she wanted to toy around with a cowboy, she’d better learn there weren’t going to be any niceties. He almost wished he chewed, because the notion of spitting tobacco juice out just then was stupidly appealing.
She, of course, not-a-princess that she was, ignored his cavalier behavior and turned her knees beneath the table, sitting with a straight back despite her obvious exhaustion. Then she picked up the sandwich with as much care as if it were crustless, cut into fancy shapes and served up on priceless silver. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
He wanted to slam his head against a wall.
Every curse he knew filled his head, all of them directed right at his own miserable hide. He grimly pulled a sturdy white plate from the cupboard and set it on the table. He didn’t have napkins, but he tore a paper towel off the roll, folded it in half and set it next to the plate. Then, feeling her big brown eyes following him, he grabbed a clean glass and filled it with cold tap water. She was surely used to the stuff that came in fancy tall bottles, but there was no better water around than what came from the Rocking-U well. Aside from water, he had milk and beer. He wasn’t sure the milk wasn’t sour by now, and she definitely wasn’t the type to drink beer.
“Thank you,” she said again, after taking a long sip of the water. “I don’t mean to put you to any trouble.”
He folded his arms across his chest and dragged his gaze away from the soft glisten of moisture lingering on her full, lower lip. “Shouldn’t have gotten on the airplane, then.” Much less a bus.
She looked away.
For about the tenth time since he’d found her hiding in his barn, he felt like he’d kicked a kitten. Then ground his boot heel down on top of it for good measure.
“Eat.” He sounded abrupt and didn’t care. “I’ll get a bed ready for you.”
She nodded, still not looking at him. “Thank—” Her voice broke off for a moment. “You,” she finished faintly.
That politeness of hers would be the end of him.
He left the kitchen with embarrassing haste and stomped up the stairs to the room at the end of the hall. He stopped in the doorway and stared at the bed.
It was the only one in the house.
It was his.
“You’re a freaking idiot,” he muttered to himself as he crossed the room and yanked the white sheets that were twisted and tangled and as much off the bed as they were on into some semblance of order. He’d have changed the sheets if he owned more than one set.
Once she was gone, he’d have to burn the damn things and buy different ones. For that matter, he might as well replace the whole bed. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since learning she’d gotten engaged to that other guy within hours of leaving his arms. He was pretty sure that sleeping was only going to get harder from here on out.
He realized he was strangling his pillow between his fists, and slapped it down on the bed.
It was summertime, so he hadn’t personally been bothering with much more than a sheet, but he unearthed the quilt that his mother had made for him years earlier from where he’d hidden it away in the closet after Carrie left him, and spread it out on top of the sheets. It smelled vaguely of mothballs, but it was better than nothing.
Then he shoved the ragged paperback book he’d been reading from the top of the nightstand into the drawer, effectively removing the only personal item in sight, and left the room.
He went back downstairs.
She was still sitting at the table in his kitchen, her back straight as a ruler, her elbows nowhere near the table. She’d finished the sandwich, though, and was folding the paper towel into intricate shapes. Not for the first time, he eyed her slender fingers, bare of rings, and reminded himself that the absence of a diamond ring didn’t mean anything.
When she heard him, she stood. “I should go to Aunt Jeanne’s.”
“Yes.” He wasn’t going to lie. She’d already done enough of that for them both. “But it’s after midnight. No point in ruining someone else’s night’s sleep, too. And since Horseback Hollow isn’t blessed with any motels, much less an establishment up to your standards,” he added even though she was too cultured to say so, “you’re stuck with what I have.” He eyed her. “Bedroom’s upstairs. Do you have enough stuffing left in you to make it up them, or do I need to put you over my shoulder?”
Her ghostly pale face took on a little color at that. “I’m not a sack of feed,” she said, almost crisply, and headed past him through the doorway.
His house wasn’t large. The staircase was right there to the left of the front door and his grandmother’s piano. She headed straight to it, closed her slender fingers over the wood banister and started up. The ugly shirt she wore hung over her hips, midway down the thighs of her baggy jeans.
He still had to look away from the sway of her hips as she took the steps. “Room’s at the end of the hall,” he said after her. “Bathroom’s next to it.”
Manners might have had him escorting her up there.
Self-preservation kept him standing right where he was.
“Yell if you need something,” he added gruffly.
She stopped, nearly at the top of the stairs, and looked back at him. Her hair slid over her shoulder.
Purple shadows, ghostly pale and badly fitting clothes or not, she was still the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen and looking at her was a physical pain.
“I need you not to hate me,” she said softly.
His jaw tightened right along with the band across his chest that made it hard to breathe. “I don’t hate you, Amelia.”
Her huge eyes stared at him. They were haunting, those eyes.
“I don’t feel anything,” he finished.
It was the biggest lie he’d ever told in his life.
* * *
Amelia’s knees wobbled and she tightened her grip on the smooth, warm wooden banister. Quinn could say what he wanted, but the expression on his face told another story.
And she had only herself to blame.
No words came to mind that were appropriate for the situation. Even if there were words, she wasn’t sure her tight throat would have allowed her to voice them. So she just gave him an awkward nod and headed up the remaining stairs. Because what else was there to do but go forward?
There was no going back.
He’d made that painfully clear more than once and her coming to Horseback Hollow to see him face-to-face hadn’t changed a single thing.
At the landing, the room he spoke of was obvious. Straight at the end of the hall.
The door was open and through it she could see the foot of a quilt-covered bed.
She pushed
