own two feet.
“How long have you been there?”
“Long enough to hear you ban her from that horse of hers.”
“You think it’s too harsh?”
He was silent for several seconds. The only sound in the kitchen was the ticking of the clock above the refrigerator and the burbling coming from the pots on the stove. “I think it’s probably the only punishment that would mean a thing to her,” he finally said. “She loves that horse more than just about anything.”
“I had to do something. She’s going to have to repeat the seventh grade if I don’t.”
“She doesn’t really hate you. You know that, don’t you?”
If she did, it would be no less than Annie deserved. For most of her daughter’s life, their home hadn’t been the safe haven every child deserves but a place of prolonged tension and then sharp, sudden outbursts of temper. Why shouldn’t Leah hate her for the choices she’d made?
The hell of it was, if she had it all to do over again, she would probably make the same choices.
She glanced up to find Joe studying her, expecting an answer. Since she couldn’t very well tell him her thoughts, she just nodded. “I know she doesn’t hate me,” she said, without conviction.
He looked like he wanted to pursue it, but to her relief, he changed the subject. “Have you told the kids about my new job?”
The new job. The reminder sent fresh pain slithering to the base of her skull.
She shook her head, wincing a little at the movement, while she pulled out a fragrant loaf of garlic bread from the oven. “You’re the one leaving. You’re the one who can break the news.”
He frowned at her shortness. “Annie—”
“This is almost ready. Where’s the rest of the crew?” She cut him off, not wanting to hear more apologies or explanations.
A muscle flexed in his jaw but he let the matter rest. “Patch was just about finished in the barn and I think Ruben and Manny are right behind me.”
“What about Luke?”
“I think he went back to the trailer to get gussied up for you. Said something about putting on a clean shirt.”
She looked up from stirring the spaghetti sauce, just in time to catch his rare grin. She gazed at it, at him.
The smile softened the harsh lines of his features, etching lines along the edges of his mouth and the corners of his eyes. He was beautiful, in a raw, elemental way with those glittering black eyes fringed by long, thick eyelashes, that sensual mouth and that coppery skin from his Shoshone heritage stretched over high cheekbones.
She blinked, suddenly breathless. “Don’t tease him, Joe. He gets enough from the rest of the men.”
“He wouldn’t if the kid didn’t make it so easy for us. He follows you around like he’s a puppy dog and you’re a big ol’ juicy bone he wants to sink his teeth into.”
“He does not.” She felt her face flush from more than just the heat rising off the pans on the stove.
She was very much afraid Joe was right, that their newest ranch hand made it painfully obvious to everyone he had a crush on her. She had done her best to discourage him but he seemed oblivious to all her gentle hints. If it was causing problems between him and the rest of the help, she was going to have to be more stern.
“Does so.” Joe flashed another of those rare grins. “We practically have to lift the boy’s tongue off the floor every time he looks at you.”
She managed—barely—to lift her own tongue off the floor and yanked her gaze away from that smile she suddenly realized she would miss so desperately.
She stirred the spaghetti sauce with vigorous motions. “He’s just a little overenthusiastic. He’ll get over it. Besides, don’t you remember what it was like to be twenty-two?”
As soon as the words escaped her mouth, she wanted to grab them and stuff them back. The year he had turned twenty-two, she had been eighteen, and she had given him her love and her innocence on a sun-warmed stretch of meadow grass on the shores of Butterfly Lake.
Now, after her hastily spoken words, he was silent for one beat too long and she finally risked a look at him over the steam curling up from the bubbling pasta. That muscle worked in his jaw again and his dark eyes held a distant, unreadable expression.
“I do,” he said softly. “Every minute of it.”
Her breath caught and held, but before she could think of a reply, the outside door opened, bringing a gust of icy air, and the Santiago brothers tromped through the mudroom. The kitchen was soon filled with the sound of scraping chairs and melodious Spanish.
“That storm’s gonna be a real bi…er, beast,” Patch McNeil entered the kitchen behind them, his leathery cheeks red and wind-chapped above the white of the handlebar mustache he was so proud of. “I’m afraid we’re gonna lose some stock tonight.”
She barely heard the old cowboy, still flustered from the intense exchange with Joe. What could he have meant by those low words? Was she reading too much into it? Could he simply have been referring to being twenty-two or was he also haunted by the memory of those hours spent in each other’s arms? After his release from prison, he had never given her any indication he even remembered the encounter that had forever changed the course of her life.
They had never talked about it, about the day of her father’s funeral when he had come in search of her and found her lost and grief-stricken at the lake they’d spent so many hours fishing when they were younger.
While he was alive, her father had been stiff and un-affectionate, impossible to please, but she loved him desperately. He was the only parent she ever knew and his death had left her a frightened eighteen-year-old girl responsible for a six-hundred-head cattle ranch.
Joe had started out comforting her but she had wanted more from him. She had always wanted more from him.
She knew he regretted what they had done. He couldn’t have made it more clear when he left Madison Valley that night for a new job on a ranch near Great Falls, taking her heart with him.
In the years since, that hazy afternoon had become like the proverbial elephant sitting in the parlor that both of them could clearly see but neither wanted to be the first to mention.
Her mind racing, she drained the pasta with mechanical movements and spooned the sauce into a serving dish. She finally turned to set the food on the big pine table that ran the length of the kitchen and was startled to find all the men watching her, wearing odd expressions.
“What’s the matter?”
“I asked twice if you wanted me to round up C.J. and Leah.” Joe sent her a long, searching look and she hoped like crazy he couldn’t read her thoughts on her face.
“Um, yes. Thank you.”
Luke came in from outside just as Joe returned to the kitchen with C.J. riding piggyback
