Slow Ride Home (The Grady Legacy) (11 page)

“Of who?”

“Of the horses. Especially the foals, with their big eyes and the way they look at you as if they can see right into your soul.” Rather like the way Ben’s had just seen into her subconscious.

“I used to think the same of you.” Ben’s voice turned husky. He stood behind her, resting his hands lightly on her waist. “I still do.”

“Don’t.” Don’t tempt me to want a relationship with you again unless you’re dead serious. And the idea that she wanted to be in another committed relationship scared the living daylights out of her.

“Don’t what? Don’t tell you I loved you?” His thumbs slipped beneath her top and stroked her waist. “Don’t tell you I was planning on going into Dallas that weekend to buy you a ring? Or that I was fixin’ to propose to you?”

Her throat ached to hear his admission, and her knees weakened. Needing distance, she jumped down and stepped away. “Please. Just don’t. I can’t...I can’t deal with this right now.”

He cupped the back of her head until she tilted it to look at him. An intensity that startled her filled his eyes. “I would never hurt you, Allie. Not then, not now.”

His thumbs moved further beneath her shirt, and now his palms warmed her skin too. “I want more than just a truce between us. I want to know if we’re as good together now as we were back then.”

“I’m not who I used to be.”

“Of course you’re not. I’m not either.”

Afraid of the desperate craving to agree with him, to touch his chest, to cup his face and kiss him senseless, Allie squirmed out of his grasp. “The other day shouldn’t have happened. It’s too fast.”

“Maybe we rushed things,” he acknowledged slowly. “But aren’t you curious about me? About us? About how we might be together now? Didn’t the other day prove there’s still something between us?”

“The other day was just sex.” Her admission tore the back of her throat. It hadn’t been just sex to him? She’d wanted it to be more, which explained the desperate fear inside her now. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

He tapped his chest. “It matters right here—” then moved his hand to hers, “—and here too.”

She jammed her elbows on the fence, staring at the mare who’d resumed grazing, rather than facing Ben. He was a Grady. This was Bull’s Hollow. The land, the cattle, they came first to him, over everything else.

His hands squeezed her shoulders lightly, then slid down her side and wrapped around her waist, pulling her against his chest. “If you’d never met me,” he whispered, “if you’d met me for the very first time because of this case, would I stand a chance?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Definitely. She turned her head to meet his gaze. “Why are you so intent on chasing me?”

His brows arched in surprise. “I’m not chasing you particularly hard, Al. If I was, you’d know it.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “You’re not the only one who can get hurt here. All I’m asking is for you to give me a chance. Pretend that we’ve just met. Go out on a date with me. I want to know who you are now. What makes you tick. You say you’ve changed—I want to know how.”

She shook her head and pulled away, turning to clutch the fence rail in an effort to ground herself. “It won’t work. I can’t forget what’s happened between us.”

“What’s happened between us? Not between Gramps and you, just you and me.”

She closed her eyes, unable to stand the husky plea. The fence rail moved—he’d braced his hands on either side of hers.

“Give me another chance. I didn’t run out on you or force you away before.” His breath brushed her neck as he leaned in. “I’m sorry that Gramps hurt you, but he isn’t me. I’d never hurt you.”

“I know.” Did she? Or was she just so lonely that her body was convincing her to give in? “It doesn’t make what I’m feeling any less valid.”

He stepped back, and she found herself mourning the loss of his warmth. “You never used to be a coward.”

Damn it. She whirled to face him, her fingernails digging into her palms. “I’m not a coward. I’m a realist.” A realist who was tired of being hurt. Of being a pawn.

“Okay, then let’s say you never used to dwell on the past the way you do now.” He held out his hand, palm up, waiting for her to take it. “Let go of the past, Allie. Let’s see if we have a future together.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“Why can’t it be?”

His soft question speared through chest and lodged in her heart. After all she’d been through, how could he ask such a question? She met his gaze, seeing no guile hidden in those beautiful blue eyes. Wondering where she’d have been, where they’d be, if he proposed to her all those years ago, she whispered, “Because life isn’t simple.”

