0373659458 (R) (13 page)

“Still am,” she said softly, then glanced at Zach’s profile, his expression so set—his smile so careful when his gaze shot to hers—she got the distinct feeling he wasn’t the only one who’d gone through some changes that morning. Only no way in hell was she gonna open
that
can of worms. Or, as he said, go poking around someplace she hadn’t been invited.

Because why ruin a perfect day?

Chapter Seven

A
week later, Zach still couldn’t shake the memory of the look on Mallory’s face when she’d finally gotten on Henry, a look that shot right past joy to absolute triumph. Only thing to equal it had been Heidi’s expression, right after she’d given birth to the boys. That Zach had been in some way the cause of both had unnerved him far more than he was about to let on.

“Here you go, guys!” At Levi’s bellow, Zach looked up to see his taller, brawnier brother navigating the crowd in the bleachers, one large hand clamped around an open cardboard box piled high with hot dogs and nachos and cotton candy, the other precariously balancing another box jammed with cans of soda. The nippy fall air smelled of animal and dung, sawdust and fried food, the afternoon sun still high in a bright blue sky. Forget the thrill of competition, Zach thought, barely able to keep the boys from attacking their uncle like baby wolves. Never mind the breath-holding anticipation of how long the cowboy could stay on the bull, or whether the clowns could keep the bull distracted long enough for said cowboy to save his ass. For these two, it was all about the food.

It was always about the food.

A few feet away, Val laughed, her lap full of baby Risa, her eyes full of happy. “Good God, Zach—when was the last time you fed them?”

“An hour ago?” he said, watching the boys inhale their hot dogs, and the blonde laughed again. You would’ve never known the wedding was only two days out. Lord, Heidi had been an absolute basket case. Then again, they’d done the whole church-wedding-and-reception-for-a-hundred deal—mostly for Heidi’s relatives and family friends he’d never seen before. Or since. Frankly, it’d been beyond him why most of ’em had even bothered coming. And after her mother’d moved out to Phoenix after Heidi’s father died a few months after Heidi, the boys only saw her two, three times a year. So no way would he take them away from their other grandparents. Especially after the scare with his father—

“Hey,” Levi said, nudging Zach with his elbow. “Isn’t that Mallory and her mother down there?”

The handicapped-accessible area wasn’t huge—but then again, neither was the venue. They were also sitting maybe twenty feet away...which made it ridiculously easy for even Jeremy’s squeaky, high-pitched “Mallory!” to reach her ears.

She and her mother both turned, Mallory shielding her eyes in the bright sunshine. Which had turned her hair the color of lust. Not that Zach had ever thought of lust being a color until now. Until Mallory Keyes and her damn hair.

“Up here!” Val yelled, waving madly, and half the people below them twisted around to look up. For such a tiny person, Levi’s almost-wife had lungs on her like a moose. Mallory smiled and waved back and that lust thing got a whole lot worse. At least, that’s what Zach was going with. Because that, he could deal with. That, he could handle. That, he could dismiss simply as a whackadoo reaction to loneliness and grief and an epic case of it’d-been-too-long. Rather than, say, an actual attraction to the woman whose hair had provoked the whackadoo reaction. Because...no.

“Can we go see ’em?” Jeremy asked, already halfway on the next riser, never mind the burly cowboy in his way. And of course Liam, sensing adventure, was not about to be left out.

“Me, too?”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said, licking cotton candy from his fingers and adding streaks of putrid pink to bilious yellow mustard smears all over his face. “Maybe her mother has cookies.”

Zach gawked at his oldest, wondering not for the first time how his brain worked, only to hear Levi chuckle and say, “Kid has a point. What? You never know.”

In any case, he could hardly ignore any of it. His kids, her hair, Levi’s grin. So he took two very sticky hands in his own and navigated the sea of butts and backs until he reached ground level, where Mallory hauled Liam up into her lap and her smile knocked him clear to Colorado.

“I figured y’all would be here somewhere!” she said, tugging the toddler closer and making him giggle.

“You probably should’ve hosed him down before you did that.”

“Please. For years Landon’s favorite thing to wear was mud. And everything I’ve got on is old as the hills.” Jeans. Boots. A blazer over a sweater. Nothing special. And yet... “So it’s all good. Right, bud?” she said, giving Liam another squeeze.

