All the King's Horses (13 page)

My gaze slid toward Amy as she watched couples slowly forming on the dance floor. What the hell I was thinking, I had no idea, especially when my heart rate was somewhere about ninety miles a minute and I was sure I might just choke on my own voice, but I gestured with my beer bottle at the swaying couples.

“You want to?” I asked.

Amy blinked. “Are you… Really?”

“Why not?”

“I…” She stared at me in disbelief.

Before I lost my nerve, I pushed my chair back, stood and held out my hand. “Come on. It’s just one dance.”

I was sure she was going to politely decline or tell me to keep dreaming, but after a couple nerve-racking seconds of uncertainty, she put her hand in mine and stood.

On the dance floor, Amy put her other hand on my shoulder as I rested mine on her waist. Falling into step during a line dance was easier than getting our feet under us now. Nerves tried to tangle my feet up with hers, and neither of us could quite look at each other. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Because clearly, if Amy and I needed anything, it was a reason for things to be more awkward between us.

Like, say, touching. Pushing the envelope between platonic distance and something much too intimate. Just a slow dance to a country song, yes, but considering how icy we’d been since the day we’d met, jumping to this step was as sudden as if we’d skipped all the bullshit and dived right into bed.

That thought sent a shiver through me, and I couldn’t hide it from her.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I smiled through my nerves. “You know, I think we really got off on the wrong foot. When we met, I mean.”

Amy shrugged. “It happens.”

“It does,” I said. “But I’m sorry about it. How things started out.”

“Me too.” She held my gaze—
oh God, your eyes are beautiful
—and shrugged. “I think we’re going in the right direction now, though.”

And what direction is that?

I just moistened my lips and then whispered, “Yeah, I hope so.”

Amy smiled but said nothing.

I wondered if she could tell how fast my heart was beating just then. Thank God it was a slow dance, because my shaking knees lacked the coordination for even the most basic line dance right now. Just moving like this, close together and making a steady circle around this small expanse of the floor, took all the concentration I had.

God, I could kiss you now.
The thought startled me, but I didn’t argue with it.
I want to kiss you, Amy.

But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not knowing what I did about her, and I couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or a bad thing that I’d looked her up last night, that I knew she was so recently a widow. If I hadn’t, then I wouldn’t be so reluctant to obey the voice in my head that screamed for me to lean in and kiss her. She might have been okay for a dance, but a kiss would be too much, and I could only imagine the awkwardness if I tried and she declined.

So I just kept on dancing with her and hoped I didn’t lose my fucking mind. Or fall on my ass, and that was a distinct possibility.

“I’m glad I’m not the only nervous one,” Amy said with a smile in her voice, and when I looked in her eyes again, we both laughed quietly.

“I haven’t done this in a long time.” I was certain my cheeks were bright red, but hers weren’t exactly pale right now either, so I held her gaze. “I swear I’m usually a little better at it than this.”

One shoulder rose in a half shrug. “Oh, I don’t know. You’re doing okay as far as I can tell.” Her smile turned to a devilish grin. “You haven’t stepped on my feet yet.”

I glanced down and chuckled. “Well, now that I’m thinking about it, I probably will.”

“Do it,” she said. “I
dare
you.”

We both laughed again and kept trying to dance, which was when I suddenly realized we’d fallen into step when I wasn’t looking. In perfect synch, we moved. I stepped; she stepped. I went forward; she went back. Together, we turned.

Amy looked up at me, and her smile almost threw me back into stumbling over my own feet again. “Maybe we can get the hang of this after all.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “Just needed to shake off the rust, I guess.”

“Apparently so.” The song faded, but as he often did, the deejay followed one slow dance with another, and though the tempo changed just slightly, it may as well have been one continuous dance. Part of me wished he’d skip into a faster one, because I could no sooner stop now than I could in the middle of a song, so I kept going, and she kept going, and somehow we kept going in spite of nerves and not knowing what the hell we were doing.

The song changed again. Another slow one. I glanced over Amy’s shoulder and caught the deejay’s eye, and my face burned when he gave me a wink and thumbs-up.

I didn’t say anything to Amy, though. I didn’t suggest going back to the table, and I sure as hell didn’t tell her about my silent exchange with the deejay.

Somehow in step, we kept on dancing.

The night was quiet except for our boots on the porch steps and some distant crickets.

Our boots stopped. The crickets didn’t. Standing there midway between our front doors, Amy and I looked at each other. Though we’d long since stepped off the dance floor, she still had a hint of color in her cheeks and more than a little life in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. I thought she was beautiful when we stood here a few hours ago, but she’d had nothing on the woman looking back at me now. She certainly hadn’t stirred quite the same reaction below my belt like she was doing right now, and I caught myself regretting wearing jeans quite this tight, because all she had to do was look…

We were both still and quiet. It was one of those heart-pounding moments that took me back to my teenage years: looking at each other under the front porch light, a half dozen slow dances still tingling in my feet as I stood there wishing I could read her mind and not quite sure what I hoped would happen next.

“Well.” She offered a nervous smile. “Good-night.”

I swallowed. “Yeah. Good-night.”

And with that, we went our separate ways, and the moment was over, but God knew my heart was still pounding and every step we took seemed somehow like it was in the wrong direction, and—

Amy stopped.

Back still toward her, so did I.

“Dustin.”

I turned. “Hmm?”

She moved a little closer so the porch light illuminated her face. “I, um, I had a really good time tonight. I think I needed it.”

I somehow found enough air to reply, “Glad to hear it.”

She returned the smile. “So…thank you. For taking me out.”

“You’re welcome.” I hesitated. “If you, um, want to get out again, let me know. I mean, obviously you can drive just fine, but if you want me to show you around town or something.”

