Chapter Three
Larissa felt Matt’s eyes on her from the moment she’d stepped out of her rattletrap new-used car.
It was an uncanny, shouldn’t-be-possible thing. But the hair on her arms lifted with awareness of his gaze. A pleasant shiver squiggled down the back of her neck. Her stomach sank in that same sensation she’d had when she rode her first roller coaster—anticipation and excitement building, building…
And all he’d done was stare with that broody, melted-chocolate gaze. She headed his way, needing to get this over with so she could free herself of her last connection to Wyoming. Move on with the future she’d chosen long ago.
“Hi.” She wished she had a better icebreaker for a difficult conversation. But she was nervous enough without being clever.
“It’s not too late to get back in your car.” Matt kept his arms crossed over that impressive chest of his, one shoulder tipped against a fence post near the toolshed.
Behind him, an older man turned the key in an ATV and roared off toward the pasture, the scent of the exhaust dissipating in a sharp breeze off the mountain ridge. Even on a sunny day, the wind was unrelenting. Constant.
“You’re in that much of a hurry to get rid of me?” She shoved her hands in the back pockets of her jeans to remind herself not to touch him.
“It’s not me who wants to get out of going to Callie’s wedding.” He shrugged. “I warned you that she’s an ace with that lasso.”
“I was hoping you were kidding about that.” She stopped a few feet away from him, drawing a mental boundary between them.
Today, in the bright sunshine of a clear summer day, she could better appreciate the dark fringe of his lashes. The way his eyes followed her movements. The barest hint of that dimple in his left cheek. He was even more handsome than she remembered. More appealing.
More dangerous to her peace of mind.
“I learned months ago not to kid about this wedding.” He held his hands up to show his innocence. “One minor bridezilla crack and I was on the losing end of an old-fashioned wrestling match with the soon-to-be newlywed. I learned my lesson.”
She couldn’t help but smile. “That bad?”
“The Briggs women are fierce.” He straightened from the fence post, his full height making her all the more aware of him.
Her throat dried up.
“Right.” She expended all her willpower not to moisten her lips. “Not all that different from the men.”
His brows shot up. “Me? I’m as easygoing as they come.”
“I hope you’re right about that.” She didn’t realize she’d said the words aloud until his head dipped to better see her expression.
“Why? What makes you say that?” His gaze narrowed.
No time like the present.
“Can we talk privately somewhere?” She should have done this last night and then it would be over with. She’d be on her way to Las Vegas right now.
“Want to have a seat?” He pointed to the table near the shed.
“Um.” She hesitated. “Maybe we could go for a walk?”
“You’re serious about staying out of Callie’s line of sight, aren’t you?” His smile was a sudden, unexpected pleasure.
He looked younger when he smiled. Reminded her of the college-aged Matt she’d been in love with eight years ago.
Her heart beat harder.
“I’m planning on speaking to her and your grandmother before I leave. Callie called Mrs. Henderson while I was over there this morning and asked me to drop by. But until then—?” She pointed toward the gravel road that led to the barns.
She’d visited the Briggs Ranch a few times when they’d been dating. Enough to remember her way around.
He didn’t move.
“You sure about that, Rissa?” He used an old nickname for her—obviously without even thinking about it. One that he’d only used when they were wrapped around each other in a bed or—more often—a hayloft. “We’ve got a history of taking our clothes off when we’re alone.”
As if she didn’t remember. She swallowed. “I’ll do my best to keep my hands to myself.”
He seemed to think that over, but eventually he seemed to concede to her wishes since he started down the path.
“For the record, don’t hold back on my account.” He lifted a hand to acknowledge a young man leaning over the engine of an old pickup truck parked behind the house.
The guy fixing the truck nodded before returning to his greasy work.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” She tugged her hands out of her pockets, swinging her arms to keep up with his quick pace once he got underway. “But, Matt, the real reason I made the trip out here was to apologize for the way I left—”
He halted. “Don’t.”
She had to back up a step. “What?”
His eyes were a flat brown now. “Do not even go there. I’ve put the past behind me, so if this is some kind of effort to smooth everything over nice and pat, you can just save it. That part of my past is long gone.”
