The Long Ride Home Read online

  “You must have plenty of opportunities to practice,” she said, tracing the line of his jaw, her fingertip rasping against the stubble. “And don’t try to tell me Emily is the only girl you’ve ever kissed. You’re not that pure of heart, Dudley.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I’m gonna wish I never told you that stupid nickname.”

  “Yep,” she agreed with a quick grin. “And you’re changing the subject.”

  He sighed, wishing they could skip this part of the getting-to-know-you routine. Women always got weird when they realized how backward he was about sex. “There were other girls before Emily. And after she left, I was mad at the world and dead set on getting even. I did some things…” He shrugged, assuming she could fill in the blanks.

  “But not anymore?”

  He tilted his head back, gazing up at the point where all the tipi poles converged. “It didn’t feel right, being with someone when there were no feelings involved.”

  “Have you had feelings for anyone since Emily?”

  “Not really.”

  Unless you count now. His hand froze on Mary’s back again. Where in the hell did that thought come from? Mary was…different. Unlike any woman he’d ever met. Fierce. Vulnerable. Brave. And even more head shy than he was. Could he find a woman more likely to bolt at the first sign of trouble?

  “So…what? You’re celibate?” And there it was. The disbelief, as if he was some kind of freak.

  “It’s not like I made a vow,” he said, unable to keep the defensive note out of his voice. “It takes me a while to get comfortable with a woman, that’s all, so if being with someone is just a way to get off, I’d rather, um…you know.”

  “Handle it yourself?” she suggested.

  “Uh…yeah.” And he was not exactly comfortable with where the conversation was going, so he turned it around. “What about you?”

  Her eyebrows quirked. “Girls have ways of handling things too.”

  Heat flared in David’s face and then washed over his entire body at the mental picture she conjured. “I wasn’t asking…I meant…shit. Are you trying to kill me?”

  She laughed, taking way too much pleasure in his discomfort. “If you meant how long has it been since I’ve been involved with anyone—a while.”

  “Because?”

  “Same reasons as you, pretty much. More trouble than it’s worth, and it’s hard on Kylan when they leave.”

  “Just Kylan?”

  Her gaze fixed on a point somewhere below his chin. “We’re fine how we are, just the two of us.”

  Questions piled up at the back of David’s throat. Are you sure about that? Do you really think you can keep him forever? And a dozen others. But it wasn’t his business to question her choices, criticize her for wrapping her life around the kid and her work. Like he could talk. Besides, nothing he said would change her mind, no sense ruining what was turning out to be a damn fine moment.

  She settled deeper into his embrace, her eyes drifting shut. “God, this feels good. Just being here.”

  Being held. Holding on. A basic human need that went much deeper than sex.

  “Then stay.” Because right or wrong, he didn’t want to let her go.

  “Can’t,” she mumbled through a yawn. “Kylan…he’ll think…”

  “How ’bout this one time you don’t worry about Kylan?”

  She dragged her eyes open, tried to scowl. “I can’t just stop. And you still have to decide about Muddy—”

  “We’ll figure something out.” He feathered his fingertips down her forehead, stroking her eyelids shut. “Give yourself a break, Mary. You need it.”

  Her protest was lost in another yawn. She gave in to exhaustion and the medication, her hand going limp on his chest, her body going liquid as fatigue pulled her under. “Just for a minute,” she mumbled. “But tomorrow…”

  “Tomorrow,” he promised, kissing her forehead.

  He eased around so they were stretched out on the camp bed, pulled the buffalo hide over them and closed his eyes, contentment wrapping around him like a cocoon. It had been so damn long since he’d had this—the sharing of warmth and comfort at the end of a hard day. It was worth the deep, grinding ache of unfulfilled physical desire. As much as the sex, the laughter and even the conversation, he’d missed this moment between wakefulness and sleep, when everything he needed was right here in his arms.

  Until tomorrow.