“Yeah,” Liam said, settling in against Mallory’s chest and making Zach’s ache.

“Excuse me,” said a beefy cowboy, glaring at Mallory in her wheelchair. Even though she wasn’t in the way at all, it was the rest of them—

“I’m so sorry,” she said, “we’re causing a real traffic jam, aren’t we? Mama, scoot down so they can sit—”

“That’s okay,” Zach said, “we only came to say hi—”

“Did you bring cookies?” Jeremy asked, wiggling his little butt onto the riser beside Dorelle. Who burst out laughing.

“Now why would I do that,” she said, “when there’s so many goodies to eat here? Which, judging from this mess—” Her brightly patterned wrap slipped off one shoulder as reached into her purse for a tissue to wipe the boy’s face. Instead, shreds of tissue clung to the cotton candy residue. Still chuckling, she tried to pluck off the tufts, tucking them into the palm of her hand. And Jeremy actually
let her
. “—you’ve already sampled.”

Sighing, Zach sat on the riser by Mallory, then reached for Liam. But the little boy shook his head, twisting to look up at her, his expression rapturous. “You smell good.”

“Why, thank you, sweetie,” she said, wrapping her arms more tightly around him to whisper, “So do you.”

“I do?”

“Oh, yes. Like cotton candy and hot dogs. Yum. In fact,” she teased, as she lowering her mouth to his temple, “I could just eat you up...” Then she made gobbly monster sounds that sent Liam into gales of laughter...and Zach over the edge of something he hadn’t known was there, into something that scared the hell out of him.

Even as his little boy’s infectious giggles made him laugh, too.

The wind picked up from the east, making Mallory’s hair tumble across her face as the chute opened and a small herd of cows surged into the arena.

“I take it Josh’ll be up soon?” she asked, digging into the purse tucked beside her hip for a clip of some kind. Carefully balancing Liam on her lap, she quickly twisted up the tangled mass and clamped it into place with a natural grace Zach found completely mesmerizing.

“Uh, yeah,” Zach said. “In fact...”

The crowd murmured as his brother entered the arena on Thor, easily the best cutter in the state. As four other riders positioned themselves to keep things in check, Josh and Thor calmly moved as one into the center of the herd, efficiently separating an all-white steer from the group. Then came the dance—the cow determined to rejoin his buddies, horse and rider equally determined that not happen, the horse’s graceful, lightning-quick zigzags frustrating the cow. Two and a half minutes later, Josh had cut his two cows without breaking a sweat and waved to his adoring crowd with a grin.

Hugging Liam closer as a cloud of peach-colored dust washed over them, Mallory chuckled. “He’s really full of himself, isn’t he?”

“From the time he could walk. Although at least he has reason.”

“Very true. I had him bring Waffles over yesterday, by the way.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she blew out, then rested her cheek on Liam’s head as she looked over, her eyes silvery-soft. “I found a ramp online that’d be perfect for me to mount him from my wheelchair, if he’ll let me. You put it together like a kid’s building set. Well,
I
can’t put it together, but somebody can. It’ll be here in a few days. So, see what you did?” Releasing a breath, she looked back over the arena. “Of course, now I need a second horse so Landon and I can ride together.”

Zach smiled. “He is gonna be so proud of you.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because I can tell how much he loves you. He’s a good kid.”

Softly laughing, Mallory smoothed Liam’s curls away from her mouth. “You reached this conclusion from talking to him for, what? Thirty seconds?”

“You forget I could overhear the two of you the whole rest of the time. So...am I wrong?”

“That he’s a good kid? No, but...”

“Then there ya go.”

Zach thought she blushed, but that might’ve been the wind on her cheeks. “Thanks.”

“It wasn’t a stretch, considering who his mother is.”

This time, the laugh was sharper. “And you do realize that sounded suspiciously like a line?”

“Right. Because the perfect place to, ah...” he glanced at Liam, intent on watching the next competitor “...do that is in a crowd. With my child on the woman’s lap, no less.”

Mallory slid a sly grin his way, and his stomach jerked. “Whatever works, right?”

“And would it have? Under other circumstances, I mean?”

What the hell?

He couldn’t look at her. He could, however, feel her gaze on the side of his face. Felt it just as intensely when she looked away.

