Chapter 37

Melanie woke with a visible start when the wheels touched down. After their night in the woods, Wyatt could tell if she was sleeping…or faking it so she didn’t have to talk to him about what had passed between her and Hank. He knew the act had become reality when she started twitching and mumbling.

Was it the stress, or was she like him—incapable of shutting down completely? He wanted to know. Just once, he wanted to be with her for reasons other than crisis control. To hold her, touch her, watch her sleep just for the mutually agreed-upon pleasure of it.

He also wanted world peace and an end to global warming.

She blinked groggily and scrubbed a hand over her forehead. “How did I doze off on that carnival ride?”

“After we refueled, I took a detour and found smooth air over southern Idaho and the low end of the Blues.” He turned off the runway and taxied toward the area reserved for private aircraft. “Did you sleep at all last night?”

“Not that you’d notice.” She yawned hugely and checked the clock. It wasn’t quite five o’clock Pacific time. “Wow. You can cover a lot of territory in a day with this thing.”

He nodded, then switched over to the ground frequency and radioed Pendleton Aviation that he was going to tie up instead of hangaring his plane for the night and wanted it fueled for takeoff to Reno the next morning. Heat radiated up through the soles of his shoes when they stepped out onto the asphalt.

Melanie tilted her face into the mid-afternoon sun, soaking it up. “Ahhh! I thought I was never going to be warm again. I don’t know how Hank…”

She trailed off with a shake of her head, clearly not ready to discuss her brother. Still in her thinking space. When she emerged, would she jump in her car and drive straight back to Montana? Without Wyatt. He might not have heard what was said, but the gestures Hank had made toward him had been crystal clear.

Wyatt should apologize for tagging along. He’d known what would happen when Hank saw him, but for Maddie’s sake—and for Grace’s—he’d had to judge the situation for himself. The fact that Melanie had allowed his presence was testimony to how scared she’d been about what she might find out in those woods.

Once again, Wyatt was the lesser of available evils…and pathetically grateful to be even that much to her. Saying he was sorry would be just one more lie.

While Wyatt tied the plane down and went through his postflight routine, Melanie strolled over to a vending machine beside the door to the flight school office. She’d pulled her hair out of the ponytail, and it rippled in the breeze as she sauntered toward him with a Coke in each hand, a leggy, loose-hipped all-American fantasy girl.

He downed half the Coke in the first few gulps. Damn, that tasted good. When he lowered the can, he took the chance of asking, “How are you doing?”

“I’m not sure yet. But I do know I’m starving.” She visibly shook off the clouds that darkened her eyes. “Burgers?”

“Race you to the car.” And this time, he won.

* * *

When they emerged from the drive-through, Wyatt asked, “Home?”

“No.” She slid him a considering glance. “I realize you’ve already done more than enough, but could you manage one more favor?”

“Sure.”

Her brows arched. “Not even going to ask what it is first?”

“Not today.” Not ever, even if he went through the motions. For an incredibly perceptive woman, she had somehow failed to realize that he was incapable of saying no to her. “What do you have in mind?”

He doubted it included taking her back to the apartment, pulling the curtains, and trying to love her hurt away. After everything she’d been hit with in the past week and a half, how was she even upright, let alone functional?

“Come riding with me. Horseback,” she clarified when he blinked in confusion. “I need some fresh air to clear my head after today, and the boys need exercise…if I’m going to rope tomorrow night.”

“Really? That’s…great.”

She scrunched up her nose. “I doubt it after all this time, but I’ll get back in the groove eventually. So…?”

She wanted him to ride. With her. Hell. Why didn’t she just ask him to strip naked on Main Street? He’d be less self-conscious. He sighed. “That’d be great.”

He almost managed to sound like he meant it.

She ate in the car—careful not to drip ketchup from her loaded burger, he noticed—then left him to wolf down his two double burgers while she caught and brushed the horses. As she tossed blankets onto the back of the sorrel, Wyatt realized the flaw in her plan.

“You only have one saddle.”

She swung it onto the horse and reached under his belly for the front cinch. “You can take this guy. I’ll jump on Roy bareback.”

Literally. As Wyatt tried to get comfortable in the unfamiliar western saddle, she grabbed two handfuls of mane and vaulted onto the buckskin, then settled on his back as if she was kicked back in a rocking chair.

Gesturing at the trail, she said, “Lead the way.”

Damn. He’d been hoping to totter along behind where she couldn’t watch him, and he could enjoy the sight of her flowing so easily with every move of her horse. Unlike him. He sighed and nudged the sorrel forward. The horse stepped out eagerly. Wyatt was intensely aware of Melanie’s gaze on his back as he tried to focus on the rhythm, the press of his thighs and calves against the saddle, keeping the reins snug to maintain that ever-important contact his riding instructor had drilled into his head.

