Close Enough to Touch (23 page)

The trail continued on for more than three miles, but Cole knew
where Madeline had been headed and he couldn’t see any reason she’d have wanted
to go down the other side of that split in the ridge. Then again, her mind
didn’t work like his, and maybe the view wouldn’t be enough for her. Maybe she’d
decided she needed to head down into the next valley to see what the view was
like from the other side.

No way would Jeremy have the backbone to say no to a woman like
Madeline.

For the first time, it occurred to Cole that there could be
another reason they were late returning. His eye twitched. He shifted in the
saddle again and couldn’t find a position that didn’t make it feel as if hot
steel was jammed into his hip.

Madeline Beckingham was a woman of passion and drive, and not
just for her work. Even when he’d been twenty-one and she’d been thirty-two,
she’d been nearly too much for him, needing sex more often than he had. And on
rides like this, she’d sometimes been overwhelmed with the beauty of the place,
and the ideas swirling violently through her head, and she’d almost been manic
in her need.

“Jesus,” he cursed, hoping like hell that he didn’t round a
corner and find her riding Jeremy like some crazed pagan, naked in the rain and
wind.

Cole had thought she was a legend. An artist. A force of
nature. And the truth was, no matter how much she’d hurt him, she was all those
things. He’d been a fool to think she’d settle down with a man like him.

The same fool he was being for Grace. If he wanted a wild woman
who couldn’t be tamed, then he’d have to learn to live with being left standing
there, scratched and bruised and alone.

At three-quarters of a mile up, his hip felt as though it was
going to disintegrate. It felt as if every step were splitting him slowly in
two. The wind suddenly died down, and the trail edged around another rock face,
the rain falling steady now, slicking the rocks. Cole breathed in the wet air
and tried to ignore the pain, but in that moment, staring down at the
seventy-foot drop, he knew. It was over. Despite all his brave words, despite
his denial, his life on horseback was over.

He’d been in the saddle for half an hour and it took everything
in him not to scream with each step. He’d never make it through an eight-hour
day, much less the sixteen-hour days during a roundup or a drive.

This was it. He had the money to buy the ranch, but what would
be the point? This was the end. All his plans were dead and had been for almost
nine months. He just hadn’t realized it until now, even if everyone else
had.

He made himself keep his eyes sharp on the view below, but his
shoulders slumped. He could find work around here. He knew too many people to
find himself without a job. But what would he be working toward? What was he
going to do with himself?

Rope tricks at a dude ranch? Cooking brisket at some tourist
joint? Maybe he could work at a hole-in-the-wall bar and drink his way through
his nights the way his dad had.

His father hadn’t been mean or embarrassing or even
particularly drunk. He’d just popped open a beer when he walked in the door at
night, and pounded them back until bedtime. He’d been…numb.

Cole wouldn’t mind a little numbness right about now.

Cringing at a particularly bad spike of pain, Cole rounded the
last, long curve before the trail headed up toward the break in the rock above.
He didn’t see any sign of Jeremy or Madeline yet, or the horses.

Thunder rumbled, and after the violence of the lightning
strikes, the sound was almost soothing. But as he rode higher and higher toward
the summit of the trail, Cole began to worry again. He’d expected to find them
just at this point, sheltered beneath the overhangs of rock nestled in the
aspen.

Lightning struck again, farther away this time, and Cole dared
to urge the mare all the way to the split in the rock that the trail edged
through.

He fought the urge to close his eyes against the pain in his
hip. Every step the mare picked out was a brutal reminder that he was doing more
damage. He reached the split in the rock and tightened his fingers just the
smallest bit. The mare still knew him, and his sense of her was coming back.
Cole patted her neck and sat as straight as he could.

A small valley spread out below. They used it for grazing in
the early spring, but the cattle were higher now, eating grass that didn’t green
up until late June. Rain sheeted in the wind, but it wasn’t so heavy that he
wouldn’t have been able to spot two riders. No one was there. Where the hell
were they?

There was nothing down there but a grove of aspen and an old
sheep-camp trailer. The wind gusted, blowing the rain toward him for a moment.
He ducked his head and let it drip off his hat, then tried again. Despite the
wind, the rain was dying off again. Cole squinted into the valley, then caught a
hint of movement. He looked again, back toward the old trailer. Something moved
beneath it.

