rising to either side. Here and there, wide patches of snow from last week’s storm caught the sunlight and sparkled like sequins on a pretty girl’s white party dress.
“You want to stop at Clara’s?” he asked as they began to descend into the Justice Creek Valley.
“It’s after four.” The sun had already slipped behind the mountains. “It’ll be dark soon. Let’s just go on to the ranch. I’ll see her in the morning.”
* * *
Rory admired the view as they approached the Bar-N.
Nestled in its own beautiful, rolling valley with mountains all around, the Bar-N had been a working cattle ranch for five generations. The N stood for Noonan, which was Walker’s mother’s maiden name. The place had come down to Walker and Ryan from their mother, Darla, and their uncle, John Noonan. Four years ago, Ryan had sold his interest to Walker and moved into town.
Walker still kept a few horses, but the cattle were long gone. Nowadays, the Bar-N was a guest ranch. The homestead, in the center of the pretty little valley, contained a circle of well-maintained structures. Over the past couple of decades, Walker and his uncle before him had built five cozy cabins. There were also four full-size houses. The houses, constructed over the generations, had once served as homes for various members of the Noonan clan. Walker offered two of the houses, the cabins and the fully outfitted bunkhouse as vacation rentals.
Of weathered wood and natural stone, the main house had a wide front porch. Walker’s German shorthaired pointer, Lonesome, and his black cat, Lucky Lady, were waiting for them when they arrived.
Rory laughed just at the sight of them. They were so cute, sitting patiently at the top of the steps, side by side. When Walker got out, the dog came running and the big black cat followed at a more sedate pace. He greeted them both with a gentle word and a quick touch of his hand. Then he started unloading her things.
Rory grabbed her tote and went to help, taking a suitcase in her free hand and following him into the house and up the stairs. He led her to a room in front. She hesitated on the threshold.
He set down the suitcases on the rag rug and turned to her. Rory met his eyes—and felt suddenly awkward and completely tongue-tied. Bizarre. She was never tongue-tied.
“There are hangers in the closet and I emptied out the bureau,” he said. “I’ll just get that last big bag for you.” He eased around her and headed back toward the stairs again.
Once he was out of sight, Rory entered the room that would be hers for the next two weeks. It had a big window on the front-facing wall and a smaller one on the side wall. There was a nice, queen-size bed with a patchwork quilt, a heavy bureau of dark wood, a small closet and a bathroom.
The bathroom had two doors.
She opened the outer door and found herself staring across a short section of hallway into another bedroom, a small one with a bow window overlooking the backyard. Not Walker’s room, she was reasonably sure.
Curiosity had its hooks in her. She zipped across the hall to have a quick look around that other room.
Definitely not Walker’s. Walker liked things simple and spare—but this room was too spare, too tidy. Not a single item on the dresser or the nightstand that could be called personal.
She went back to the bathroom and stood frowning at her reflection in the mirror over the sink. Seven years of knowing Walker and this was the first time she’d been upstairs in his house. She wondered if this might be the only upstairs bath.
Would she and Walker be sharing? That could get awkward—well, for her, anyway. If Walker saw her naked, he’d probably just pat her on the head and tell her to get dressed before she caught a chill.
The front door opened downstairs. Rory shut the outer door, ducked back into her bedroom and got busy putting her things away.
Walker appeared in the doorway to the hall. “Alva left dinner, so that’s handled.” The Colgins, Alva and her husband, Bud, helped out around the ranch and lived in the house directly across the front yard from Walker’s. He rolled in the last bag. “Where do you want this?”
“Just leave it—anywhere’s fine.” Was she blushing? Her face felt a little too warm. Would he guess that she’d been snooping?
If he guessed, he didn’t call her on it. “Hungry?”
“Starved. I’ll finish unpacking and be right down.”
He left and Rory continued putting stuff in drawers—until she heard his boots moving across the floor below. Then she shut the door to the hallway and zipped back into the bathroom.
She opened the medicine cabinet and the cabinet under the sink. There were the usual towels and washcloths. Also, bandage strips and a tube of antibacterial ointment, a bottle of aspirin long past its use-by date and a half-empty box of tampons.
Tampons left there by a girlfriend?
Walker with a girlfriend...
He didn’t have girlfriends. Or rather, if he did, Rory had never met any of them.
He did have an ex-wife, Denise. Denise LeClair was tall, blonde and smoking hot—and long gone from Justice Creek.
Denise had moved to Colorado from Miami six years ago. She’d met Walker and it had been one of those thunderbolt moments for both of them. Or so everyone said. According to Rory’s cousin Clara, Walker’s ex-wife had sworn that she loved him madly and she only wanted to live her life at his side right there at the Bar-N.
One Rocky Mountain winter had obliterated that particular fantasy. They’d been married less than a year when Denise filed for divorce and headed back home to the Sunshine State, leaving Walker stunned at first, and later grim and grumpy.
Rory had actually met Denise only once, a few months after the wedding—and hated her on sight. And not because Denise was necessarily such an awful person...
Yes. All right. The embarrassing truth was that Rory had crushed on Walker from the first time she’d met him, seven years before. Even way back then, when she barely knew the guy, Rory’d had kind of a thing for him.
But it had never gone anywhere and it never would. There were issues, the debacle of Denise among them. True, they were all issues that could be overcome, if only Walker wanted to overcome them. But he didn’t. And Rory accepted that.
Walker was her very good friend. End of story.
He seemed to have more or less got over Denise in the past couple of years. But there hadn’t been anyone else for him since his marriage. He claimed that there never would be, that he was like his uncle John, a solitary type of man.
Rory stepped back and stared into the wide-open cabinets. Linens, bandage strips, ointment, aspirin. And the tampons. And four still-wrapped bars of plain soap. No men’s toiletries.
So, then. Walker had his own bathroom. Mystery solved.
Rory sank to the edge of the tub. She felt like a balloon with all of the air let out, droopy with disappointment that she and Walker didn’t have to share.
Bad. This was bad. She was long over that crush she used to have on him. Long past dreaming up possible situations where she might see him naked. She needed to pull it together.
For two weeks, she would be living here. Walker would provide the security her mother insisted she have. Nothing would happen between them. She would get through the days until the wedding without making a fool of herself. And then she would return to Montedoro and get on with her life.
Because she and Walker were friends. Friends. And nothing more. They were friends and she liked it that way.
She jumped to her feet and glared at herself in the mirror to punctuate the point.
And she ignored the tiny voice in her heart that said she did care, she’d always cared—and that was never going to change.