  An idea fluttered at the edge of his consciousness, like unseen wings in the darkness, but he was too tired to reach for it. His thoughts drifted up and away, wafting out through the top of the tipi with the wood smoke to evaporate into the night sky. Tomorrow, he’d gather them up again. Tonight, he wanted only to feel the soft weight of Mary’s body against his as he sank into oblivion.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  David woke to the sound of Mary calling his name. He had a hazy memory of grumbling in protest when she’d left him some time in the wee hours, tucking the buffalo hide around him to replace her warmth. Sleep had claimed him again, dense and dreamless, and it wasn’t letting go without a fight.

  “David?” Mary’s voice was closer, more insistent.

  “Yeah?” he grunted.

  One side of the door flap peeled back a few inches. “Is it safe to come in?”

  “Yeah.” He shoved up onto one elbow, squinting as brilliant sunlight followed her inside.

  “That’s the trouble with a tipi. Kinda hard to knock on the door.” She flashed a nervous smile, got a good look at him and burst out laughing. “Hello. There’s the man who scared the shit out of us in Kalispell.”

  He swiped a hand over his hair and yep, it was sticking up all over. Nice. Mary, on the other hand, looked as dewy fresh as a woman could after the day and night she’d had, all primped and prim in her work clothes. She probably smelled good, too, but no perfume could match the scent wafting out of the mug she held.

  “I brought coffee,” she said, holding up the mug and a napkin-wrapped square. “And a bacon-and-egg sandwich.”

  “You didn’t have to bother.”

  “I know.” She left it at that, watching with an amused expression as he fought free of the buffalo hide. She handed him the coffee first and he took a careful sip.

  “If you need cream or sugar, I can get some from the house,” she offered.

  “Black is great.” He took another sip and then stood, scrubbing a hand over his face to try to wake up. Stubble rasped under his hand. Oh, yeah. Looking good. “Are you leaving for work?”

  “Uh-huh. Gotta be there in about fifteen minutes, so…” She held out the sandwich at arm’s length, like she was feeding a dog she didn’t quite trust.

  David stepped closer, taking perverse pleasure in seeing the nerves jitter in her eyes. “Sleep well?”

  “Uh, yeah. Not bad. You?”

  “Great. Thanks for lending me your tipi.”

  “Any time. Except, um, I guess this will be the only time, but—” She dragged in a breath and huffed it out. “Wow. Who knew the morning after was this awkward when you didn’t have sex.”

  “Maybe this will help.” He scooped his arm around her waist, hauled her in and kissed her.

  She gave a little squeak of surprise, then relaxed and kissed him back. She’d had her morning coffee too, and now he knew she took it sweet and with cream. When he lifted his head, her eyes were warm and amused. “That’s one way to break the ice.”

  “The best way.”

  She smiled, pushed him away and slapped the sandwich into his hand. “I have to go. We’ll, um, talk later, okay?”

  “Okay.” He waited, watching, and was rewarded with an excellent view when she bent to duck out the door. Then that first shot of caffeine hit his brain and triggered an actual thought. “Mary?”

  Her head popped back through the door. “Yeah?”
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  “I want to go back to Rusty’s today. I’d like to take Kylan with me.”

  The doubt sprang into her eyes. “He’s not supposed to be going anywhere after last night. And he doesn’t have a horse.”

  Yet. The idea that had nudged at David the night before was back, three dimensional and fully fleshed, as if it had incubated in his mind while he slept. But it was still more than half-crazy, so he didn’t go blurting it out. “We’ll do some ground work,” he hedged. “Flank and tie a few calves, work on his technique.”

  Mary’s gaze dropped away from his. “I s’pose you want to take Muddy.”

  “Yes.”

  His pulse thudded as she considered, then nodded. “Okay. I’ll see you when you get back then.”

  His head went a little loopy with relief, and something more. She trusted him. Mary, who didn’t trust much of anything.

  She started to leave, but he stopped her again. “Mary?”

  “What?” She peeked in at him again, even more wary.

