Cold Heart, Warm Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

  Hannah, who tugged at parts of him that were anything but happy-go-lucky, whether he could identify those parts to his satisfaction or not. And if he’d had any doubts left on that score, he was standing in a freaking graveyard in the middle of the night.

  The Colorado winter had pounded down his father’s grave, so it was as flat as any of the others. Some of the headstones were cracked and crumbling, but not Amos’s. It was too dark to read, but Ty knew what it said.

  It was not good riddance, as Ty himself had suggested the night after the funeral, whiskey bottle dangling from his fingers. It was Amos’s name and dates, no more and no less. Terse and to the point.

  Tonight, it hit Ty that a name and a couple of dates were a piss-poor monument to a life. Or maybe what was hitting him was the fact that if he died tomorrow, he would never know what had happened to him in those years he couldn’t remember.

  But he was pretty sure Hannah could.

  And he acknowledged, out here where there was nothing between the river and the sky but the bones of the men who had made him, that there was a huge part of him that didn’t want to know the secrets she had to tell. Because he’d almost gotten used to what he knew about himself now, gaps and all.

  But if he wanted to fill in those gaps, he needed Hannah to do it.

  He walked back to the ranch house and climbed into his truck, then headed back toward town before he could talk himself out of it. The land out this side of Cold River had been farmed and ranched by the same handful of families forever. He passed the farmhouse where Abby’s grandmother still lived off the same county road and knew the lights in the distance when he started up the side of the hill belonged to the Kittredge spread.

  Some people—Gray, for example—liked those deep, eternal roots. They liked feeling connected, as if they were a part of the land already. Ty had always worried his roots might strangle him, the way Amos had tried to do before Ty got too big and too unpredictable.

  He drove back into town, past the turn toward the Coyote where he could find trouble if he wanted it, and around to the small parking lot in back of the bed-and-breakfast where Hannah was staying.

  Where his headlights picked her up as she threw a bag into the back seat of her pickup.

  Ty pulled up next to her and climbed out.

  The town was quiet. The stars were out up above. And Hannah looked as unsurprised to see him as he was to see her.

  She’d changed into a plain T-shirt. Her face was washed clean of the makeup she’d been wearing earlier, and her blond hair was braided and tossed over one shoulder. That made something in him click, then hum. He found himself rubbing at his chest almost absently.

  “I’m not running,” she told him, frowning. And she tipped up her chin like she wanted to fight him. “I’m leaving. It’s not the same thing.”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  He didn’t know where that came from, exactly. But the words rushed out anyway, and there they were, cluttering up the night like noise.

  Hannah sighed as if he’d hurt her.

  “You know things about me I don’t,” he said. He wanted to touch her, but he didn’t dare. He was afraid he wouldn’t let go. He was afraid his body remembered things he didn’t, maybe. “I want to know them. All this time I’ve been back I’ve been waiting. To remember. To feel something. Whatever you don’t want to tell me is as good a place to start as any.”

  “Ty…” She shook her head. “I don’t want to make you do anything.”

  He took a step toward her and thought better of it, and angled himself back against his truck instead. It was as close to surrender as he had in him.

  “I can’t force you to tell me,” he said, his voice low. “But I wish you knew what it’s like to stand in front of a person knowing they could start filling in a big, blank space in your life, but … won’t.”

  She looked away for a moment, while the night breeze played over the curls she’d braided.

  And Ty … felt.

  There was that pressure in him, like a weight, that he worried might crush him. And he couldn’t tell if he wanted it to or not. There was that restlessness that had always been in him, but this was different. This was more focused. It wasn’t scratching at him to get out, get away, get himself lost out there in the world again. It was aimed squarely at Hannah.

  He wanted to touch her. He wanted to taste her, sure, but it was more than that. He wanted to sink his hands in her hair. For some reason he wanted her to smell like rosemary, and he wanted to get close enough to find out if that was a memory or a wish.

  He wanted her and that was like a revolution inside him.

  Because the only things he could remember wanting until now were revenge, redemption, or oblivion.

  Hannah crossed her arms, and Ty couldn’t tell if she was trying to ward him off or hold herself in. Off in the distance, on the other side of the line of buildings where Main Street lay, he heard a burst of laughter from the Broken Wheel. It reminded him that they weren’t the only people out in Cold River in the dark tonight.

  But all he could see was Hannah and the way the starlight made her blue eyes look even deeper. Fathomless.

  “I don’t know how to do this gently or make it okay,” she said, and he would have said she was being matter-of-fact if it weren’t for the faint tremor he could see run through her.

  “Just do it, Hannah. Please.”

  Even though that weight on him felt a lot more like foreboding, suddenly.

  “Remember you said that,” she said softly, and her lips curved, but it wasn’t a smile. “I’m not a groupie, Ty. I’m not a buckle bunny, though more power to them, and I never was. I’m your wife.”

  6

  Of all the things Ty expected her to say, it wasn’t that.

  Wife.

  The word echoed inside of him. Too loud, though she’d said it quietly enough. Too … sharp. It was impossible, if not outright laughable—and yet he wasn’t laughing.

  He was pretty sure he’d never felt less like laughing in his life.

