lawyer had been advising him to sell the property for years now, but Jesse had too many bad memories to want to profit off that sad, miserable place. Ignoring it had been better. Easier.
He eyed her. “When?”
“It’s airing next Tuesday.” She squared her shoulders, as if trying to gather her courage. “I thought you deserved fair warning after what happened the last time.”
His leg throbbed at the memory. “So that’s why you’re here?” He tamped down the sudden ache. “To give me a heads-up?”
She nodded and something softened inside him.
A crazy reaction since he knew that her sudden visit had nothing to do with any sense of loyalty to him. This was all about the town. She’d traded in her wild and wicked ways to become a model public servant like her uncle. Conservative. Responsible. Loyal.
He knew that, yet the knotted fist in his chest eased just a little anyway.
“I know you just got back yesterday,” she went on, “but I really think it would be better to cut your visit short until it’s all said and done.” She pulled her shoulders back. The motion pressed her delicious breasts against the soft fabric of her blouse. He caught a glimpse of lace beneath the thin material and he knew then that she wasn’t as conservative as she wanted everyone to think. “That would make things a lot easier.”
“For me?” He eyed her. “Or for you?”
Her gaze narrowed. “I’m not the one they’ll be after.”
“No, you’re just in charge of the town they’ll be invading. After all the craziness the last time I think you’re anxious to avoid another circus. Getting rid of me would certainly help.” The words came out edged with challenge, as if he dared her to dispute them.
He did.
She caught her bottom lip as if she wanted to argue, but then her mouth pulled tight. “If the only eyewitness to the fire is MIA, the reporters won’t have a reason to stick around. I really think it would be best for everyone.” Her gaze caught and held his. “Especially you.”
Ditto.
He sure as hell wasn’t up to the pain he’d gone through the first time. The show had originally aired a few months after he’d graduated high school, five years to the day of his father’s death. He’d been eighteen at the time and a damn sight more reckless.
He’d been ground zero in the middle of a training session with a young, jittery bull named Diamond Dust. A group of reporters had shown up, cameras blazing, and Diamond had gone berserk. More so than usual for a mean-as-all-get-out bucking bull. Jesse had hit the ground, and then the bull had hit him. Over and over, stomping and crushing until Jesse had suffered five broken ribs, a broken leg, a dislocated shoulder and a major concussion. Injuries that had landed him in a rehab facility for six months and nearly cost him everything.
Not that the same thing wouldn’t have happened eventually. He’d been on a fast road to trouble back then, ignoring the rules and riding careless and loose. The reporters had simply sped up the inevitable, because Jesse hadn’t been interested in a career back then so much as an escape.
From the guilt of watching his own father die and not doing a damned thing to stop it.
It wasn’t your fault. The man made his own choice.
That was what Pete Gunner had told him time and time again after the fire. Pete was the pro bull rider who’d taken in thirteen-year-old Jesse and his brothers and saved them from being split up into different foster homes after their father had died. Pete had been little more than a kid himself back then—barely twenty—and had just won his first PBR title. The last thing he’d needed was the weight of three orphans distracting him from his career, but he’d taken on the responsibility anyway. The man had been orphaned himself as a kid and so he’d known how hard it was to make it in the world. Cowboying had saved him and so he’d taught Jesse and his brothers how to rope and ride and hold their own in a rodeo arena. He’d turned them into tough cowboys. The best in the state, as a matter of fact. Even more, he’d given them a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs, and hope.
And when Diamond had nearly killed Jesse, it had been Pete who’d paid for the best orthopedic surgeons in the state. Pete was family—as much a brother to Jesse as Billy and Cole—and he was about to marry the woman of his dreams this Saturday.
That was the real reason Jesse had come back to this godforsaken town. And the reason he had no intention of leaving until the vows were spoken, the cake was cut and the happy couple left for two weeks in the Australian outback.
Then Jesse would pack up what little he had left here and head for Austin to make a real life. Far away from the memories. From her.
He stiffened against a sudden wiggle of regret. “Trust me, there’s nothing I’d like better than to haul ass out of here right now.”
“Good. Then we’re on the same page—”
“But I won’t,” he cut in. “I can’t.”
A knowing light gleamed in her eyes. “I’m sure Pete would understand.”
“I’m sure he would, but that’s beside the point.” Jesse shook his head. “I’m not missing his wedding.”
“But—”
“You’ll just have to figure out some other way to defuse the situation and keep the peace.”
And then he did what she’d done to him on that one night forever burned into his memory—he turned and walked away without so much as a goodbye.
2
WAIT A SECOND.
Wait just a friggin’ second.
That was what Gracie wanted to say. She’d envisioned this meeting about a zillion times on the way over, and this wasn’t the way it had played out. Where was the gratitude? The appreciation? The desperate embrace followed by one whopper of a kiss?
She ditched the last thought and focused on the righteous indignation that came with violating about ten different city ordinances on someone else’s behalf. Leaking private city business to civilians was an unforgivable sin and the memo from the production company had been marked strictly confidential.
But this was Jesse, and while she’d made it a point to avoid him for the past twelve years, she couldn’t in good conscience sit idly by and let him be broadsided by the news crew currently on its way to Lost Gun.
Not because she cared about him.
Lust. That was all she’d ever felt for him. The breath-stealing, bone-melting, desperate lust of a hormone-driven sixteen-year-old. A girl who’d dreamed of a world beyond her desperately small town, a world filled with bright lights and big cities and a career in photojournalism.
She’d wanted out so bad back then. To the point that she’d been wild and reckless, eager to fill the humdrum days until her eighteenth birthday with whatever excitement she could find.
But then she’d received the special-delivery letter announcing that her
