And Then You Kiss (Crested Butte Cowboys Series Book 3) (21 page)

“I want you to call me Rose,” she said to him one day.

“Why?”

“I don’t like Rosa. It’s too…ethnic.”

“But it’s you,” he said. He ran his finger over her cheek when he said it, and she leaned her head into his hand.

“Rosa—beautiful Rosa. Please don’t try to change who you are. You’re perfect.”

She blushed again, and that was the first time he kissed her.

Her parents were very strict, and were opposed to her dating a boy from Aspen, but Tucker was relentless. He made excuses to come and see her in Basalt on the weekends. He sketched her all the time, and for Christmas, he gave her parents a portrait he painted of her. They accepted him after that, and while they were still very strict with her curfew, they did let her go out with him.

Rosa’s brother, in particular, didn’t like Tucker, or Jace. He’d gone to school in Basalt and worked the ski area. Both Tucker and Jace were on the ski team so they ran into him almost every day. He’d scowl at them. The day Tucker tried to start a conversation with him, all he said was that they should leave his sister alone.

Tucker didn’t understand what he’d meant by that. Why had he said they should leave her alone?

“She’s got a mind of her own,” Jace said that day. His brother looked as though he was trying to start a fight with Rosa’s brother, so Tucker pulled him away.

Jace’s reaction surprised him, and they argued. Tucker told him that he could fight his own battles and he didn’t need Jace to intervene. It was important to Tucker that Rosa’s family liked him, welcomed him, accepted him.

It was one of the worst fights the two brothers ever had. Tucker could feel Jace’s anger, and he didn’t understand it. It didn’t make sense to him. The only thing he could surmise was that Jace resented how much time he was spending with Rosa. That still didn’t explain why he fought with Rosa’s brother.

When they were in their senior year of high school, Tucker approached his father the night before Thanksgiving. He wanted to ask Rosa to marry him at Christmas. He wanted them to be married right after graduation. His father wasn’t opposed to Rosa, he told him. He liked her, but Tucker was too young to be married. His parents were in agreement that Tucker should finish college before he thought about marriage. If he and Rosa still wanted to be wed then, they’d have his parents support.

Tucker had been invited to Rosa’s house for Thanksgiving, and he went, hoping to have the chance to talk to Rosa’s father. If he felt differently, perhaps he could get his own parents to change their minds.

Rosa’s family was more against it than Tucker’s was. Her father sat Tucker down and told him it would never work between them. They came from two different worlds. Once Tucker went away to college, he’d see that more clearly. Rosa would never fit in his world. Tucker insisted her father was wrong. The economic differences in their families didn’t matter. Her father was intransigent. He refused to discuss it further, and asked Tucker to leave.

He was angry, very angry, and he didn’t want to upset Rosa, so he left. On his way to the truck, he saw her brother standing not too far from it. As he usually did, he tried to ignore him. With the mood he was in, getting into an argument would likely result in something much worse.

“Cabron,”
he said to him when he walked by. “Telling my father you want to marry my sister. You think Rosa loves you?”

Tucker kept walking, trying not to react.

“You think you’re the only
pendejo
who comes around to see her? You’re wrong, and you’re the same—assholes, both of you.”

Tucker didn’t know what Rosa’s brother was talking about. He figured he was trying to rile him further. When he got in his truck, he threw it into gear and drove away, his tires laying rubber on the road as he did.

He drove and drove that late afternoon. He went up to Independence Pass and hiked to the top. He sat there, trying to get his temper under control, until the sun began to set.

He drove back to Basalt, hoping to talk to Rosa. He needed to see her, she was the only one who could calm him down.

When he drove up to the house, he saw two figures standing near the back shed, it looked like a man and a woman, in a heated embrace. He stopped the truck and started to climb out. He startled them. And then, he heard Rosa gasp. She was with another man. She was running toward him, calling his name. He remembered backing away, turning and getting into his truck.