  “I’ll make sure Kylan takes his phone. We’ll call if we’re going to be late.”

  Her face relaxed. “Thanks. Can I go now?”

  “Yeah. Have a good day.”

  “You too.”

  She disappeared, leaving him with the triumphant knowledge that he’d faced a moment of judgment and passed. A foolish grin spread over his face. He flattened it, as if someone might see and know how much Mary’s faith mattered to him.

  He took another gulp of coffee and a big bite of his sandwich, heard the rumble of her pickup engine fade as he stepped out the door. Sunlight poured down a crystal clear sky, beginning to take the edge off the breeze. The air smelled of dew-soaked grass and the sharper tang of new leaves with a hint of pine. His muscles twitched, primed and ready after a decent night’s sleep.

  A smile pushed onto his face. And why not? The sun was shining, the birds were singing and today they would rope. Plus, he finally had a plan, for what it was worth.

  He polished off his breakfast as he walked to his trailer. Once inside, he dialed up a number from his contacts. “Hey, Uncle Pete. It’s David.”

  He endured another round of congratulations and explanations about how he’d found Muddy and then worked his way around to the reason for his call. “I assume Dad told you about the kid who’s been roping on Muddy?”

  “Yeah. Tough deal. Any luck finding him something to ride at nationals?”

  “No. But I was hoping you’d be willing to help us out…”

  He hung up ten minutes later, the first step of his fledgling plan complete. Now it was a matter of whether he had the balls to go through with the rest. And whether Mary would hand them to him on a platter if he did.

  He swung open the door and stopped dead. Kylan was slouched on the hay bale in front of the barn, the brim of his cap pulled low over his eyes. As usual, he looked like a half-made bed, hair poking this way and that from under the cap, the tail of his shirt slopping out of his jeans, one pant leg caught on the top of his boot. David stepped down, shut the trailer door behind him and walked toward the kid. He stopped a few yards short and they sized each other up like a pair of gunfighters at high noon.

  David waited for Kylan to ask what he was doing there, but the kid didn’t say a word. Just sullen silence and the sound of both horses munching the hay Kylan had fed them.

  “You took us on that detour on purpose yesterday,” David said. “So we wouldn’t get caught leaving town.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  So Kylan had known exactly what he was doing letting David take Muddy off the reservation. Not only knew, but aided and abetted. Trusted David to keep his promise. That counted for a lot in David’s book.

  “How much trouble are you in for last night?” he asked.

  Kylan hunched his shoulders. “I’m grounded until nationals. Can’t go anywhere with my friends, can’t even hang out at Starr’s place.”

  “Tough.”

  “Yeah.” Kylan pulled an alfalfa stem from the bale and crimped it in half with a thumbnail. “It was stupid. I don’t even like Weasel.”

  “So why’d you go with him?”

  “I dunno. Sometimes, everything in my head gets so—” He fisted his hands, shook them, crushing the alfalfa into bits.

  “Does running off make it better?”

  “Sort of. At first. I just…I get so tired of feeling stupid and stuff and it seems like it would be better to be somewhere else.”

  Somewhere that wasn’t his own life. A different place. A different person. A boy who didn’t have to try so damn hard and fail so often. David yanked his gaze away and stared at the snow-capped mountains while he waited for his eyes to stop stinging.

  Kylan’s head jerked up, his voice harsh. “Why don’t you just say it?”

  “Say what?”

  “That I’m not good enough for a horse like Muddy.” Kylan lurched to his feet and jammed his hands in his pockets. “That run you made on him yesterday…shit. I could never in a million years rope like that. It must really piss you off knowing he’s been stuck here, wastin’ his time with me.”

  So that’s what had set him off. Pretty damn obvious, now that David didn’t have his head up his ass. Watching David rope on Muddy must’ve really brought it home to the kid that the horse was no longer his.

  “I’m not pissed,” David said. Anymore.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I think things happen for a reason.”

