Harvest at Mustang Ridge (9 page)

He fell in beside her as they headed up the barn aisle with Klepto trailing behind. “You’ve got a top-notch setup and they’re making it easy.”

“This is a good group.” She rolled open the sliding doors wide enough for them to slip through. “Not every week is going to be this— Oh!” She stopped dead at the sight of her parents and grandparents standing in the parking lot, shoulder to shoulder and looking braced for a shoot-out.

Her stomach headed for her toes. She loved her family, she did—loved the way they fit together, laughed
together, worked together, especially these days. And there had been times in her life that she had been incredibly grateful to have her parents and grandparents backing her up, letting her lean on them, or giving her a needed kick in the butt. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of those times. In fact, it was times like this that she thought longingly of a one-bedroom apartment or a little cabin in the woods, someplace where she didn’t have a well-meaning committee weighing in on her every move. What had happened to “We trust your judgment, honey”?
Gah!

She stepped in front of Wyatt. “Hang on. It wasn’t what it looked like. We were just—”

Without warning, a hand clamped over her mouth from behind, bringing a quick impression of warm skin and rough calluses. Then she was set firmly aside as Wyatt moved up to face the others. “I’ve got this.”

A
s a rule, Wyatt didn’t do complicated, he didn’t do long-term, and he sure as heck didn’t do meet-the-parents. He didn’t know exactly how he had wound up one-for-three on that, but he’d meant it when he said he wasn’t going to bail on her this time. More, he wasn’t going to bail on himself, or the better man he had tried to be in the years since he’d walked out on her.

Squaring off opposite her family, he held still as big, grizzled Ed Skye gave him a long up-and-down, and said, “We’d like a word with you, Webb.”

“I’d say you’re due several. First, though, I owe you folk an apology for a meal I missed eight years ago.”

Beside him, Krista sucked in a breath. “Wyatt, you don’t have to—”

“Yeah, I do.” At first he’d been relieved that she hadn’t asked him about that night. Now he felt like it needed to be said, not just to her, but to all of them. “I panicked. I’m not proud, but that’s the short and long of it.”

Ed Skye’s eyes narrowed. “Go on.”

He tried to get it right. “I was twenty-four, and I’d been out on my own since after high school, rodeoing to help support my ma and my sister because my old man couldn’t be bothered. So you’d think I’d be mature for a college kid. Maybe I was, in some ways. Not where it came to Krista, though.” He glanced over, saw that she had backed off a few steps, face pale. “I fell hard for her, and I fell fast, and suddenly I wasn’t just thinking about getting a job and saving for my own place anymore. There was Krista, Mustang Ridge, her plans to start a dude ranch. . . . It was incredible,
she
was incredible, and there was this whole new life opening up in front of me. But then . . .” He faced her fully, because telling the others was taking the easy way out. “I wish I could say there was something big, a defining moment when I knew I couldn’t do it. But there wasn’t. It was more that in those last couple of weeks before graduation, that big wide world you were offering me started feeling smaller and smaller, like I was a bull caught in a squeeze chute. I kept checking out job listings that weren’t anywhere near Wyoming. Then, when that wasn’t enough, I called on a couple.” When he got the offer, it was like a gate had opened up at the far end of the chute and he had glimpsed brilliant green grass beyond. “That night, when it came down to meeting your family, taking the next step . . . I just couldn’t. I wanted to be with you, but I wanted everything to stay the way it was at school, with all of us looking forward to whatever came next. I couldn’t”—
commit, box myself in, lock myself down
—“be the guy you needed.”

She didn’t say a word. He didn’t know if that was a good sign or bad. The others, too, were silent. Watching him. Listening. Judging. Finding him as lacking as he found himself when it came to those last few weeks of school.

“That night, I was getting dressed to head to the restaurant, when . . . I don’t know. I just blanked.” Standing frozen in front of the mirror, seeing a stranger in the glass and feeling like the tie she’d bought him for the occasion was cutting off his air. So he’d hacked off the tie with his pocket knife, pulled his bags out of the closet, and started stuffing them full. His face had been wet, his heart sick, but that hadn’t stopped him. “I drove straight through to Texas, where there was a job waiting for me.”

He had lasted eight months there, seven at the next place, then bounced around until he hooked up with Ryan and learned that mixing metal with fire and an eight-pound hammer could forge a quiet place in a man’s brain.

