Fall to Pieces (3 page)

Not to mention, her father didn't exactly
accept her help and her advice without protest. Though it was great
catching up with old friends, especially Molly, she was ready to
get back to her real life, where people appreciated all of her hard
work and ability.

But she wasn't about to go into that tonight.
Tonight was about having fun and showing the hottest guy on the
planet that she was so not the awkward dork he remembered from high
school.

"I know the feeling," he said grimly as the
music wound down.

She moved closer, heart pounding against her
chest as she mustered up the courage to make her move. "As long as
we're both stuck here—" the last part of her line was lost as Dylan
stepped left, Sadie stepped right, and somehow got her leg tangled
with his.

Her stomach pitched in horror as she realized
not only was she falling, she was bringing Dylan down with her.

"Wow, Hank is pouring strong tonight."
Blaming her half consumed vodka tonic was so much better than
admitting she'd literally tripped over her own feet. She forced a
laugh as Dylan helped her up and asked her if she was okay.

Wishing the floor would open up under her and
swallow her whole, she assured Dylan she was fine and followed him
back to their table.

Knowing with one hundred percent certainty
that whatever shot she deluded herself into thinking she’d had just
been blown.

Awkward high school dork: 1. Sexy new
confident Sadie: 0.

As Dylan turned down the familiar drive he
felt some of the lingering tension of last night's nightmare start
to fade along with the heart-pounding, panicky feeling that had
started accompanying the nightmares recently. In the ten years
since he'd been here, the Thornton horse ranch hadn't changed much,
if at all, and something about that soothed the restlessness that
hadn't eased a bit his first week home.

The big main house still stood at the end of
the circular drive, the out buildings where the foreman and the
ranch hands lived branching off to the side, towards the creek.

The green grass of the sprawling hay meadows
extending out to the mountains jutting up from the land, were like
a calming hand on his shoulder. The familiarity made it easier for
him to thrust away the last of the haunting images. Easier for him
to focus on the here, the now, not think about what his team was
doing on the other side of the world.

Made it easier to appreciate the peace, the
quiet, the nights not marred by the sounds of gunfire, the days not
spent looking over the next ridge for the glint of a gun
barrel.

And right now he appreciated the fact that
while he had changed so much in the ten years since he left his
small town home, the Thornton Ranch was exactly the same as it had
been when he'd driven up this same drive countless times his senior
year in high school so Sadie Thornton could help him with his
trigonometry homework.

Back then, he'd been itching like hell to get
out of Big Timber, Montana, away from the small town, out from
under the long shadows cast by his older brothers. Eager to start
his career in the military, sure of his path, ready to show the
world what a badass he was.

Now he shook his head at that naive kid,
setting out for basic training, his head full of heroic visions for
himself. With no clue of the reality, no clue of how he'd be
tested, pushed to the breaking point in every way possible.

His boots crunched against the gravel and he
heard the faint strains of Pink's latest hit coming from the barn
door. Back in the day the radio knob was broken off on the a.m.
country station. A grin pulled at his lips. Sadie was back, and she
was making her presence known.

He walked through the big double doors,
squinting as his eyes adjusted from the bright July sun to the
dimmer interior. He spotted Sadie and Pete Jenkins, the ranch
foreman, over by one of the stalls. Their conversation was
inaudible over the music, but from the set of Sadie's narrow
shoulders he could tell it was tense.

He still couldn't get over the change in her.
In the week or so since he'd seen last seen her at his brother's
party, he'd tried to convince himself that he'd been imagining
things. That the reason he'd reacted so strongly to her that first
night at the Last Chance, and later that week at his brother,
Deck's, party, was the sheer contrast between the too tall, too
skinny, awkward girl who'd earned the nickname "Sadie Storkton" to
a woman who was certifiably hot.

But nope, there she was, her delicately
carved nose and cheekbones shown in profile, her now curvy ass
filling out the top of her low slung jeans and her new (to him)
breasts mounding against the thin cotton of her t-shirt.