When the trail crossed the saddle club driveway, she rode up alongside. “Did you ever ride outside the ring? Just meander over the hills or whatever you have out there?”

“No. My family doesn’t meander. Our riding was all about discipline.”

“Well, this isn’t.” She poked him lightly in the side. “Make like Gus McCrae and slouch a little. The judges aren’t watching to be sure your horse maintains a perfect topline.”

“Habit,” he said stiffly. “I was taught to keep my horse between my legs at all times.”

She laughed. “An excellent strategy. Things tend to go straight to hell when I fail to keep a leg on either side of my horse.”

Wyatt grinned reluctantly. He was aware that he was overly sensitive about the subject, but all of the things that set him apart, his riding style had always felt like the most emphatically not cowboy.

“What we need here is to give your brain a logical explanation for why we ride the way we do.” She moved a few steps past, then swung Roy around to face him, making a wide, sweeping gesture. “Picture the Panhandle, and how much ground a horse might have to cover. You want him as relaxed as possible to conserve energy on those dawn-to-dusk days—his and yours. And that is one of Cole’s horses, so I guarantee he can follow a trail or a cow from here to Texas all by himself. Your job is to leave him alone and let him do it.”

Well…okay. That made sense. Wyatt took a deep breath and drew upon his progressive relaxation training to consciously push the tension out of his body with the exhale and allow his shoulders to slump.

“There. That’s already better.” She swung her gaze around to study the trail, which crossed over the highway and meandered toward the river, skirting a series of large ponds. “How much farther does that go?”

“About half a mile.”

She jerked her chin. “Give ol’ red there his head.”

Wyatt did as she instructed, putting slack in the reins. The horse heaved what sounded like a sigh of relief. For the rest of the way, Wyatt attempted the opposite of contact, imagining himself so light in the saddle that he all but floated. In response, the gelding dropped his head and settled into smooth, ground-eating strides designed to cover a lot of Texas country. The sun was warm on Wyatt’s back, the air sweet with the scent of blooming Russian olive trees. He was so lulled by the clomp of hooves and the easy, rocking gait that he was surprised when they emerged from a cluster of trees at the river’s edge.

“Much better,” Melanie said.

“Thanks.” He had to squelch a foolish smile at her approval.

She slid off of Roy, unsnapped one end of the roping rein from the bridle, and picked her way across the stretch of rocky beach, leading the horse. Wyatt followed suit. The horses eased up to snuffle and lip at the river, cold, rushing water being a novelty to creatures of the flat, hot Texas prairie. Melanie crouched to trail her fingers in a small side stream, as graceful as a deer with sunlight striking fire in the chestnut brown of her hair.

Another image permanently burned into Wyatt’s brain. Another place—along with the bar, his arena, the Roundup grounds, and especially the apartment—where he would never stop seeing her.

He cleared his throat. “How’s the job hunt going?”

“I just finished putting everything together. My portfolio is pretty strong, but the cover letter…” She grimaced. “I’m eager for new challenges. Ugh. And I wouldn’t ask Westwind for a letter of recommendation even if I thought I’d get one.”

“As your most recent client, I’ll give you a reference.”

“For what? I haven’t done anything yet.”

“I beg to differ. Our business has quadrupled since you came to town. Louie had to restock the beer cooler a week sooner than usual.” A chore most bars performed nightly—at least.

Her mouth twisted. “That’s just pathetic.”

“Tell me about it.” He picked up a small piece of driftwood and turned it over in his hands as he watched her from the corner of his eye, trying to sense her mood, what direction she might swing. He edged back from the side of the river. No sense making it easy if she settled on being mad at him for screwing up her chances with Hank.

“Speaking of doing something about the bar,” she said, “I have thoughts.”

“I was hoping.”

She threw him a mock sneer. “These things take time. I drafted a preliminary plan, but I like to get to know the client, figure out the things they don’t want to tell me.”

And now she’d reached a verdict. His body tensed, fiber by fiber, as he braced to hear what she’d deduced about him.

“Such as…” She flicked water from her fingers in a shower of sunlit diamonds. “You failed to mention that you’d talked to Hank since Cole fired him. When, pray tell, was that?”

Crap. He’d hoped Hank hadn’t got around to mentioning that. Wyatt scored a groove in the soft driftwood with his thumbnail. “About a month after he left Texas. There’s a winter rodeo series in Billings, Montana, that needed a bullfighter, and they would have put him up.”

“He said to give you this…” She flipped him a middle finger.

Figured, but at least the gesture hadn’t been aimed at his sister. Wyatt heaved the driftwood out into the river. “I should have found someone else to make the offer, but I thought it would be worse if he accepted, then found out after the fact that I set it up.”

“And his sister was too wrapped up in the big release of our new fly control mineral formula to be bothered.”