He sounded deadly serious. But the thing was, she’d come all this way for just this reason.
“I realize that.” She hadn’t expected such a staunch reaction. “And I’m not trying to resurrect anything—”
“Good. Because no matter what Callie might say about me needing a date for her wedding—she’s just joking.” His jaw flexed with a steely set. “I’ve got a lot on my plate right now and I don’t need the complication of a woman’s expectations.”
Well didn’t that put her in her place? She bristled at his assumption.
“I don’t expect anything of you, Matt.” She had plenty on her plate, too. “Other than letting me get my thoughts out of my mouth.”
He seemed to chew on that. Overhead, a crop-duster plane buzzed toward a local farmer’s field, casting a shadow over them both for a moment.
“Fine,” he said finally, voice tinged with resentment. “As long as there is no talk of apologies for water under the bridge.”
“It was more than water under the bridge.” She looked past his broad shoulder, her gaze fixing on a distant peak in the mountains to the west. Taking a deep breath, she told him the truth. “I was pregnant.”
*
The moment stretched out, the ramifications of that statement casting long shadows over the last eight years of his life.
Hurt scored his mid-section. Hell, he wondered if he looked down at his gut right now he’d see an open wound. That’s about how it felt.
Then, the anger hit with a cold, hard fist.
“You took my child?” The words were a harsh rasp of air.
“No.” She shook her head. Blinked fast. “Not like that. I miscarried.”
He closed his eyes. Needed a five-count to process that. Some of the cold, fisted anger faded away. But another kind—a hot, burning resentment—simmered in its place.
“When?” he asked tightly. “How far along?”
“Just twelve weeks.” She wrapped her arms around herself, the wind plastering her shirt to her delicate curves, wreaking havoc with her dark hair until she reached up to hold the ends in her fist.
In the back of his mind, he wondered why she felt the need to tell him now. She could have withheld the information forever and he never would have guessed. Why had she come all this way eight years after the fact to crash a wrecking ball through the past as he knew it?
But the fact of the matter was this: she had told him. He couldn’t return to that oblivion of a few moments before. And right now, he needed details. All of it.
“Tell me everything. When you found out. Why you didn’t tell me. Why you thought you could take a Briggs out of the state—”
“I will.” She peered behind them toward the main house. “Can we keep walking, please?”
At least now he understood her request for privacy. He didn’t want this conversation floating on the wind for anyone working in the barns to overhear. His gaze landed on the side door to the heavy machinery shed where his father had kept an office.
“As long as you keep talking.” He palmed the small of her back and steered her toward the machinery building. No one would be in there at this time of day. “This way.”
She picked up her pace, apparently appreciating his need for answers. A few barn cats trotted out to greet them, but he stepped around them to unlock the door with a key from the ring in his pocket. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d come in here since his father died. But he needed this space now.
Two of the cats scurried in along with them before he could close the door behind them. Lock it. He tugged down the roman shade on the window in the steel door for good measure. Then he pointed to the worn leather couch near an old woodstove that sat cold now. He clicked on the overhead fan to move the air around the space that consisted of file cabinets, a desk, and wall-to-wall maps of Briggs land.
“Sit.” He reached under the desk to the mini refrigerator that was still chugging even though no one would have touched it for months. He pulled out two bottles of water and handed her one before he dropped onto the seat next to her.
“Matt.” She set her bottle on the floor and shifted toward him. “I wouldn’t have kept the pregnancy from you if I hadn’t miscarried.”
“You would have brought my child back here?” He watched her as she scooped up an orange tabby cat and laid it across her lap to pet. “Back to Cheyenne, after you were all the way in New York?”
“Yes.” She hesitated. “At the time I just needed some space to think through what to do next. I knew I wanted to go to New York and dance one day. Live the dream my mother wanted for me. And between us getting serious and then the baby news…” Her fingers flexed in the cat’s fur. “I panicked.”
“Yet you would have brought my child back here? When? When he was eight?” He couldn’t help the anger boiling through him by now. “Were you planning to text me the news of my kid’s birth, too?”
