slung over his shoulder, his gaze was more on where he was stepping than where he was heading. “This the Wind Dancer Ranch, ma’am?”
“Yes, Kyle. It is.”
He stopped short. His head jerked up, his gaze narrow and piercing her straight through to the bone.
He didn’t say a word. He just kept staring, whatever he was feeling locked tightly behind an expression harder than ice. His fingers flexed on the duffel strap at his shoulder. His lips tightened. And Maxie felt the hay-strewed floor soften beneath her feet as he moved within a yard of her. His gaze roamed, and she felt heat slowly sketch her face as he searched for changes and absorbed each one. It was hard to believe those eyes still held the same intensity, dark and wicked, making her skin warm in the chilly morning, making her body talk when she wanted it to be silent.
And unfortunately, after all this time, he knew it.
It didn’t help that he looked as good as he did when he was a marine, she thought. Oh, he was older, more mature and though there were a few lines around the corners of his eyes and a cynical tightness to his lips that hadn’t been there before, he was still essentially the same. Handsome, tanned, sable haired with pebble dark eyes that had always held a glint of mischief. They didn’t now, offering nothing. Apparently he didn’t think his surprise arrival was any kind of blessing, either.
Kyle was shaking inside. Seven years faded away, and he was a marine, standing on the flight deck, waiting for her, hurting like mad. He couldn’t stop the sensations, wishing to God he had never set foot inside the barn, but knew he had to get control, reminding himself that she was his past, not his present.
Damn.
Damn, damn, damn.
It shouldn’t be this hard to just look at her, Kyle thought, the agony of losing her and never knowing why clutching at his chest Yet like a masochist searching for more pain, his gaze moved over her face, her petite features, the lush figure even a shapeless flannel shirt and down vest couldn’t hide. She’s cut her hair, he thought stupidly. Her auburn waves were evenly trimmed, side parted and skimming her jaw, her long drop earrings emphasizing those great bones. One thing he had to say about Maxie—she had a body that evoked wild fantasies and a face that gave a man sleepless nights.
He ought to know. He’d had his share of them. And he didn’t want any more.
He brought his gaze back to hers. “Hello, Max.”
The sound of his voice, deep as the ocean floor, coated her, sending tremors through her bloodstream. And with it came a flood of unwanted memories, of heartache and guilt. Oh, Lord, the guilt, Maxie thought. It had never eased completely, and as she stared into his eyes now, it magnified. The last time she’d seen him, he was cramming his gear into a marine green Man!, expecting to marry her before he shipped out to Saudi Arabia. Her gaze wavered. Selfpreservation steadied it. Don’t panic, she thought He doesn’t know about the past seven years.
“Why are you here?” she finally asked, trembling and trying not to show it.
He arched a brow, his dark gaze boring into hers. “Don’t have anything else to say, Max? Like ‘I see you survived’? Any bullet holes to show for nine months in the Iraqi desert?’”
She cringed, his bitter tone reminding her that she didn’t know what had happened to him after Desert Storm. Only that he’d never wanted to see her again.
Not that she could blame him.
Yet she refused to rise to his bait and acted as casual as she could with him staring at her so intensely. “Hello, Kyle,” she said calmly, bracing her gloved hands on the top of the shovel handle and tipping her head. “You look good. Any bullet holes?” He shook his head. “Now...why are you here?”
“Me and my chopper are on loan to the park service.”
Disappointment shaped her face. “Helicopters. Surprise, surprise,” Maxie muttered, then hefted the shovel, scooping and dumping, relieved that her voice was steadier than her hands. “I should have known you couldn’t go far from chasing danger.”
Resentment burst through Kyle, that she didn’t believe he’d changed—and more so that she appeared unaffected while his heart hadn’t made it back to his chest, still sitting in the pit of his stomach. “You mean instead of manning a .50-caliber machine gun in an open chopper during low-flying reconnaissance?” His biting tone grabbed her attention, and she met his gaze. “No,” he said, as if mulling over how to solve world peace. “I can’t say it’s the same.” His features sharpened, his eyes penetrating. “Hauling tourists lacks some of that killer adrenaline rush you get under live enemy fire.”
His sarcasm wasn’t hard to miss, yet she paled at the image anyway. “What?” She focused on hitting the wheelbarrow and not his feet. “Not dangerous enough?”
“Forget about my chopper—” he unzipped his jacket and tipped his hat back “—what the hell are you doing here?” He gestured to the rows of stalls.
She scoffed and kept shoveling. “You don’t think I wade in this stuff because I like the fragrance, do you?”
Kyle’s lips thinned, his impatience gone. “Look, Max, just point me in the direction of the boss, and I’m outta here.”
“I am the boss.”
“What?”
Maxie glanced up. His disturbed look was almost amusing. If she wasn’t doing her level best not to unravel all over the place, she might have smiled. Instead she held on to her frayed nerves, deposited the scoopful in the wheelbarrow, then propped the shovel against the wall. She faced him, brushing her hair off her forehead with the back of her gloved hand and said, “I own this place, Kyle.”
Briefly he glanced around, scowling, but her mutinous expression dared him to contradict her.
They stared.
The wind skated along the barn, searching for a spot to enter and chill them to the bone. The dropping temperature outside didn’t compare to the atmosphere inside.
“So. You’ve been here?” His words dripped ice. “All this time?”
“Not all this time,” she answered frostily, bending to move the wheelbarrow farther into the corridor. “And it doesn’t matter now, does it?” As she spoke, she pulled a pair of wire cutters from her back pocket and snipped open a hay bale lying outside the stall.
With his free hand, he reached out to pat the horse, anything to keep from shaking some feeling into her. Maxie had never been so...emotionless. “Not that I can see,” he said, shrugging.
“Good.” She grabbed a pitchfork, quickly spreading hay in the clean stall. “At least we understand each other.”
He hitched the duffel higher, shifting his weight to one leg. “Do we?”
Her gaze shot to his, and she shook her head, a warning in her tone. “Don’t even go there, Kyle.” She told him like it was. Over. “If I’d wanted you in my life, I would have shown up at the church.”
He scowled, his gaze raking over her, making her feel as if she’d been scraped raw with a knife. She tried to look away, but couldn’t and Maxie told herself it didn’t do any good to notice how
