he was after something else entirely.
Still, though he believed in straight talk, he hesitated. Telling another person that you knew what she wanted, before she’d declared herself, felt downright rude. On the other hand, maybe these tippy-toe hints were as close to a declaration as Mitzy could come.
She handed him his brandy, then clinked her glass against his. “To us,” she said softly, and held his gaze over the rim as she drank. She licked her upper lip, then smiled a slow invitation.
But Rafe was stuck back on “us.” There was no “us” yet, as far as he was concerned. “Us” sounded like a matched pair in harness trotting down the long, long road together. No, thanks, Mitzy. She was moving way too fast. “To good times,” he said firmly.
“What about you?” Mitzy murmured, snuggling back into the hollow of his shoulder. “With your chick leaving the nest in September, won’t you be terribly…lonely?”
“No.” He finished half his glass in a gulp, and straightened the arm she was leaning against along the top of the sofa, making himself into a hard, unbending corner. “I won’t be.” At least, he thought not. “You’ve got to understand, Mitzy. I’ve been sitting on that…nest for almost seventeen years.” Hatching his one fabulous, freckled egg for the past ten years all by himself, except for Mrs. Higgins. “I was nineteen when Zoe was born.”
“That must have been so hard,” she said softly. “But I suppose the good side of it is, now you’re still a young man. Why, you even have time to start a second family, if you feel like it.”
“What I feel like, after all this time of being a responsible, hard-working daddy, is taking a break,” he said bluntly. “Being footloose and fancy free. Free to come and go as I choose, when I choose.” To chase one woman or twenty, or none at all.
She was right; he was still a young man. But he’d missed most of the good times that a young man enjoyed. Those wild and crazy times that made the best memories, that a man could look back on with rueful pleasure when he reached his settle-down years. So far, Rafe had had to live his life backward, and though he didn’t regret it—look what he had to show for his hard work—still…If this wasn’t his time now, when would it ever be?
“Oh,” Mitzy said in a small voice.
Good, she was getting his message.
“Do you mean to…travel much?” She tipped her head to gaze up at him.
“Some,” he allowed cautiously. As manager and part owner of one of the region’s largest ranches, he’d never be able to travel far or long. But he’d finally found himself a good foreman, and he paid the man well enough to keep him. Anse could take up the slack if Rafe wanted a week or two away in the off-seasons.
Though it wasn’t as if Rafe had any particular plans. He wasn’t one of those middle-aged idiots desperately trying to recapture the lost years and live them now. At thirty-five, he was too old, too stiff, to hit the rodeo trail, although that had been his intention before he and Pilar had made a baby.
And he was too wise to chase the girls he’d missed out on seventeen years ago—the pretty rodeo queens, the spunky barrel racers, the sassy waitresses. Somewhere along the line his tastes had changed. To him, those girls all looked like slightly older sisters of Zoe, staying up way past their curfews. No, nowadays when he wanted company, he wanted a warm and knowing woman in his bed, not some giggling child.
The warm woman leaning against him stirred. “I’ve always wanted to travel, too. I’ve been thinking about flying down to Cancún, sometime this month. Laze around the beach, drink too many margaritas, take a lo-o-ong siesta every afternoon.” She arched her back and smiled up at him then, and hooking an arm around his neck, leaned backward. “Want to come with me?”
If there hadn’t been so many strings attached…Rafe had shaken his head regretfully, resisting the urge of both gravity and nature to follow her down on the cushions. “June is branding month, moving the cows up from the home pastures…” And he was a full-time father for one last summer, before he could cut loose.
She pouted prettily. “What if I waited till July?”
“I don’t think you should wait for me,” he’d said in all truth. Any woman who dreamed of starting a second family with him would have a long, long wait, indeed.
He’d made his excuses and left soon after that, though it had been a hard-won retreat. Sensing his cooling, Mitzy had redoubled her efforts to fan his flames. But knowing she wouldn’t thank him tomorrow if he took what she was offering tonight, he’d politely declined—and gained no gratitude for his self-control. He winced, remembering her final tearful reply as he stood shuffling on her doorstep, hat in his hands.
“Thanks? Thanks for nothing, cowboy!”
“Well, damnation, what was I supposed to do?” he now asked the night and the mountains. His truck was mounting the last rise of the county road that twisted up the valley past Suntop.
He’d given nothing tonight, taken nothing. Felt nothing now but shame and frustration and emptiness. A man felt nothing but small when he failed to give a woman what she needed, wanted. And as for his own wants—He thought of that handful of condoms in his wallet and groaned aloud with embarrassment. If he hadn’t needed both hands for steering, he would have yanked them out and tossed them to the winds!
He reached the main gate to the ranch, and, as his truck turned under the big name board that arched overhead and rumbled across the cattle guard and onto his own land, Rafe heaved a sigh of relief. At least here on Suntop, everything was simple.
As he drove the last half-mile up to the manager’s house, his eyes automatically swept the pastures to either side, his mind cataloguing the state of the grass—greening up nicely since they’d moved the yearlings last week. The condition of the fences—a post on the right looked wobbly, tell Anse tomorrow. He braked as a whitetail deer soared over the right fence, touched once, twice on the roadway, then flew away over the left into darkness. He brought the truck to a halt and waited, and sure enough here came a second, then a third, fourth and fifth. A fawn raced frantically along the barbed wire, calling, and one of the does leaped back the way she’d come to meet it.
Rafe drove on—then let out a grunt of surprise as he topped the last rise and saw Zoe’s Mustang.
Must have just arrived, he realized as he parked beside it, outside the back door. She’d yet to shut off her headlights, and the passenger door swung wide. Great. Much as he loved his daughter, she wasn’t the sort of company he’d had in mind tonight. And given his mood, he’d sooner get over his frustration alone, with a cold beer and a good book by the fire, than be forced to sit in the kitchen, eating a bowl of ice cream, while Zoe quizzed him in cheerful detail about his big night out.
“Daddy!” Zoe leaped down the porch steps to the yard, with the dogs, Woofle and Trey, bounding at her heels. “What are you doing back?”
“Called it an early night,” he said, walking around to her door to close it. As he leaned in to turn off her lights, he saw the bags of groceries crowding the seat and the floorboards. He scooped up the nearest four and straightened. “You’re supposed to be over at Lisa’s,” he noted.
“She, um…got sick. Flu, I guess. It seemed smarter to not stay over. So I swung by the grocery store, then came back.” Zoe reached for one of his bags. “Here—give me that one.”
“I’ve