  Ty had absolutely no idea what to do next. What he remembered stretched back to last March, but during that time, he’d always had a plan. Get off the painkillers. Stop hurting everywhere, so bad he wanted to pass out every time he breathed. Learn to use his busted-up leg again. Walk. Head back home to the ranch. Stay at the ranch and work it with his brothers. Then start training to take back his pride and his reputation from the bull that had stomped it out of him.

  In retrospect, all of that was easy.

  “My wife,” he said. Flatly. Like it would make sense if he said it too. Or maybe prompt her into laughing and admitting that this was all a big joke at his expense.

  But Hannah didn’t laugh either. The night seemed thicker than before, but she didn’t appear surprised by Ty’s reaction. Or his lack of a reaction. She already had her arms crossed and her chin up, and he could only describe the look she aimed his way as belligerent.

  “I’m afraid so.” But her accent made that a whole thing. A symphony or two, soft and sweet and yet decidedly not here for his nonsense.

  “I mean … We actually…”

  “We sure did. That’s why I used the word ‘wife.’ Not girlfriend. Not fiancée. Wife. Because yeah. We actually.”

  “I got married. To you. In a big … church thing with the matching dresses and people throwing rice and God and everything else.”

  He was no longer leaning against his truck. Or languid in any way. It was like his body was betraying him all over again, except this time there was no bull to blame it on.

  “You look unwell, Ty. A little intense.” By contrast, she looked almost entertained. “There was no big church. It was you and me and our own, personal officiant.”

  Something in him … flatlined. Too much noise, and then one continuous roar, blocking everything else out. He’d never panicked in his life, but he was pretty sure that this was it. This was panic.

  All the panic in the world, and then
some. “I have to go.”

  He didn’t realize he’d said that out loud until she shook her head, her eyes glinting dangerously out there in the dark.

  “What a tremendous shock.”

  “Just for a while,” he said, maybe fiercer than he intended. Not that he had any idea what he intended with all that roaring inside of him and his heart beating so loud, he was half-afraid it would kick its way through his chest. “To clear my head.”

  She looked as if she expected him to break into a jog and head for the foothills. As if it was possible he already had. “If you say so.”

  He could barely make his jaw operate. “I have to think, Hannah. And I have chores I need to do on the ranch in the morning.”

  “You do chores?”

  The fact she looked as baffled by that as she did amused made that roaring thing in him rock, darkening at the edges.

  “It’s a working cattle ranch. Of course I do chores. But then—”

  “Oh, sure, the mythical then.” Hannah shook her head as if he’d already let her down. Right here and now. “So, whenever then is, when you’re finished thinking and working and whatever else you come up with to put this off, we’ll … what? Come up with new ways for you to disappoint me?”

  It was one blow after another, and that one nearly took him down. Ty felt off balance. Like he didn’t know up from down, and the only clear thought he had in his head was that he needed to get away from her.

  Just for a minute. Just to regroup. Just to remember what little he knew about himself, and do something about the throbbing thing in his temples, like a pulse.

  “Give me your phone number,” he bit out, too gruffly. “I’ll call you. And we can…”

  But he didn’t know how to finish that sentence.

  “Talk about our marriage?” Hannah asked brightly. “Won’t that be a treat. Because as you can guess, what with me standing out here in the middle of the night loading up my truck and you having no idea who I am, it’s been pretty stellar so far.”

  “Fantastic. More things for us to talk about. But not now.”

  “And you already have my phone number, Ty.”

  It was that, more than anything else she’d said to him so far, that … wrecked him. If she’d produced a baseball bat from the back of her pickup and whacked him one, he doubted he would have felt any less beaten up.

  She held out her hand, and Ty found himself digging into his pocket and pulling out his phone. Then handing it over wordlessly, with the dizzying sensation that he’d done this before. Maybe a lot.

  She swiped a few times, scrolled down, and then handed it back to him.

  He stared down at the entry on his screen. “This says Ball as a first name. And Chain as a last name.”

  “You’re a funny guy.”

  Ball and chain. Wife. Ty was sure that the earth was leaping and buckling beneath his feet, but when he looked around, there was no damage. His truck stayed put. The buildings remained standing.

  There was no earthquake, there was only Hannah. And the way she stared back at him, implacable and certain, that only made that buckling sensation worse.

  “We thought that was funny?”

  “You thought that was funny,” she corrected him. “But I can see you don’t want to believe me. Go ahead. Call the number.”

  If it was a test, he failed it, because he hit the call button. Then they both stood there as the phone she clearly had stuck in her back pocket started playing Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” into the night.

  “Yes, we know each other,” Hannah said when the ring tone died away, her voice as even as her gaze was steady. “Yes, you not only have my phone number, but you kept it. Under a cute little nickname. And yes, I really am your wife. I’m sorry if that upsets you.”

  He almost laughed at the notion that he was upset. As if this was upsetting, instead of, to pick a word at random, catastrophic.

  “You were leaving,” he managed to say, trying to gather himself when all he wanted to do was hit himself on the head repeatedly to make his memory work again.

