Taking Back Tara (Ranch Lovers Romance) (2 page)

“Let go’a me,
sweet pea. You need a cuppa hot cocoa and I can’t make it for you out here in
the rain that’s startin’ again.”

She sniffed and
let go, sitting up in the saddle. “Cocoa
with a shot of bourbon in it?”

He smiled
softly with a hint of pride in his eyes. “I don’t make it that-a-way anymore.”

Her platinum
brows shot up in surprise. She didn’t speak for several minutes as Zane walked
Blue through the re-gathering storm toward shelter and comfort. After a while,
she quit crying altogether and got an unattractive case of the hiccups.

***

“Hey!” Tara
cried, from her easy rolling seat on Blue’s saddle while Zane picked his way
through the mud in boots soaked to the socks. “You just passed the cut-off road
to my trailer.”

“That’s ‘cause
you ain’t a-going there, darlin’!”

“Take me home,
right now, Zane McKenna!”

“Oh, I’m taking
you home all right. To
our
home!”

“Kidnapper!”
she blurted.

“Mule,” he
replied good-naturedly and kept walking, Blue following him sedately and Ty and
Fly hitching a ride on Blue behind the saddle.

“Zane! I don’t
want to go home with you,” Tara whined.

“You
are
coming home with me, Tara. You reek
of piss and sweat and blood. You need a bath and a serious first aid kit. You
need hot food. You need a bed.”

“Hey, you’d pee
yourself too if you fell as hard as I did! I have everything I need at my
Airstream.”

“It’s a very
old travel trailer, Tara. If the axle wasn’t busted, it might be good for rodeo
circuit, or camping, but it ain’t fit for living in.”

“I live in it
just fine.”

“No. You don’t.
You’ve dressed in black for over a year and holed yourself up in that busted
tin can like a hermit or a mental case. When I lifted you on Blue, I felt your
bones. It’s not even a proper place to cook. You’re starving to
death
!”

“I
have
lost weight but I needed to.”

“Bullshit. You
ain’t got one curve left!”

“Well, that’s
fine. Kick a gal when she’s down.”

He plodded
through the freezing mud. “I want you to come home, Tara.
Let’s stop this hard feeling between us, on both sides. Mine, too.”

“
I’m
the one who left you for another
man. You didn’t do a thing wrong, Zane. You’re being a knight in shining armor,
under the circumstances. You just feel sorry for me. You don’t really want me
back.”

“The hell I don’t!
I’m taking you, right now.”

Tara
gripped the saddle horn and winced as her ankle banged softly against Blue’s
side. Despite her resolve, a swear word hissed out.

“That bad, eh?”
he asked.

She nodded and
replied curtly, “I’m long past caring if I swear at my life.”

***

By the time
they reached the old two-story ranch house, afternoon had faded into deep
evening. Sunset was a memory as buckets of cold, icy rain pounded down from the
sky in gray sheets that stung the skin.

Behind the
black kerchief covering her face, Tara gasped when she
saw the house. “What on earth happened to the house? Doors are hanging off
hinges. Windows are missing! The porch is half destroyed.”

“I have at
least one surprise for you, Tara, soon as I put Blue in the barn and dry him,
feed him. Come here, darlin’.” He reached up for her and she slid into his
arms, lighter than she’d even been in high school. He sat her gently on the
steps of the porch out of the rain. “Stay here,” he said firmly and she nodded,
pulling the black kerchief higher on her face. She sat there shivering in her
wet clothes, waiting for him to come back. She leaned against the porch post,
completely exhausted.

He came back in
ten minutes and took her up in his arms again, carrying her around the side of
the house and then the back of it. “Oh Lord, I knew it. You’re taking me to the
woodshed, aren’t you?”

“Not hardly,”
he said wryly. “Not that it didn’t cross my mind, that first year without you
how much I wanted to lay a few licks on you in some twisted fantasy where I get
even and then we have makeup sex. But I’m not John Wayne and you’re not Maureen
O’Hara. We have to solve our problems in some mature way. Like adults.”

“How?” she
asked. “How can we solve this awful thing between us?” She paused. “That
I
did?”

“We change
ourselves to fit better.” He paused. “I’m not just talking about you changing.
I mean me, too.”

