Reuniting With the Rancher (10 page)

The old stubbornness tried to rear up, tried to tell her she could do anything she put her mind to, but since coming here she had begun to realize that wasn’t true. She had limits just like every other person in the world. Physical limits, emotional limits.

Her friends at work, Carla and Laurie and Sharon, had been trying to tell her that for the last few months. Rotate, they kept telling her. They could see what Cliff was seeing, too, and given how close they were to her, it was even more surprising that they’d noticed it. He, after all, was seeing her after an absence of ten years. They saw her every day, and the contrast shouldn’t have been as obvious to them.

Unless it was so blatantly true that the whole world could see it.

She lowered her head again, listening to the voice of the rushing creek, seeking some kind of answer within herself. Did she just need a vacation? Did she need to take a break from the streets? Or did she need a major life change?

That latter idea scared her half to death. Yet wasn’t that exactly what she was considering by thinking about a youth ranch here?

Maybe that scared her as much as anything. Not just the change, but the size of the task. She couldn’t imagine where to even begin. She’d need advice from all kinds of professionals at the very start, and she wasn’t even sure which ones. A lawyer? Probably. Psychologists, probably. And then what? What steps in which order?

“I don’t know how to start,” she mumbled.

“I’m sorry?”

She lifted her head, feeling the fear and hollowness that must be showing on her face. “I don’t know how to start. Where to begin. I’d need so much help, there’d be so many hurdles. I’d need people who’d actually be willing to work with the kids when they come here. How can I afford that?”

“I don’t know about affording, but you might find plenty of volunteers.”

“Who?”

“Me, for starters. I could help you build what you need. I could teach kids about animal husbandry. Jean would probably love to teach gardening. Then we’ve got a whole slew of good teachers here, both at the community college and in the public schools. I bet they’d be willing to volunteer time to help. But that’s not the immediate issue. Is it?”

No, it wasn’t, she admitted to herself. There was the whole part about jumping off a cliff into the unknown. The possibility of having it all blow up in her face. “What if it doesn’t work?”

“Then I’d be very surprised if you couldn’t get another job just like the one you already have.”

He had a point. What with budget cutbacks, jobs weren’t as available as they once had been, but on the other hand a lot of people quit for the very same reason she was facing: burnout. So there were always new openings, and finding an experienced social worker wasn’t easy. When most quit, they quit the streets for good.

“Do you think it would work?” she asked finally.

“Well, I’m not the biggest authority on youth ranches for inner-city kids, but I’d be surprised if there aren’t enough needy kids in
this
state to keep you going.”

She hadn’t thought about that, either. It didn’t just have to be inner-city kids.

“Do you know,” she said slowly, “that one of the reasons poor kids don’t do as well in school is because they don’t enjoy enrichment opportunities over school breaks?”

“Really?”

She nodded. “It’s like the spigot gets turned off during the breaks, and when they come back they have to make up lost ground, unlike the children of better-off families, who get to the library or visit museums or take trips. It’s like their learning turns off every summer. But once they get back up to speed, they do every bit as well. And when there are summer enrichment programs, they never lose ground at all. We’ve been working on that, but funding is hard to come by.”

“So you’d give them summer experiences that would help them keep up?”

“That would be part of it, along with taking them out of danger for a while.”

“I think you’d find a lot of teachers around here who’d want to help with that. Want me to ask around?”

“Not yet,” she said finally. “I haven’t even figured out the first steps. I probably need a complete plan. And somewhere along the way I’ll need licensing. But for now, I’ve got to figure it all out. Who it would serve and how.”

She released the last of her resistance, and tried to envision the complete life change she’d only been playing with so far. Had this been what Martha had meant about finding her dream? It was possible.

Apparently he decided they had been serious long enough. He sat up straighter and said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. I had breakfast before sunup. If you haven’t noticed, the sun is rising awfully early these days.”

His change of subject came as such a relief that she giggled. “I didn’t notice.”

“Slugabed,” he teased. “Jean filled me up before the crack of dawn.”