Not lush, by any means, but a nice little
handful that would fit perfectly in his big, broad palm—

"Dylan!"

His eyes snapped up at the sound of her
voice, and he hoped to God the dim light hid the fact that he'd
been staring at her boobs. And please Jesus let it hide the effect
those boobs were having on his own body.

"Hey, Sadie," he said. Shit, had his voice
just cracked? He hoped to hell not, but it was hard to get anything
out, what with the way he felt like he'd taken a sucker punch to
the chest the instant he laid eyes on her face.

Her eyebrows knit above her big dark eyes and
her mouth was pursed in what looked like irritation.

"What are you doing here?" she asked as she
approached.

Dylan forced his eyes away from the tempting
sway of her hips. "Dad said your tractor seized up. He's slammed
this morning so I told him I'd take care of it." He held up his
toolbox for emphasis. Though he didn't share his father's passion
for automobile repair and restoration, he was a capable mechanic
and helping his father at the shop gave him something to fill his
time between working out to prepare him for the intense physical
training he'd face when he went back to Fort Bragg..

"Oh, I was expecting Frank."

"I'm more than capable of fixing it," he
said.

"Of course you are, you've always been great
with your hands." She gave her head a little shake and laughed.

Come a little closer and I'll show you
just how good,
said a voice that came straight from the little
head.
Knock it off,
he told his inner horndog.
This is
Sadie. Sweet, smart, Sadie, who doesn't deserve our bullshit no
matter how hot she's become.

"Sorry," she continued. "You just caught me
off guard. Things have been a pretty..." She raised her hands and
screwed her face in an expression to convey chaos.

"How's your dad? When ran into him at Adele's
last week it looked like he was getting around pretty well."

"Don't tell him that," she said wryly. "His
cardiologist says that his blood pressure is still elevated and he
still needs to take it easy. You can imagine how well he took
that."

Right. Jim Thornton was what the old timers
called a tough cuss, about as tender as a piece of rawhide. A
gritty cowboy who wouldn't let something like a heart attack keep
him from running his outfit. Dylan would have wondered how he'd
managed to spawn a daughter as sweet and funny as Sadie had he not
known Sadie's mom, Angela. "I imagine he's happy to have you around
though."

Sadie's smile stiffened around the corners.
"I'd like to think so."

Dylan's heart pinched a little, but before he
could hone in closer, Pete's rough voice interrupted. "Hay's not
going to mow itself. You gonna git to that tractor you or two gonna
stand around jawing the morning away?"

Sadie rolled her eyes and motioned Dylan out
the main door and around the back where the hulking piece of
machinery was parked while Pete stomped off toward the
outbuildings, his bowlegged gait attesting to decades spent on
horseback.

"I see his mood hasn't improved over the
years."

"If he was a woman I'd think he had a
constant case of PMS," she said with a wry smile that made his own
lips tingle with the urge to kiss it off her face.

"So what's going on here?" he said as he
rapped his fist on the tractor's hood, forcing himself back on
task.

"No idea," she shrugged. "All I know is it
makes this horrible sound every time you start it."

Dylan nodded and climbed into the cab. He
turned the key and pressed the clutch so he could hear it for
himself. The engine rumble to life, followed almost immediately by
a high pitched squealing noise that made his teeth ache in his jaw.
He quickly killed the engine and hopped down. "Sounds like the
alternator." He popped the hood and peered inside.

"You can fix it right?" Sadie sidled up next
to him. He tried to ignore the clean soapy smell of her, crawling
into his nostrils even over the seemingly insurmountable
combination of diesel fuel and horse manure surrounding them.

He nodded. "Shouldn't be too bad. Even if I
have to run into town for a part, I should still have it running by
later this afternoon."

"Oh thank God," Sadie said, her relief almost
palpable. "We can't afford to delay mowing the south meadow, not if
we want to make the shipment by the end of the month. Especially
after the first cut was so disappointing."

"Listen to you, miss rancher. And here I
thought you'd turned full on computer nerd."

