Maverick (Star Valley Book 3) (10 page)

“I came to talk, Leah. That’s all.”

She put her hands on her hips and Austin couldn’t help but remember when his own hands had been on them, especially in the elevator. His life would be a whole lot simpler now if he’d kept his promise just to look.

Leah narrowed her eyes at him. “I can’t think what else you’d have to say. I’m pretty sure I got the gist. Thanks for stopping by.” She marched across the room and grabbed his forearm, which surprised him. She actually tried to push him out the door but he’d driven a long way to be here and he wasn’t going to be ousted so easily. He planted his feet and refused to move.

“Leah, I made a whole lot of mistakes from the minute I met you. I’m probably wrong about a lot of things. I’m probably wrong about
you
. If you’ll just hear me—”

“You know what, Austin? You’re not wrong. You’re absolutely right about me.”

“Leah!” Candace chastised from behind her.

Leah ignored her. “You’re right. Really. My tits are fake. And guess what? So’s my hair!” Astonishingly, she reached up, tugged, and pulled a handful of it out. She cocked back her arm and threw it at him. Shocked, he still managed to deflect it. The limp hairpiece skidded onto the nearby table, taking out a stack of papers and mail along with it.

“Everything about me is fake! So go on. Just go home. You saved yourself a whole lot of trouble, didn’t you? Yeah, you saw right through me. I’m ugly, and flat-chested, and I have terrible hair and I’m just the
worst
person you’ve ever met in your life! Forget about the baby. There is no baby! Not as far as
you’re
concerned.
So. Get. Out.
”

“I’m not leaving, Leah,” he declared and walked away from the front door to the table instead. He bent to pick up the mess she’d made.

“Don’t do that!” she ordered but he ignored her.

He gathered up the items and stacked them back on the table, which he noticed was wobbly and in need of repair. He reached out to steady it and his hand came down on a piece of paper that crackled under his palm. He glanced down, without thinking about it, and peered at it. Then he picked it up, deciphering the writing scrawled over the now-wrinkled paper.

“
Put that down
!” Leah hissed and made another move toward him but she was quite possibly too intimidated to actually enforce her demand, because she didn’t come any closer. “Give me that!”

“What’s a Reverse Bucket List?” he asked instead of handing it over.

Silence was all he got in response.

It wasn’t Leah, but Candace who spoke up. “It’s—”

“Don’t!” Leah snapped. “Don’t you dare tell him. Don’t you dare!”

Candace sighed. “Leah—”

“Don’t.” Leah turned from Austin to plead with her friend. The anger in her voice just moments ago had seemingly dissipated. “Please don’t,” she begged.

The two women regarded each other in a silence so heavy that Austin wished he’d never picked up the paper in the first place. Now that he had, he couldn’t seem to put it down or hand it over.

“It’s—” Candace began again.

“Don’t,” Leah whispered, but it was a half-hearted effort now. She wiped at her cheeks and looked away, out the window instead, anywhere, apparently, other than at the two other people in the room.

“Well, you know,” Candace said to him. “You know what a Bucket List is.”

Austin hadn’t known that it was possible to feel any worse than he had right up until this moment, to feel any more guilty than he already did. But his gut twisted anyway and it felt as though there was a nest of rattlers in his lower belly. “Yeah,” he said slowly, cautiously, waiting for the inevitable strike, knowing he couldn’t stop it, but still desperately wanting to.

Candace cast a guilty look at Leah, a sort of preemptive apology. “A Reverse Bucket List is all the things you’re going to do when they tell you you’re going to
live
.” Candace cast another furtive glance at her friend. “She—”

Leah whirled on her, just as quick as any diamondback. “Don’t you tell him any more. He doesn’t deserve to know.” She threw a cutting look at Austin. “And he doesn’t care anyway.”