“Then what happened?”

“I helped my hired men start the worming and the vitamin shots.”

“You have to give vitamins?”

“You saw my range. Do you really think I’d have healthy, plump animals if I didn’t supplement from time to time?”

“I wouldn’t know,” she admitted. “I feel kind of stupid.”

“Why?”

“Because I never bothered to learn much about what you do.”

He waggled his eyebrows at her. “I seem to remember we were busy with other stuff.”

She felt her cheeks heat and hoped he couldn’t see. Even though the trees weren’t completely leafed out yet, they did cast the world in a greenish glow.

She accepted half a ham sandwich from him and bit into it, savoring it. “Great ham!”

She also noticed his bare feet. That long-ago summer she had told him he had beautiful feet for a man. He still did. They were masculine, for sure, but narrow and well formed with high arches. More than once she had made him moan with pleasure by giving him a foot massage. He had always reciprocated, too, teaching her that nothing could relax her as fast or deeply as having her feet massaged.

She missed that.

She squirmed as she realized there was a whole lot more she missed, as well. Like being able to reach out and touch him at any time, in any way she chose. Like seeing that look come into his eyes that meant they were about to find a private place to make love.

She giggled unexpectedly as a memory returned.

“What?” he asked.

“The person who thought that making love in a hayloft would be romantic never tried it.”

A laugh escaped him. “That wasn’t one of our better ideas, even with a blanket.”

“A horsehair blanket!” she reminded him. “That was almost as bad as the hay.”

“Hey, it was the only one handy.”

“I don’t know what was worse, the stink or the itch.”

The shared laughter filled her with warmth, relaxing her utterly. It was good.

And there was only one way it could be better. She quickly looked away as laughter faded and resumed nibbling at her sandwich. She’d had cereal for breakfast, but it seemed to have moved on, and despite the relatively early hour, she felt ravenous.

Crossing his legs, Cliff dove into the contents of the bags and came up with a leafy green salad to go with the sandwiches, some warming bottles of soda and a small plastic container of cupcakes. “A feast,” he said. He held up a couple of sporks, making her laugh again. “I’m more in the mood for coffee than soda, though.”

She passed him the vacuum bottle she’d carried. It had a double cup and he filled them both with steaming brew, passing her one.

A bridge had been crossed, she realized. They had moved beyond all the lingering tension left by that summer and were growing comfortable again. Only now did she understand how much she had missed that. Missed him.

Oh, yes, she had ached when she left him. Months had passed before she could stop thinking about him almost constantly.

But the weirdest thing was that now she was sitting here wondering why she had insisted on breaking it off with him. She’d been full of youthful idealism and determination, sure she couldn’t be content being a ranch wife for the rest of her days, but in the process of making those decisions she had cut herself off from other possibilities and a number of wonderful things.

She put her sandwich down on the wax paper, wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees, staring up along the rushing, swollen creek, thinking about the way choices rushed by in much the same way, often with unintended consequences. Choices that couldn’t be recalled.

Cliff, seeking to pursue his own life, had married the wrong woman. She had married no one. She’d dated a few times, but if she was honest with herself, no one had measured up to Cliff.

“It couldn’t have been any different.” She spoke the words aloud, musingly, then wished she hadn’t. That was going to open up a whole bunch of questions she wasn’t sure she could answer.

Seconds ticked by before he said, “Us breaking up, you mean?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

He surprised her. “I don’t think it could have.”

She turned her head, resting her cheek on her knees. “Why?”

“You’re asking me? And damn, I wish you’d eat more.”

“I will.” She waited, wondering if he was going to answer her.

He had started his second sandwich, but put it down and reached for coffee. “We were too young and we were pulling in different directions. You needed to go places, I needed to stay here. Hell, my family has been planted here since 1878, and how likely do you think I was to abandon the homestead? I couldn’t.”

“Certainly not with your mother ailing. How is she, by the way? I wish I could have met her.”