“Who says it didn’t?” she said so softly he wasn’t sure he heard right. Liam wriggled off Mallory’s lap and moved closer to Dorelle, apparently figuring more interesting stuff was going on over where his brother was. Several more seconds of silence—between them, anyway, since the arena was like a rock concert—passed before she asked, “Were we...flirting?”

“Beats me,” Zach said. “It’s been so long I’m not sure I remember how.”

“God’s truth,” she said, sighing. Then she smiled, not looking at him. “We probably shouldn’t do that again. You know, because of those circumstances and all.”

“Right.”

“Although—speaking only for myself—it felt good.” Her gaze briefly touched his. “To flirt. To feel like...”

“I know. And yeah, it did. Except—”

“No, got it, really. But for a moment, you made me feel like a woman. Not just a woman in a wheelchair. That was nice.”

Zach’s throat got so tight he could barely swallow his spit. He remembered what she’d said about her husband, wondered about all the things she hadn’t. Whether he should or not. Besides that, though, for a moment he’d also felt like something more than...whatever he was these days. To admit that, however, would only be courting disaster. On many levels. So all he said was, “Glad to be of service, then,” and she laughed again.

God, he loved that laugh. Then she looked around, taking in the crowd. Such as it was.

“This brings back so many memories,” she said. “First rodeo my daddy took me to was about this size, when I was so little he had to put me on his shoulders so I could see. Dinky little local thing. Even smaller than this. The junior high competition I entered a few years later seemed huge by comparison. Then high school after that.”

“How’d you do?”

A moment of silence preceded, “High School National champion in barrels at sixteen.”

“Get out.”

One side of her mouth lifted. “Now you know my secret.”

“You ever go pro?”

“Never got the chance,” she said on a sigh. “Since I left for Hollywood soon as I graduated from high school.” Not looking at him, she picked up a can of soda from the edge of the bench and took a long pull from the straw. “Josh said he doesn’t compete much anymore, either.”

“No. But he earned more than a few real pretty belt buckles for what you just witnessed. Did the State Fair down in Albuquerque a few times.”

“So the Vista wasn’t always only a horse breeding operation?”

“Recent development. When we were kids it was a working mama-and-calf operation. There’s still a small, rotating herd of heifers for Josh to train with, but that’s about it.”

“Why’d it change?”

“I’m guessing it got to be more than Granville felt he could handle. Or wanted to deal with. Although he hasn’t sold off any of the acreage yet. Not sure what his plans are on that score. There’s a handful of hunting lodges on the land, too, so lots of possibilities there.”

Looking away, Mallory balanced the cup on one knee. “It’s a gorgeous property. Probably worth a fortune.”

“Maybe. But not my area of expertise. Or interest.”

“So you don’t see yourself becoming a rancher, huh?”

“No, ma’am. I’m perfectly happy doing what I’m doing.”

His face warmed under her gentle scrutiny. “I can see that.” Then she turned away again. “Seems a shame, though, your brother putting so much energy into something that’s not even his.”

And there it was again, that empathy that twisted him all up inside. “Josh is young yet. Plenty of time to work toward establishing his own operation. Right now his first priority—after his son, of course, since Austin’s mom took off when he was a baby—is to Granville and the Vista.”

“Because Granville’s sick, you mean.”

“Yeah,” Zach said on a breath. “And we all owe the old man a lot. He’s been...” He swallowed. “He’s always been real good to us. All of us. Looking out for him now...it’s the least we can do.”

A beat passed before she said, “The Talbots are a very loyal bunch, aren’t they?”

“It’s that small-town survival thing—”

“No, I think it’s more than that with y’all.” Her gaze shifted back to his. “It’s simply who you are. You’re good people. Genuinely good, I mean. People who keep your promises.”

“Our parents would tan our hides if we didn’t. So,” he said, changing the subject, “you looking forward to teaching Landon to ride?”

She picked up the soda again, taking another long swallow before saying, “Not sure I can, actually. Give him instructions, sure. Catch him if he falls off? Not so much.”

“Even though you know the chance of that is pretty slim.”

“Yeah, well,” she said quietly, “stuff happens.”

Right. Like breaking your back in a skiing accident. Or a car skidding on a random patch of ice—