Awkwardly, Candace cleared her throat and ducked her head. “Well, she’s going to live,” she finished quietly. “And she was never sure if she would.
I
always thought she would,” the girl added with a slight smile. “But Leah never believed it.”

Austin glanced around at the bare apartment, the ponytail on the floor, and the paper in his hand. “I—”

“Just get out!” Leah snapped. “Just leave.
Now
.”

He wasn’t certain what to say and it seemed very likely that anything that came out of his mouth would be wrong right now, anyway. He closed his hand around the paper and pressed his lips together before saying, “I’m staying at the Holiday Inn off the highway. I…I’ll come back tomorrow, when things are less…”

Austin struggled to find the right words. The truth was, he wasn’t sure things would ever be less, or easier, or better, for that matter, but he for damn sure wasn’t going to keep making them
worse
. “Tomorrow,” he muttered, feeling like an asshole and a damn fool as he walked out the door.

After checking into his room, he slid down into the chair in the corner and smoothed out the paper on the desktop. He didn’t even remember taking it with him.
Fuck a cowboy with his boots on
. Except fuck had been crossed out. Seeing the words
Make love to
scrawled above it made him groan out loud. He had a hazy recollection of his night with Leah, but they hadn’t made love, or anything close to it. He was pretty sure he’d ridden her like a greenbroke filly and then collapsed into unconsciousness just after.

Had she been a virgin? He didn’t think so. He had a vague memory of having made sure. That was a relief.

Ride a horse.

Climb a mountain.

Sing a song in public.

Drive a stick shift.

Get a tattoo.

He couldn’t help but smile sadly at them. All things he’d done, that almost
everyone
had done, what kind of life had she lived if she hadn’t managed a single one?

Austin didn’t know. He didn’t know her at all. But he needed to find out.

‡

L
eah leaned against
the door and kept her eyes closed for a full minute before finally looking at Candace.

“You could’ve listened,” her friend said gently. “But then if he’d talked to me the way he talked to you yesterday, I think I’d have kicked his ass out, too.”

Leah was still angry and hurt over his previous words. He didn’t know her! How dare he judge her?

“He’ll come back tomorrow,” Candace reminded her. “Will you listen then?”

Leah scowled. “I don’t know.” She sighed. “Maybe.”

“I can’t believe you threw your hair at him.”

She covered her face with her hands. She’d been embarrassed, mostly, not only because of the things he’d said but also because her spartan apartment paled in comparison to his castle in the foothills of the Tetons. When she’d come out of the bedroom, she’d seen the look on his face as he’d been studying the place,
judging
the place,
judging her—again
.

“I was just surprised to see him here,” she told Candace, not wanting to remind her friend how little she’d contributed to their shared furnishings. Candace had gotten them all their kitchen utensils and appliances. Leah had bought the furniture mostly second hand. And one chair she’d picked up off the curb. Her friend had never complained, but even so.

“Why’d you tell him?” Leah asked her.

“Because you never would have. And because I think maybe the two of you got off on the wrong foot and then just kept sliding down. Somebody had to reach out and grab you, Leah. Before you went over the cliff and ran him of permanently. He said he screwed up,” Candace declared. “He apologized. I would have told you but you didn’t give me a chance.”

“He screwed up?”

By screwing
her
? Leah guessed she could understand why he felt that way, but the thought was still depressing.

“I think he’s offering an olive branch here, Leah. And I’m not so sure you should spit on it. He has money—”

“I don’t want his money. I told you before.”

“But it’s not for you,” Candace replied quietly.

Leah had never been one to ignore or run away from her problems and it certainly made no sense to start now. Candace was right, as usual, and it was time once again, to deal with what was right in front of her.

“I’ll talk to him,” she finally agreed.

Candace visibly relaxed in front of her. “You’re doing the right thing.”

Leah hoped so.

That night she could barely sleep, getting less rest than usual these last few weeks. Tomorrow night (tonight, since it was well past midnight) seemed too far away. She was anxious to get this resolved, to focus on the future, assuming there was anything to focus on. Tomorrow she’d know for sure, when the doctor confirmed it either way.

