Walk Away Joe (8 page)

And at the end of the day’s workout, when he and Tag had broken out a couple of longnecks from the fridge in the barn and offered one to her, he’d upgraded admiration to respect. She’d turned the ice-cold beer down in favor of a can of soda.

When the lady said no more, it seemed that she meant it.

It was more than he could say for himself. Against his will, he watched her as she sprawled on a hay bale in the alley of the barn outside the office. She sagged against the wall, her hat beside her, her hair finger-raked away from a face flushed with heat and fatigue and streaked with sweat and dirt. And he thought she was just about the prettiest thing he’d ever seen.

Tag drained his bottle, stretched hugely, then thumbed back his hat. “That’s a wrap for me, kids. I’m heading for the shower.”

“We’re right behind you,” Tucker said, but stood where he was, the cold bottle clasped loosely in his hand as he leaned a shoulder against the wall and told himself he could control this until Karla and Lance got her out of his hair.

“Catch you at the supper table, then,” Tag said as he headed for the house. “Thanks, cowboy,” he added, stopping to toss Sara a quick, approving grin. “Ya done good.”

She beamed up at him as if he’d just given her the ultimate compliment. “You’re very welcome.”

She was still smiling as she watched Tag go. Then she turned her dark eyes on Tucker.

And he was still scowling, wondering what it was about her that wouldn’t let him look past her the way he did every other woman like her whose path he crossed. He dismissed her kind without a second look. They were the kind who wanted forever. The kind he didn’t make the mistake of giving even the time of day. And she, of all the women in the world, was the one he couldn’t have even if he decided to change his tune.

He was making mistakes with this little cowgirl. He was letting those soft brown eyes get to him. Letting her expectations weigh heavy on his mind. Letting his own wants outdistance the reality of his past.

He touched his fingers absently to the cut above his swollen eye. Hell, because of her, he’d even felt the sting of Rita’s anger when he turned down her offer for a quick tumble and a mutually satisfying night.

Only nothing seemed satisfying in that area anymore. Nothing but the prospect of Sara Stewart between his sheets, of him between her thighs. And he wasn’t about to let that happen. No way. Once would never be enough with her. Once was all he had in him by way of commitment. Not to mention that once she found out about him, it would be all over, anyway.

“Is it bothering you?” he heard her ask, then realized he was absently rubbing the bandage as he watched her.

She was talking about the cut. And no—it wasn’t bothering him, not the way she thought. She was bothering him. He had to figure out what to do about it.

“It’s fine,” he said brusquely. “And you’re beat. Go clean up, then come to supper.”

“Yes, boss,” she shot back with an ornery grin.

“I didn’t mean—”

“To be giving orders?” she asked. “I know. It’s okay. I am beat, but you know what? I can’t remember when I enjoyed a workout more.”

“Yeah, well—” he couldn’t quell the admiration “—like Tag said, you’re a real cowboy.”

She rose and stretched the kinks out, laughing through a grimace as she did. “I bet I smell like one, too. See you at supper.” She stopped halfway to the barn door. “Can I come back and play again tomorrow?”

He shouldn’t let her. He should say no, if for no other reason than to bank on the old out of sight, out of mind adage helping him make it through the day. But she looked so hopeful and so thoroughly guileless as she stood waiting for his reply that he didn’t have it in him to say no.

“We’ll see,” he said instead. “You’re going to have a few ticked-off muscles, not to mention a bruised butt, when you bail out of bed in the morning. You may not be up to it.”

“Oh, I’ll be up to it,” she assured him, and turned around, giving him a view of her saucy little bottom in those tight, worn jeans. A bottom he’d held in his palms not two nights ago. A bottom that had pressed against him as he tugged her onto his lap in her kitchen last night.

He stood there, getting hard thinking about it. About how sweetly her soft pink cheeks had filled his palms. About how silky her skin had felt beneath his calloused hands.

About how much he wanted to take that little cowboy to his bed and into his heart and let her convince him he was worth her time.

He looked away, then pitched the empty longneck toward the recycling barrel.

Paul Stewart’s daughter, he thought with a shake of his head as he headed up to the house, a safe distance behind her. Damned if life wasn’t just one swift kick in the ass.

