Sweet and Wild (31 page)

Jacob was down in the barn with Doc Tolson.
He didn’t look all too happy to see Craig when he walked in, but moved away
from Doc and put out his hand. Craig took it.

“So she’s really rebuilding your old
place?” Craig asked, though he really didn’t need an answer.

Jacob’s face turned hard and Craig
couldn’t blame him. If he had a little sister, he’d probably be pissed off if
his much older buddy came along and broke her heart. It would’ve been difficult
enough dealing with the falling in love part, but the way things turned out… Jacob
had every right to be angry.

“She’s good at redirecting her energy.
And she has plenty of that right now.”

“I’m sorry. I never meant to cause
problems.”

“You know, a week ago I was ready to lay
you flat on the ground. Little sisters, well, they’re sacred territory. But I
figure Quinn would’ve done the same to me. Still, what were you thinking?”

“Honestly, I’m thinking I’m in love with
her. What happened with Robby and Marisol doesn’t change that fact, Jacob.
Whether you like it or not.” No point trying to play down his emotions.

“Can’t say I’m jumping up and down with
glee,” Jacob admitted. “Despite her tough girl attitude, she’s got a sensitive
side that hurts easily. Not that she’ll show it off to anyone, but it’s there.
I don’t like seeing her hurt, not by anyone.”

Craig nodded. He deserved this. “It’s
not my intention to do that. You know me, Jacob. I’ve never been one for
getting into idle relationships.”

“It’s been a long time since you’ve been
around,” Jacob replied. The tone of his voice remained cool, but he regarded
Craig with a steady gaze. Not hostile, just wary. “I don’t think a man can
change his character too much. You were always a family man at heart and I can
see that with your daughter. You can’t force anything with Quinn any more than
you can force anything with Marisol. You got two women pulling you in two
different directions. I don’t envy you one bit. Quinn’s doing you a favor by
keeping her distance. Take advantage of the time she’s giving you. Get things
right with Marisol. Quinn’s not going anywhere. When she’s ready, if you still
feel the same about her and she’s still in love with you, then maybe Marisol
will have had enough time to accept it.”

“Damn, Jacob. When did you get so wise?
You’re going to make a great father someday.”

“Someday. Don’t rush me yet,” Jacob said
with a grin that lightened the mood.

“Well, when that day arrives, you’ll be
ready.”

“I know Quinn. Let her do her thing. If
it’s meant to be, it’ll be”

“That’s for sure. I’ll think of
something she won’t be able to resist."

“Quinn doesn’t need grand gestures. Just
time. Give it to her.”

***

He didn’t realize the time she needed
would stretch out for as long as it did. He’d stopped counting, but Craig
figured Quinn had him in blackout mode for at least four weeks. She kept him
updated on the day to day business of Emerald, including the progress she and
her trainer friend was making with Fire. Each email blatantly lacked any
feeling. If he stopped in, she conveniently wouldn’t be there. Scott was her
representative. Thank goodness the boy had a good head on his shoulders. Craig
hoped Scott would stay at Emerald after Quinn left, but he had a feeling the
boy’s allegiance was strictly with Quinn.

Her absence ate at him and came at any
odd hour, while out working with the cattle, mending a fence, making breakfast.
His need for her would rear its head and wouldn’t let itself be ignored. There
were tough times when all he wanted to do was throw something, let the pain
out. How in the world could she just walk away from what they had? How in the
world did he come to love her so damned much that it felt like a knife slicing
into him whenever he thought about the times they spent together?

He forced himself not to think about her
in that way. Instead, he pushed himself out on the ranch, working longer than
he should’ve, until he was dead tired.

Besides the ranch, Craig dedicated
himself mostly to Marisol. Luckily, school started soon after the trail ride
and the work and meeting new people got her mind off what had happened. Craig
wondered if she found satisfaction in Quinn’s absence. He wouldn’t know because
his daughter didn’t mention Quinn’s name even once over the weeks that followed
the disastrous ride.

