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Tara laughed, low in her throat. He felt the caress of it. “I knew that’s how you would react. I promise, I didn’t encourage him to return.”
“Good.”
“This auction is going to be a huge success. I can just feel it.” She hugged her arms about her middle, a self-satisfied look on her face.
“It better, with all we have invested in it, both in money and hard work.”
“It will.” There was a confident curve to her lips. “Do you know what is so ironic, Ty?” Her gaze slanted up to him, partially screened by the thick sweep of her dark lashes. It was an evocative look, full of tantalizing promise.
“What?” His glance drifted of its own accord to her lips, glistening in the moonlight.
“When we were married, ninety percent of all our arguments were about business. Now look at how well we work together. Looking back, I can see the fault was mine. I’ll bet you thought I would never admit that,” she teased.
Oddly enough, her confession took the sting out of their past. Ty smiled back. “Quite honestly, I didn’t.”
“I guess it was only natural for me to believe that my father’s way was the only way,” Tara mused. “After all, he spent his life exploiting natural gas, oil, and coal reserves. I was raised in that world, Ty. But the ranch was totally alien to me. I didn’t seem to fit in anywhere. There was nothing I could contribute—no way I could help. And I am simply not the type of woman who is content with home and hearth. I need the mental stimulation that business provides. When Daddy wanted to mine the coal on the Triple C, I pushed for it. This was a business I knew. For the first time I could be useful. You will never know how important that was to me back then,” she explained, emphasizing it with a quick glance his way. “That’s why I sided against you all those years ago—and destroyed our marriage in the process.”
“I never realized any of this.” Ty stared, moved by her explanation. It was his first glimpse into their married life from her side of it. He suddenly understood the cause for all the restlessness and dissatisfaction she had exhibited back then.
“Why should you?” Tara shrugged, a beautifully rueful smile playing across her lips. “I spent two years on an analyst’s couch before I guessed at any of it. Most of the time I acted like a spoiled, petulant brat. In a way, that is exactly what I was. Instead of sitting around feeling sorry for myself or flying off to some party or function where I felt important and my views mattered, I should have used that energy to learn the ranch business. I could have asked you to teach me. I knew about these private livestock auctions back then. Maybe if I had tried to learn more about ranching, I would have said something about them to you. But I was too busy trying to force you to become part of my world to take the time to become a part of yours.” Her eyes darkened with honest and profound regret. It stirred through his emotions, awakening them.
“I wish I had known. I wish I had guessed.” His husky voice echoed the regret in her eyes.
“I have wished that a million times. Even though I never meant to do it, I drove you away. But, Ty,” she took a step closer, her expression earnest and imploring, a look of utter longing in her eyes, “it was never because I didn’t trust you or believe in you. I truly loved you. That’s what is so horribly sad about this. That’s why it still hurts.” Tara whispered the last in a tremulous voice as tears brimmed in her eyes.
“I know.” Ty felt the same pain over this new insight into the past. It linked them closer than before.
“Do you? Do you really?” She looked at him, breathless with hope.
“Yes.” He gathered her close to him, seeking the comfort to be found in physical contact, something they both needed. Tara slid her arms around him and rested her head on his chest. It was an embrace without demand, full of warmth and closeness.
“Sometimes, Ty,” Tara murmured, “I can’t help wondering about what might have been if things had worked out differently.”
For the first time, Ty did, too. And it confused him. Suddenly nothing was black and white anymore. He felt again the same tear of loyalties between his feelings for Tara and Jessy that he had experienced back when he was still married to Tara.
“We can’t turn back the clock.” Ty said it as much for himself as for Tara.
She sighed and pulled fractionally away, allowing a wedge of space to come between them, her hands gliding to rest on his hips as she tipped her head back. “No, we can’t, can we? Too many other people are involved now. It’s too late for us,” she admitted, raising a hand and resting it lightly along his cheek, a fondness in its touch. “But I can’t help wishing that wasn’t so.”
She stretched upward, her lips moving onto his in a tenderly warm kiss of sweet longing. Ty responded in perfect accord, gripped by a sense of sadness and loss.
Some distance off to his right, there was a scuff of a boot on the graveled drive, followed by the tumbling roll of stones. The sounds signaled the approach of someone to the house. Breaking off the kiss, Ty lifted his head.
Tara stepped apart from him, but without haste or guilt. Innocent as the kiss had
been, Ty felt unease over it.
“If I plan on leaving in the morning, I need to get my things packed.” Tara spoke clearly in a tone that carried without an increase in volume. “Enjoy your cigar, Ty.”
But it had gone out long ago. When she crossed to the front door, Ty dug another match from his pocket, watching the hatted figure moving out of the shadows toward the steps. Ty struck the match and held the flame beneath the cigar tip, his gaze on the man not yet close enough to identify. Smoke puffed from the corners of his mouth. He shook out the match, everything inside him hardening when he saw Ballard step into the light.
“What are you doing out and about this evening, Ballard?” Ty demanded, all the time wondering how much Ballard had seen and angered by the sense of guilt the question produced.
“I’ve been going over the construction billings with Matt Sullivan,” he said, identifying by name the Triple C’s bookkeeper. “We have a problem with the lighting supplier.”
“What kind of problem?”
Ballard climbed the steps and came to a stop in front of Ty. His expression was too bland to tell Ty anything. He detected a certain coolness in Ballard’s attitude, but that had been there ever since Ty jumped him for touching Jessy.
