tall and cool, still the darling of Dallas, still the belle of the ball. He couldn’t see her eyes, but he knew the color was a deep, pure blue, same as the Arkansas sky over his head. He couldn’t take his own eyes away from her, though, so he leaned there against the support of the rickety barn and allowed himself this one concession while he compared the real-life woman to the girl he’d watched walk away so long ago.
He’d had an image of this woman in his mind for the past eight years, an image that had warred within his subconscious, an image that at times had haunted him, at other times had comforted him. He’d tried so very hard to put Tricia Maria out of his mind. But she wouldn’t disappear. It had taken her father’s death to bring her back to him in the flesh.
Now he used bitterness as his only weapon against the surge of emotions threatening to erupt throughout his system.
He had so many questions; he needed so many answers.
So he remained silent and just stared at her.
Trixie opened her eyes, feeling the heat from the sun on her tear-streaked face at about the same time she felt someone watching her. It didn’t take her long to figure out who that someone was.
Logan.
She stared across the expanse of the dirt driveway, to the spot where he leaned with his arms crossed over his chest, just inside the open barn doors. In her mind she held the memory of a young man in his early twenties, muscled and tanned, with thick wisps of brown hair falling across his impish, little-boy face. This Logan was the same as the one in her memories, yet different. He still wore his standard uniform of faded Levi’s and chewed up Ropers she remembered in her dreams. A battered Stetson, once tan, now a mellow brown, sat on his head. The torn T-shirt, smeared with grease and dirt, told her he still worked as hard as anybody around there, and…he obviously still wore the attitude, the whole-world’s-out-to-dome-in attitude, that had attracted her to him in the first place.
Only now, a new layer had been added to his essence, along with the crow’s feet and the glint in his brown-black eyes. He’d matured into a full-grown man, his muscles heavier, more controlled, broader, his expression hardened, more intense, deeper.
He looked bitter and angry and hurt.
He looked delicious and vulnerable and lost.
And he looked as if he’d rather be any place on earth except standing there with her.
“Hello, Logan,” she said, her voice sounding lost and unsure to her own ears as it drifted up through the live oaks.
“Tricia Maria.” He lifted away from the barn to stalk toward her, his eyes never leaving her face. When he’d gotten to within two feet of her, he stopped and hooked his thumbs in the stretched, frayed belt loops of his jeans. “Sorry about your daddy.”
“Yeah, me, too.” She looked away, out over the hills. “He wanted to be buried here, so…”
“So you had no choice but to come back.”
“Yes, I had to—for him, for his sake.”
Not for me. Not for my sake, Logan thought. Because she’d written him off a long time ago. And they both knew why. Yet he longed to ask her.
The questions buzzed around them like hungry bees. Logan wanted to lash out at her, to ask her why, why she’d left him so long ago. But he didn’t. Because he knew the answer, knew probably even better than she did why she’d deserted him and left him, and lied to him. Instead he said, “C’mon. We’ll get your stuff up to the lodge. When’s this thing taking place?”
“Three o’clock,” she said, understanding he meant the graveside service for her father. “Didn’t anybody call you about it?”
He didn’t look at her as he moved around her to get into the driver’s side of the car. “Yeah, some fellow named Ralph, Raymond—”
“Rad. Radford Randolph. He’s…we’re engaged. I asked him to call ahead and let you know when we’d get here. Granddaddy’s coming later.”
Logan slid into the car, then patted the passenger’s seat, his dark gaze on her face. “Get in. I’ll drive you up to the lodge.”
Trixie had no choice but to do as he asked. She remembered that about Logan. Quiet, alert, a man of few words. Dark and brooding. A rebel. A troublemaker who’d been turned over to her father for a job over ten years before by a judge who’d agreed with Brant, and Logan’s mother, Gayle, not to send him to a juvenile home. He’d come to work off a truancy sentence, and he’d never left.
In spite of everything, Logan had not deserted her father the way she had, the way Pamela had. Somehow, that had comforted her and made her resent him at the same time. Logan had known Brant Dunaway better than Brant’s own flesh and blood. She could tell he was taking this hard, too. Maybe that was why he had a scowl on his scarred, harsh face. Out of respect, Trixie didn’t speak again. Besides, she didn’t know what to say, how to comfort him. She’d prayed long and hard to find some sort of comfort for herself, but it hadn’t come yet.
Logan pulled the car up to the long, square lodge that Brant had built with his own hands, then turned in the seat to stare over at Trixie. “Yeah, this Rad fellow was more than happy to talk with me a spell. Asked a lot of questions, too.”
Frowning, Trixie said, “What kind of questions?”
Logan tipped his battered hat back on his head and wrapped one hair-dusted arm across the steering wheel, his eyes full of accusation. “Oh, about profit and loss, how much income we’ve been generating, how much I think the land is worth.”
Trixie moaned and closed her eyes. How could Rad be so presumptuous? This wasn’t his land, after all. It was hers.
When she felt Logan’s hand on her chin, she opened her eyes to find him close, too close. His touch, so long remembered, so long denied, brought a great tearing pain throughout her system. To protect her frayed nerve endings, and the small amount of pride she had left, she tried to pull away.
He forced her head around so she had to look at him. “You’re gonna sell out, aren’t you?”
She did manage to push his hand away then, but the current of awareness remained as an imprint on her skin. “I…I haven’t decided.”
Logan jerked open the door and hauled his big body out of the car, then turned to bend down and glare at her again. “I can’t believe you’d even think of selling this place, but then again, maybe I should have seen it coming.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, her hand flying to the door handle. When he didn’t answer her, she rounded the car to meet him at the trunk. “Logan, explain that last remark, please?”
Logan opened the trunk, then snorted at the many travel bags she’d brought along. “Still so cool, calm and collected, still the fashionable big-city girl, aren’t you, Trixie?”
In defense of herself she said, “I wasn’t sure how long I’d need to stay.”
He lifted her suitcases out of the trunk, then slammed the lid shut. “Oh, I think I can clarify that for you, darlin’. Just long enough to shed yourself of this place, I imagine.” When she looked away, he grabbed her arm to spin her around. “Am I right, Trixie? Is