No, not beneath it. Behind it. A horse shifted and poked its
head around the corner.

“Bingo,” Cole breathed, and urged his mare past the rock and
down the trail. He was a quarter of the way down when he realized maybe this was
none of his business. If they wanted to snuggle up in a broken-down love hut,
they were welcome to it. But Jeremy should’ve known better. He was on the clock,
and Cole would be damned if he’d let the boy get paid for sex.

When he got to the bottom of the trail, he almost kept riding.
There was a creek at the mouth of this valley, and he could just follow it down
to a dirt road that crossed it a mile up, then circle back to the ranch. But
he’d still only seen one horse. There was a chance there was a problem. A small
chance.

Cole set his jaw and rode across the grass. The sharp agony had
faded into a strange buzzing numbness around the edges of the pain. Probably not
a good sign, but it was a relief. He still kept the horse to a walk.

When they got close, the mare snorted and whinnied to the
gelding hobbled behind the little camp hut. A few seconds later, the tin door of
the hut flew open. “Cole!” Jeremy called. He seemed fully clothed, but his shirt
was wrinkled and matted to his body.

“Is Madeline in there?”

“Yeah, her ankle’s pretty swollen, though. Her mount spooked in
the storm and took off. Luckily, she was already off and just holding the reins.
Got yanked off her feet. She should be fine, but I didn’t want to risk riding
through the storm.”

Cole glanced at the sky. “I think it’s letting up.”

Madeline hopped into the doorway as Jeremy stepped down to the
grass. “I need to get back, Cole. Is it safe?”

Aside from the foot she held off the ground and some damp
patches on her clothes, she looked totally unaffected by the adventure. Smoke
puffed from the tiny chimney of the stove that heated the trailer. Jeremy had
played the gentleman, it seemed.

“Hey!” Jeremy said. “You’re riding!”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to take Ms. Beckingham back while I look for that
horse?”

“I—” Cole cut himself off. No, he didn’t want to ride back with
Madeline tucked against his back, but he couldn’t trot around for an hour or two
looking for a lost horse. He met Madeline’s eyes. He didn’t know what she and
Jeremy had been doing in front of that stove in the camp hut, but the good news
was that he didn’t care. “Hand her up,” he said tersely.

Madeline grabbed the fur-edged vest she’d been wearing and
shrugged it on, then Jeremy tossed her up to sit behind Cole’s saddle. Her arms
went around his waist. She put her chin to his shoulder. “Thanks, Cole,” she
said softly. She didn’t offer a farewell to Jeremy.

“Come back along the creek,” Cole ordered, then headed that
direction himself.

For a while, he was so aware of this woman pressed against him
that he forgot his hip. It felt strange to have her touching him. She’d once
been his lover, and then he’d hated her. Now it just felt like a stranger was
embracing him. He shifted and cleared his throat.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Fine. You?”

“I’m good.” A few heartbeats passed before she spoke again.
“How badly were you hurt?”

He hoped she didn’t notice the way his muscles twitched at her
question. The woman was too quick by half. He didn’t answer.

“You said you’d hurt your leg, but the limp, the way you favor
that side… Jeremy seemed surprised to see you riding, which made me realize I
haven’t seen you on a horse once since I got here. You were glued to one on that
first set.”

“This isn’t a set. It’s my life and my work.”

“More reason to be on a horse, then. What’s going on,
Cole?”

God, his jaw ached with the strain of his teeth grinding
together. It was none of her damn business. More than that, he didn’t want her
to know. He’d never thought he’d see her again, but if he’d had to choose, she
wouldn’t have seen him like this. The lowest point in his life. The weakest he’d
ever been. She’d left him lying on the ground like trash, and here he was again,
as if he’d been ruined by her. As if he’d never gotten up and moved on.

He imagined Grace coming through ten years from now. Imagined
himself as his father, broken-down and numb and bitter.

Christ. That couldn’t happen. He’d have to find some way. He
couldn’t let these people determine who he was and wasn’t. Madeline, Grace,
Easy, the doctors. He couldn’t measure himself with their words, see himself
through their eyes.

