Walk Away Joe (20 page)

 
He gave her an uncertain look.

 
Her smile, if not full-fledged, was at least hopeful. “Let’s just say that while I don’t ever see the two of you as best friends, he’s a reasonable man. He realizes people can change. And he’s more tolerant than you’d think of youthful indiscretion—perhaps because Saundra was capable of pulling the wool over his eyes too. Maybe even because he’s been guilty of some bad decisions in the past himself.”

 
His chest tightened with an ache of regret and longing so strong he had to close his eyes against the pressure.
 

“Don’t shut me out, Thucker. Please.

“I love you,” she whispered, moving close, touching his arm, making him ache. “I want the chance to prove to you that I’m worth it, too.”

He swallowed thickly. “Dammit, Sara, you’re not making this easy.”

“You catch on quick, cowboy,” she murmured, with all the confidence he remembered and all the fire he wanted to claim.

 
It left him then. All the fight. All the denial. All of his perfectly good intentions to protect her from everything bad he could give her.

 
“You’d better be sure about this—damn sure, darlin’, because I haven’t got it in me to fight you any longer.”
 

 
Without another word, she flew into his arms. Without a hint of regret, he caught her.

 
“I’ve been so miserable,” she murmured as she covered his face with kisses and buried her hands in his hair.

 
“I know.”

 
“I’ve been so lonely.” Her hands went to his shirtfront and ripped open the snaps.

 
He groaned as her cool hands touched his bare skin. “God, I know.”

 
“I’ve been so homy,” she moaned on a laugh as he lifted her fully against him and, chuckling with shared frustration and happiness, carried her toward the ranch house.

 
“Seems we are of the same mind, Miz Stewart.”

 
“There’s going to be a lot of that going around from now on, cowboy. Do you think you can get used to it?”

 
He shouldered open the door and stalked directly to his bedroom. “I think I’m going to love giving it a try.”

 
With an urgency that held little regard for the sound of rent fabric or the give of delicate lace, they scrambled out of their clothes and fell together on the bed.

 
“I love you,” he whispered as he eased himself into the silken haven of her body.

 
“Yes,” she answered, urging him deep with her caress. “Yes, you do. And I’m not about to ever let you forget it.”

∙ ∙ ∙

Reason returned long, languid moments later. Tucker realized he must be crushing her. Weak and sweat-drenched, he rolled onto his side and pulled her against him to savor her nearness. He was spent. He was sated. He was in aching awe of the breadth and the depth of his physical need for her—in helpless acceptance of his love for her. In the undiluted joy of having her here in his arms.

 
He turned to look at her. Her expression was as soft as her sigh.

“No pressure, Tucker,” she whispered, as if she felt the need to reassure him. “Whatever you can give me, that’s what I’ll accept. I won’t crowd. I won’t push. I just want the chance to see if we’re up to this.”

 
He lifted his hand to her hair, sifted its silken length through his fingers. “I don’t know if I can be any good at this. I’ve convinced myself for so long that I’m just like him, it’ll take awhile to shake loose of the expectations.”
 

 
He rolled to his back, staring at the ceiling, remembering and sorting through. “For as long as I can remember, he was a rounder and a drifter. When he came home—if he came home—it was only when he felt like it. If he took care of us, it was more by accident than intent.”

 
A breath as thick as his memories and as heavy as his uncertainty escaped him.

 
“My best recollections of him are stumbling home drunk, picking a fight with my mother, and me shagging on to him when he went after her with his fists.
 

 
“And of Tag,” he added after a long moment. “He was four. Wide-eyed and crying, he’d cower in the corner, taking it all in.”
 

 
She said nothing. She just waited for him to finish.
 

 
“And then he’d leave. Be gone for weeks, months at a time. Once he was gone over a year. And every time, she’d take him back.

 
“I don’t want that for us. I want what my little brother has. I want it all.”

 
His chest pounded as he turned to her. He searched her face in the cocooning darkness, needing to know she understood.

 
“I want it all,” he repeated, understanding for the first time in his life how deeply that craving ate at him. “And until you showed up, I was afraid to think it could ever happen. I’m still not sure I’ll be any good at it.”

 
“That makes two of us who are unsure of ourselves,” she said, her eyes glittering in the tender shadows. “I’m scared, too, Tuck. Down to my toes. I’m scared you deserve more than what I can give you.

 
“No, let me finish,” she insisted when he shook his head. “You know all about duty and love and honor. You’ve shown that with what you’ve done for Tag and Lana. You’ve proven you’re capable of all those things. I’m still uncharted ground.”

 
He understood then what she was trying to tell him. Understood the extent of her own reservations.

 
“Then chart a path for me, darlin’,” he told her gently. “I want to know where you’ve been.”

 
She lowered her eyelids, her breath growing as deep as his own.

 
“It’s not very pretty,” she said after a long moment.

 
“I didn’t expect it to be.”

 
He would have backed away then, when the silence lengthened and her hesitancy increased. No matter how important it was that she open up to him, he would have backed away. He felt her inner struggle. No matter how much it meant to him that she confide in him, he would not push her.

 
He’d decided this was as far as they were going to get when she started talking.

 
The words came slowly at first, spilling out of her like water, a little trickle at a time, then in a waterfall of broken memories and battered hopes, of mangled bodies and too-certain death.

 
“I think it was the futility of it all,” she finally said, when she was spent. “The knowledge that one shift followed another, each one filled with the same victims of violent crime, the innocent caught in the cross fire, the young lives wasted for the colors of a gang.”

 
“I couldn’t do it,” he said, in awe of the horror she’d seen.

 
“Well, evidently, I couldn’t, either. Only I was too stubborn to admit I was no longer in control.”

 
He read the struggle in her eyes, saw the residual pain and knew the worst was yet to come.

