A Cold Creek Reunion (7 page)

“That makes one of us,” she muttered, then looked as if she regretted the words.

More than anything, he wanted to go back in time ten years and make things right again with her. He had hurt her by closing her out of his pain, trying to deal with the grief and guilt in his own way.

But then, she had hurt him, too. If only she had given him a little more time and trusted that he would work things through, he would have figured everything out eventually. Instead, she had gone away to Spain and met her jerk of a husband—and had two of the cutest kids he had ever met.

“Laura—” he began, not sure what he intended to say, but she shook her head briskly.

“I’m sorry my children bothered you. I won’t let it happen again.”

“I told you, I don’t mind them.”

“I mind. I don’t want them getting attached to you when you’ll be in their lives for only a brief moment.”

He hadn’t even known her kids a week ago. So why did the idea of not seeing them again make his chest ache? Uneasy with the reaction, he gave her a long look.

“For someone who claims not to hate me, you do a pretty good impression of it. You don’t even want me around your kids, like I’ll contaminate them somehow.”

“You’re exaggerating. You’re virtually a stranger to me after all this time. I don’t hate you. I feel nothing at all for you. Less than nothing.”

He moved closer to her, inhaling the springtime scent of her shampoo. “Liar.”

The single word was a low hush in the room and he saw her shiver as if he had trailed his finger down her cheek.

She started to take a step back, then checked the motion. “Oh, get over yourself,” she snapped. “Yes, you broke my heart. I was young and foolish enough to think you meant what you said, that you loved me and wanted forever with me. We were supposed to take vows about being with each other in good times and bad, but you wouldn’t share the bad with me. Instead, you started drinking and hanging out at the Bandito and pretending nothing was wrong. I was devastated. I won’t make a secret of that. I thought I wouldn’t survive the pain.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She made a dismissive gesture. “I should really thank you, Taft. If not for that heartbreak, I would have been only a weak, silly girl who would probably have become a weak, silly woman. Instead, I became stronger. I took my broken heart and turned it into a grand adventure in Europe, where I matured and experienced the world a little bit instead of just Pine Gulch, and now I have two beautiful children to show for it.”

“Why did you give up on us so easily?”

Her mouth tightened with anger. “You know, you’re right. I should have gone ahead with the wedding and then just waited around wringing my hands until you decided to pull your head out of whatever crevice you jammed it into. Although from the sound of it, I might still have been waiting, ten years later.”

“I’m sorry for hurting you,” he said, wishing again that he could go back and change everything. “More sorry than I can ever say.”

“Ten years too late,” she said tersely. “I told you, it doesn’t matter.”

“It obviously does or you wouldn’t bristle like a porcupine every time you’re near me.”

“I don’t—” she started to say, but he cut her off.

“I don’t blame you. I was an ass to you. I’ll be the first to admit it.”

“The second,” she said tartly.

If this conversation didn’t seem so very pivotal, he might have smiled, but he had the feeling he had the chance to turn things around between them right here and now, and he wanted that with a fierce and powerful need.

“Probably. For what it’s worth, my family would fill out the rest of the top five there, waiting in line to call me names.”

She almost smiled but she hid it quickly. What would it take for him to squeeze a real smile out of her and keep it there? he wondered.

“I know we can’t go back and change things,” he said slowly. “But what are the chances that we can at least be civil to each other? We were good friends once, before we became more. I miss that.”

She was quiet for several moments and he was aware of the random sounds of the old inn. The shifting of old wood, the creak of a floorboard somewhere, a tree branch that needed to be pruned back rattling against the thin glass of the window.

When she spoke, her voice was low. “I miss it, too,” she said, in the tone of someone confessing a rather shameful secret.

Something inside him seemed to uncoil at her words. He gazed at her so-familiar features that he had once known as well as his own.

The high cheekbones, the cute little nose, those blue eyes that always reminded him of his favorite columbines that grew above the ranch. He wanted to kiss her, with a raw ferocity that shocked him to his toes. To sink into her and not climb out again.

He managed, just barely, to restrain himself and was grateful for it when she spoke again, her voice just above a whisper.

“We can’t go back, Taft.”

“No, but we can go forward. That’s better anyway, isn’t it? The reality is, we’re both living in the same small town. Right now we’re living at the same address, for Pete’s sake. We can’t avoid each other. But that doesn’t mean we need to go on with this awkwardness between us, does it? I would really like to see if together we can find some way to move past it. What do you say?”

She gazed at him for a long moment, uncertainty in those eyes he loved so much. Finally she seemed to come to some internal decision.

“Sure. We can try to be friends again.” She gave him a tentative smile. A real one this time, not that polite thing he had come to hate, and his chest felt tight and achy all over again.

“I need to get back to work. I’ll see you later.”

“Goodbye, Laura,” he said.