“Wait,” she screamed at him. She reached the passenger door before he could lock it, and she climbed inside.

“Tucker, please,” she begged. “Let me explain.”

“Get out of the truck Rosa. Get out of the fucking truck.”

“I won’t,” she insisted. “We have to talk, you have to understand…I love him.”

Tucker couldn’t think straight. She loved someone, and it wasn’t him. He didn’t understand, and he didn’t want to. How could Rosa love someone else?

He yelled more, telling her to get out of the truck. He looked up and saw the man walking out of the shadow of the darkness. He couldn’t do this now. If he got anywhere near him he wasn’t sure what he’d do. Right now he felt like killing him.

“Get out of the truck Rosa,”
he screamed at her. “If you don’t, I’m leaving with you in it.”

“Do it then,” she screamed back at him.

Tucker backed the truck out of the driveway and sped away. He couldn’t look back, he couldn’t see who it was. He didn’t know what he’d do if he did.

“Tucker please,” she begged him. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

Tucker didn’t want to listen to her, he didn’t want to hear this. She was ripping his heart right out of his chest. He wouldn’t answer her. He drove faster and faster on the winding mountain road.

He was going around a curve when she pulled at his arm, trying to get him to look at her. He lost control of the truck and it barreled off the road, and rolled. He looked at Rosa, her eyes were filled with terror, and looking straight into his.

“I looked at her Blythe, right before the truck rolled. The look in her eyes…I’ll never forget. She looked at me like I was supposed to save her, and I couldn’t.

“She didn’t live Blythe. She died. And it was my fault. Do you understand? It was my fault. I killed her that night, the only woman I ever loved. Until you.”

Tears were rolling down Blythe’s cheeks as she listened to Tucker. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but she wanted him to finish, to say everything he needed to say. If she interrupted him, he might never ever be able to tell her the rest of the story.

“I had internal injuries that required emergency surgery, and I ended up in the hospital for several days. Her family came to the hospital one night, but waited until my parents left before they came in the room. Her father was in an angry rage. That I could deal with. But her mother, her rage was quieter, and far worse. The things she said to me…I’ll never forget them.”

“What did she say?” Blythe whispered.

“She cursed me. Screamed that I would never find love, never know love because I didn’t deserve it. She told me that even Rosa didn’t love me, but she’d been too afraid to tell me. She told me Rosa had always been afraid of me.

“I didn’t understand it. Rosa never acted as though she was afraid of me. I was so confused, and heartbroken. I didn’t understand.

“Her mother told me that Rosa had wanted to get away from me for months, but she was afraid of what I’d do when I found out she was in love with someone else. And then she told me Rosa loved someone close to me, and knew if she told me,
I’d kill him.
”

Tucker was crying, and the final words he said came out as a sob. “I guess she was right, because when I saw her with another man, I did want to kill him. I honestly did. And that’s why I was leaving, because I was afraid of that kind of rage. I wouldn’t have hurt her, but I might have hurt him, whoever he was.”

Blythe reached out her hand to him. He wanted to take it, he wanted to let her hold him, but he needed to finish.

“When I got out of the hospital, I lashed out at all of my friends. I knew it had to be one of them. I accused them all, I wanted to force them to tell me who it was, but no one would. I swore all of them off, swore I’d never talk to any of them again. The only one I didn’t was Chris, who you met at Django’s. He and his wife, Kate, have been together since high school. Kate told me that Chris had been with her that night, and I knew she wouldn’t lie about it. If she thought Chris had been unfaithful to her, she would’ve been in as much of a rage as I was.”

“That’s why you’re such close friends.”

“He was the only one I trusted. And Jace. They became the only people I’d talk to, other than my parents. I had to get away from Aspen. Everyone I saw, I wondered if he was the man with her that night, the man she fell in love with.”