Oh hell. He grimaced in apology. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even consider—”

“You shouldn’t have had to! He’s my brother. My responsibility.” She stood abruptly, causing the sorrel to jump back a step, rocks clattering under his metal-shod hooves. “I tried so goddamn hard to fill in all the gaps for Mama, did everything I could to keep the peace between him and Daddy, hauled him to practice and rodeo and the ER, and he won’t even…” She gulped in a breath, giving her head a violent shake. “No wonder he was hiding. As usual, it’s me, me, me!”

Wyatt wanted to insist that she’d been a teenager, for hell’s sake, doing the best she could, but she wasn’t asking his opinion. She was just thinking out loud, still sifting it all through…

Still in her time-out corner. And she’d invited him inside the space she so rarely shared. He felt as if she’d handed him the key to a secret glade wrapped in sunshine, water, and rustling trees. His heart stumbled, half joyfully, half fearfully.

Don’t screw this up. Do not screw this up! He bit back the reassurance that leapt to his tongue and waited.

She wound the end of Roy’s bridle rein tight around her hand. “Hank tried to tell me how he felt about Mariah. And I told him not to be stupid. How’s that for supportive?”

“Understandable, considering the circumstances. You were trying to protect him.”

She hunched her shoulders. “Maybe I should have tried listening instead. Then he wouldn’t be…”

She bit her lip and kicked at a rock before turning dark, miserable eyes toward Wyatt. “I know I promised not to ask…but if you could explain what in the hell would make you want to be more like this, I could really stand to hear it right now.”

“You believe,” he said simply. “In yourself, your friends, a greater power…and in Hank. For all of the times and all of the reasons he’s given you to stop, you’ve kept believing in him.”

“Have I? Or was I just using him to get back at my parents for leaving me to pick up their slack? Nothing better than helping him do exactly what Daddy didn’t want.”

“Now you’re being stupid.” He caught her arms to make her face him. “Tell me…what did you think the first time you watched Hank fight bulls?”

She bowed her head and closed her eyes, as if fixing the image in her mind. And then she blew out a wavering sigh. “I was amazed. He was so good. And I was excited, because I’d never seen him so excited. He was one of the best players in every school sport, and he liked them all, but the day he made his first save in the arena…it just lit him up.” She raised her head to meet Wyatt’s gaze. “You know how that feels.”

“I do.” And it still did, every single time, but this wasn’t about Wyatt. “Are you listening to yourself? You watched your brother find his calling, and you were thrilled for him. Those are not the words of a self-centered person.”

She ducked her head again, pressing a fist to her temple. “I can’t tie him up and drag him out of that place, no matter how much I want to. But I can’t stand doing nothing. I just…I don’t know how to help him. I’m supposed to know.”

“We’ll figure it out.” He rubbed her arms, resisting the impulse to fold her close. His body was already trying to misinterpret her proximity. “I’ve been through worse than this, Melanie. I’m not going to pretend it’ll be easy, or quick, but Bing is right. He’s showing signs of recovery. And you need time, too. Everything you’ve had to deal with…most people would be flat out on the floor. Give yourself a break, and a chance to sort it all through.”

She tilted her head, considering, then angled a look at him through her lashes. “While you start prodding your contacts for the best treatment options?”

Busted. “I may have made a mental list on the flight home,” he admitted.

She huffed out a soft laugh. Then she threw one arm around his neck and gave a quick, hard squeeze before stepping back, turning to toss the rein over Roy’s neck and snap it to the bridle.

His unguarded heart gave another of those hopeful bounds before he reined it in. Stop! Even if she’d meant it as more than a platonic gesture, he couldn’t…could not allow her to believe they could be anything more than friends—and even that was unforgivably selfish. His fall was inevitable. Encouraging her to climb onto this crumbling ledge with him would be flat-out cruel.

“What was that?” he asked, lacing his voice with a touch of easy humor.

She grabbed two fistfuls of Roy’s mane and vaulted onto his back, then swung the horse around to face Wyatt. “I told you I wasn’t sure whether to kick you or hug your neck. I made up my mind.”

Without waiting, she pointed Roy toward home. By the time Wyatt climbed into the saddle and caught up, she was almost to the highway.

“Got any plans for the evening?” she called over her shoulder.

“No. Why?”

“No better therapy than work, and no time like the present to get started on my plan for the Bull Dancer. Like I said, I have thoughts. And I have an extra rope.”

“A…what?” On top of that unexpected embrace, the images that popped into his head short-circuited his ability to process information.

She frowned thoughtfully as she reined up and waited for a car to pass. “I wonder where we could find a dummy steer.”

Oh. His lust bubble burst into Technicolor shreds. “There’s a farm store on Southgate that carries rodeo gear. They’re open until nine, and they probably have what you need.”

“Me?” She splayed a hand across her chest and gave him a wide-eyed grin. “Au contraire, mon ami. We’re gonna teach you how to rope.”