She had come around on a few things,
though. Like Sunny. As soon as her ribs and arm healed enough, her interest in
riding returned. He noted the strong affection she had for her horse and that
relieved part of his mind. Except for those first few days, she hadn’t even
mentioned wanting to return to Washington. There was hope. He picked up with
her lessons where Quinn left off, but more times than not, they both went out
on the prairie for rides as he continued to introduce her to life on the ranch,
the workings of her land.

School was a big hit. Maybe because she
was the daughter of the famous Elise Hahn-Lynch and the almost as famous author
Craig Lynch, or maybe being from another part of the country made her seem
exotic. Whatever the reason, she wasn’t subjected to the same cast-out
experiences as most new kids. Her instant celebrity did her good. She basked in
it though she didn’t let it go too much to her head.

Settling into a normal life with his
daughter, making the ranch work and finding a new manager for Emerald, didn’t
keep him busy enough. Didn’t dull the pain he constantly felt because of
Quinn’s absence. In the beginning, he believed it would pass, but he was wrong.
It became blatantly obvious, especially at night when he lay in bed and
couldn’t sleep; there was no escaping his longing for her.

Two weeks after the fiasco on the
prairie, Robby came to his door, eyes cast down, head lowered, looking
miserable and sorry. With hat in hand, he reminded Craig of a ten-year-old boy
who’d broken the neighbor’s window.

Craig didn’t care how hangdog his little
brother looked. Fresh rage, rage he wasn’t used to, swelled inside him. He couldn’t
be angry with Marisol for how she felt, for the way she chose to show it. She
was a child and everything hit harder for her. Robby, however, was supposed to
be a grown up. He should’ve been able to control himself. He should’ve been
able to shut the hell up and handle things like a mature adult.

Two weeks of missing Quinn had chewed Craig
up, clawing to get out and the sight of Robby, standing there looking like
he
was the victim, opened some cage and let the beast out.

Craig stepped onto the porch, grabbed
his brother by the collar of his shirt and shoved him against the wall.

“Craig, what the
fuck
,” Robby
choked out as Craig’s fist rose in the air. “Come on, man.”

Craig’s mind cleared a bit, and his fist
paused. He wanted to get one in, just one solid blow that would hurt like hell.
Not like it would match the constant pain he’d been in.

Would it kill the pain? Would laying
Robby flat out make the emptiness go away? Would it bring Quinn back?

Craig dropped his arm, but kept Robby
pinned against the wall.

“You’re an asshole,” Craig ground out.

“I am. A big one,” Robby agreed.

“You should’ve just kept your mouth shut
and moved on. She told you enough times that she didn’t want you back.”

“Plenty of times. Craig, man, you’re
choking me. Can you loosen up a little?”

“You know how much trouble you caused? If
you kept your damned mouth shut everyone would be getting used to us being
together.” Craig eased his hold, but didn’t release Robby. “Instead, I got a
daughter who’s broken hearted, and the woman I love won’t even see me. God
knows if we can even start over again. She was good for us. Both of us. She and
Marisol were friends and now, well if you’d seen…”

He stopped and let go of Robby. He
turned away and faced the prairie. Autumn had arrived and the land had lost most
of its green. Gold and auburn had settled in. Every time he looked out onto it,
with the setting sun shimmering down on the waving grass, he thought of Quinn,
her long chestnut hair. The same damned color. He sat down hard on the top step
and rested his chin on his fist.

“I was madder than hell, for a long
time.” Robby’s voice was quiet as he took a seat next to him. “Still don’t
think I acted in a way totally wrong. Well, maybe the junk I said. That was
wrong. I’m not going to say I’m sorry for laying you out that night. Felt
damned good. You might not believe it, but I did love her. She’s not a woman a
man forgets easily. I’m sure you understand that.”

Craig nodded his agreement.