∙ ∙ ∙

When Karla and Lance pulled into the drive at Blue Sky two days later, they looked first at the trio in the cutting corral, then at each other.

“Interesting,” Lance said, easing his long legs out of the luxury SUV and watching his wife’s face as she stepped out the other side.

“Very,” she agreed, then walked with Lance toward the corral.

They waved at the riders working the horses, but kept silent, taking as much pleasure in watching the action as they did in this surprising turn of events.

“Could it be they’ve made some sort of peace?” Lance asked with a pensive grin.

“I don’t know,” Karla said, after a long, appraising look at Sara, who sat astride a buckskin mare, holding a calf with Tag as Tucker worked his sorrel stallion. “But she looks wonderful.”

“And he looks like he chewed horseshoes for breakfast,” Lance added speculatively as Tucker let the calf go and headed, along with Tag and Sara, in their direction.

Sara flashed a quick, nervous smile at Lance before swinging her gaze, somewhat warily, to meet Karla’s. “Hey, you,” she said finally.

Karla visibly relaxed and returned her tentative smile. “Hey, yourself.”

The unasked questions hovered in Karla’s eyes. “How are you? I’ve been worried about you. Are you still angry with me for interfering?”

“We didn’t mean to interrupt anything,” Lance said into a silence filled with long looks and uncomfortable shifting. “Go ahead and finish your workout.”

“We just did,” Tucker said, grim-faced, as he swung out of the saddle.

“Looks like you’ve got yourself a new wrangler here,” Lance added, with an approving nod toward Sara.

“Just filling in,” she said, for some reason not wanting Karla or Lance to read more into the situation than there was. Not that there was more to the situation, she reminded herself... nothing more than a hundred undercurrents that had been tugging at both her sexuality and her heart for the past few days.

“Seems the least I could do,” she added, with a pointed stare at her friends that was meant to remind them that she hadn’t forgotten they’d dumped her here.

“She’s as savvy as an old pro,” Tag put in, in a not-so-subtle attempt to diffuse the tension. “Ain’t that right, bro?”

Tucker glared. “I need to talk to you, Griffin.” He turned toward the bam, his expectation that Lance would follow as explicit as if he’d barked an order.

 
“Well,” Tag said brightly as he watched the two men walk away, “If you ladies’ll excuse me, I’ll just go see if those are chocolate chip cookies I’ve been smelling all morning. Lana’s cookies are the best this side of Waco.” In silence, the two women watched him go.

“You look good, Sara,” Karla said after a long moment.

“I’m getting there,” she said, realizing as she did that it was the first time she’d admitted to her friend that she’d been in trouble. “And no—I’m not mad anymore,” she added, with a crooked grin that changed in a thought to a grimace. “Just embarrassed.”

“No need.” Karla’s eyes were soft. “You needed a little rest, that’s all.”

“I needed a swift kick,” Sara said with a self- deprecating sigh as she swung down from the saddle to join Karla by the fence. “Dropping me out here did the trick.”
 

“Does that mean you’re ready to come back to work?” Karla had weighed the asking of the question carefully. Sara weighed her reply with just as much care.
 

She shook her head. “Not yet. I’m not sure if I ever will be.”

Tears filled Karla’s eyes, prompting a welling of moisture in her own. “Hey, none of that. I’ll work it out, Karla. I just need a little more time. Come on,” she coaxed, forcing a smile. “Before we both get all watery, why don’t you go on up to the house and say hello to Lana and Cody while I put this little girl away? Then we can have a heart to heart.”

∙ ∙ ∙

“I’d heard about nurses breaking,” Sara confessed later, after she and Karla had gotten comfortable in the living room of her little casa. She’d showered and changed, and now that the ice was broken, she’d relaxed. This was her best friend. She could tell Karla everything, and always had. “I just never thought it would happen to me.”

“It can happen to any of us.”

“Not to you,” Sara said matter-of-factly.

“But that’s not to say it wouldn’t have if I hadn’t had Lance. I sometimes wonder if that isn’t part of your problem. You don’t have anyone to share the load.”

That much Sara had begun to recognize as truth. Her daddy hadn’t wanted her going into nursing in the first place. Her mother, long divorced from her father and living in Dallas, had been appalled. Because of their attitudes, she’d been determined to be the best. That determination might have been her downfall.