“It’s impossible to say what I would have done because I hadn’t figured it out yet by the time I went to the obstetrician—and then there was no heartbeat.” She spoke softly, carefully, like the words still hurt. “The doctor said it was common. That about twenty percent of pregnancies are lost before that twelve-week mark.”
He wished he’d been able to share that with her then, to comfort her. But she’d never given him that chance. He shot to his feet, restless with frustration about something that had been over for years. Something he couldn’t fix.
“I’m more sorry than I can say that you had to go through that alone,” he said finally, pacing around the back of the desk, his boots echoing on the worn hardwood floor.
“I denied you the news, and I denied myself your support. At first I thought it was okay that I hadn’t shared something that would have only hurt you as much as it hurt me.” She drew a long breath before continuing. “But I never would have ended things so abruptly if not for the pregnancy and that part—the way I broke things off—I always regretted that.”
He didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t wanted an apology, but she seemed to need to get this off her chest.
“Why now?” He lowered himself to sit on the edge of his father’s desk beside a model of an International tractor that Matt had built as a kid. Damned ironic that a tractor had caused his father’s death. “I can see this bothering you a year or two after the fact. But eight years?” He shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
The second cat that had come into the office with them jumped up on the desk to sit behind him. Matt scratched his head.
“I was leaving New York anyhow. Things haven’t been going well for me professionally for the last couple of years since an injury.” She twisted open the cap on her water bottle and took a sip. “Actually, my personal life took a downturn too. And then my girlfriends and I were listening to this radio show with a popular life coach talking about how making peace with the past could clear the way for new happiness—” She broke off mid-sentence. “I know. It sounds silly. But at the time, I was sure that the advice applied directly to me.”
“A life coach?” He had visions of Larissa taking direction from a muscle head with a whistle. “As in, someone who tells you how to win at life?”
A half smile kicked up the corner of her lips. “Kind of.”
Seeing that smile, knowing he was responsible for putting it on her face, felt damn good. He wanted to repeat the process and see that smile again and again. Except she’d only come here to put him firmly in the past.
The idea sucked the wind out of that good feeling. The sound of the clock ticking on the wall opposite the desk seemed louder suddenly, counting down the seconds until Larissa would walk away again.
“So you’re off to Vegas?” he asked, scuffing his boot over the floor and wishing he had more time to oversee the upkeep of the place.
His dad had run a successful ranching operation that inspired Matt to go out and start his own. Why hadn’t the old man treated himself to a few updates now and then? Matt would have been happy to run a sander over the office floor and stain it. Now that his father was gone, Matt had less time to do things like that. And it was too late for his dad to enjoy it anyhow.
Maybe it was the upcoming wedding making him think about his father more this week. On top of that? He’d have to get used to the idea of how close he’d come to being a father himself.
“Yes.” Larissa capped the water bottle and set it near her feet. “I’m hoping it’s a restart for my career.”
“You said you’d had an injury?” He didn’t want her to walk out just yet. It wasn’t like him to put off work, but who knew if he’d ever see her again?
“Hip problems—labral tears, some impingement issues. Nothing required surgery, but I had to rest it for so long I needed to quit dancing for months.” Gently, she set aside the orange tabby cat and rose from the couch to look over a group of framed family photos on the wall near the woodstove. Like the maps, they’d been there for as long as Matt could remember.
“Are you sure it’s wise to continue?” He hated to think of her putting herself through more pain.
“It’s hard to say when you’ve pursued something for long enough—when it’s your dream.” She pointed to the framed photo at the center of the grouping—his grandparents on their wedding day. “Do you think your grandfather ever asked Hattie that question about her bull riding?”
“Only when he was prepared for the fallout, I expect.” Sliding off the desk, he joined her where she stood looking at the photographs. “Eventually, she decided to settle down somewhere she found real happiness. Follow a different kind of dream.”
Joy radiated out of that old photo. The two of them laughed at some private joke just before the picture was taken. Instead of a wedding dress, Hattie wore her biggest rodeo buckle—just like her groom. The only nod to the day was the white lace she’d tied around her Stetson.
