“I love fresh bread,” she added with a blissful sigh.
Cindy returned, bringing Kelly’s lobster salad and his prime rib. Mace was relieved by the interruption, and although he’d lost his appetite somewhere along the line, he picked up his knife and fork.
Kelly smiled with a hint of sadness as she watched the girl walk away, resuming her duties. “I was like that once,” she said softly. An instant later, her expression made it obvious that she regretted the remark.
Mace forgot his own concerns as he studied Kelly’s face. “You were like what once?” he asked, reaching for his cabernet.
She lowered her eyes for a moment, raised them again. Their gazes connected.
The charge reminded him of the business end of a cattle prod.
Kelly’s spine was straight as she raised her shoulders on an indrawn breath and then looked down again. “Full of plans, I guess,” she answered reluctantly. “You know. Convinced that things would turn out the way I expected.”
Mace gave a slight, rueful smile. “I can relate,” he said.
She paused, a forkful of lobster salad halfway to her mouth. “You can?” She seemed surprised. “Are you telling me you’re disappointed in your life?”
Mace shook his head. “It’s not that. I love what I do. Love living on the ranch—it might sound corny, but the place is literally in my blood.” He paused, then went on. “There isn’t much I would change.”
“But there is...something?”
He sighed. He’d opened himself up to that question, he supposed. “I always figured I’d have a wife and kids by now,” he admitted.
She took that in, quietly chewing the food she’d just put in her mouth.
“What about you?” he asked. What dimmed your light, Kelly? Was it the attack, that night on campus? Or something that happened afterward? “You said you were ‘full of plans’ once.”
Kelly looked uncomfortable as she swallowed the bite of food, then took a sip from her wineglass. She smiled with an effort, a kind of fragility that tugged at Mace’s insides. “The usual things. Life in general, I guess.”
“Can you be more specific?” he asked.
She dodged his words neatly. “You wanted to be married, start a family?”
Mace smiled. “Nice try,” he said. “But the conversational ball is still in your court, isn’t it?”
Kelly sighed, put down her knife and fork. Pondered her reply. “I guess so,” she said, speaking so softly that Mace had to strain to hear. She went on, after more consideration. “Like I told you, I was married for a little while. My husband was a decent guy—he never cheated or anything like that. It was just that we wanted...different things, Alan and I.”
“Such as?”
“I wanted a few more years to build my career. Alan wanted children right away.”
“You didn’t want kids?”
“I did,” Kelly said. “But we were so young, just getting started. I thought we should wait until we were on solid financial ground, with a house and a bank account and everything.” She fixed her gaze on something beyond the window beside their table. “That was the agreement from the beginning,” she added. “I wasn’t asking Alan to wait forever, just until we were ready.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Mace told her.
Kelly nodded. Her eyes were somber, even a little misty. “I thought so,” she agreed, dropping her gaze to her salad. Picking up her knife and fork once more. When she looked at Mace again, she’d rustled up a flimsy smile. “Your turn.”
Mace ached for her, but he returned her smile. “Fair enough,” he said. “But there isn’t a whole lot to tell.”
“Sarah,” Kelly prompted gently. Thanks to Cindy, that much of his personal history was out in the open, anyway.
“Sarah,” he confirmed. “We dated in college.”
Kelly waited, saying nothing.
Mace had always kept his own counsel, especially where his love life was concerned, but for some reason, with this woman he hardly knew, he found himself talking.
“We were in some of the same classes, freshman year, and we just sort of gravitated toward each other as time went by. Maybe it was because we had some things in common—Sarah grew up on a farm, I was raised on a ranch—and I think we both felt a little out of our element at the beginning, a couple of country kids on a crowded campus in a major city, a long way from home.”
“Did you love her?”
Mace weighed his answer. “I thought so at the time,” he told her. “I was pretty torn up when she called it off, but looking back, I know she was right. I have two older brothers, and they’re both married to incredible women. Seeing Slater with Grace and Drake with Luce—short for Lucinda—completely happy, sharing everything and starting families... Well, that got me wondering if I’d ever actually known what real love was like.”
Kelly smiled a soft, sad smile. “My parents are crazy about each other,” she said. “I used to think every marriage was like theirs.”
Mace wanted to take Kelly’s hand, but something stopped him. “Mine were pretty tight, too, as I recall,” he told her. “But our dad died when my brothers and I were young, and our mother never remarried. She’s a great mom, and she certainly taught us to admire and respect women, but when it came to love between a man and a woman, we didn’t have a whole lot to go on.”
Kelly nodded and her eyes misted over, although she was quick to blink the moisture away. “Sorry,” she said.
Mace knew she’d run into some kind of emotional roadblock, and he wasn’t going to push her past it. After all, this was supposed to be a business meeting, if an informal one.
True, Kelly had been the one to get the conversational ball rolling, but she probably hadn’t expected things to get so heavy, so soon. It was time to lighten up, get outside, soak up some sunshine and breathe some fresh air.
He pushed his plate away. “I’m about finished here,” he said. “How about you?”
Kelly surveyed her half-eaten salad with a combination of relief and regret. “I’m definitely full.”
“In that case, why don’t you head on upstairs and change your clothes? I’ll sign the check and meet you in the lobby in a few minutes.”
Kelly’s eyes, tearful a minute before, glinted with a sort of mischievous triumph. “I’ve already taken care of it,” she said.
Mace laughed and spread his hands in good-natured surrender. “So much for my reputation as a macho cowboy,” he said. “By nightfall, everybody in Mustang Creek will know I let a woman pick up the lunch check. For all practical intents and purposes, I’m ruined.”
Kelly