Nearing the end, wanting to get it over with, he said, “I’m sorry for embarrassing you in front of your family and ruining graduation. Most of all, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all of it sooner, and in person, the way I should have. That was about as wrong a thing as I’ve ever done, and one of my biggest regrets.” When Krista didn’t say anything, just stood there staring at him with a blankness he hoped to hell covered anger rather than pain, he turned to the others and said, “I was old enough to know better and handle it like a man, and I
didn’t. If any of you want to take a swing at me for it, then go ahead.”

For a second he thought Krista’s grandfather was going to take him up on the offer. Instead, he harrumphed and said, “It’s one thing to own what you did wrong, another to not do it again. And the two of you looked pretty close this morning.”

“We were just talking.” Which was the truth, but not really an answer. Wyatt wasn’t even sure he
had
an answer, because the more he was around her, the more he remembered why he had fallen so hard in the first place. Krista was unique. Special. She saw the best in everyone but wasn’t a pushover. She was a caretaker, a nurturer, and sat a horse in a way that made a man want to write a bad country song. None of which he was going to say to her parents or grandparents, especially when he was just passing through. So instead, he said, “With all due respect to each one of you, what happened this morning is between me and Krista. I’m going to leave it up to her when and if she wants to discuss it.” He turned to her. “That work for you?”

He didn’t get an answer, though, because she was gone.

*

Down by the lake, on the far side of the boathouse where nobody would see her unless they came looking, Krista pressed her face against the rough wall, shaking with the force of her sobs. The tears burned her eyes, her skin, and the place where she had bitten her lower
lip hard enough to draw blood as she forced herself not to react to his story, not to let him embarrass her all over again in front of her family.

Damn him.
Damn
him. Why couldn’t he have left it alone? She hadn’t asked, hadn’t wanted to know. She just wanted to move on.

The tears hurt. Everything hurt—her head pounded, and her heart felt gaping and raw. She didn’t want to feel this way, hated that he still had power over her.

She didn’t want to be twenty again, didn’t want to remember the restaurant, the mad rush to the apartment, the walls collapsing in on her as she read his letter out loud to her family. Which hadn’t been the worst of it. The worst had been waking up the next morning with her eyes and throat raw, then turning to find Jenny asleep beside her, and having it come crashing down on her all over again—that he had lied to her, left her, hadn’t loved her enough.

Her dreams of having a family and a forever-after with Wyatt had died hard over tear-soaked weeks and months. Yet somehow there were more tears now, more grief, and the new panic-sting of knowing she was in danger of doing it all over again.

God, this sucked. Why did it still hurt like this? And why was he the only one who made her
feel
?

“Ah, hell, Krista,” Wyatt’s voice said suddenly from right behind her. “I’m sorry.”

She jerked and spun toward him, galvanized by horror—that he had come after her, that he had seen her
like this—and her hands came up against his chest as he put his arms around her. His pecs were warm and firm beneath the material of his work shirt, his body solid.

She tried to shove away, but he held on tight. Furious, she smacked his chest and glared up at him. “Let go of me!”

Eyes dark, he shook his head. “I can’t do that. Not when you’re this upset.”

“Leave me alone!”

“It seems I can’t do that, either.” The regret in his voice made her heart shudder, as did the feeling of his body pressed against hers.

He would let her go if she struggled, she knew, leave if she insisted. But she was weak, darn it, and he was solid and strong, and offering a shoulder. Against all her better judgment she sagged against him as the tears broke free once more. Burrowing into his chest and finding that her head didn’t hurt so much when the lights went out, she wailed, “Why did you say all those things?”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I thought you and your family should know what happened back then.”

“I didn’t want to know!” It hurt to cry, hurt to hold him, hurt to let herself be held.

He tightened his arms around her, like he was afraid she would pull away when he said, “I’m sorry I took off on you, Krista. I’m sorry I left that letter. I was afraid if I told you in person, I’d never make the break.”

Let it go. It doesn’t matter anymore.
But the words came unbidden, feeling like they were being ripped from her chest. “You said I was different, that the way you felt about me was different!”

“You are. It was.”

“Don’t!” She beat at his arms. “Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear. Tell me the
truth
, damn you!”

He was holding her so close that she could feel his pulse. “That
is
the truth, always was. I never had the same feelings for anyone else, before or since. But it turned out that I wasn’t wired for forever. I wanted to be. I tried to be. But I didn’t have it in me back then. Still don’t now, but at least I know better than to try.” His voice went hollow. “I was a stupid kid and I pulled a crappy stunt taking off like that, but whether it happened then or a few months later, the end result would’ve been the same. We were too young to get in that deep so fast.”

