“Come on down here,” he said. “Just for this afternoon let’s pretend we aren’t those people. I’m not a guest and you’re not a ranch hand. We’re just a guy and his girl and we’ve got this beautiful afternoon to spend together.”
* * *
Never in her life had Amberley wanted to get off a horse more. But her gut said no. That this wasn’t going to be sweet or uncomplicated. And the last time she’d been sweet-talked by a guy it hadn’t ended well. It didn’t matter that she was older and wiser now. She didn’t feel as if she was either.
Riding hadn’t helped to chase away her demons back then, when she’d found herself pregnant and alone at eighteen, and it wasn’t helping now. He stood there in his clothes, not fake-cowboy duded up the way some city guys dressed when they came to Texas, and to be fair he looked like he fit in. He wasn’t chasing a Wild West fantasy, he was here to do a job.
And her job was to make him feel comfortable.
What could be more comfortable than hanging out together?
Dumb.
Stupid.
His hair was thick and wavy and he wasn’t wearing a hat, so she could see the way he’d tousled it when he’d run his fingers through it. She wasn’t getting off her horse. She was going to be sensible.
Please, Amberley, be sensible.
But she never had been.
She suspected it was because she’d had to be so responsible so young. She’d always had to take care of her younger brothers and sisters. But that was in Tyler, and she was away from there now, with no one to worry about but herself.
And this was safe. He just wanted to spend the afternoon together.
One afternoon.
Surely even she could manage that without having it go to hell.
She shifted and started to turn to swing her leg over the saddle and dismount, then she saw the smile on his face and the look of relief.
He was unsure.
Just like her.
Except he wasn’t like her. He had ties. And she hadn’t asked about them earlier. There was so much she didn’t know. Where was his baby’s mother? That baby was pretty damn young to be living with a nanny and her father. Was there any way this could be just an afternoon?
If it was...then the mom didn’t matter... Unless they were still together. That would be—
“Hey, before we do this. Where is your baby’s mother? I don’t want to pry but you’re not still with her, right?” she asked.
He stepped back—stumbled was more like it—and she suddenly wished she’d kept her mouth shut.
There was no denying the way all the color left his face, or how he turned away from her and cursed under his breath.
“No,” he said, walking back over to his horse and taking his saddle with much skill and finesse.
“We’re not still together. She’s dead.” He made a clicking sound and took off across the field as if the hounds of hell were chasing him, and Amberley guessed maybe they were.
She stood there, a wave of sadness rolling over her. A part of her had died when she’d miscarried. Seeing Will...had made her realize that they were two sides of the same coin. She had no baby and no family and he had a baby and no wife or mother for the child. He was trying to deal with the loss the same way she had been.
She knew that riding helped at times but she’d never been able to outrun the pain. Those memories and the truth of her life were always waiting when she’d gotten off the horse.
She clicked her mare and followed Will close enough to call out if he took a path that wasn’t safe, but he had watched their trail on the way out and he made no mistakes on the way back.
She slowed her own horse to a walk as Will entered the stable area and decided that maybe she should just let him go. Give him some space to dismount and leave before she entered the barn again.
She saw the ring that she’d set up earlier to practice barrel racing and rode over that way. Montgomery and she had been partners for the last year or so. And when the Flying E could spare her she took the horse and went and competed in rodeos.
Will had just spent the last ten minutes in the barn trying to avoid a confrontation with Amberley—the woman he’d practically run away from. But he had no doubt she would be avoiding him after his foolish reaction to her harmless question about Faye’s mother.
It was hard to think that at twenty-eight he was turning into his father, but it seemed that way more and more. And it wasn’t Faye who was forcing the change. It was him. It was as if he’d lost that spark that had always driven him. And the therapist he’d seen for two sessions at his mom’s insistence had said that grief took time.
But as he left the barn and spotted Amberley exercising her horse in the ring, he felt that stirring again.
It was lust, because even though he was grieving he wasn’t dead, and the feeling was laced with something more. Something much more. She was one with the horse as she raced around the barrels, her braid flying out behind her as she leaned into the curves and got low over the horse’s neck, whispering encouragement, he imagined.
He watched her and wanted her.
She stopped at the end of her run and looked over toward the barn. Their eyes met and he felt stupid just standing there.
He clapped.
But that felt dumb, too.
It seemed that he’d left his smarts behind in Seattle, he thought. Everything was different here. He tried to justify his feelings—like he needed an excuse to find a woman pretty or be turned on by her. Yet in a way he felt he did.
But that was his issue, not Amberley’s. And it wasn’t fair to her to bring her into the swirling whirlpool that his emotions were at this moment.
She nodded and then turned away from him.
Dismissing him.
He’d had his chance and he’d ruined it.
Maybe it was for the best. He had Faye to take care of and a criminal to catch. In fact, he needed to get back to work. Without another glance at her he turned and walked to the golf cart that had been allocated for his use during his stay on the Flying E. He put it in gear and drove to the house that Clay Everett had been generous enough to provide. To be honest, he knew that Clay had a stake in Will finding Maverick, as did most of Royal.
He shifted gears as he drove farther and farther away from the barn and the cowgirl that he’d left there, but a part of his mind was still fantasizing about the way his afternoon could have gone.
His nanny, Erin Sinclair, was waiting for him at the door when he got back.
“Faye’s asleep and I need to run to town to pick up some more baby food and formula. Are you okay if I go now?” she asked.
He had hired Erin to help with the baby even before Lucy’s untimely death. His late wife had been a product rep for a large pharmaceutical company and traveled a lot for work. Though Will spent a lot of time in his home office, he tended to have a single-minded focus, so he knew that by the time Faye was born, both he and Lucy would have needed help with the baby.
“Yes, go,” he said.
He went into the bedroom they used as a nursery and looked down at Faye’s sleeping face. He tried to see Lucy in her features but he was starting to forget what she looked like. Of course he had pictures of her but he was starting to lose that feeling of what she’d looked like as she smiled at him. The different