  Kylan snorted. “Yeah, right. Everybody gets exactly what they deserve.”

  “No. Life isn’t that fair. But sometimes, the powers-that-be even things up a little.” David’s thoughts crystallized with the words, and he spoke the truth as he had come to see it now that he understood Kylan’s situation. “Maybe you needed Muddy more than I did. Or maybe I needed a lesson.”

  “Like what?”

  “To appreciate how lucky I was, for starters. To buck up and keep going, even when it’s really hard.” David made a wry face. “Mostly, I learned I’d rather have a lousy day roping than a great day doing anything else.”

  “Me too.” Kylan pulverized a dried-out horse turd with the toe of his boot. “It doesn’t matter what horse I ride, I can’t beat those guys at nationals.”

  “Is that the only reason you want to go? To win?”

  Kylan frowned, like it was a trick question. “That’s why everybody goes.”

  Okay. Treacherous ground here. David didn’t want to imply that Kylan didn’t stand a chance, but the kid wasn’t stupid. He knew his own limitations. “When I was in the ninth grade, I was so excited just to be there, I didn’t expect to beat anyone.”

  Kylan stared at him in awe. “You made it to nationals in the ninth grade?”

  “I was, uh, big for my age.”

  Kylan ducked his head again. “The only reason I qualified is ’cause a couple of the guys who were supposed to win had bad calves.”

  “That’s rodeo. Luck of the draw. You still had to rope and tie your calves to beat them.” David paused, tried to put together the right words, borrowed some instead. “My dad told me to focus on catching both of my calves at nationals. He said most years, no more than a third of the ropers will get a time on both runs, so if I just did that I’d be in the top forty in the country, and that wasn’t half bad.”

  “Did you do it?”

  “Yeah.” Actually, he’d ended up third, not thirtieth, but that wasn’t anything Kylan needed to know.

  Kylan’s forehead puckered as he thought it over, then he puffed out a sigh. “I miss a lot of calves.”

  “Muddy can be hard to rope on.”

  At the sound of his name, Muddy raised his head, looked from David to Kylan, then decided neither of them were worth his time and went back to his hay.

  Kylan stared into the barn, working his bottom
lip in and out. “Are you still gonna take him?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I thought maybe since you and Mary…”

  “Since we what?” David asked, bristling.

  “Um, you know.” Kylan waved a hand toward the tipi. “You were in there together last night, and she didn’t come in the house until real late.”

  “And you assume we had sex?”

  Kylan’s face went red, but he didn’t back down. “That’s usually how it works.”

  “Not for me.”

  Kylan shot him a look of patent disbelief. “You don’t like sex?”

  “No. I mean, yes, of course I like sex.” David felt his own face heating up. “But not with a woman I’ve just met.”

  “Why not?”

  Oh, hell. David did not want to go through that whole song and dance again, so he kept it as simple as he knew how. “I don’t like being naked in front of a stranger.”

  “Oh.” Kylan pondered that for a moment. “I guess I never thought of it like that. It is kinda scary, huh?”

  “I’ve always thought so.” He gave the kid a severe look. “And it’s an insult to Mary, assuming she’d be willing.”

  Kylan tucked his chin into his chest, scuffing at the dirt with his foot. “I heard her tell Galen she’d do anything to make sure I had Muddy for nationals.”

  The doubt demon jumped on David’s back, dug in its claws. He tried to shake it off. “I don’t think she was talking about seducing me.”

  “Yeah. I guess not.”

  Probably. Silence fell again, heavy and awkward. Even the horses stopped chewing, eyeing them as if waiting to see what would happen next.

  David cleared his throat. “About nationals…how would like to try roping on Frosty?”

  “Your white horse?” Kylan’s gaze shot to the stall. “You mean you could leave him—”

  “I haven’t entered any rodeos yet for that week,” David cut in. “And it’s not that far to Pueblo from where I live. I asked my uncle, and he said I could haul Frosty down there for you to ride.”