After graduation, which he didn’t attend, he left for Europe. He went to art school in Spain, and decided to make his home there. He came back to the States for holidays, but was always anxious to leave again. When he was in Aspen, he only saw his family, and occasionally Chris and Kate. Then he’d return to Europe.

It wasn’t long before his work became known and US galleries were clamoring to represent him. He’d been coming back more often in the last couple of years, but he still had no desire to live here again.

“Jace and I have a condo in Aspen, but I’m almost never there. It has my art in it, the pieces I’ve given to Jace, or the ones I haven’t wanted to sell. In the last three years, I don’t think I’ve slept there more than a dozen times.”

“Spain is your escape.”

“It has been.”

“Is that where you were?”

“No, it isn’t. I would’ve been too easy to find. I went to Mexico.”

Blythe was taking it all in. He could see her processing the story he was telling her.

“When I came back before Thanksgiving, I had been feeling as though my life was meaningless. I wanted love, the kind of love my parents have, the kind that since Rosa died, I never believed I could have. I knew it was too much to hope for. I expected life to continue the way it had been. A series of affairs with women I lost interest in after a handful of times of being with them.

“And then there you were. You with your violet eyes and obstinate attitude. The minute I saw you, I wanted you, and I knew it wouldn’t be meaningless between us. I could feel you. It was immediate. We connected, and I know you felt it too.”

Tucker moved his chair closer to the bed. He wanted to hold her, but he wasn’t finished. He had to finish.

“I didn’t plan to leave on Thanksgiving. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to get away, push Rosa out of my head, and come back in to you. But once I started driving, I kept going. Leaving is what I knew, what I know. And up until this last time, it was always Spain I ran to.”

He told her he painted her every day when he was in Spain. He was with her less than twenty-four hours, but he could still remember everything about her. He told her he painted her hands, the curve of her spine, her smile.

“They’re all still in my house. I have a home in San Sebastian, it’s a seaside village on the Bay of Biscay. It’s in Northern Spain, very close to the border of France.”

He inched closer still, taking both her hands in his. “When Jace told me he planned to see you in January, I knew I had to come back. You are the first woman I’ve felt anything for since Rosa. For a while I didn’t think I would ever feel anything again, especially love. I didn’t think it was possible.”

He stood and she moved over, so there was room for him. He gently climbed in next to her and put his arm around her, bringing her closer to him.

“When Bree’s husband died, I saw how you took on all her pain. You swallowed it; you carried it for her. Whatever Bree was going through, you felt. I was so worried that if I told you my story, you would do the same. I wanted to tell you, but it was so soon. The funeral was that same day. It would have been selfish for me to burden you with my pain, my damage, as Jace calls it. But I knew if there was going to be anything more between us, and I wanted there to be, I needed to tell you.”

He was torn, which is why he was acting the way he was. He’d wanted to go to Aspen, to think, but he was afraid if he did, he’d head right back to Spain. Then, the worst thing he could ever imagine happened.

“The accident,” she whispered.

“I woke up. I saw you. Your back was to me and I couldn’t tell if you were breathing or not. The next thing I knew I was in a hospital bed. Again.

“Rosa’s mother’s words came screaming back at me. She told me I’d never know love because I didn’t deserve it. You know, I’ve never told anyone else what she said to me that night. I never told my parents or Jace that Rosa’s parents even came to see me in the hospital.”

That was why Jace didn’t understand, why no one understood. They thought he couldn’t let go of Rosa, but that wasn’t it. It wasn’t about letting go, it was about believing in the future. That was the part he couldn’t let himself do.

“You have no idea how hard it is for me to believe it now. Every part of me is terrified that with me in your life, something will happen to you, and now, to the baby.

“That’s why I left. I believed you were better off, safer, without me in your life. But a couple nights ago, when they brought you here, I knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. I couldn’t stop myself from calling Jace. I had to know what had happened. The only other two times in my life I felt that way were when Rosa looked at me, right before the accident, and again, when you did.”