She wanted to argue, but wept instead, sobbing like she had that night.

Stupid to cry, stupid to feel anything. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“Shh,” he said against her temple, rocking her. “Any boy who treats you like that doesn’t deserve you crying over him.”

She sniffled. “That’s what my father said.”

“Smart man. You should listen to him.”

She pushed at him. “Let me go.”

“Not yet.” He tightened his grip on her. “Give yourself another few minutes.”

But as the tears drained to an empty ache, she was too aware of how their bodies lined up, hard to soft, and how badly she wanted to nestle in close. Which so wasn’t happening.

Forcing her voice level, she said, “I need to get cleaned up for dinner. You should come. We’re playing strip Bingo. I’m sure Trixie and Tracy would let you sit with them.”

He chuckled obediently and finally let go and eased away from her, but his eyes were serious on hers. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.” She used the tail of her shirt to swipe her face dry, aware that his eyes followed the motion as he waited for a real response. She gripped his wrists, then stepped back, breaking his hold on her. “I’ll be fine. Honest. It just hit me harder than I would have expected.” She would think about what that meant later.

When she released his wrists, he let his hands fall to his sides as he studied her. “How about us?” he asked with a new note in his voice. “Are we okay?”

She hesitated, then said, “Not yet. But I think we’re getting there.”

*

Later that evening, after the sun dropped behind the mountains in a fiery ball that turned the cloud-feathered sky to salmon and purple, Wyatt dragged out his sketch pad and a fountain pen, on the theory that maybe vintage would spark vintage in his stubborn
brain. Heck, he’d sketch with a quill if that was what it took, or use a charred stick.

“And it’s a bad sign when a change of writing implements is as creative as I get,” he grumbled.

Klepto’s head came up from his doggy bed, his ears angled forward. “Whuff?”
You missing something?

“Yeah, my spark.” Except that wasn’t really true—he had plenty of sparks going on in other parts of his life all of a sudden. But when it came to the piece for the pioneer museum, he had
nada
.

The furry gray face tilted in inquiry.
You want me to find the pretty lady again? I’m good at finding the pretty lady.
Which was true. Klepto had tracked Krista to the boathouse, giving Wyatt the opportunity to see firsthand the damage he had done by following the grand Webb tradition of loving and leaving.

He had known it before, but now it was burned into him like a brand. He had quit on her, bolted on her, taken the easy way out. Not that it had been easy for him—he wore his own scars from that night. But he’d spared himself the big, messy scene . . . until today. He wasn’t sure if he’d helped or hurt by telling her the truth about that night, or if it didn’t matter one way or the other now. All he knew was that he’d made her cry, and he never wanted to do that again—which meant staying away from her and keeping his hands to himself. He needed to forget the sparks, forget the way the sunlight turned her hair to gold, and do the jobs he’d been hired to do.

Like be her head wrangler. Train her mustang. And design the biggest sculpture of his career when he totally wasn’t feeling it.

Muttering under his breath, he flipped open his sketch pad. It fell to the page of notes he’d jotted down during his meeting with the museum board—snippets like
go beyond the wagon train
,
embrace the vaquero tradition
, and something indecipherable that probably didn’t say
rampant rubber mice
but sure looked like it.

Not that he needed the notes—he knew what the museum folk were after, knew he could deliver if he could just get his blasted brain back in the game. But that was the thing, wasn’t it? He had hung out at the museum, done a boatload of research, and had even taken a wagon train ride near Jackson Hole. More, he had scoured his usual sources—a mix of repair shops, junkyards, auctions, and falling-down barns where decades of farm equipment had gone to die—for scraps that would put themselves together in his mind and make his fingers itch for a torch. He had even called Ryan for help, and on his mentor’s advice had ordered some raw bar stock so he could get back to basics.

None of it had worked though, forcing him all the way back to paper and pencil, hoping that the sketches would shake something loose.

Muttering under his breath, he flipped the page. Then kept flipping, past several variations on the same theme—a cowboy hunkered over a fire, making coffee while a scruffy mechanical dog begged for scraps. “Hm.” He stared at the least lame of them, getting a
glimmer as the last bit of pink bled from the sky and darkness closed in.

Maybe he was overcomplicating things.

Swapping out his pen for a worn pencil, he scrubbed the eraser over the dog, wiping it out and leaving the cowboy alone. There. That was better.