* * *

Nearly an hour had passed since Allie had finally placed her palm in his. The conversation between them flowed between her life in Houston and progeny tests for the upcoming breeding season, a discussion of irrigation problems over in Biscuit Pasture and crop yields with the current drought.

A pair of crows cawed overhead and cattle mooed in the distance—probably the dozen head of Guernseys Butch kept to provide the ranch with fresh milk as they lumbered up to the milking shed. The grass and weeds on the edge of the path they followed thickened as they reached the edges of Amaleen Creek. A few months ago, they’d have already been knee-deep in water and had to have waded a good twenty feet, up to their thighs to get across, but at this time of year the creek had dried up to little more than two feet wide. One of the dogs lapped at the edge of the thin stream, while the other splashed across, snapping at flies it disturbed in the bushes on the opposite side.

Allie sought out the shade of massive live oak and perched on its lowest branch overhanging the creek. “I’ve missed this, being able to walk without dodging traffic or breathing smog.”

“I can’t imagine having to live in town all the time.” Ben hiked himself up beside her, resting one booted foot in a fork in the trunk. “Sure I went to college and lived in a city then but College Station isn’t as crowded or smoggy as Houston or New York. And Bozeman isn’t much bigger than Carter Valley.”

“Bozeman? Montana? When were you up there?” He must be referring to a visit, not living there. Or maybe something to do with his courses at Texas A&M?

“About a week after you left. I worked on a ranch for the summer.”

“Before you went to college?” When she’d known him, he’d never wanted to leave Bull’s Hollow for anything other than school. The ranch was his whole world. What on earth had made him leave his beloved home?

He jumped down and strode to the side of the creek, his face unreadable in the shadows of his hat. “You remember how Gramps and I got in this big fight about me going to college and how it was a waste of money.”

“Yeah.” It had been that fight that resulted in him being assigned to fix that long stretch of fence. The one Logan had convinced her to go out with him and help Ben fix.

“Well, after you left we had another huge blow up. He...” He shook his head and stared at the crow circling overhead. “He was a total asshole.”

“Color me surprised,” she said, pleased she’d managed a dry tone instead of the very real shock she felt. While she’d known George was an asshole, Ben had always defended his grandfather. That he finally admitted they had a common ground on the matter, was...well, yeah, she was shocked. “What was it over this time?”

She clamped her mouth shut before she could blurt out, “Me?”

“He lit into me about how he’d found out you and Logan had helped me fix the fence when he’d specifically said I was to do it alone.” His head whipped up and he met her gaze, his eyes wide in shock. “Shit. How come I’d never put that together before? There’s no way he could have known that unless...”

“Unless he’d had someone following us,” she finished. Taping us.

“Fuck.” He paced along the water, the dogs happily following him.

“Let me guess. He made you tear down the fence and re-install it all by yourself again?”

“I don’t know what he had planned. He was yelling at me. Telling me that I wasn’t taking my responsibilities seriously. That I’d never earn a place on the ranch the way I was headed. That it was a damned good thing he’d caught...” He heaved another deep breath and faced her again. “That he’d caught your father stealing so he could kick you off the ranch too. That you’d been a bad influence. A distraction I couldn’t afford.”

“My dad said the same thing to me about you after we left.”

His chin dropped to his chest. “Gramps really fucked everyone over, didn’t he?”

Pretty much. She jumped down from the branch and trailed him along the edge of the stream. “So you left?”

His shoulders hunched, and she barely heard him say, “Yeah. After he said that I was a fool. That I’d cost the ranch a lot of money because I’d been taken in chasing...”

“Chasing what?”

“You.”

“He didn’t say it that way, did he? Let me guess, he called me a whore. Or a slut?”

He nodded. “His exact words were ‘after a piece of cheap pussy’.”

Even though she’d been expecting something similar, hearing it spoken aloud was like being stabbed in the heart.

“He was yellin’ at me so hard he got red in the face. Pop kept telling him to calm down or he’d give himself a heart attack.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I told him I wished he would. Both Gramps and Pop told me to leave. So I did.

