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Five days without a ride and the boy was getting restless; she understood that.
“You sure you should be riding?”
“We’ll be fine, Grandma,” she said, frustrated with Chris’s well-meaning concern. She was a big girl and his boss to boot. “Go back to your knitting.”
Chris walked away muttering under his breath, and Mia knew she wasn’t being all that smart, but the truth was, she needed a ride as much as Blue did. Her head was a mess, and with any luck, a good hard ride would clear it.
The high pasture would be silent and radiant with late-day sun. And best of all, she’d be alone.
Jack knew Mia was in the pasture without turning around. His gut, that world-class barometer, told him.
She’s here.
He turned, looked over his shoulder to see her riding that old dun, Blue. She was gorgeous, sitting on top of that horse, her black ponytail lifted by the wind, fanning out across the brilliant blue sky behind her.
Her eyes were shadowed by the cap she wore, and that was fine. He didn’t need to see her eyes to read her mood; it was all right there in the hard, high set of her shoulders.
The wagons had been circled, all her soft spots protected. The vulnerability that had so stunned him this morning was buried under the prickly outer shell she’d grown over the years. The shell he’d come to expect and…love?
Love, he thought, wishing he had some kind of context, some kind of organizational system, so he could look at each specimen and see if it was big enough or strong enough to keep him here. To keep her happy. Forever.
Because it didn’t seem like it.
He didn’t have those feelings, not for her, maybe not for anyone.
“I fixed your well,” he said, and she turned, looking at the well, and then kept looking at it, as if it were simply easier than looking at him.
Don’t be embarrassed, he wanted to say.
But it was too late, and she’d be further embarrassed if he said something.
“You shouldn’t have any more trouble with it.”
“Thank—” She cleared her throat and the tension between them filled the whole pasture—from endless sky to rocky ground, she emitted enough discomfort to rival the Sierras. “Thank you.”
“I’m going to leave tomorrow,” he said, the words sticky in his throat, and she turned to face him. Her lips, oh, those lips, parted in surprise.
Suddenly the reality of what he was doing sliced through him. He was losing Mia. His friend for his whole life, that woman on the roof of the hotel in Santa Barbara, whom he’d only just met. Both of them would be gone.
Grief rippled over him.
Mia dismounted but didn’t come much closer. She wrapped her arms over her chest, as if keeping herself all together.
“What you told me,” he said. Good Christ, where was this emotion coming from? He felt his eyes burn. “About being in love with me—”
She turned, her cheeks red, her embarrassment a palpable pain, and he didn’t want that. Couldn’t leave her pained by what she felt, not when he was the one who was embarrassed he couldn’t return it. Not the way she deserved.
He leaped off the truck and crossed the grass between them until he was right in front of her. Still she didn’t look at him. He watched her swallow, breathe until he couldn’t take it anymore, and he touched her chin, her cheek, slid his fingers into her hair.
She gasped, her eyelids trembling, and he turned her head to face him, feeling things crack and split inside his chest.
“Thank you,” he said into her brilliant eyes. He’d never forget those eyes. “For loving me. You’re the only one who ever has.”
Her face crumpled slightly, as if bowing under the pressure of her feelings, and he knew he should back up, take his hands away so she could get herself back together, but he didn’t.
This was his last time to touch her and he wasn’t letting go until he had to.
“I’m going to take care of the tax problem,” he said.
“What?” she asked, blinking up at him, as if she didn’t understand what he was saying. He knew his touch was distracting her. It was distracting him. Her cheeks, her skin was the softest he’d ever felt. He ran his thumb over the skin near her lip.
Yep. The softest.
“It’s the least I can do, Mia, and I know you want to argue with me about this, because you’re stubborn and proud, but you need this. So just take it.”
Her eyes blazed.
“I don’t need it,” she said, pulling away from him. “Once we sell the calves, the taxes are taken care of.”
“Then some money for summer hands.” Her eyes were full of painful emotion, the bedrock of her hardheadedness, the sharp edges of her resentment, the last white-hot embers of that love she’d felt for him.