She tossed and turned and watched the clock until it was a reasonably civilized hour—8 a.m. She dressed quickly and grabbed enough money for the bus across town, the Holiday Inn, he’d said. She knew it but had never been there. Leah hadn’t bothered with the fake hair piece. He’d already seen her without it and it would’ve taken too long to put on and arrange it. Plus she was a little tired of trying to be someone she wasn’t, and that included her short hair. She wasn’t fooling anyone. Everyone around her knew she’d been sick. It was only vanity that had her endlessly fiddling with her hair. She had more important things to worry about these days.

The girl at the front desk, scarcely older than Leah herself, was happy to ring Austin’s room.

There was no answer.

Leah’s stomach twisted for reasons she couldn’t explain. “Has he checked out?” For some reason, that thought did not give her any relief at all.

The girl clacked away on the keyboard, squinting at the screen. “No.”

“Can you try again?”

Leah waited, patiently, but grew more agitated with every passing second. “Can you tell me his room number?” she asked sheepishly.

The girl frowned. “We’re not supposed to.”

“I guess I could wait.
All day
.” She glanced wistfully over her shoulder. “Or I could knock on every single door.” Leah walked away slowly, toward the nearest hallway, allowing the girl time to contemplate the possibility of getting yelled at once, if Austin complained, versus getting several dozen angry phone calls from disturbed guests.

“Okay, wait!” She glanced nervously toward a door marked Employees Only. “I could get fired,” she whined.

“He won’t be mad. I promise.” Leah was aware that by all rights she could make no such promise but she smiled wide anyway. Apparently, she was living dangerously now in many, many ways.

“Room 430,” the girl whispered. She said it so quietly Leah had to ask her to repeat it.

“You won’t get in trouble,” Leah promised again and hurried off toward the elevators. In just minutes she was standing in front of his door, feeling strange about listening for any signs of life. The last time she’d done this, he hadn’t been in the room. He hadn’t answered the phone earlier. It was possible he was out.

If that was the case, Leah didn’t want to think about where.

She took a deep breath, gathered her courage, and knocked. Immediately she heard his voice on the other side of the door.

“One minute!”

She barely had enough time to second guess herself before the door swung wide and Austin greeted her in jeans, no shirt, and barefoot. A few drops of water from his damp hair beaded onto his chest and shoulders.

Suddenly it was very warm indoors.

He rocked back on his feet, mouth open. “I thought it was housekeeping.”

“Oh, um, no,” she said rather lamely. Suddenly, she felt ridiculous standing in the hall.

“I’m not sure I would have recognized you if I’d bothered to look through the peephole. I’m not used to seeing you like this. So, I guess this is the real you.”

All her fragile hopes came crashing down and she glared at him. “Sorry to disappoint you.” She turned on her heel, disgusted with him, herself, the whole situation.

“Hey,” he said, hot on her heels. When she didn’t slow down, he moved around her to block her path to the elevator. “Damn it, Leah. Don’t do that. Don’t put words in my mouth, okay? God knows the ones I choose on my own haven’t been all that great. I just…I was just commenting that we don’t know each other very well. Maybe our perceptions of each other are all wrong.”

She hesitated, glancing over his shoulder to the bank of elevators just a few feet away. Somewhere, around a corner, someone was vacuuming. It all seemed so mundane. Her life was, once again, spinning out of control but everything around her seemed to go marching on, undisturbed.

“Do you want to come in?” he asked, gesturing toward the closed door. “Rather than stand in the hall?”

She was about to say no when a door opened farther down. A middle aged man came out, glanced their way, then shut his room door tightly. The sharp click echoed in the hallway. She definitely didn’t want to talk out here and she was probably kidding herself that there was nothing left to say. She sighed and nodded, following him cautiously back to his room.