Larkspur Road (23 page)

“Come on, I’ll get a fire going, then give you the tour. If we open any of the windows facing west, you can hear the creek. And there’s a great view of the Crazies from the master bedroom.”

The moment the words were out of his mouth, he wanted to bite them back. Master bedroom. Now she’d think he was trying to steer her into his bed.

But…wasn’t he?

“I didn’t mean that the way it came out,” he said, stopping short.

“Uh-huh. Sure you didn’t.”

Slipping free of his grasp and trying to hide a smile, she moved ahead of him toward the wide porch, leaving Travis to linger a moment behind her, enjoying the delicious sway
of her hips. Not to mention the way her snug jeans hugged her curvy little butt.

“This porch looks plenty big enough for a swing,” she remarked over her shoulder.

“There’ll be one soon. I have some fond memories of porch swings.”

He heard her little choke of laughter ahead of him and suddenly wanted her with an intensity that rocked him. No one laughed like Mia. Soft and low and sexy, full of joy. Something about the sound made him hungry to make love to her that very minute. On the swing that he didn’t yet have.

He lengthened his stride to catch up to her and caught her hand as they went up the steps.

Inside, he flicked on the lights and waited as she stared around in amazement.

“Travis, it’s incredible. I can’t believe what you’ve done. The last time I was here…”

Her voice trailed off, but he remembered. The last time he’d brought her here the outside of the cabin had been muddy, the grounds choked with weeds, all the windows smudged and filthy. They’d been in high school then and Travis had wanted to show it to her, since one day, according to his grandfather’s will, the cabin would be his.

But it had been dark and musty then, the corners shadowed with spiderwebs, and mouse droppings littering the scarred old floor. It had given Mia the creeps and they hadn’t stayed long. She couldn’t wait to get out of there.

Now…

Now the place shone with light and wood and warmth. She took in the comfortable leather furniture, the gleaming hickory floors and richly colored throw rugs. The big windows and open floor plan. Airiness, warmth, and space.

A big stone fireplace and mantel dominated one wall of the living room.

“I like the new paint,” she murmured, sniffing at the faint, fresh scent of the sage green walls.

“It’s all new throughout the house. And the new appliances are in, too, except for the fridge. That’s being delivered tomorrow.”

Travis got busy loading logs into the hearth. “New windows are on the agenda next, as soon as I get around to it. I had everything else renovated about five years ago.”

After the fire roared to life, he switched on the handsome brass table lamp beside the fawn-colored sofa. The living room was flooded with more light.

“Denny McDonald and his dad did the work back then. I was still married to Val at the time and I had it in my head that we could come out here with Grady, use the place as a second home on long weekends—and maybe even longer during the summers. But things didn’t work out that way,” he added as he led her through the wide dining room with its big bay window and view of the mountains. He let Mia precede him into the spacious kitchen with its farmhouse table and chairs, and a curving black granite island flanking the breakfast area.

“Why not? What happened?” She slipped onto one of the caramel-colored leather stools along the island as Travis scraped a hand through his hair and studied her with a rueful expression.

“What I should have guessed would happen. Val balked about coming back after the one time we stayed at Sage Ranch for a few days with Rafe and Ivy.”

Mia’s slender brows lifted.

“She thought both the ranch and this cabin were too isolated. Said she liked city living.” Travis shook his head. “She claimed she could never feel comfortable out here in the middle of nowhere, that she couldn’t relax so far from civilization. Lonesome Way being all of ten miles away,” he added dryly.

“Ouch.” Mia knew living in a small town—or on a ranch outside of a small town—even for a short time wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea. But for a man like Travis, whose family
was firmly rooted in Montana, it must have been a hard pill to swallow.

“The three of us never came back. But then, the three of us didn’t last that much longer.” He leaned a hip against the island. He was close enough to touch, but Mia didn’t dare touch him right now. He looked too good. Way too good in that black polo and jeans. His tall body taut and muscular, his dark hair glinting almost blue-black in the kitchen light.

They were all alone in this house, and if she wasn’t careful, she’d be kissing him instead of merely drinking in the nearness of him. And kissing him now…
here
…could lead to a whole lot more….