She gave him one more little smile before hurrying out of the room. He watched her go, more off-balance by the encounter with Laura and her children than he wanted to admit. As he turned back to his work, he was also aware of a vague sense of melancholy that made no sense. This was progress, right? Friendship was a good place to start—hadn’t their relationship begun out of friendship from the beginning?

He picked up another board from the pile. He knew the source of his discontent. He wanted more than friendship with Laura. He wanted what they used to have, laughter and joy and that contentment that seemed to seep through him every time he was with her.

Baby steps, he told himself. He could start with friendship and then gradually build on that, see how things progressed. Nothing wrong with a little patience once in a while.

Her hands were still shaking as Laura walked out of the room and down the hall. She headed for the lobby, with the curving old stairs and the classic light fixtures that had probably been installed when Pine Gulch finally hit the electrical grid.

Only when she was certain she was completely out of sight of Taft did she lean against the delicately flowered wallpaper and press a hand to her stomach.

What an idiot she was, as weak as a baby lamb around him. She always had been. Even if she had hours of other more urgent homework, if Taft called her and needed help with Spanish, she would drop everything to rush to his aid.

It didn’t help matters that the man was positively dangerous when he decided to throw out the charm.

Oh, it would be so easy to give in, to let all that seductive charm slide around and through her until she forgot all the reasons she needed to resist him.

He asked if they could find a way to friendship again. She didn’t have the first idea how to answer that. She wanted to believe her heart had scarred over from the disappointment and heartache, the loss of those dreams for the future, but she was more than a little afraid to peek past the scars to see if it had truly healed.

She was tough and resilient. Hadn’t she survived a bad marriage and then losing the husband she had tried to love? She could surely carry on a civil conversation with Taft on the rare occasions they met in Pine Gulch.

What was the harm in it? For heaven’s sake, reestablishing a friendly relationship with the man didn’t mean she was automatically destined to tumble headlong back into love with him.

Life in Pine Gulch would be much easier all the way around if she didn’t feel jumpy and off-balance every time she was around him.

She eased away from the wallpaper and straightened her shirt that had bunched up. This was all ridiculous anyway. What did it matter if she was weak around him? She likely wouldn’t ever have the opportunity to test out her willpower. From the rumors she heard, Taft probably had enough young, hot bar babes at the Bandito that he probably couldn’t be bothered with a thirty-two-year-old widow with two children, one of whom with a disability that would require lifelong care.

She wasn’t the same woman she had been ten years ago. She had given birth to two kids and had the body to show for it. Her hair was always messy and falling out of whatever clip she had shoved it in that morning, half the time she didn’t have time to put on makeup until she had been up for hours and, between the kids and the inn, she was perpetually stressed.

Why on earth would a man like Taft, gorgeous and masculine, want anything
but
friendship with her these days?

She wasn’t quite sure why that thought depressed her and made her feel like that gawky seventh grader with braces crushing on a ninth-grade athlete who was nice to her.

Surely she didn’t
want
to have to resist Taft Bowman. It was better all around if he saw her merely as that frumpy mother.

She knew that was probably true, even as some secret, silly little part of her wanted to at least have the
chance
to test her willpower around him.

Chapter Six

“H
urry, Mama.” Alex practically jumped out of his booster seat the moment she turned off the engine at the River Bow Ranch on Saturday. “I want to see the dogs!”

“Dogs!” Maya squealed after him, wiggling and tugging against the car-seat straps. The only reason she didn’t rush to join her brother outside the car was her inability to undo the straps on her own, much to her constant frustration.

“Hang on, you two.” Their excitement made her smile, despite the host of emotions churning through her at visiting the River Bow again for the first time in a decade. “The way you’re acting, somebody might think you’d never seen a dog before.”

“I have, too, seen a dog before,” Alex said. “But this isn’t just
one
dog. Miss Bowman said she had a
lot
of dogs. And horses, too. Can I really ride one?”

“That’s the plan for now, but we’ll have to see how things go.” She was loath to make promises about things that were out of her control. Probably a fallback to her marriage, those frequent times when the children would be so disappointed if their father missed dinner or a school performance or some special outing.

“I hope I
can
ride a horse. Oh, I hope so.” Alex practically danced around the used SUV she had purchased with the last of her savings when she arrived back in the States. She had to smile at his enthusiasm as she unstrapped Maya and lifted her out of the vehicle.

Maya threw her chubby little arms around Laura’s neck before she could set her on the ground.

“Love you,” her daughter said.

The spontaneously affectionate gesture turned her insides to warm mush, something her sweet Maya so often did. “Oh, I love you, too, darling. More than the moon and the stars and the sea.”

“Me, too,” Alex said.

She hugged him with the arm not holding Maya. “I love you both. Aren’t I the luckiest mom in the world to have two wonderful kiddos to love?”