 
“I should have known how deeply I was in trouble the day I walked by the drug cabinet and the thought crossed my mind that there lay the escape route.”

 
He knew by the tightening of her body that she was bludgeoning herself with guilt.

 
“I don’t know if I can explain it. The fact that I’d actually entertained, if only for a moment, the idea of resorting to drugs as an easy out was like awakening from a nightmare—or plunging headlong into one, I’m not sure which.

 
“I walked off the floor. I went home. And I just sort of turned off the switch. If the phone rang, I wouldn’t answer. If someone came, I let them knock. I didn’t eat. I didn’t sleep. I didn’t do anything but drink until a week later, when Karla convinced the super I was sick and he let her into the apartment.”

 
He pulled her close against him, hurting for her, wanting more than he’d wanted anything in his life to shelter her.

 
“I recognize now that I’d reached a saturation point of sorts. I’m gradually accepting that that stunt I pulled was an involuntary defense mechanism, shutting my systems down before they overloaded. That doesn’t make me proud, though, of the way I fell apart.”

 
He ran his hand in a gentle caress up and down the length of her back. “I’m just glad that Karla and Lance had the sense to get you out of there. I’m glad you ended up at Blue Sky and that I was here to pick up the pieces.”

 
She pulled back so that she could look in his eyes. ‘‘Me too,” she whispered. “Me too.”

 
“We’re a pair, aren’t we?” he said, nuzzling a kiss on the top of her head as she snuggled back against the warmth of his body.

“Two of a kind,” she agreed. “We need each other, Tucker. And we can be good together. We just need to give it a chance.”

EPILOGUE

………………

T
HE FUTURITY IN FORT WORTH
was the granddaddy of all cutting-horse competitions, with a total purse of over one and a half million dollars. It was the culmination of eighteen months of training of the brightest and best three-year-olds from all over the world. It was the cherry at the top of the sundae. The summit of Mount Everest. The highest pie in the sky.

 
Sara was so nervous she wasn’t sure she would keep her light lunch down when Tucker, aboard Poco, entered the round arena to the cheers of the crowd and the stoic, appraising eyes of the judges.

 
The pair had become a favorite of the cutting aficionados who had paid their money and packed into the Will Rogers Coliseum for the final night of competition.

 
Their style was crisp and thrilling. Their combined athleticism and grace awe-inspiring and natural. And the beauty of both horse and rider was unrivaled.

 
She’d gotten used to heads turning when Tucker made an entrance. She’d gotten accustomed to the glow she felt when he pulled her to his side and introduced her to his friends. But the pride she felt as she watched him and Poco warm up for the championship round was beyond any emotion in her experience.

 
Six months had passed since she’d returned to Blue Sky. Six months of sharing and loving. And healing. Both of them had had a lot of healing to do.

 
“They look revved.”

 
This from Lana, who along with baby Cody shared the box seat at the rail of the arena and the excitement the moment promised.

 
“Let’s hope they— Hey...” Sara paused, concern darkening her eyes as she studied Lana’s face. “Are you okay? Maybe you should have sat this one out at the hotel.”

 
Lana grinned, rubbed her fully extended tummy and lifted her brows. “And miss the night those two have been working toward for what seems like forever? Not on your life.”

 
“I don’t know,” Sara insisted, second-guessing the wisdom of championing Lana’s cause when she’d promised Dan Morton, Lana’s obstetrician and Sara’s new employer, that she’d keep a close rein on Lana’s activities.

 
“Sara,” Lana protested with a patient smile, “I’m fine. And I’ve still got thirteen days to go, so relax. Besides, I went over with Cody. And little Elizabeth here,” she continued, patting the baby still inside her, “she’s a good girl. She wouldn’t give her mama a hard time. Not tonight.

 
“Would you just look at them?” Lana continued, nodding toward Tucker on Poco and Tag, riding hold on the black filly he’d finally managed to talk Mason into selling him. “Aren’t they just something, though?”

 
“Aren’t they just?” Sara echoed, then drew a deep breath and tried to settle herself down.
 

 
“It’s show time.” The buzz of the crowd muted to a low murmur as the two-and-a-half-minute clock started and Tucker made his cut from the herd.

 
“Yes...” she hissed, her fingers balled into fists that she pressed against her mouth to keep from shouting as Poco made his first electrifying move on the calf. From then on, it just kept getting better. He dropped down on the calf, working hard as the determined Hereford tried him over and over again.

 
She watched the concentration on Tucker’s face, knowing that despite the focused, firm set of his eyes, he was having the time of his life. Knowing that he’d enjoy it more when it was over and he had time to sit back and think about how fast and hard it was and how much acceleration there was in the run.

 
“You’ve got to put your mind in the horse’s mind,” she’d heard him tell Tag. “You’ve got to give up a little of yourself, and when you do, you feel all that power come up through your body and it becomes yours.”

 
The power was his tonight as they cut and dodged, getting ground with a sureness and speed that defined the sport at its finest, and the stallion showed Fort Worth what he was all about.

 
When the buzzer sounded, the entire arena erupted in an earsplitting roar. The crowd rose to their feet, yelling and whistling and showing their appreciation for the performance with a standing ovation.

 
The judges showed their appreciation too with a near perfect
221-1/2
score that held up through the final contestant’s performance and cinched first place in the most prestigious futurity in the world.

 
With tears of pride streaming down her cheeks, Sara latched hold of Cody’s hand and, with special care for Lana’s condition, maneuvered the three of them to ground level. Tag was so high he was practically floating when he spotted them making their way to the holding pen.

 
“Hot damn! ” he exclaimed, lifting Cody above his head and spinning him in a wild, fast circle. “Did you see that, partner? Did you see Uncle Tuck show that old calf what for?”