Don’t even go there
, she thought with a hint of panic. She spoke quickly to stop the wanderings of her mind. “I’m sorry. It must have been rough. The whole breakup thing.”

“Yeah, it was, but mostly because of how it affected Grady.” There was a low note of regret in his tone. And total honesty in his face. “I think Val and I had both begun to realize that we’d rushed into our marriage without knowing all that much about each other. Much as I hate to say it, I suspect part of me was more in love with the idea of being a father to Grady than I was with Val.”

He broke off suddenly and looked at her. “Sorry. I didn’t bring you all the way out here to talk about Val.” He thrust a hand through his hair. “How about a glass of wine?”

“Wine sounds good.” She smiled wryly. “It might relax me before I have that little conversation with Britt later.”

Plucking a bottle of red wine from a cooler, Travis poured generously into two glasses. He handed one to her and took a seat on the stool beside her.

“To good days ahead.” His gaze was steady on hers as they clinked glasses. “And good nights,” he added with a grin that made her tingle down to the soles of her feet.

She fought to keep herself from getting lost in those keen eyes, in the warmth of that Travis Tanner grin. Even in the slant of his jaw, where a dark fringe of five o’clock stubble
cast a sexy shadow that made her want to reach out and touch him. Everywhere.

“To your new home.” Her voice came out sounding a little bit breathless, and she quickly took a sip of wine.

Travis drank, too, then slowly set his wineglass down on the counter.

“How about to getting everything out in the open?”

She froze.

“Everything like…what?”

“Like the past.
Us
. More specifically, what I
did
to us.”

Her heart began to thud. “Travis, you don’t have to—”

“Yes. I do.
We
do. We need to get this out there. Deal with it. Right now,” he said quietly. “I’ve made a hell of a lot of mistakes in my life, Mia. But marrying Val wasn’t the biggest one, not by a long shot. And it wasn’t the first.” He caught her free hand in both of his, and his warm fingers closed around hers. His gaze locked on her face. “Leaving you was the dumbest thing I ever did. Bar none.”

“Travis, it was a long time ago. We’ve both moved on—”

“The hell we have. And we won’t. We can’t—not until I get this off my chest. I hurt you, Mia. And I don’t have any fancy excuses. I was young and dumb as dirt—and that’s my only excuse. I was a jerk and an idiot. I loved you and I walked away from you.
You
—the best thing in my life.”

It was so long ago. The words shouldn’t have mattered. But they did. Her heart trembled. She felt like she wanted to run away from him and toward him all at the same time. Those intense blue eyes were steady on hers. She saw hard determination in his face. And…something else. Sorrow. He needed to say this, she realized.

Even though it hurt him, and it would probably hurt her, too.

“Go on.” Her voice was soft in the big quiet house. The only other sound was the rustling of the leaves outside as the wind picked up, whistling down from the mountains. In the kitchen, she looked into Travis’s eyes and couldn’t look
away. “I’m listening. But first I need to say something, too.” She took a breath. “I know now that we were both young. Too young. We weren’t ready—”

“Wrong.
I
wasn’t ready. Don’t blame yourself.” Travis’s fingers gently stroked hers. “None of it was your fault. It was
me
. I panicked. I…lost sight of what we had. What I felt for you. It started before the prom, a week before. You remember that I went down to the University of Montana campus at Missoula that weekend? A week before prom? To visit Jim Malloy?”

She nodded. Jim Malloy. Two years older than Travis. He’d been the star quarterback of the Lonesome Way High School football team when Travis first joined as a linebacker. Malloy had been a player in every sense of the word.

“We partied that weekend, me and Malloy.” Travis shook his head at the memories. “We partied hard. More than I told you at the time. I didn’t hook up with any other girls,” he added quickly, scanning her face to make sure she believed him. “I never cheated on you. But I came damn close. And a part of me wanted to.”

She sat completely still. His words hurt. Like an ice pick digging in her heart. Even though it was years ago, it hurt to hear flat-out that he’d wanted other girls. She could
understand
it—he’d been eighteen, as handsome as sin, and on the brink of a new world: college, freedom, choices…

And his girlfriend was only sixteen. If they’d stayed together she’d have held him back….