“I’m not sorry about hitting you, but I
am sorry about what I said. None of it was true. And I’m sorry about where I
said it. Should’ve kept it ‘til later. When no one else was around. Including Q.”
He rubbed his chin as if he still felt the shot she took at him. “I’m sorry
about how Marisol took the news. She’s a good kid and I know she adored Quinn.
Neither of them deserved what they got.”

With that, Robby got up and walked down
the stairs, not saying goodbye, not looking back. Craig stayed put, watching
Robby drive away before turning his attention back to the prairie. No doubt Quinn
was seeing the shifting colors, the lone hawk that drifted in a wide circle
against the pale blue sky. They should have been experiencing it together.

Behind him, the door opened. Marisol.
Damn,
did she witness another confrontation?
This time Craig could only blame
himself. He expected an angry child, expected condemnation in her hazel eyes,
but instead she sat down next to him and took his hand in hers.

“It’s really pretty out there today,”
she commented. “Can we go for a ride?”

***

After the turn in their relationship,
Robby would come by a few nights a week to hang out, talk about his new job
waiting tables at a restaurant the next town over. It wasn’t anywhere near as
fulfilling as ranch work, and he vowed he’d get Jacob to give him his job back,
no matter what.

“I hear her barn is just about finished.”
Robby commented. They were sitting on the front porch, each with a beer, two
weeks after Robby first showed up on Craig’s front step. “She talk to you yet?
About what happened?”

“Not a word. Unless it’s about business,
and only then in the form of an email.”

This was the first time, in two weeks,
that he’d had a conversation with anyone about Quinn. On one hand, he longed to
talk about her, get everything out in the open, but it still felt like ripping
open a wound that had only begun to heal.

“Me neither. I’m not exactly welcome
over at Long Knife Creek. Just plain sucks. I’d take that night back if I
could. You know that, don’t you? No excuses for what happened. I was a jealous
ass. Guess I still am, but, well, I never meant to chase her away. Damn.”

“Guess she needed time to think.”

“Wonder if she’ll talk to either of us
after she gets her place set up.”

Behind them, at the door, Craig heard a
deep sigh. He turned around and saw Marisol standing there. Before he could say
anything, she turned around and disappeared into the dark house.

“Sorry. Didn’t know she was there.”

“S’okay.”

“Does she talk about it at all?”

“Never a word. Sometimes she gets sad
and I’m not sure why. Yesterday after school, I found her down in the paddock
taking Sunny around the barrels. That’s the first time since Quinn… Well, might
not mean anything, but I wonder if she’s missing her a little. She likes going
over to Long Knife Creek Ranch, hangs out with Thea. Thea thinks Marisol misses
a woman’s company. A few times she’s slipped and talked about Quinn, but Thea
doesn’t push her. Says it might be good for Marisol to get it out of her
system, though, talk about how she feels about everything now.”

“Hope so. Quinn is a good woman. I know
she thought a lot of Marisol. Those things I said, about Quinn not measuring up
to Elise. I shouldn’t have. With all due respect to your wife, who by the way,
rocked, well, Quinn, in her own way, rocks just as much.”

Craig chuckled. “Yeah, I guess you could
say that.”

Robby drew a long sip from his beer.
“Wish she’d been interested in me, but I guess I had my shot and blew it.
That’s the one thing about Quinn, though, if you hurt her she doesn’t forgive
easily.”

Those were cold words. Maybe true, Craig
didn’t know. Maybe he’d never know because it seemed like Quinn was never going
to see them again.

Craig wasn’t the only one who dwelt on
the subject. For the next two weeks, Marisol went out daily on Sunny, working
on her barrel racing. It may have had more to do with the friendly competition
between herself and Bonnie, but Craig had a feeling something else drove his
daughter. He didn’t press it though.

He couldn’t have been more surprised
when Marisol brought it up. Once school started up, it became their habit for
her to do her homework in his office while he worked on the ranch accounts.
That’s what they’d always done while on the road, and living in Washington.
They’d fallen back into that natural pattern. Tonight he noticed her restlessness
though, and when he looked up from his monitor, he saw her drawing spirals on
the cover of her notebook.