but I’m working at the elementary school, too.”
“That’s right, I remember now. You came with Dean Pritchett’s group.”
“Dean’s been a friend of our family for years. He was one of the first to volunteer to help.”
“How long can you be away from Thunder Canyon?”
“I’m not sure.” Because Brooks was a stranger, she found herself saying what she couldn’t to those closest to her. “My job was...static. I need a business degree to get a promotion and I’ve been saving for that. I came here to help, but I also came to escape my family. And...I needed a change.”
“I can understand that,” Brooks said with a nod. “But surely they miss you back home, and a woman like you—”
“A woman like me?”
“I’d think you’d have someone special back there.”
She thought about Griff Wellington and the proposal he’d wanted to make and the proposal she’d avoided by breaking off their relationship. Her family had tried to convince her she should marry him, but something inside her had told her she’d known better. Griff had been hurt and she hated that. But she couldn’t tie them both to a relationship she’d known wasn’t right.
Maybe it was Brooks’s easy way; maybe it was the interest in his eyes; maybe it was the way he listened, but she admitted, “No one special. In fact, I had a date tonight before I ended up here.”
“Something about that doesn’t sound right. If you had a date, why isn’t he here with you?”
“He’s a calf roper.”
Brooks leaned a little closer to hear her above the music. His shoulder brushed hers and she felt heat other places besides there. “What does that have to do with your date?”
“That was the date.”
Brooks pushed his Stetson higher on his head with his forefinger. “What?”
“Calf-roping. He thought it would be fun if he showed me how he did it. That would have been fine, but then he wanted me to do it. Yes, I ride. Yes, I love horses. But I’d never calf-roped before and so I tried it. There was mud all over the place and I slipped and fell and I was covered with mud from head to toe.”
Brooks was laughing by then, a deep, hearty laugh that seemed to echo through her. She liked the fact she could make him laugh. Genially, she bumped his arm. “It wasn’t so funny when it was happening.”
He gave her a crooked smile that said he was a little bit sorry he laughed, but not much. “Whatever gave him the impression you’d like to try that out?”
“I have no clue, except I did tell him I like horses. I did try to be interested in what he did, and I asked him questions about it.”
“This was a first date?” Brooks guessed.
“It was the last date,” Jazzy responded.
“Not the last date ever.”
She sighed. “Probably not.”
Was he thinking of asking her out? Or were they just flirting? With that twinkle in his eyes, she imagined he could flirt with the best of them if he really wanted to.
“So you came here to meet a friend and hash out everything that’s happened,” he concluded.
“My gosh, a guy who understands women!”
He laughed again. “No, not so well.”
She wondered what that meant. “When I’m at home, sometimes I talk it all out with my sisters.”
“How many do you have?”
“I have four sisters, a brother and parents who think they know what’s best for me.”
“You’re lucky,” Brooks said.
“Lucky?”
“Yep. I’m the only one. And I lost my mom a long time ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Water under the bridge.”
But something in his tone said that it wasn’t, so she asked, “Are you close to your dad?”
“He’s the reason I stopped in here tonight.”
“To meet him?”
“Nope.” He hesitated, then added, “We had another argument.”
“Another?”
Brooks paused again before saying, “My dad’s not taking care of himself, and I can’t give him what he wants most.”
In her family, Jazzy usually said what she thought, and most of the time, no one heard her. But now she asked, “And what’s that?”
“He wants me to marry, and I’ll never do that.”
Whoa! She wanted to ask that all-important question—why?—but they’d just officially met and she knew better than to probe too much. She hated when her family did that.
Her questions must have led Brooks to think he could ask some of his own because he leaned toward her again. This time his face was very close to hers as he inquired, “So what was the job you left?”
After a heavy sigh, she admitted, “I was a glorified secretary.”
“A secretary,” he murmured, studying her. “How long are you staying in Rust Creek Falls?”
“I’ve already been in town for a while, so I guess I’ll have to go back soon. I work for Thunder Canyon Resort. I’m in the pool of assistants who handle everything to do about skiing. I had a lot of vacation time built up but that’s gone now. I don’t want to use all my savings because I want to earn my degree. Someday I’m going to own a ranch and run a non-profit organization to rescue horses.”
Brooks leaned away again and really assessed her as if he was trying to read every thought in her head, as if he was trying to decide if what she’d told him was really true. Of course it was true. A rescue ranch had been a burning goal for a while.
“How did you get involved in rescuing horses?”
“I help out a friend who does it.”
Finally, Brooks took a few long swigs of his beer and then set down his glass. He looked at it and then grimaced. “I didn’t even offer to buy you a drink. What would you like?”
“A beer would be fine.”
Brooks waved down the bartender and soon Jazzy was rolling her finger around the foam on the rim of her glass. This felt like a date, though it wasn’t. This felt...nice.
The music on the jukebox had stopped for the