“Nobody saw much of her back then. She couldn’t get out of bed. She’s doing okay. She and Dad have settled in New Mexico where the weather is warmer year-round and she cuts quite a swath in her motorized cart. Her multiple sclerosis hasn’t worsened any. Maybe it’s even improved.”

“I’m glad they’re okay.”

“So am I. Anyway, I couldn’t leave. You know that, even if I didn’t tell you all the reasons. Primarily I needed to make this ranch run so that I could help them out, as well as support a family of my own. I couldn’t just pack and leave, Holly.”

“I understood that.”

“Not saying you didn’t. But you
had
to leave. Nothing of what you wanted was here.”

“Except,” she admitted quietly, “you.”

He nodded. “I felt the same about you.”

She hesitated, feeling her heart hammer with trepidation, but deciding it was high time she told him the truth. Hell, she should have had the guts to do it years ago, but back then she’d been too chicken to face up to herself. “I’m sorry I was so hard on you. God, I took an ax to you, to everything. I was horrid.”

“No kidding.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling the rebirth of an old pain.

“You had to be cruel,” he said after a moment.

With difficulty she forced her eyes open. “No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did. I was arguing with you, objecting to everything you said, fighting to keep you, which would have been about as good as caging you. You had to ax it. You made me so mad I started to hate you, which I needed. And you made sure you burned the bridge completely so you’d have no further contact with me. I get it. You deliberately left us with no way back.”

She averted her face, looking up the stream again, thinking life was like that water, rushing by, here and then gone. Nothing to cling to. Her throat tightened, and her eyes burned. “I was still awful.”

“I don’t think there was another way to do it, so stop beating yourself up. At that time, there was no other way to go. You set us both free to do what we needed.”

“It didn’t feel a whole lot like freedom.”

“No,” he agreed. “It felt more like desperation. Anyway, I was furious with you for a long time. I’m not sure I ever really got over it until lately, but it eased, and eventually I could even see the justice in what you’d done.”

“I’m not sure it was justice.”

“It was at least right. Damn it.” He threw out an arm. “We had an idyll. It wasn’t reality, for the most part. Two crazy kids locked in a haunting and fantastic summer romance. But then like everyone else on the planet, we had to face reality. We were headed down different roads. End of story.”

She nodded, unable to find her voice around the lump in her throat. He had described it perfectly, just the way she thought of it, as a summer idyll without a future.

But how often had she wished she could recapture those halcyon days, however briefly. They couldn’t build an entire lifetime, but they could sure as hell make up a beautiful experience. Nor did she feel that she wanted this story to end again.

She watched him move the food out of the way. Then he reached out and gently unclasped her arms, easing her back on the rock. He leaned over her, his head framed by the trees and sky.

“It was perfect,” he said, brushing her hair back behind her ear. “Absolutely perfect. Perfection is a rare and priceless thing. You don’t find it often, and it seldom lasts. We were blessed.”

She tried to swallow the lump, then asked, “Are you measuring everything else against it?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“I think I have.”

Despite the fact that his face was in shadow, she saw his eyes widen. “Oh, damn, Holly, no.”

He scooped her into his arms and rolled over so that she lay on him, not the hard rock, then he caught her face between his hands and kissed her. Hard. The way he had once kissed her when the flame between them seared them with passion. She opened her mouth to him, wanting that kiss as much as anything she had ever wanted, well aware that this was dangerous, that they were still headed along their separate roads. If ever the universe had decreed that a relationship wasn’t meant to be, this was it.

But she was helpless before the force of her longing and need. For some reason she needed him now, more than ever, but in different ways she could scarcely put a name to.

His hands began to wander, first stroking her back, then slipping between them until he held her breasts. It was so familiar, yet as new as the moment. The hunger within her strengthened, driving everything else away except awareness of him beneath her and the magic his hands worked. It was as if she had been made only for him. She deepened her kiss and lifted her arms until she dug her fingers into his shoulders, silently begging for more. Her entire body tingled and ached, and the throb between her thighs intensified, promising heaven. Her hips rocked against him, and she felt his hardness rise up to meet her.