The Bride Wore Starlight (20 page)

“People are right,” he said. “You're born to work with animals.”

She held up her hand. “We're not going there, okay?” Her taut voice brooked no argument. “Cole and I have been around horses our whole lives. Cowboys learn stuff like this. You do what you have to do.”

“That's not—”

“Alec.” She wasn't smiling. She wasn't even understanding—he could see it in the opaque of her eyes. They were letting no emotion in or out. “I'm going to get cleaned up. You stay here. Watch the miracle of the new baby standing and of the mare's instinct taking over. The doctor will be here shortly, and she'll check everyone out. Come on up after that.”

“Let me drive you back. You can't—”

“Oh, no, you don't.” She pointed a finger at him. “You keep telling me not only that I
can
but that I
should.
Stay here, Alec.”

She swung her body furiously between her crutches as she limped as fast as the metal legs would allow out of the barn.

Alec stared, dumbstruck at the inexplicable change in her personality. He turned slowly, and Bjorn set a hand on his shoulder.

“There's a lot going on in her head,” he said. “I don't think anybody knows quite what's going to trigger what. She'll be okay.”

Alec understood triggers.

“Thanks, Bjorn.” He nodded and turned back to the stall, confused as the newborn colt in the shavings.

B
LESSEDLY HOT WATER
sluiced over Joely's body, carrying away the foal's birth muck, its smell, and a little of her physical pain. She ached after straining shoulder, back, and hip muscles in a way she hadn't since well before the accident. The water also washed away traces, she hoped, of an embarrassing flood of tears. She couldn't explain the overwhelming grief to herself, much less Alec—although she'd have to try after turning on him the way she had in the barn.

She and Cole had done a wonderful thing, but it hadn't been miraculous. The foal's birth could have been disastrous, but Bjorn had caught the trouble in time. With the vet on the phone, and experienced horse people surrounding them, she'd simply had to do the job without panic. She'd done exactly that. Rather than turn on Alec, she should have been rejoicing in his arms.

Instead all she'd seen in her memory's eye, during the whole wonder of a new birth, was the
loss
of life that had spun her world out of its recognizable orbit. Damien had a new baby, yes, but she'd lost two—one equine and one human. The horse, her sweet and talented Penny, had been her best friend, her only constant in three years of disastrous marriage and indescribable pain. The human baby? Joely halted the memory.

In that stall today everyone had cheered. A new, interesting, complicated man had stood beside her, pulled her up onto her ruined leg, and would have kissed her on the spot had she so much as smiled at him. He'd praised her. Told her she'd done something she was meant to do. In reality all she'd done was rip open her heart.

Maybe four years ago, had she done things differently, she could have followed the golden, ordained path to which Alec had referred. Back then the life plan in her head had looked much different, and she hadn't yet gone to her father and Tim—her new man at the time—excited about the plans she'd devised for her Miss Wyoming scholarship money.

Unfortunately she
had
gone to them. On the very weekend Tim had come to meet her parents and, unbeknownst to her, propose, she'd laid out her future for him and for her father. She was going to vet school. Finally. Now that she was done with planning every step of her future around the next pageant, the next beauty regimen, the next push-up bra or taping session to hold her safely in a gown with a plunging neckline, she was going to pursue her dream.

She could still see her father's absent smile as he listened to her from behind the big desk in his study filled with pictures of his male ancestors—three generations of them—like a hall of kings in a royal palace. “Joely, honey, that's a tough career. You shouldn't have to worry that gorgeous head of yours over cattle and public health debates and pregnancy testing cows. You've got talent most girls would kill for.”

To this day she didn't know what he'd meant by that. That she had talent to be an actress or a school teacher or some other job “for girls”? Or had he simply implied she could trade on her looks forever?

“I'm not going to spend my life preg testing cattle,” she'd told him. “You know I want to be an equine vet.”

“Well, there would be a waste of four years of vet school.” Again the words had been calm, non-confrontational, almost nonchalant and jokey. “A horse vet on a cattle ranch. What good would that do? You'd be much better off to learn the skills you'd actually need for working on a spread like Paradise and pick up the horse knowledge on the side. Besides, there's nothing that happens to horses around here that the hands can't deal with.”