She’d guessed at this, but she’d never really known. Because the night Travis had come to her door and told her good-bye, he hadn’t given her a reason.

“The two of us hit the bars nonstop that weekend,” he continued, his strong fingers laced through hers. “It was a pretty wild scene. Crazed. I’d never seen anything like it before. There were tons of college girls there, new girls, who seemed hot and exciting and who just wanted to have fun. No strings, no feelings, just…freedom. I felt like a mustang
turned loose in wide open spaces with nothing to hold me back.”

“Except me,” she said very quietly.

“Except you.” His grip on her hand tightened. He held her fingers carefully, gently, not hurting her, but his grip was firm. As if he didn’t ever want to let go.

“I made the decision to break up with you that weekend. Then I almost changed my mind a dozen times the following week before I actually did it. I’d already decided to get a summer job in Missoula and move down there early, so I told myself it would be better that way, better to make a clean, quick break right away. Malloy had an apartment there and he’d said I could bunk with him over the summer until I moved into the dorm and started classes. I wasn’t thinking, Mia, at least not with my brain,” he added ruefully.

She nodded slowly.

“So I let go of the one thing that mattered to me most. But believe me, I realized the idiocy of that mistake a few months later.”

That surprised her and she stared at him. The quiet intensity in his face made it impossible to look away.

“The wild side of college life got old fairly quickly. One day it hit me like a ton of rocks just how much I’d let my studies slide—and my grades reflected that. My parents weren’t happy, to put it mildly. But worse than that…
I
wasn’t happy. I missed you. More than I’d ever realized I would.”

Surprise swept through her, but she didn’t interrupt.

“By March, I really woke up,” Travis continued, his thumb stroking gently across her knuckles. “I started staying up all night studying, not partying. And I managed to pull my grades up by the time finals rolled around. When I came back home that summer, I got a job at Tobe’s, but all I could think about was you. I hoped so hard you’d take me back. But you weren’t interested. You were dating Curt Hathaway by then.” He grimaced. “And every time I came
to your house to try to talk to you, you blew me off. That drove me crazy.”

“You had it coming,” she murmured, unable to contain a smile.

“No argument there. But then…” This time when he looked at her, there was a glinting challenge in his eyes. “Flash-forward a whole lot of years. To Rafe and Sophie’s wedding. You
still
wouldn’t talk to me. You wouldn’t even so much as
look
at me.”

“I told you.” She bit her lip to keep from smiling. She couldn’t believe how much her avoiding him at the wedding had bothered him. “I didn’t notice you.”

Travis was off his barstool so fast Mia barely had time to gasp before he tugged her off hers, plucked the wineglass from her fingers, and set it down with a hard clink on the granite counter. His arms snaked around her waist, pulling her close against his body.

“And I told you,” he said, making sure that a dime couldn’t have fit between their bodies, “I noticed
you
.”

“Are you sure about that? It was more than a year and a half ago and you might not remem—”

Her teasing words were cut off as he kissed her. A kiss that made her forget where she was, who she was. A deep, dark, sensual kiss that had her shivering and hot and wanting more. Her arms tightened around his neck as the kiss went deeper, burning back her laughter and her defenses in one fell swoop. She swayed against him, drinking in the taste of him as Travis’s strong hands slid roughly down the length of her body. He caressed her hips, cupped her bottom, lifted her up to her tiptoes, and pressed her close against him as his tongue delved deeper, stirring a whimper of pleasure from far back in her throat. His mouth never left hers, even as he scooped her up into his arms.

“I noticed you,” he huskily murmured against her lips. “And I’ve been wanting to do
this
—and more, a lot more—ever since that damned day at the wedding. You believe me now?”

“I could use some more convincing.” Breathless, she traced his lips with the tip of her tongue. Her skin felt hot and there was an ache of need in the deepest place inside her. She knew she should be cautious, but suddenly she didn’t want to be. She rubbed her fingers through the thickness of his hair as he laughed and kissed her again, carrying her toward the staircase.