She squinted
through the bleak darkness. Her eyebrows rose as she saw a new, smaller house
built behind the old house. “Wow! It’s our solar, straw-bale house, the one we
talked about for years! The one we planned!”

“You just said
our
house!” Zane said.

Her hand rose
to her mouth and patted the black kerchief. “I mean,
your
house.
You
built
it!”

Zane walked up
the dark porch steps, his arms tight around her body, her legs draped over his
forearms. “Clap your hands,” he said.

She did as he
asked and the porch light flicked on. “Oh gosh, the Clapper for the porch? You
really
did
that?”

“You always
have great ideas, Tara. Wait till you see it all.”

“Just like I
imagined it, the outside. The stucco is homemade?”

“Yes. Clay and
mud and straw. Needs another coat after this hard rain, I’m sure. But I have to
let it dry out between coats.”

Her eyes took
in the wraparound porch and log vigas that supported the roof, the turquoise
blue paint on the wooden window frames that she could see were salvaged from
the old house. “Zane, it’s beautiful. You used a lot of stuff from the old
house, just like we wanted to do.”

“You ain’t seen
nothing yet, babycakes.”

Her eyes smiled
at his pet names for her, a tradition in their marriage. He couldn’t see her
mouth but he guessed she was smiling there, too.

“Turn the knob
so I can carry you over the threshold, Tara Lee McKenna,” he said softly, using
her old married name.

He heard the
catch in her throat as he said her old married name. She turned the knob. When
the door swung open, lights went on in the house. He carried her across the
threshold.

“Zane. It’s
beautiful inside, too.” Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks to
wet the black kerchief, still pulled up bandit-style over the lower half of her
face.

“Not the
waterworks again. Please stop cryin’. It’s for you, Tara. I built this for you.
And me, o’ course. Hoping, praying, and wishin’ like the song says.”

She opened her
mouth to protest. He could see the suck of inhaled breath against the black
kerchief. He put a finger to where he thought her lips might be. “Don’t say
anything negative right now, or you will bust up my heart all over again. I
don’t know if I could live another heartbeat past a rejection of this house, my
gift to you. My blood, my sweat, my heart is in this house.”

She began to
cry in earnest.

“Come on,
Tara-girl. Git a hold of yourself.”

“I can’t
believe you did this for me.”

“
Believe
,” he replied firmly. He sat her
in a chair in the soft yellow kitchen with the copper countertops and matching
copper stove hood, with iron skillets hanging from hooks dangling from the
ceiling.

“You put the
kitchen in the front of the house, just like I wanted,” she said. “The saffron
walls and the white molding. Everything is just what we talked about. You must
have used the paint chips and the drawings I made.”

“Of course I
did. As soon as I tear down the old house, you’re going to get the morning
light through this bank of windows in your pretty new home.”

“Zane, I don’t
know what to say about all this.”

“You don’t have
to say anything, Tara. Just soak it in like a lump of
sourdough starter. And let it rise in you—the yeast of joy.”

She squeezed
his forearm and he smiled tightly but did not pull away from her touch. Zane
knelt to pull off her remaining boot and sock, then said, “Grit your teeth. I
need to pull the sticks and reins off the hurt ankle. And get some ice on it.”

“Ice?” she
squeaked. “I’ve been freezing for two days! No ice!” she begged.

“Well then,
let’s have a look at the mess,” he replied.

He peeled off
the makeshift splints tenderly but she still gasped in pain.

“Oh God, Zane.
It hurts so bad. Now that I am not laying on the cold ground, numb with wet and
cold, it’s throbbing like a sum-bitch.”

“I know. I can
see how purple and swelled it is. I’ve saved all your stuff and moved it to the
new house. I think you have a pain pill or two left from some dental work,
three years ago, but they’re probably still good. I’ll get you one from the
medicine cabinet if you want it.”

“Please,” she
said. “Don’t make me beg for it.”

He shucked his
boots and socks in the kitchen and walked barefoot across the tongue-in-groove
cedar floors, then padded across a vast Navajo rug in a darkened living room.
She heard him open a cabinet in a room in the back of the house. He came back
shortly with a pill and a glass of water.