“Well, just so you know I’m not acting on any nasty impulses anymore,” Sara said with a sheepish grin. “I’ve got a handle on one problem. Booze was never my style, anyway. I don’t even like it. I can’t imagine why I thought I’d find any answers there. The hangovers are hell, and the highs don’t balance out the lows.”

Karla’s smile relayed her relief and approval.

“Now,” Sara added with a warped grin, “if I could just figure out what I want to do now that I’m all grown up.” She left the thought dangling, as much out of frustration as out of disgust.

“You’ll figure it out,” Karla assured her. “I guess the immediate question is, where? I know you aren’t ready to come back to work, but are you ready to come back to Dallas?”

Sara took a slow sip of her iced tea and leaned her head back against the sofa. “If you’d asked me that last week, I’d have had my bags packed and been planted in the back seat of your car before you could say ‘Don’t you want to think about this?’ Now, I’m content to stay put. At least for a little while longer.’ ’

“And how’s Tucker going to feel about that, do you think?”

One comer of her mouth tipped up. “Not too hot, I’d say.”

“You two didn’t hit it off too well, I take it.”

That assumption brought an actual laugh. “Were we supposed to? If I recall, my mission was to sit on my duff and collect myself and stay the heck away from Mr. Love- ’em-and-leave-’em Lambert.”

“But you didn’t?”

She snorted. “Not quite.”

Karla studied her with a frown. “I don’t think I like that look.”

Sara stared at her iced tea, avoiding Karla’s eyes. “Tell me about Tucker,” she said after a hesitant silence.

Karla’s frown deepened. “I
know
I don’t like
that
look. And I like the question even less. The less you know about him, the better,” she said, after gauging Sara’s expression more critically. “Look, he may be my friend, and I trust him, or I wouldn’t have left you with him, but I’m telling you, Sara, he’s not the kind of man you want to get involved with.”

“Who said I wanted to get involved?”

“That look in your eyes says so. Oh, Lord,” she muttered, rising from the sofa and dragging her hand through her hair. “I don’t believe this. I told Lance leaving you here with him wasn’t a good idea.”

“He’s not such a bad guy, Karla,” Sara said, meeting her eyes evenly. “And I’m a big girl. I can handle it.”
 

“Sara,” Karla pleaded, sitting down beside her again and taking her hand, “you came here to heal. A fast, hot affair with Tucker is not going to help you accomplish that—and trust me, an affair is all the commitment you’ll ever get out of him. When it’s over, he’ll only have compounded the hurt, and you’ll be further from pulling yourself together.”

Sara looked away, suspecting her friend was right, yet unable to leave it alone. “Tell me about him, Karla,” she insisted softly. “Tell me everything you know.”

5

………

T
HE PRINCES STAYED FOR SUPPER
. Everyone laughed and relaxed and enjoyed each other’s company. Everyone except Tucker and Karla.

 
For all Sara’s insistence that she wasn’t interested in Tucker, Karla still felt uneasy. And for all the grousing Tucker was doing over getting rid of Sara, the looks she saw him cast her way when he thought no one was watching had Karla drawing the wildest conclusions imaginable.

 
“What do you think?” Karla asked Lance as they pulled away late that evening, reluctantly leaving Sara behind.

 
“About what?”

 
“Don’t play dumb with me. You know what.”

 
Lance grinned. “Well,” he said slowly, “I think Tucker was a little too insistent that we take Sara with us when we left—and a little too miffed when we didn’t.”

 
“Which means?”

 
“Which means that since I’ve never seen our freewheeling friend this upset over a woman, the chances are good he’s in deep dirt over this one.”

Karla chewed on her lower lip. “That’s what I was afraid of. Sara’s in deep, too, though she won’t admit it.”

Lance laughed. “It’s out of our hands, babe. So there’s no use worrying over what might or might not happen. Besides, I’m not so sure it’s such a bad idea. After all, if we’d listened to our friends and family, we’d never have ended up together.’ ’

“That’s different.”

“How was it different?”

“You needed me,” she said, sounding smug.

He conceded the point with a soft look. “And what makes you think they don’t need each other?”

She considered his question in frowning silence as the vast Texas landscape swept past the car windows, blending to a purple-and-pearl dusk.