but I choose not to.”
He gave her a strange look. “Is there a reason why?”
“Yes. What if I say that horses don’t like me?”
He gave a half laugh. “Then I’d say that if you feel that way it means you haven’t developed your own personal technique of dealing with them. A horse can detect a lot from people. Whether you’re too aggressive, too nice, sometimes both. A horse is the most easy-going animal that I know of.”
“Yeah, you would say that since you tame them,” she said, glancing out the truck window and thinking how beautiful the land was getting the farther they got away from the city.
“I’d say it even if I didn’t tame them. If you stay at the ranch I guarantee you will develop a liking for horses.”
“I never said I didn’t like them, Clint. It’s just I’ve been thrown off one too many times to suit my fancy. I know when to give in and quit.”
He chuckled. “I don’t. And if I stopped riding based on the number of times I’ve been thrown, I would have given up riding years ago. That’s part of it. Learning to ride with the intent of staying on.”
Alyssa heard what he was saying but it wouldn’t change her mind. The truck had come to a stop and she glanced over at Clint. He was staring at her in a way that had her pulse racing, was making her feel breathless. A brazen image formed in her mind. “What?” she asked in a low voice.
It was as if that one single word made him realize that he’d been staring and when the truck began moving again, he muttered, “Nothing.”
It was there on the tip of Alyssa’s tongue to say yes, it had been something and she had felt it, too, in the cozy space surrounding them. As she glanced back out the window, she thought that living on a ranch with him wouldn’t be easy. The only good thing was that he’d said he would be gone most of the time. That was good to know for her peace of mind.
“Will your family have a problem with it?”
She glanced back over at him. He was staring straight ahead and she thought that was good. Every time he looked at her, sensations she hadn’t felt in a long time, or ever, seemed to unleash inside of her. “A problem with what?” she asked, thinking she liked the sound of his voice a little too much.
“Living with me for a while at the ranch. That is if you decide to do it.”
Alyssa sighed. There was no need to go into any details that certain members of her family wouldn’t care if she left Waco for good. It was all too complicated to get into and too personal to explain. That was the only good thing about the thirty days. Time away from Waco was probably what she needed. Ruining her wedding day hadn’t been enough for Kim. She was determined to sabotage any decent thing that came into Alyssa’s life. “No, they wouldn’t have a problem with it,” she finally answered. “What about your folks?”
He glanced over at her and smiled and that single smile ignited a torch within her. She actually felt heat flowing through her body. “My family is fine with whatever I do. My brother, sister and I are extremely close but we know when to give each other space and when to mind our own business.” He then chuckled and the sound raked across her skin in a sensuous sort of way.
“Okay, I admit when it came to Casey, Cole and I never did mind our own business. We felt she was our responsibility, especially during her dating years. But now that she’s married to McKinnon all is well,” he added.
“Have they been married long?”
He shook his head. “Since the end of November. Cole and I couldn’t ask for a better man for our sister.”
Alyssa smiled. “That’s a nice thing to say.”
“It’s the truth. Although we do sympathize with him most of the time. Casey can be pretty damn headstrong so McKinnon has his work cut out for him.”
“So your immediate family consists of your brother and your sister?”
“We used to think that. My mother was Uncle Sid’s sister and she came to live with him at the ranch when her husband was supposedly killed during a rodeo and she was left carrying triplets.”
Alyssa slanted him a confused look. “Supposedly was killed?”
“Yes, that’s the story she and Uncle Sid fabricated for everyone when in fact our father was very much alive. However, she felt she was doing him a favor by not telling him she was pregnant and disappearing. So Cole, Casey and I grew up believing our father was dead.”
“When did you find out differently?”
“On Mom’s deathbed. She wanted us to know the truth.”
Alyssa immediately recalled her grandfather’s deathbed confession. He’d revealed that he was her biological father and not her grandfather. It had been a confession that had changed her life forever, one that had caused jealousy within the family—a family that had never been close anyway. “What happened after that?”
He smiled over at her and she knew what he was thinking. She asked a lot of questions. Gramps would always tell her that, too. Thinking of the man whom for years she’d thought of as her grandfather sent a warm feeling through her.
“After that, Cole and I decided to find our father and develop a relationship with him. We knew it wouldn’t be easy, considering we would be a surprise to him and the fact that we were grown men in our late twenties.”
That hadn’t been too long ago, she mused, considering he was thirty-two now. Probably around the same time she had been learning the truth about her own parentage. “Did you find him?”
He gave another chuckle, this one just as sensitive to her flesh as the other had been. “Yes, we found him, all right. And we found something else right along with him.”
“What?”
“A slew of cousins we didn’t know we had. Westmorelands from just about everywhere. We suddenly found ourselves part of a big family and it was a family that welcomed us with open arms. They’ve made us feel as if we were a part of them so quickly it was almost overwhelming.”
Alyssa studied the sound of his voice and could tell that even now for him it was still overwhelming. He was blessed to be a part of such a loving and giving group. There, however, was one thing she’d noted. He hadn’t mentioned how his sister had taken the revelation of the missing father.
“Your sister, how did she handle meeting her father for the first time?” she asked.
A part of her needed to know. She knew how she had handled it when she’d discovered that Isaac Barkley was her father and not her grandfather. A part of her had wished he would have told her sooner. That would have explained a lot of things and then the two of them would have been able to face the jealousy and hatred together. But he had died, leaving her all alone.
“It was harder for Casey to come around and accept things. She’d believed what Mom had told us all those years. She wasn’t ready to meet a father who was very much alive. It took her a while to form a relationship with him, but that’s all in the past now. In fact she moved to Montana to be close to him. She met McKinnon there and fell in love.”
Alyssa