“I’m going to
take off your clothes, sugar, and throw them in the washer. Right here in the kitchen.
Then I’m gonna run you a bath and carry you in there.”

His calloused
hand moved to her black shirt collar and pulled apart the pearl snap. She
stayed his hand with hers. “No, I can do it myself in the bathroom.”

“The rug is
new. You’re filthy and dripping wet.” Their eyes met. “You are not going across
that rug in those dirty clothes, even if I carry you.”

“Can’t you
bring me a robe or something?”

“I could, but
I’m not going to -- Guess how many times I’ve seen you naked, Tara?”

She shrugged
and looked at her dirty toes. “A lot.”

“More than
seventy-three hundred mornings or evenings, we were peeled to the skin, both of
us. I know every freckle, every silky blonde pubic hair, every tickle spot,
every soft place on your body. And…there ain’t any spot where my mouth hasn’t
been.
Any
!”

She blushed to
the roots of her hair, remembering. Her mouth dropped open in horror. “You want
to know some truth, Zane?”

“I’d love some
truth right about now,” he replied.

“I’m not scared
to be naked in front of you from the neck down. Hell, I could care less about
that. I just don’t want you to see my face, what happened to it.” Her voice
broke into tremors and she blurted in a panic: “You used to call me angel
face.”

“Aw, honey! Is that
what this bandit bandana is all about? That pet name was about how much I loved
you, not about how pretty you were. I meant
are
.
Shit. Sorry.”

“I’m the one’s
who’s sorry, Zane. I literally cannot face you after what I have done and after
what has happened to my face.” Her hands quivered in her lap. “I can’t ever be
your angel face again. Not ever.”

He knelt in
front of her and took her hands in his. “Listen to me, Tara.” He kissed the
dirty palms and winced at the sight of the broken, bloody nails from her climb
out of the ravine. “I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t matter, Tara,
or say that it looks okay if it doesn’t. It matters a lot. But we’ll get past
it. You and me. Nothing can break us. Not even goddamn Hugh T. Palenuts, the
poet lariat who stole you away from me.”

Her mouth
twitched in amusement under the black kerchief. “That’s poet laureate.
Laureate, not lariat. And he was Hugh T. Palafox.”

“Makes no never
mind now, does it?” Zane asked.

“It does. He
didn’t steal me away. I went willingly.”

“Why honey?
Why’d you run off with him? To this day, I still don’t know what happened that
night you said you were going to hear a poet read after he bought the place
next to ours and you never, ever came back. Text message and terse phone calls.
That was not you. It was some stranger in your body acting more bizarre than
anything I’ve ever seen come from any human being.”

“I know,” she
said softly. “It was surreal. I barely understand it myself.”

“Did he drug
you or something? And then you slept with him and were afraid to come home?”

“No, he didn’t
drug me. And yes, I did something very wrong…After I slept with him, I was
afraid to come home and face you.”

“You weren’t
afraid of me, were you?”

“A little.
Cause you could get mean when you drank. But I wronged you. No two ways about
it.”

He sighed
heavily. “We could have worked it out.”

She inhaled
long and hard and on her exhaled breath said quickly: “Mostly, I was too
ashamed. Deeply and profoundly ashamed. I was even afraid of my own shame. I
can’t even look at myself in the mirror, Zane. It’s not just the…scars. I
loathe myself.”

“That ain’t the
Tara I know. I will want to see your face. We’re going
to have some awkwardness about it, and then it will pass and we can go back to
being together.”

She put her hands
on his cheeks and looked into his eyes, her eyes wet. “I don’t know how you
changed yourself like this, Zane.”

“T’weren’t
easy, my love. I spent the last two years reading your books and magazine
subscriptions.”

“You did that?”

“Hell, yes. I
read every relationship book on your shelf, every decorating book. I read every
Cosm
o magazine and every romance
novel under the bed. I read those books and magazines and sat there astounded
at your woman’s world, how different it was from mine.”

“Mars versus
Venus,” she replied.

“Yep. It gave
me a look inside of the woman I love. I learnt what made her tick.” He kissed
her forehead and she closed her eyes, shimmering tears sparkling in her lashes.