latte?”
“Yeah.”
“I heard Jason McCoy is back in town,” Lacey said in a questioning sort of way. The two of them had dated a couple of times in high school. Maybe she was hoping to see him again.
“He inherited half of the Bar T. So he’s here to take care of that,” Molly said. “Then he’s going back to Houston.”
“You okay with that?” Lacey asked, turning to the back counter and grabbing Molly’s coffee from her teenaged assistant. “He’s been gone a dog’s age and you haven’t heard from him before now, have you?”
Lacey was a gossip, though not in a malicious way. Molly supposed it would happen to anyone who worked in a small-town coffee shop.
“It was a surprise,” Molly admitted. She smiled and nodded at the kid as she took her coffee from Lacey. “But of course I’m going to honor Dad’s wishes.”
The bell on the coffeehouse door pinged and Lacey turned to greet her next customer with a smile.
“Jason McCoy, I wondered if you were going to stop by,” Lacey said.
Molly stepped over to the bar to add a packet of sugar to her latte and then stirred it slowly. Way slower than was called for.
“I heard this place had the best coffee in town and had to check it out,” Jason said. When he’d left thirteen years ago it hadn’t yet opened.
“It’s the only coffee in town so I guess you are right,” Lacey said. “What’ll it be?”
“Hey, Lacey. Good to see you again. Filtered coffee, please. The biggest cup you have.”
Molly glanced over her shoulder at him. She wanted to play it cool. It was probably no big deal to him to make out with her, but it was a big deal to her. She realized just how limiting her life had been staying here. If she’d gone out and seen the world...maybe she wouldn’t be so fascinated by his damned blue eyes and firm mouth.
He stepped closer and looked down at her, a furrow wrinkling his brow.
“What?”
“I asked how you were,” he said.
“Good. I’d like to discuss a few ideas about the ranch. Maybe we can do that before we head over to see Rupert.”
“Okay. You want to talk here or in the park? It’s a nice day and I saw an empty bench on my way in.”
“Park sounds good to me,” she said. That way the town gossips—and, let’s face it, in a town this size everyone knew each other’s business—couldn’t hear what they were saying. Hell, it didn’t matter what they said—people were always going to talk. Many of them probably remembered how she’d followed Jason around town the summer before he left. How she’d tried wearing makeup and short skirts to catch his attention...
He called out a good-bye to Lacey. Molly noticed Lacey had her cell phone in her hand, furiously texting something...probably about them. She was embarrassed and a little bit...well...excited that she was being linked to Jason. And that was the problem right there.
He wanted her to buy him out or have her accept his offer to turn over his half of the ranch so he could leave. Go back to Houston. And the truth was she wanted him to stay.
They walked over to the park bench. She sat down on one end. Jason stood there for a minute then stooped to put his coffee on the ground by her foot. He stayed there so that they were at eye level and she looked at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to see what’s going on in your pretty head,” he said.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Try to be charming,” she said. “Sit down and let’s talk about the ranch. That’s all we have between us.”
“We have a hell of a lot more than that.”
“Passion?” she asked, remembering the other night. “Dad always said passion leads to trouble.”
“And he was right. But not this time,” Jason said, putting his hand on her leg. “Are you ticked at me again?”
She shook her head. “Just unsure and kind of mad at myself. It was one thing to have a crush on you way back then, but as a woman I should know better.”
“Better than what?”
“Than to fall for you,” she said. She took a sip of her coffee and looked away from him. Across the street she saw a group of elementary school students all walking in a row and she knew they were heading to the library because it was Tuesday and that’s what they did on Tuesday. They had probably been doing it since the library opened back in 1915.
“Hell,” he said. “You want to do this here?”
“You’re the one who started it,” she said. She hated it, but he brought out her competitive side. Why did she need to one-up him all the time? she wondered. She probably needed to stop reacting to everything he said. But she wasn’t sure she could.
“I am. Well, fine, I needed to get out of the house for the night because you made me want to knock on your bedroom door. I thought, hey, if I am grounded from NASA, maybe this life wouldn’t be too bad, and you know what?” he asked, pausing.
“What?” she asked after the pause lengthened.
“That wasn’t right. I was using you as an excuse to settle. And you deserve better from me than that.”
Settling...it made sense, but it still hurt. She closed her eyes. Cole’s Hill was where he went to escape from his problems. She didn’t want to be an escape for him. She wanted him in her life because he wanted to be there. Not because he felt trapped and out of choices.
“Fair enough. You gave me time to think as well,” she said.
“Yeah, what about?”
“That I don’t want to be a fling for you. Your summer romance before you head back to NASA.”
“You think I’ll be going back?”
She nodded. “I’ve never seen you lose anything you really wanted.” She stood and carefully stepped around him. “I’ll meet you over at Rupert’s.”
JASON WATCHED MOLLY walk away and let her go. He had been honest, but the fact was their situation was complicated and he hadn’t done either one of them any favors by leaving the house for the night because she’d gotten too close. He’d justified it to himself, but then he was good at doing that. He spent a lot of time alone with his thoughts. Training to be an astronaut, spending as many days orbiting Earth as he had—it gave a man time to think.
Time to know himself better than most would be comfortable with. But he’d always been one to keep his thoughts to himself and he’d done that as he’d watched her walk away from the bench. As he’d realized the ranch had a pull on his soul that he’d never known was there.
It wasn’t as strong as the call to explore the universe. But the call was there all the same. And he’d felt a tearing deep inside where he’d always been so sure that nothing could rock him.
A need. A desire for Molly and something that only she could offer him. He’d kept his distance last night because she called to him.
No other woman would tempt him to give up his place in NASA—to give up his dream—but there was a part of him that knew she did.
And he couldn’t justify sleeping with her...having that summer affair she was so afraid of. But he knew if they were near each other it would happen.
They wanted