And when the hell did I turn into a rambling school kid?

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. “Always nice to have someone around who knows the area.”

“Well, you know where to find me.”

Chapter Nine

Amy

Five thirty never comes earlier than it does after a late night, especially when there’s drinking involved. Not that I drank all that much, so I really couldn’t blame my heavy eyelids, throbbing head and dragging feet on anything that came from a bottle. All of that probably came from a long night of staring up at a dark ceiling, wondering what the man on the other side of the wall was thinking, or if he was sleeping when I definitely wasn’t.

Hungover or exhausted, whichever it was, one thing was for certain—I was in a better mood than I had any business being in at this hour.

Not that I really tried, but I couldn’t get last night out of my head. From day one, I’d been sure Dustin didn’t like me, but something had changed in him last night. He was… My God, he was actually
nice
. To
me
. And not just when he did an about-face and suggested I work with Blue and Star.

I knew damn well it wasn’t a date. We hadn’t gone alone, and he was my boss, for crying out loud. But I hadn’t been out with someone like that in so long, I didn’t even care if the resulting butterflies—butterflies I actually
felt
this time—didn’t mean anything. All that mattered was that my heart was beating again. I couldn’t even say when it had stopped, only that last night, something had kicked it back into motion, and this morning, I didn’t feel so dead inside. Regardless of where something like this might go, even if it went absolutely nowhere from here, I let myself be in love with one evening out with a man whose smiles weren’t loaded and questions weren’t baited.

Standing on the porch last night, when we’d locked eyes and nobody said anything for a little while, I’d wondered if he might kiss me. Or if I might work up the nerve to ask him to come in for a drink. He didn’t, and I didn’t, but that moment was more than I’d had with anyone in so, so long, and I held on to that.

Of course I didn’t dare say a word to Dustin about it. He’d have thought I was some sort of crazy, clingy stalker he never should have taken out for an evening. I mean, how on earth could I explain to him that all I meant was he’d given me an evening I didn’t even know I’d needed? That without even trying, he’d brought me back to life in ways I hadn’t known I was dead? It wasn’t love. Probably wasn’t even lust, though I’d decide that when and if I ever saw him without a shirt. Last night was, nothing more and nothing less, just a few hours of feeling like I was worth getting up from a table for a dance.

Last night was perfect in and of itself. If nothing else, I had hope there was a light at the end of this numb, depressed tunnel, and these days, I couldn’t ask for much more than that.

It was noon when we finally crossed paths in the barn. We made eye contact in the aisle, but he quickly broke it, and that black-brimmed hat didn’t quite hide the color in his cheeks. I tried to keep my amusement from showing as we continued in opposite directions. What could I say? On a guy who’d initially struck me as an abrasive jackass, shy was adorable.

Adorable and just as puzzling as last night. Both parts of last night. The going-out-and-dancing part, and the asking-me-to-work-with-his-horses part. His one-eighty threw me. One minute, I was sure he was this close to sending me packing for interacting with Chip, and the next, he was asking me to work with Blue and Star, and the one after that, he was asking me for a dance that wound up going on long past one or two songs.

But what about Sam?

That thought deflated some of my good spirits. The wedding ring was around my neck again, a tiny golden albatross to remind me I was grieving. I was
supposed
to be grieving. I hadn’t even taken the time to pay my respects to the man I’d given a decade of my life, and something about last night felt disrespectful and shameful. Like I’d had no right to give even that much to Dustin, and certainly no right to take what he’d given me. There were times I’d hated Sam, nights I’d dreamed of waking up a single, unattached woman, but he was my husband. And I had loved him. Maybe not when he was at his worst, but enough that it was too soon for me to feel this giddy about a night of dancing with another man.

Only problem was, the fact that my husband was barely cold in the grave didn’t change the fact that no man—
no man
—had ever held me like Dustin did last night. So it was just a dance? If he could touch me so gently and make me feel so… God, what did I feel? Safe? Comfortable? So turned on I wanted him to take me right there on the dance floor? If he could make me feel that way with just a fully clothed touch in public, what could he do to me behind closed doors?

I shivered, goose bumps prickling my arms and neck under the hot desert sun. I should have been ashamed, and in a way, I was, but at the same time, I was intrigued. I wanted Dustin, and damn it, I felt guiltier about wanting him than I did for feeling nothing about my husband’s death, which didn’t make sense because I didn’t feel like a widow. Or a married woman. Or even a single woman. I didn’t know what I was except attracted to Dustin. More attracted to him than I should have been in light of recent events.

In spite of the guilt and the shame, though, I felt better than I had in a long time. The pain was coming. The onslaught of grief that I wouldn’t be able to stop. It was there, hiding behind a wall that hadn’t yet come down, and sooner or later I wouldn’t be able to hold back that avalanche of emotional hell.

But if only for today, I wasn’t numb and I wasn’t sad, and I wasn’t letting go of that.

This afternoon, after I’d finished everything that needed to be done before the afternoon feeding, Dustin was in the barn when I went to take Blue out for the first time. I hesitated at the stall door, halter in one hand and half-fastened door latch in the other, waiting for him to come to his senses and tell me to get back to fences and horseshit.

He didn’t, though, and I was really working with Blue now.

Blue, whose ground manners were
awful
. On the way to the arena, he wasn’t too bad. Not great and certainly in dire need of work, but not as bad as he was in the arena. The minute we were through that gate, he was a nervous wreck. It wasn’t as obvious when he was ground-driving, since there was no one for him to step on when he decided to spook or just not pay attention, but when I led him? Different story. We’d been in the outdoor arena for fifteen minutes, and he’d already stepped on my foot three times.