“Yes, you are,” he said, with a total lack of vanity that made her smile.

She supposed she couldn’t be a completely terrible mother if she was raising her children with such solid assurance of their place in her heart.

At the sound of scrabbling paws and panting breaths, she raised her head from her children. “Guess what? Here come the dogs.”

Alex whirled around in time to see Caidy approaching them with three dogs shadowing her. Laura identified two of them as border collies, mostly black with white patches on their faces and necks, quizzical ears and eerily intelligent expressions. The third was either a breed she didn’t recognize or some kind of mutt of undetermined origin, with reddish fur and a
German shepherd–like face.

Maya stiffened nervously, not at all experienced around dogs, and tightened her arms around Laura’s neck. Alex, on the other hand, started to rush toward the dogs, but Laura checked him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Wait until Caidy says it’s safe,” she ordered her son, who would run directly into a lion’s enclosure if he thought he might have a chance of petting the creature.

“Perfectly safe,” Caidy assured them.

Taft’s sister wore jeans and a bright yellow T-shirt along with boots and a straw cowboy hat, her dark hair braided down her back. She looked fresh and pretty as she gave them all a welcoming smile. “The only danger from my dogs is being licked to death—or maybe getting knocked over by a wagging tail.”

Alex giggled and Caidy looked delighted at the sound.

“Your mother is right, though,” she said. “You should never approach any strange animal without permission until you know it’s safe.”

“Can I pet one?”

“Sure thing. King. Forward.”

One of the lean black-and-white border collies obeyed and sidled toward them, sniffing eagerly at Alex’s legs. The boy giggled and began to pet the dog with sheer joy.

“This was such a great idea,” Laura said, smiling as she watched her son. “Thank you so much for the invitation, Caidy.”

“You’re welcome. Believe me, it will be a fun break for me from normal ranch stuff. Spring is always crazy on the ranch and I’ve been looking forward to this all week as a great respite.”

She paused. “I have to tell you, I’m really glad you’re still willing to have anything to do with the Bowmans after the way things ended with Taft.”

She really didn’t want to talk about Taft. This was what she had worried about after Caidy extended the invitation, that things might be awkward between them because of the past.

“Why wouldn’t I? Taft and I are still friendly.” And that’s all they ever
would
be, she reminded herself. “Just because he and I didn’t end up the way we thought we would doesn’t mean I should shun his family. I loved your family. I’m only sorry I haven’t stayed in touch all these years. I see no reason we can’t be friends now, unless you’re too uncomfortable because of…everything?”

“Not at all!” Caidy exclaimed. Laura had the impression she wanted to say something else, but Alex interrupted before she could.

“He licked me. It tickles!”

Caidy grinned down at the boy’s obvious enjoyment of the dogs. He now had all three dogs clustered around him and was petting them in turns.

“We’ve got puppies. Would you like to see them?” Caidy asked.

“Puppies!” Maya squealed, still in her arms, while Alex clasped his hands together, a reverential look on his face.

“Puppies! Oh, Mama, can we?”

She had to laugh at his flair for drama. “Sure. Why not? As long as it’s all right with Caidy.”

“They’re in the barn. I was just checking on the little family a few minutes ago and it looks like a few of the pups are awake and might just be in the mood to play.”

“Oh, yay!” Alex exclaimed and Caidy grinned at him.

They followed her into the barn. For Laura, it was like walking back in time. The barn smelled of hay and leather and animals, and the familiar scent mix seemed to trigger an avalanche of memories. They tumbled free of whatever place she’d stowed them after she walked away from Pine Gulch, jostling and shoving their way through her mind before she had a chance to block them out.

She used to come out to the ranch often to ride horses with Taft and their rides always started here, in the barn, where he would teach her about the different kinds of tack and how each was used, then patiently give her lessons on how to tack up a horse.

One wintry January afternoon, she suddenly remembered, she had helped him and his father deliver a foal. She could still vividly picture her astonishment at the gangly, awkward miracle of the creature.

Unbidden, she also remembered that the relative privacy of the barn compared to other places on the ranch had been one of their favorite places to kiss. Sultry, long, intense kisses that would leave them both hungry for more… .

She absolutely did not need to remember
those
particular memories, full of heat and discovery and that all-consuming love that used to burn inside her for Taft. With great effort, she struggled to wrestle them back into the corner of her mind and slam the door to them so she could focus on her children and Caidy and new puppies.

The puppies’ home was an empty stall at the end of the row. An old russet saddle blanket took up one corner and the mother dog, a lovely black-and-white heeler, was lying on her side taking a rest and watching her puppies wrestle around the straw-covered floor of the stall. She looked up when Caidy approached and her tail slapped a greeting.

“Hey, Betsy, here I am again. How’s my best girl? I brought some company to entertain your pups for a while.”