“Marry me,” Tim had said then, right in front of her father. “Marry me and come do the animal charity work you talked about in your Miss Wyoming platform. With your scholarship money and my connections, honey, you can make a difference.”

One man's criticism and another man's convincing charm had swayed her. As she looked back now all she could feel was disgust at her lack of self-worth and her willingness to do exactly as her father had suggested—trade on her looks to get what she needed. Sadly, it had worked. She'd become a former Miss Somebody married to a well-known LA businessman and had the world at her feet.

No wonder she couldn't fight for herself now. She was nothing but shallow beauty. And she didn't even have that any longer. She'd set her life on its current trajectory the moment she'd said “I do.”

The only thing left for her to do was find a way to say she didn't. She could shake off at least one of her mistakes.

And not start another.

She turned off the water and wrapped herself in one of her mother's thick, oversized towels. She fought the urge to sneak into her old bedroom and curl up like a caterpillar in a soft, warm cocoon; she owed Alec more than the rude cold shoulder she'd given him.

Mia's jeans and lightweight sweater were slightly large on her. She stared at her image in the bathroom mirror, wiping away the condensation fog from her shower. Everyone told her constantly she needed to eat. Maybe they were right. She'd never not filled out a fitted top or the seat of a pair of Levi's. But now she saw for the first time that all her title-winning curves were starting to look flattened.

She studied the scar on her jaw as objectively as she could. It was ugly, no way around it. Winding and pink. She could work further with a plastic surgeon, and maybe sometime she would. She'd just been sick of surgeries after so many of them on her back and leg, and to get the scar even this far, that she'd put the brakes on any more dates with scalpels.

Ten minutes and one slightly camouflaged scar later, she finally left the bathroom. Coward that she was, she hoped most people would still be away at the barn. She would take as much time to process her thoughts and plan her speech as she could get.

He was there, and she tried to discipline her unruly heart when he rose from the couch in the living room, empty except for him, his concern, and his obvious hope that she was all right.

“Everything okay?” he asked. “You
look
much better.”

“I was pretty gross.” She hesitated. “Alec, I'm sorry I acted so weird. Guess it was my turn again.”

To her horror, the pressure of more tears rose in her throat and pushed up behind her nose and eyes. She wanted to tell him about the grief, not sweep it away under the guise of being an overemotional girl. But no way was she opening that vein in front of him.

“And it's my turn to tell you there's nothing to be sorry for. You saved a horse. You need to pat yourself on the back.”

The tears pressed harder to be let free. “I can pat myself on the back as much or as hard as any rancher can when he or she does what needs to be done.” She managed to get out the words without falling apart. “This had to be done. Luckily it worked.”

“That's a little jaded.”

“It isn't. It's practical. That's ranch life.”

“I know practical when I see it. And I know innate talent when I see it. You have the talent, sweetheart, with animals and with people.”

For a few more long seconds she held back the emotion, unable to believe there could be more tears left after her pity party in the shower. The dam ruptured in one unstoppable burst.

“Don't . . . ”

She waited for him to hand her a tissue and tell her everything was all right. She waited for him to fix everything like he always wanted to do, and she welcomed the thought. For once he could have at it and stop this ridiculous reaction to what should have been a wonderful day.

He gathered her to him and lowered them both into the soft cushions of the sofa. Without a word he held her, and she cried. She'd never cried for everything at once until today, and before this moment, she'd never let anyone see her cry for anything.

After five minutes the tears finally ebbed, and she stopped waiting for him to tell her what to do next. Her body curled into his exactly the way she'd longed to curl up in her bed earlier. She didn't want to move. She didn't want to look at him. All she desired was to stay locked in his arms where she was starting to believe nothing bad could happen.

At last he stroked her hair softly and kissed the top of her head. “It sucks,” he said.

“I'm sorry.” She broke the spell with her voice and pulled away from him. “That was childish.”

“Sometimes it's the only thing that helps.”

She couldn't imagine him breaking down this way, but she didn't say so. Straightening, she wiped her tears away with heavy strokes of her fingers and drew a deep breath for courage.

“I thought I'd come so far in the past few weeks. So much was because of you.”

“You've done a lot of things you didn't realize you could do. All I did was irritate you enough to make you move.” He smiled and caught a last tear from her cheek with his thumb.