"A girl can leave the ranch, but the ranch
never leaves her. Even if I have spent most of the last five years
buried in code," she said with a grin.

The grin quickly faded to a look of vague
disgust as she looked at a point over his shoulder. "Nice of him to
finally show up," she muttered.

Dylan turned too, tracking her gaze. He saw a
lean, slightly stoop shouldered form ambling bow leggedly toward
them. Dressed in a long sleeved, snap front shirt, wrangler jeans,
boots and beat up straw hat, he had the unmistakable look of a
career ranch hand.

As he got closer, Dylan understood the
derisive curl in Sadie's lips, the flare to her fine nostrils as
though she'd smelled something bad. The hand's eyes were bloodshot,
his shirt rumpled as though he'd slept in it and sporting a big
grease stain to boot.

"Good morning, Miss Sadie," he said in a tone
that stripped any note of respect from the address, his grin
showing teeth stained by coffee and tobacco.

"Morning Andy," she replied in a tone that
betrayed none of her disdain. "This is Dylan. He's going to fix the
tractor."

Dylan reached out his hand, noticing the
tremble in Andy's as he shook it.

You sure you want this guy operating heavy
machinery?
he thought as he shot Sadie a pointed look.

She shrugged as if to say,
we have to make
do.

"Why the hell did Pete roust me when it ain't
even fixed yet?" Andy snarled and let fly with a long stream of
tobacco laced spit that just missed the toes of Sadie's boots.

Dylan's fist clenched around the wrench in
his right hand.

"I'm sure he has his reasons," Sadie said in
a cool, poised tone he'd never heard from her before. No longer the
girl who was easily flustered, Sadie's confidence had evidently
grown along with her beauty. "But you can head out as soon as the
tractor's back on line.” Her stare didn't waiver from the scruffy
cowboy's for an instant.

Dylan felt a spurt of pride that he instantly
squashed. So Sadie was growing into her own. Nothing for him to get
excited about.

"Thank you so much for helping us out," she
said, turning to Dylan with a smile that had him going all aw
shucks and digging his toe in the dirt. She laid her hand on his
forearm, and the shock of heat from her palm against his bare skin
was so fierce she might as well have slipped it between his
legs.

"I'm happy to," he said, struggling for words
as all the blood in his body headed south. "Gives me something to
do while I'm here."

"Of course."

She pulled her hand away and he forced
himself not to snatch it back.

"Of course. I didn't mean that you would be
doing a favor or anything special, like, for me." She clamped her
lips together in a gesture so familiar that it made his chest
ache.

Did it make him an asshole that he loved that
he could still get this grown up, sophisticated Sadie Thornton as
tongue tied as he had in high school? When she'd shadowed him in
the halls of Sweet Grass County High School in the throes of her
not so secret crush?

A crush, he admitted to himself with no small
amount of shame, he'd exploited ruthlessly when it came time to
study for finals each and every year?

A musical trill filled the air and Sadie
fished her phone out of her pocket. "I need to take this. We're all
good right?"

Dylan nodded and she turned and hurried back
toward the main house, phone to her ear.

He tried but couldn't tear his eyes from the
sight of her ass, swaying in rhythm with her long legged strides.
Just looking. No harm in looking.

He pulled his gaze just in time to see Andy
do the same. The man shot him a knowing grin that made his skin
crawl. "Nice view, ain't it?"

Rage boiled in his veins, making his fists
clench and his vision grow red. His stomach churned at the idea of
a piece of trash like Andy so much as looking at her. No one should
be looking at her, or God forbid touching her. No one but—

No, chief. Don't even go there.

"Her father or Pete hear you talking like
that, you'll be out on your ass."

Andy gave a snort. "And I'll go work for the
mining company for twice the wage. Hell, he's so short handed
Thornton would probably tie her to my bed himself to keep me on,"
he chuckled and spat another ugly brown mess in the dirt.

He took a deep breath, forced himself not to
knock out the guy's ugly yellow teeth.