  “Yes, I was leaving,” she said in the same distressingly even tone. “Because you can’t remember, and I don’t know that I have it in me to argue with you about the life we lost at the same time you lost your memory.”

  The hits kept coming.

  “Okay.” Ty shoved his phone back into his pocket. Then he rubbed his hands over his face. Neither made him feel particularly better, but he stopped wishing something would fall down from the mountains and crush him where he stood. “Go back inside your hotel. Let me … take this in. Can you do that?” And when she only stared back at him, another word was torn out of him. “Please?”

  There was something so stark on her face, then. Heartbreaking, even.

  “I can do that,” she said softly. “For now.”

  Ty was entirely too aware of her as he backed away. Then he rounded his truck, climbed into it, and drove out of the small lot.

  Before … whatever was coming at him transformed into a train and flattened him.

  He had no idea how he got himself back to the ranch. Or into his bunkhouse. All he could focus on was that buckling feeling, out there in the dark behind the B and B. That shaking, as if he were being turned inside out, over and over, without end.

  Like a ride on a rank bull that went on and on, long past the usual eight seconds.

  Ty had no memory of going to sleep, but he woke up with a jolt when his alarm went off at four thirty. It was still dark outside. But that was morning on the ranch, every day at you must be kidding o’clock. The four-thirty alarm was part of the deal.

  He launched himself up. He staggered into his shower, feeling as wasted and hungover as if he really had drowned himself in whiskey last night the way he’d wanted to.

  Whatever Hannah had done to him, whoever she was to him, she was far more potent.

  He fixed himself coffee in his efficiency kitchen, grimacing at the kick of it, and when he felt fortified enough, he headed out to the barn. He had horses to tend to, his own and the ranch’s. He and Brady handled the stalls, feed, and water while Gray went out to do the initial check of the pasture and the herd.

  Then it was into the ranch kitchen for a quick bite and more coffee before heading back out into the fields to get down to business. The fences always needed checking. The animals always needed feeding and care. The paid hands were working on the irrigation system, so once feed and water was handled, the brothers rode the fences. Repairing them as needed, which was exactly the kind of physical labor Ty craved.

  Maybe if he beat down his body enough, his memory would catch up with him.

  “You’re a lot less cranky than I expected,” Brady said at one point, as they set to work on a downed stretch of fence in one of the upper pastures. “Since you apparently went back out last night.”

  “You must not know how to hold your liquor, baby brother,” Ty replied, keeping his hat tilted down low over his face so Brady couldn’t really see his expression. “If you think I’d show it one way or the other the next day.”

  “Do you actually handle your liquor?” Brady asked with a laugh. A genuine laugh, as if Ty were telling jokes. “Or do you drink so much all the time that you’re always more drunk than not?”

  Brady had said something similar last night. Everyone believed Ty was constantly wasted, and up until last night, Ty had been fine with that. His father had been the egregious drunk of the family, staggering around kicking up violence and making a mess out of everything he swayed near. Ty didn’t know why he’d taken up that torch every time he came home. Amos had always told him how worthless he was, so Ty had belly flopped right on down to meet those low expectations, maybe. Or had Ty wanted to try to meet his father on his own level?

  Whatever the reason, he’d been drunk at every family event he could recall before January, and he’d never made any announcements when he’d stopped getting quietly wasted, so it had been amusing to watch his brothers tiptoe around
his supposed problem. Also, if he were drunk all the time, he certainly couldn’t be training for anything like a redemptive bull ride. He’d figured it was a good camouflage.

  But that was before Hannah held his gaze and talked about him disappointing her. And suddenly Ty didn’t find it all that entertaining that Gray and Brady basically thought he was the reincarnation of Amos.

  “I’m wasted right now,” he told Brady, his voice too dark. “Who knows? I might pound you into the ground instead of this fence post. Anything could happen.”

  Brady wiped at his face, and then eyed Ty much too closely.

  “You don’t actually have to fill Dad’s shoes, you know,” he said. Quietly. “Just because he was a lousy drunk, it doesn’t mean we need another one around like some kind of monument to him.”

  Ty wanted to make a monument out of Brady’s face, but restrained himself. And when he pulled out his grin, it didn’t quite fit the way it used to.

  “I’m a charming drunk,” Ty drawled, as if there were nothing dark in him at all. “And if you don’t know the difference, Brady, I really don’t know what all that fancy education of yours was for.”

  Which changed the subject for a while, because Brady’s college years were a sore spot between him and Gray, who’d never been shy about pointing out that Brady could have used his education to help the family enterprise. And hadn’t.

  But in case Ty had forgotten that he was now living in the midst of his family like he was a teenager all over again, Gray weighed in after he and Ty had finished wrestling with another stretch of fencing some time later.

  “How many times did you come and go last night?” Gray tilted his own cowboy hat back on his head, the better to pin Ty with one of those stern looks of his. Ty would rather die on the spot than admit that he, a grown man, was reacting to his older brother’s sternness. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think this was still high school and you were sneaking out to see that girl. What was her name?”

  “I can’t rightly say,” Ty drawled. He squinted at his big brother. “What was your high school girlfriend’s name again?”

  Gray’s mouth curved at that. “Now it feels even more like high school. And you wish.”