“I shattered my femur,” he finally said. “Broke my pelvis. I
haven’t been on a horse in nearly nine months.”

“Oh, Jesus, Cole. I’m sorry. But you’re better now?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, thanks for coming to my rescue. I think that boy was
scared of me.”

He grunted and eased the horse down a steep bank. Shifting
again, he tried to find a way to stall the pain for a moment.

“We can walk if you want,” Madeline said quietly.

Cole stared straight ahead. “I’m not sure that would work at
this point.”

She touched his hip, slid her hand over him with proprietary
ease. He looked down to see her hand on his thigh, her fingers sliding slightly
under the edge of his chaps. It reminded him of Grace touching him, so he let
her do it. It hardly mattered at this point.

“You need help, Cole?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think cowboys have the best health-care plans, do
they?”

“I had insurance,” he said dully. “I’m fine.”

Her hand rubbed up and down his thigh, and he hated that it
felt good. “You’re back in the saddle now. Are you just going back to being a
cowboy, then?”

“Yes. This place will be mine soon,” he said, not knowing if it
were true anymore.

“That’s why you’ve been so possessive about it.”

He stayed silent, keeping his eyes on the creek as he led the
mare along the shallow edges.

“Why don’t you let me help you?”

Her hand slid to his inner thigh. Cole gritted his teeth
against the feeling, but his cock began to swell. “What are you talking
about?”

Her hand slid up. She chuckled and scraped her nails along the
fabric that strained over his erection. He wanted to tell her it had nothing to
do with her. Nothing at all. It was just an automatic response to touch. But
that would sound pitiful, so he just moved her hand back to his thigh.

“I know what you must think of me, Cole. But I know what I want
and I go after it. And I want you. Again. The way it was before. You were good
then. I know you’re even better now. More mature. A man’s touch. A man’s
knowledge.”

“Just say it,” he growled.

“I’m leaving today. I’ll be in L.A. for a few weeks before
coming back to film. Why don’t you come out to California with me? Like old
times. You can recuperate. Relax. Sit in the hot tub. I’ve even got a personal
masseuse. It’ll be good for you. You’ll be a new man.”

A new man. He’d been a new man after his last trip to L.A.,
too. He’d gone out there an arrogant kid, and he’d come back a man, though not
for the reasons she’d think. When she’d kicked him out, he hadn’t wanted to go
home. He couldn’t have imagined it. Dragging back into town with his tail
between his legs. All that bragging he’d done. All the friends he’d blown off.
And his girlfriend, whose family had once embraced him as one of their own—he’d
broken her heart. But more than anything else, he hadn’t wanted to face his
father.

His dad had been disgusted that Cole had even wanted to work on
the movie set in the first place. And when Cole had decided to leave town, his
dad had called him a disgrace. The worst kind of son. And a man who didn’t know
how to keep his word. “You’re a fool if you think those people want you,” he’d
said. “And you’re a fool if you think I’ll want you back when they’re done.”

So Cole hadn’t gone back. His pride hadn’t let him. Instead
he’d stayed in L.A. with the money Madeline had showered on him. He’d partied
and slept around, hoping the news would get back to Madeline and hurt her. He’d
gotten drunk and popped pills so he wouldn’t have to see what he was doing to
himself.

A few weeks later, his father had died. Alone. A heart attack
that Cole could easily blame on himself. His pride had meant nothing then. He’d
come home to try to inch his way back into being a man his dad could’ve been
proud of. Cole owed him that, at least.

He shook his head.

Madeline made a soothing noise and slid her hand back to his
cock. “You didn’t love me, you know.”

He let her hand stay where it was this time, because he wanted
her to feel that her touch wasn’t working anymore. But he should have known
better. She just stroked him and pressed her breasts against his back.

“You didn’t love me,” she repeated. “You loved the excitement.
The newness. The adventure and the sex. You didn’t know me well enough to love
me. So whatever you tell yourself about what happened, know this—when you
whispered that to me, it wasn’t true, and that’s what I had to live with. That’s
what I’ve always had to live with, whether it was you or someone else. People
want things from me, Cole. Even when I was a little girl, my friends knew who my
father was. And their parents knew.”