of iced tea from the refrigerator beside the stove and opened the cupboard above to retrieve a glass.
More memories came flooding back as she poured the amber-colored liquid and handed it to him, not easy to do with trembling hands. She’d poured him iced-tea all those times she’d kept him company while he’d waited for Jen to come downstairs. She tried to clamp the lid tight on the details but failed miserably at forgetting how she’d pined for him, hoping and fantasizing that a miracle would happen and he would notice her. That someday he would wait downstairs for her to get ready to go out with him.
“How did you wind up in charge of the high school rodeo association?” she asked. “It wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that you were once the state bull-riding champion, would it?”
“You remember that?”
“Yeah, I do.”
A muscle in his jaw contracted for a moment before he continued. “As you pointed out, I gave up my scholarship to join the pro rodeo circuit. I did okay that first year, although I wasn’t the overall point winner. But I took nationals in Wyoming. I was nineteen. It was a sign to make hay while the sun shines, so to speak.”
“Then what?”
“I rode the crest for two or three years until—”
“Until what?” she encouraged.
“I had a couple of injuries,” he said as if it was no big deal.
She decided to mimic his tone and keep it light. “Really? Imagine that. Riding a ton or two of ticked-off bull is hardly more challenging than a merry-go-round at the Texas state fair,” she teased.
One corner of his mouth lifted. “Yeah” was all he said. “All the hits were to my right leg. The third injury was bad. The doc said one more and I might never walk again—at least not on my own two feet.”
The words tugged at her heart in spite of all her warnings to harden it. She knew how much rodeo had meant to him. It was all he’d talked about. “Oh, Mitch, I had no idea. I didn’t mean to—”
He held up his hand. “It’s okay. I managed to take it in stride,” he said with a grin. “Pardon the pun.”
His smile kicked the butterflies in her stomach into fluttering again. She thought she’d reined them in. Apparently that was something else she’d been wrong about.
“That still leaves out a couple steps—pardon the pun,” she said.
His grin widened. “I went back to school.”
“But your scholarship?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t need it then. Not like—”
He stopped, but she knew what he’d almost said. In high school he’d been a poor kid in a foster home until the state turned him loose at eighteen. Then he’d been on his own and needed that scholarship if he wanted a chance at a higher education. That’s why she’d been so stunned when he gave it up.
“So you went to college?” She leaned back against the counter and folded her arms over her chest. A large space separated them, but it wasn’t enough to blunt the force of his appeal. Or the way he could stir up her emotions without even trying.
“Yeah.” He set his tea on the ceramic tile beside him. “I got my degree in business from UCLA. Then I started R&R Development.”
“I’ve heard of it,” she said. The only thing she hadn’t heard was that he owned it.
“You have?”
She nodded. “I read the business section of the paper every day. Your company has been mentioned a couple of times for projects pending here in Texas. By all accounts it’s a company to watch.”
“I’m working on it,” he said. “But I missed the rodeo.”
“Who wouldn’t? Everyone should be stomped into the dirt by an angry bull at least once a day.”
She couldn’t help laughing and he joined her. Rewind ten years—to before everything had gone wrong. That’s how she felt. Putty in his hands. For just an instant. Just until she shut it down cold. She didn’t ever want to go there again. She was through loving men who loved someone else.
“How did you get sucked into volunteering?” she asked.
“That’s an interesting choice of words.”
Not really, she wanted to say. He was young, a hunk and a half, so many buckle bunnies, so little time. She wanted to say she knew him, at least she had. Ten years ago he was a loner who didn’t play well with others. The high school coaches had courted him for team sports but he’d turned them down flat in favor of bull riding. But she didn’t say anything. She just looked at him.
“Okay.” He crossed one booted foot over the other as he continued to lean against the tiled countertop. “Dev Hart called me.”
“Really?”
Dev had a ranch in Destiny and had taken over the stock business from his father. He supplied animals to rodeos all over the country. He and Mitch had rodeoed together in high school. She and Dev were friends.
“Yeah. We’ve kept in touch. The association was in a real bind when the commissioner resigned. Work and family obligations he said. I don’t have those.” He let the sentence hang there. “Dev thought I might be interested in helping out. Since I have business dealings in the area.”
So he wasn’t married. All the willpower in the world couldn’t prevent her insides from doing the dance of joy. But she got the feeling there was more, a still deeper reason. “And?”
“He put the bite on me. It’s no big deal, just temporary. I wouldn’t have agreed to a permanent position.”
“Dev must have had some clue that you would even consider doing it.”
“I guess he did.”
“So what was it?”
“He knew rodeo saved my life.”
Mitch wasn’t sure what had made him say that, especially when he saw the surprised look on Taylor’s face. She tried to hide it, and he found it amazingly appealing that she couldn’t.
There was something about being back in Destiny. More specifically back in this room with Taylor Stevens. He’d been telling the truth when he’d said that he’d hardly known her at first. She had changed—in all the right places. Her light brown hair was shoulder-length and the layers were streaked with gold highlights. Brown eyes full of spirit and intelligence challenged him. She’d been just a kid the last time he’d seen her. That night—
The longer he stood in this kitchen, back on the Circle S, talking to Jen’s little sister, the more he remembered. Feelings washed over him—frustration, yearning, anger that burned into rage and a feeling of helplessness that he rode like a broken-in saddle.
“Saved your life?”
“You know as well as I do that I’m a kid no