“It must be tough giving up something you love.” Larissa stepped back from the photos, her green eyes finding his.
“Maybe not if it’s for someone you love.” He referred to his grandparents, of course. But hectic color rose in Larissa’s cheeks anyhow.
They both knew she’d chosen dancing over him.
“Maybe.” She cleared her throat. “I’d better get back so I can fulfill my promise to see Callie and your grandmother today.”
He nodded, knowing he needed to let her go even if the conversation had stirred…something. Sadness, yes. Pain for a loss he hadn’t known about. Yet underneath that, the attraction between them was still there; that much was certain. He saw it in the way she kept some distance between them. In the way her eyes followed him.
What if she’d been thinking about him—about their shared past—for more reasons than just a need for closure?
He didn’t want to have regrets of his own once she left town again. Eight years ago, he’d been so focused on his own goals, his own future, he hadn’t given much thought to hers.
It had never occurred to him to prove to her that life on a remote Wyoming ranch could be rewarding. He’d assumed she was drawn here the same way as him. But what if he could show her a different side of ranching?
A different side of him?
“I should warn you that my grandmother isn’t well.” Matt wasn’t ready to lose more of his family, but his father’s death had taken a noticeable toll on Hattie. “She’s still feisty, but the years seemed to catch up with her overnight when my father died.” He scooped up the key ring and unlocked the office door.
“I’m so sorry about your dad.” Larissa followed him, giving his forearm a squeeze. “I remember you two were close.”
“Thank you. It’s been a rough year without him.” The burn in his throat shouldn’t surprise him after all these months. He opened the door wide to let the cats out and Larissa, too. “Dad worked that same hill a hundred times with that tractor. Best we could figure is that it was wetter than usual and that made the tractor slip.” He swallowed past the emotions as he locked the door behind him. He should have been here that day, helping his father. “Anyway, Hattie is convinced this is her last summer and that’s one of many reasons Callie wants the perfect wedding.”
“Understandably so,” Larissa murmured as she headed back up the hill toward the main house with him. The orange tabby kept pace, clearly reluctant to lose a friend.
“So don’t be surprised if you’re attacked from all sides about being a wedding guest.” Matt wondered if Hattie would be able to convince Larissa to stay.
His grandmother had always liked her.
And, Matt realized, he didn’t think it was such a bad idea for Larissa to stick around a little longer. They’d never have the kind of relationship they used to. But they were older now. Wiser. There was no reason in the world they couldn’t enjoy that attraction for a few days before she left.
Larissa, unaware of the direction of his thoughts, gave a resolute nod. “I will remind them how awkward it will be for you—”
“For me?” Matt laughed. “No way are you using me as an excuse, Rissa. If you want to take on my sister and Granny, you go right ahead. But as far as I’m concerned, you’ve got an open invitation to spend the week at Split Fork or Briggs Ranch. Take your pick.”
She missed a step and he caught her arm. She blinked up at him in the bright sun, the wind whipping her dark hair against her cheek.
“You’re kidding, right? You don’t want me here—”
“Don’t forget we’ve made a good start at finding peace with the past,” he teased, enjoying the way her lips pursed in irritation. “And as my sister pointed out to you, I don’t have a date for the wedding.”
“You certainly wouldn’t want to attend your sister’s wedding with me!” Her cheeks took on a shade of red almost as deep as her T-shirt. “Matt, honestly.”
“I’m being completely honest.” He took her hand to turn her toward him so they were facing each other. So there could be no mistaking his words. “We’re not dating. We’re not in love. But you’re hot as hell, Larissa Martine. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend this Saturday with than you.” He stepped closer. Just near enough to brush a thumb along the side of her cheek. “In the interest of giving us a positive sort of closure, of course.”
Her jaw dropped. For a second she gaped at him. Then, tugging her hand from his, she spun on one boot heel to stomp off toward the main house.
Even the orange tabby couldn’t keep up. Matt picked up the cat as he watched her walk away, liking the view a whole lot.