella out before climbing out of the car herself.

  “Didn’t realize you were already here.” Jaden knelt to pet Bella, who was whining and pawing at his legs like she hadn’t seen him for a month.

  Kate tried to keep her smile intact. “Just pulled up a minute ago.” Now that was a lie.

  “Perfect.” The man stood, and she couldn’t believe how different he looked than he had the first day she’d met him. His face had relaxed, and his lips loosened into a smile whenever he saw her. Even his posture seemed stronger, taller, and less reserved.

  “I want to take you somewhere.” Jaden eased an arm around her waist and brushed a kiss along her temple. “I’ve got dinner packed,” he whispered in her ear.

  Even with regret and guilt swelling through her, she couldn’t resist leaning into his touch, savoring it. Once he found out about her story assignment, he might never touch her again. “Maybe we should eat here. So we can talk.” She couldn’t tell him the truth in public. The setting for this conversation had to be perfect. They had to be alone.

  “We can talk where I’m taking you.” Jaden released her and strode up the driveway. “It’s kind of a hike, so we’ll take the Jeep.” He punched in the garage code. Then he walked back to her and took her hand, guiding her to the passenger side and opening the door for her.

  He did things like that all the time. Small gestures like moving aside to let her go first through a doorway or always leaving the last bite of dessert for her. In the evenings, he’d walk over and slip her sweatshirt on her shoulders when he could tell she’d gotten cold. Kate closed her eyes as Jaden let Bella into the backseat and then strode to the driver’s side and climbed in.

  How was she going to do this? She’d rehearsed the words a hundred times. Before she’d pull up to his house every morning, she would say them again. But then he would greet her and kiss her and he was so happy that she didn’t want to ruin it. She didn’t want it to end.

  “You okay?” he asked, backing the Jeep down the driveway.

  “Fine,” she murmured, close to tears. “Just a little headache.” Heartache.

  “Here.” He reached back into a small cooler and pulled out an ice-cold water bottle. “Water usually helps. It’s easy to get dehydrated at this altitude.”

  “Thanks.” Her throat felt raw. She opened the water bottle and took a long sip. She had no idea where they were going, only that it was up. Up the street, then up past the resort, and then up higher still on some lonely dirt road that cut through the wide spaces between trees that Kate assumed were ski runs. Patches of snow still dotted the mountainside, but there was grass too—new and green. Luckily, they didn’t need to talk. With the Jeep so open on top, wind whistled between them, which meant Kate didn’t have to force the words that churned in her stomach. He wouldn’t have heard them anyway.

  While the Jeep bumped along, Jaden brought his hand over to rest on her thigh. “Feeling better?”

  Nodding, Kate closed her eyes and breathed in the cooling air. She loved the feel of his hand on her, warming her, reassuring her.

  After one more switchback, he parked the Jeep, and she raised her head. They were above the trees. There was more snow up here, but she hardly cared about the temperature. The view to her right consumed her. It was endless. A blue-hazed vista of snowcapped peaks hovering above a watercolor of reddish cliffs and green, tree-studded mountainsides that came together in long, lush valleys. There were little round lakes so far off in the distance that they looked like puddles. “This is incredible,” she breathed.

  “One of the reasons I loved boarding so much.” Jaden gave her thigh a squeeze and then got out of the Jeep. “That view never gets old.”

  He let Bella out and started to rummage through things in the back of the Jeep before meeting her on the passenger side. “It’s colder up here,” he said, helping her put on a fleece jacket. It smelled like him—like male spice. The same scent that always filled her senses when they were kissing.

  Taking her hand, Jaden led her a few steps away from the Jeep, where a large snowfield still smothered the grass. The view once again stretched out in front of them, a painting she wanted to jump into.

  “This is the snowfield where I started out,” Jaden said. “My buddies and I wou
ld hike up here, out of bounds, and we’d board as long as we could. All the way through June some years.”

  She threaded her fingers through his, holding on to his hand tighter. “You never got caught?”

  “Nah. They didn’t keep a close eye on things around here during the summer months.” He couldn’t seem to look away from the snow. “Even as a kid, I loved it. Being out here made me feel so free.”

  “I bet you miss it,” Kate said quietly. She could see it in the sad slump of his shoulders, hear it in the shaky tenor of his voice.

  “I almost killed someone.” He paused and swallowed hard like the words had the power to strangle him. “A few months ago. At the Olympics.” Jaden faced her as though he wanted her to see the pain on his face. “I was trying to take the lead, and I lost control. Plowed right into my rival and took him out.”

  Kate looked up into his eyes, and she couldn’t lie to him anymore. “I know.”

  “You do?” He dropped her hand and stepped back. The sudden uncertainty in his glare cut off the rest of her words. She couldn’t tell him about the article. Not yet. “I kind of put it together. Jay—J.J. You’re a snowboarder. You’ve been in an accident…” He had to realize that she would’ve heard about it. Everyone had heard about it.

  “You never said anything.” His expression was guarded, the same way it had been when she’d met him on the street.

  Kate eased closer to him, looking intently into his eyes so he would remember she wasn’t a threat. “You didn’t bring it up, so I figured you didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “I haven’t.” The rigidity in his shoulders seemed to give way. “Not with anyone. The days after were so intense. With the media, and surgery to reset my arm.” He turned back to the snowfield with a blank stare. “Then they told me Kipp had a spinal cord injury. That he wouldn’t walk again. And I couldn’t function. I couldn’t sleep or eat. I had nightmares constantly. Everyone was saying I’d done it on purpose…”

  “Of course you didn’t do it on purpose.” She turned him back to her. God, he was so tormented by it. She couldn’t stand seeing him that way, so lost. “Tragedies just happen sometimes. You didn’t cause it. You didn’t bring it on him or yourself.” She took his cheeks in her hands and guided his face to hers. “You are a good person, Jaden Alexander. You didn’t deserve this. You didn’t deserve to be crucified in the media.” But she could change things. She could tell his side of the story. “You need to stop hiding and let people see who you really are. I can help. I can write—”