I didn’t particularly want to get married. I haven’t had much time in the past year or so for dating.” Or much desire. In fact, the thing she’d wanted to do most in that time was hibernate. Disappear off the face of the earth. Find some way to turn back time and make right everything she’d done wrong.
“Take your pick, or make your own excuse.” She smiled tautly. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
A faint blush stained Jordan’s cheeks. “Sort of. We go out, but she sees other guys, too.”
“Are you free to see other girls?”
“Yeah, but who’s got the time?”
Or the desire, Natalie suspected. A faithful man—a rarity in her experience. She wondered—purely for the sake of the book—if his uncle shared that trait or took after the fidelity-challenged Chaneys.
“Her name is Shelley. Here’s a picture of her.” He passed over a brass frame from the end table. It held an eight-by-ten-inch photograph of a dozen or more teenagers. Jordan and a tiny blonde were front and center, looking like Ken and Barbie, Jr.
“She’s pretty,” Natalie said of Shelley, then pointed to another girl. “Who is she?”
“That’s Mike. She lives down the road a ways. Her real name is Michaela.” With a glance at his watch, he jumped to his feet. “I gotta go. See you later.”
While listening to his footsteps, then the slam of the door, Natalie continued to study the photo. The kids all looked so young, so fresh-faced and innocent, starting lives that were brimming with potential. It seemed she had always been the new kid in school, there and gone before she’d had the chance to make any lasting friendships. She envied the kids and hoped they enjoyed the camaraderie while they could.
Poor Mike didn’t look as if she was enjoying anything in the moment captured on film. She was taller than every girl and most of the boys in the shot, a brunette in a sea of blondes, her glasses unflattering and her clothes ill-fitting, and she was looking at Jordan as if he’d hung the moon. Unfortunately, Jordan was looking at Cheerleader Barbie’s Best Friend, Shelley, in exactly the same way.
Young love. Young heartache.
Natalie’s only experience with heartache had been of a nonromantic nature. She’d been betrayed by her only best friend ever, and she couldn’t imagine a lover’s betrayal could hurt any worse. She didn’t intend to find out, though. In the foreseeable future, her life was going to revolve around work—the book on Senator Chaney, undoing the mistakes of the past, righting the wrongs, winning back her father’s respect.
Like Jordan, she had no time or desire for anything more.
Chapter Three
It was after six when Tate returned to the house with only two things on his mind—a long, cool shower and a quiet, peaceful evening sacked out on the couch in front of the TV. The instant he saw the Mustang parked under the tree, though, the hope for a quiet evening went right out of his mind. He had to spend the evening with the woman of a thousand questions. He’d have no peace tonight.
As he reined in his horse, then swung from the saddle, he smiled without humor. He had to spend the evening with Natalie Grant. When was the last time he’d spent three whole hours with a beautiful woman and complained about it? Hell, he couldn’t remember his last date. Sometime last winter, he thought, with one of Jordan’s teachers. The kid had been mortified and had done all but beg him not to make a second date.
Tate hadn’t. Ms. Blythe, the English teacher, had been about as interesting as the subject she taught, and she’d spoken to him as if he were one of her students…at least until she’d sucked the oxygen right out of his lungs.
He didn’t think he had to worry about anything like that with Natalie—though given a choice, he’d rather kiss her than lie to her.
Damn, given the choice, he’d rather kiss Ms. Blythe than lie to Natalie. He just wasn’t cut out for deception and dishonesty.
He’d just finished tending his horse and tack and was heading for the house when he saw Natalie come out next door and start toward her car. When she saw him, she angled toward him, strolling across the yard as if she belonged there. The rays from the evening sun made her burnished hair glow and gave her creamy skin a golden gleam. She’d removed the ribbon that contained her hair in a ponytail, and now it hung wild and unrestrained down her back, so thick and electric that touching it, he thought, might send out sparks.
Burying his hands in it might generate more heat than he could bear.
“Hey,” she said, turning and falling into step beside him. “Long day.”
“The usual.” He removed his hat and drew his arm across his forehead. His sleeve came away wet and grimy. He was dripping with sweat, coated with dust and stank to high heaven…but he would swear he could smell the subtle fragrance of her perfume. Sweet. Clean. Light. “Did Jordan get back okay with your stuff?”
“Yes.”
“Did he take it inside for you?”
“Yes, he did. Then he left for football practice. Isn’t it way too hot for that?”
“If life stopped around here for the heat and the drought, we’d be shut down part of July, all of August and most of September every year. The kids are used to it, and the coaches keep an eye on them.”
“I know you played football in high school because I saw the picture. Any other sports?”
“Baseball. I was a pitcher.”
“You, too?” At his questioning glance, she shrugged. “Jordan said he’s a pitcher, and so was his dad. So all three Rawlins boys have a good arm.”
Through sheer will, Tate kept his grimace inside. This damned charade offered a million chances to screw up, and he’d just taken one. Truth was, Josh couldn’t hit the barn with a rock unless he was standing within spittin’ distance. He’d rodeoed and chased girls, and that was it.
He climbed the steps to the back door, then turned to find her following. Deliberately he blocked her way. “Yeah…well…” Brilliant observations, but all he could think of at the moment. Then he turned the conversation back on her. “I know Jordan didn’t say, ‘Here’s your luggage and, by the way, did you know my dad and I both pitched for the Wildcats?’”
“No, of course not. We were talking, and I asked—” She broke off and backed down a step, then another. Because she realized she’d already broken their agreement? Or because he was scowling at her? “I wasn’t questioning him. We were talking. He asked me if I was married. I asked him if he played anything besides football. It was just idle conversation.”
Like father, like son. Under better circumstances, whether she was married would be one of his first questions, too. It was too late for that now, but… “Are you? Married, I mean?”
Confusion shadowed her blue eyes momentarily, then cleared. “No. I’m not.”
It was an unimportant detail. She might as well be, for all it mattered. She was still a reporter snooping into his family’s lives. He was still lying to her with every breath he took. He couldn’t summon any respect for her or her job, and at the moment he was