Laura could swear she saw understanding and even relief in the dog’s brown eyes as Caidy unlatched the door of the stall and swung it out. She could relate to that look—every night when her children finally closed their eyes, she would collapse onto the sofa with probably that same sort of look.

“Are you sure it’s okay?” Alex asked, standing outside the stall, barely containing his nervous energy.

“Perfectly sure,” Caidy answered. “I promise, they love company.”

He headed inside and—just as she might have predicted—Maya wriggled to get down. “Me, too,” she insisted.

“Of course, darling,” Laura said. She set her on her feet and the girl headed inside the stall to stand beside her brother.

“Here, sit down and I’ll bring you a puppy each,” Caidy said, gesturing to a low bench inside the stall, really just a plank stretched across a couple of overturned oats buckets.

She picked up a fat, waddling black-and-white puppy from the writhing, yipping mass and set it on Alex’s lap, then reached into the pile again for a smaller one, mostly black this time.

Now she had some very different but infinitely precious memories of this barn to add to her collection, Laura thought a few moments later. The children were enthralled with the puppies. Children and puppies just seemed to go together like peanut butter and jelly. Alex and Maya giggled as the puppies squirmed around on their laps, licking and sniffing. Maya hugged hers as enthusiastically as she had hugged her mother a few minutes earlier.

“Thank you for this,” she said to Caidy as the two of them smiled at the children and puppies. “You’ve thrilled them to their socks.”

“I’m afraid the pups are a little dirty and don’t smell the greatest. They’re a little young for baths yet.”

“I don’t worry about a little dirt,” Laura said. “I’ve always figured if my kids don’t get dirty sometimes, I’m doing something wrong.”

“I don’t think you’re doing
anything
wrong,” Caidy assured her. “They seem like great kids.”

“Thank you.”

“It can’t be easy, especially now that you’re on your own.”

As much as Javier had loved the children, she had always felt very much on her own in Madrid. He was always busy with the hotel and his friends and, of course, his other women. Bad enough she had shared that with Taft. She certainly wasn’t about to share that information with his sister.

“I have my mother to help me now. She’s been a lifesaver.”

Coming home had been the right decision. As much as she had struggled with taking her children away from half of their heritage probably forever, Javier’s family had never been very welcoming to her. They had become even less so after Maya was born, as if Laura were to blame somehow for the genetic abnormality.

“I’m just going to come out and say this, okay?” Caidy said after a moment. “I really wish you had married Taft so we could have been sisters.”

“Thank you,” she said, touched by the words.

“I mean it. You were the best thing that ever happened to him. We all thought so. Compared to the women he… Well, compared to anybody else he’s dated, you’re a million times better. I still can’t believe any brother of mine was stupid enough to let you slip through his fingers. Don’t think I haven’t told him so, too.”

She didn’t know quite how to answer—or why she had this sudden urge to protect him. Taft hadn’t been stupid, only hurt and lost and not at all ready for marriage.

She hadn’t been ready, either, although it had taken her a few years to admit that to herself. At twenty-one, she had been foolish enough to think her love should have been enough to help him heal from the pain and anger of losing his parents in such a violent way, when he hadn’t even had the resolution of the murderers being caught and brought to justice.

An idealistic, romantic young woman and an angry, bitter young man would have made a terrible combination, she thought as she sat here in this quiet barn while the puppies wriggled around with her children and a horse stamped and snorted somewhere nearby.

“I also have a confession.” Caidy shifted beside her at the stall door.

She raised an eyebrow. “Do I really want to hear this?”

“Please don’t be mad, okay?”

For some reason, Laura was strongly reminded of Caidy as she had known her a decade ago, the lighthearted, mischievous teenager who thought she could tease and cajole her way out of any situation.

“Tell me. What did you do?” she asked, amusement fighting the sudden apprehension curling through her.

Before the other woman could answer, a male voice rang out through the barn. “Caidy? Are you in here?”

Her stomach dropped and the little flutters of apprehension became wild-winged flaps of anxiety.

Caidy winced. “Um, I may have casually mentioned to Taft that you and the children were coming out to the ranch today and that we might be going up on the Aspen Leaf Trail, if he wanted to tag along.”

So much for her master plan of escaping the inn today so she could keep her children—and herself—out from underfoot while he was working on the other renovations.

“Are you mad?” Caidy asked.

She forced a smile when she really wanted to sit right down on the straw-covered floor of the stall and cry.

Yes, when she decided to return to Pine Gulch, she had known seeing him again was inevitable. She just hadn’t expected to bump into the dratted man every flipping time she turned around.

“Why would I be mad? Your brother and I are friends.” Or at least she was working hard at pretending they could be. Anyway, this was his family’s ranch. Some part of her had known when she accepted Caidy’s invitation to come out for a visit that there was a chance he might be here.