She wanted to melt into the touch, but she wasn't ready for this closeness. He hadn't solved her problems—he'd only made her face them. The next steps she had to take on her own.

“I think I actually appreciate that now.”

“I'd say we're making progress.”

“No, Alec, wait. Before anything goes further between us, or I give you the wrong idea about getting involved with you, I think we need to slow this way down. In fact, I've come to the realization we need to part. As friends.” Pain stabbed her chest at the words. She ignored it. “I haven't made all that much progress yet. I have a lot to figure out. I'm also still a married woman. If Tim sees—”

“You don't have to be a married woman,” he said. “It can be over in five seconds.”

“I'm going to the lawyer tomorrow. I'm drawing up a counter to Tim's offer that gives me spousal support until the insurance claim with the lumber company is settled. That will at least send Tim a message, and I can survive on that and a part-time job.”

“That's your way of getting back at him?”

“Money is the only thing he understands.”

“No. He understands dickwad behavior. And he understands success. You being successful and overcoming his dickwaddedness will send a much stronger signal than tying yourself to him financially.”

“There you go with unsolicited advice again. What I do about this is none of your business. We barely know each other.”

“I don't know. I think we're more alike than different. I think we do know each other.”

“I know you love to butt into my life.”

“I want to know why you don't see your own potential. You just showed everyone what a fantastic veterinarian you could be. It's more than delivering a foal; it's about dealing with the pressure. Jumping in to solve a problem without fear or second-guessing. You have a gift, pursue that.”

Anger surged through her calm. This was exactly what she'd listened to so many years before in her father's study.

“Don't talk to me about my gifts or what I can do with them. You talk a big story, but you have your demons, too, Alec. The difference is, I respect mine.”

“What does that even mean?”

“You were there. I can't even get up off the barn floor on my own after sitting there for twenty minutes. So just like your excuse that there are things a prosthetic leg won't let you do, there are things a veterinarian in a wheelchair can't do.”

“Then get out of the wheelchair.”

“Then you get up on that horse.” At the shock in his eyes, she nodded curtly and scrambled awkwardly to her feet. “That's right, Alec. You hide things, too. You haven't got it all so perfectly worked out after all, and you haven't conquered this injury as completely as you pretend. So from now on—no telling me what to do until you've got it all figured out yourself.”

“You've got it wrong,” he said as he also stood. “I don't get on a bucking horse because it's something specific I've chosen not to do. You? You're running away in general. You haven't made any big, philosophical decision about your life. You're reacting. To Tim, to your anger, to me. At least I ride horses. You say you can't ever ride again. How do you know?”

“Because I remember exactly what it requires and I can't do it.”

“Aw, hell. You've never tried.”

Her leg nearly buckled beneath her. She wished for her wheelchair. For its safety and its mobility and the extension of her body it had become in the past six months. She didn't even know where it was.

“I'm not competing in a ‘who has the worst leg injury' contest with you. Our wounds are different. You have your reasons for not riding. I have mine. Nobody has the deeper hurt.”

“I don't think this is about wounds,” he said quietly. “I think it's about fear. I think this is because I kissed you yesterday and you kissed me back, and that means you did something crazy that you wanted to do. You don't know how to handle that, Joely. You need to learn how to be you and love it.”

“I think maybe I'd like to go home now,” she replied.

She didn't even want to respond to his ridiculous theory. Kissing him had nothing to do with her anger at his current arrogance—thinking he could comment incessantly on her life. She'd liked the dang kiss. She'd thought about little else for twenty-four hours. She just didn't want another. Alec Morrissey messed up her head.

“No,” he said, throwing her further off balance. “You need to stay and put on a good show for your family. They want to pat you on the back even if you don't. I'll tell Gabe I have an unexpected emergency and need to leave. Someone will take you home later.”

Really?

“Fine.” She tried to sound flippant. It came out angry.

He nodded curtly. Halfway to the door he looked back. “Just so you know. The kiss was pretty amazing. You're a special woman in more ways than one. But it didn't mean I was looking for a sudden commitment. I don't want serious, heavy relationships. As you can see, they don't go well for me. So you didn't have to be nervous. I never intended to be more than a fling.”