“I told him I was never coming back. That I’d find somewhere else to work. Somewhere I’d be appreciated. Told him I wouldn’t set foot on Bull’s Hollow land unless he was pushing up daisies.”

The roughness in his voice, the guilt filling it, tore into her. She wanted to hold him, to let him know she was there for him, but she dared not touch him in case he stopped talking.

“I packed up my bags that night and took off. I ended up working as a hand up in Montana and stayed there until school started.” His voice had changed, grown flat and he stared into the distance, his jaw hard. “He had his first heart attack right after New Year’s. Even then, I stayed away. I didn’t know how to come back. Undo what I’d said.”

A proud man like Ben wouldn’t want sympathy, but still she murmured, “I’m sorry.”

“I let ’em down, Al. Ma and Pop took a lot of shit from Gramps because I’d walked out and left them short-handed. Gram blamed his heart attack on me—I don’t know if she’s ever forgiven me completely. Even if I didn’t agree with him, he was family. And Gradys—”

“Look out for their own.”

“But I didn’t look out for him, did I?”

Her pledge not to touch him crashed to a halt at the shudder that went through him. Allie caught his hand with hers. “You didn’t let him down. And your grandmother’s wrong—you’re not responsible for his heart attack. You must have reached some sort of accord in those years before he died.”

He nodded. “We just pretended it never happened.”

“I know how that works. Those last months I lived with dad, we played the same game.”

He squeezed back, hard, as if she were a lifeline. Until he faced her with that same fierce determination in his face. “You didn’t let your father down either. Don’t ever think you did.”

How had he turned the conversation around to her so neatly? “That story, about you working on Montana, was that made up for my benefit? Or did you really walk out?”

“It’s all true.” He stared at their joined hands, his thumb making circles on hers. “I’ve been thinking a lot about how your father never told you about why he was fired. How he let you think you were to blame. None of it was your fault, no matter what he said. So stop carrying that guilt around your neck like an albatross.”

“Rime of the Ancient Mariner?”
She smiled up at him, her heart aching that he could still see through her so clearly. “You copied off my notes in that class.”

He lowered his head and skimmed kisses along her jaw. “Guess I learned something after all.”

The heat of his breath shivered over her skin. If she didn’t stop this soon, she’d be flat on her back beneath him again. Not that there was anything wrong in scratching that particular itch, but she wanted to get to know him better before they did it again.

She lifted his hand, and fingered his gold Aggie ring. “Or you were forced to take a class in reading comprehension at college?”

“I was, but we didn’t discuss Coleridge.”

“Going for bonus points for remembering the author?” She deliberately kept her tone light at the emotion swamping her.

“I’m not going to push you into anything, Al,” he said softly. “All you had to say was stop or no, or just pull away.”

Disconcerted by how well he could read her, she nodded.

He leaned down and brushed his lips over hers in a feather-light kiss. “I’m glad you’re here.”

To her surprise, so was she.

Maybe it was the way the wind ruffled the leaves above, or the water babbled over the stones along its path, or maybe it was just the truce finally settling into her soul, but a peace settled over her like a comfortable mantle, and the knowledge that she hadn’t driven all this way out simply to yell at him about not phoning. She’d needed to see him. She’d needed to know if they’d had a future, just the way he’d wondered aloud earlier.

She reached up and cupped the back of Ben’s head and pulled him down to meet her. His eyes widened for just a second, or maybe they were still wide, but she’d closed her eyes and brushed her lips against his. His hand skimmed down her back to cup her behind and bring her closer. There was no urgency to the slide of his tongue over her lips, but there was no hesitation either. Though it started out sweet and soft, the heat rising between them, each breath on her cheek, each touch of his fingers where he touched her breast, where his other hand dug into her behind, sparked an intense need to touch him too.

Her fingers slid beneath the opening of his shirt, fumbling with the button as she tried to ease through the hole. A giggle escaped, along with a murmured
oops
when the threads holding it in place popped and the button pinged off her chest.

“Don’t worry about it.” He broke off the kiss and stepped back to help her unbutton his shirt. But as he looked down the brim of his hat hit her on the tip of her nose.