A Cowboy's Pride

“Thanks, Mr.... I mean, thanks, Boyd.” She turned to Cole with a sinking heart.

Great.

Just great.

Who didn’t want to rehash ancient history with the man who’d shattered her once fragile heart?

* * *

COLE MANEUVERED THE ATV around another rut a few minutes later, careful not to bounce the vehicle or spew dirt up at Katie-Lynn—Katlynn—since her dress probably cost more than he made in a month. Maybe two. Or three...

What did he know about dresses?

But this one looked expensive, like every inch of the new version of her he hardly recognized. Although, he had to admit she looked fine in the fitted black dress, her legs as long and sleek as he remembered.

“I’m sorry to hear your ranch is struggling,” she shouted over the roaring engine, her smooth platinum hair now wild, whipping around her flushed face in a golden-white stream.

“It’s not as bad as Pa made out,” his pride prompted him to holler back. Katie-Lynn was beautiful, successful and famous and who was he? A soon-to-be homeless cowboy with no prospects. Not exactly a catch by anyone’s standards, let alone a star like Katie-Lynn.

Not that he was looking to get caught...

But her knowing how low his family had fallen, financially, stung him hard.

He had to turn the ranch around without selling family secrets to the highest bidder and risking his father’s happiness. And he sure wasn’t selling to the Cades.

Katie-Lynn turned and mouthed something to him; he caught the word, “Foreclosure.”

He shook his head, keeping his eyes dead ahead in case they betrayed him, a trick he’d learned from a childhood spent keeping secrets. Katie-Lynn, on the other hand, had always lived her life out where anyone could see it, the good, the bad and the ugly, open and unafraid.

He’d admired that about her once.

Loved her for it.

Only now that trait might come back to bite him. If she revealed too much about their financial situation, shared it with the world, the Lovelands would never hold their heads up again in Carbondale, and his father’s chance at happiness might vanish if Joy changed her mind. He had to convince Katie-Lynn to back off the story.

He peered at her, briefly, from the corner of his eye, taking in the delicate slope of her nose, the soft curve of her cheek, the rounded point of her chin, and his heart eased. Beneath the war paint, she was still the girl who’d held his hand at his mother’s funeral, who’d kissed away his tears and listened as he’d rambled, raged and ranted during the most difficult time of his life. They used to climb up an ancient gnarled oak they’d dubbed their Say Anything tree and shout their problems to the wind, speaking everything they couldn’t say to anyone else.

Would she listen and agree to kill the story? Put him and his family ahead of her ambitions and career? She hadn’t before, but it was worth a shot.

A couple minutes later he parked the ATV by the calving shed, hurried around to Katie-Lynn’s side and helped her out. For a moment he stared deep into her blue eyes, and his heart stopped, the birds silenced, the wind stilled, and the entire world narrowed down to just her and the feel of her soft skin against his. He breathed in her expensive perfume and recalled her clean, cottony scent that used to remind him of laundry hung on a line to dry. Fresh and full of life.

“I miss the way you used to smell.”

He realized he said it out loud when her long lashes—artificial and alien-looking—blinked up at him. “You remember how I smelled?”

He forced himself to release her hand and nodded to the field behind the shed, heat stinging his cheeks. “The new calf’s over there,” he said gruffly.

She tilted her head and considered him for a long moment before nodding. “Let’s see it.”

His hand settled on the small of her back as he guided her across the uneven terrain. When they stopped at the fence, she climbed up one slat, heels and all, to lean over the top rail.

“Oh! He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” she breathed then turned her sparkling smile on him, full wattage. His mind seized like an overheating engine. Total meltdown. Speaking was clearly not an option. Luckily for him, Katie-Lynn had always been able to talk enough for them both.

“I love Brahmans,” she babbled on, and he closed his eyes and let his ears drink in the rushing, soothing sound. “They’ve always been my favorite. Their gray coats. The hump in their backs. So unique. Plus, they have the best temperaments. Look how sweet his mother is being to him. He’s nursing like a champ. When did you say he was born? Cole? You in there?”

His lids flew open. “A couple of hours ago.”

“Were you up all night watching her?”

He nodded.

Her nails, perfect red ovals to match her lipstick, lightly scraped his hand when she patted it. “You must be exhausted. I remember pulling those all-nighters with you. Remember the time when the calf was breach, and we turned it with the rope?”

“Surprised you remember.”

“There isn’t much I’ve forgotten about us.” She ducked her head and fiddled with the short zipper on the side of her dress.

He glanced at her bare ring finger, picturing the small, heart-shaped diamond he’d once placed there...the one still resting in his bedside drawer. “You’re not married?”

“No. Too busy for romance. You?”

He exhaled the air stuck in his lungs. What was it to him if she dated anyone? Yet it mattered, more than it should. “Same.”

They watched the nursing calf in silence. The loamy smells of fresh earth and dew-tipped grass was in the air, and a crisp wind blew down from the mountains. “You got rid of the pool.”

“The year after you left.” He hid his wince, recalling their first date at his sixteenth birthday party and his mother’s drowning. Katie had been by his side when he’d found his mother.

Back then Katie-Lynn had chattered when he couldn’t speak, held him when he couldn’t stand and touched him when he couldn’t feel. She’d acted as his buffer, allowing him to deal with the world from a distance, filtered through her sunshine.

“A lot has changed since then.” The Brahman heifer bellowed when she spied them on the fence, protective of her newborn.

“Your freckles,” he observed, watching the calf suckle.

“Freckles?”

He cocked his head and studied Katie-Lynn’s smooth, flawless skin. It resembled porcelain—fragile and untouchable—so unlike the country girl-next-door he’d known. Loved. “What happened to them?”

“My plastic surgeon lasered them off.” She said it like someone might say, “My dentist cleaned my teeth.” As though having a plastic surgeon was no big deal, and maybe it wasn’t in Hollywood.

“Why do you have a plastic surgeon?”

“To make me beautiful.”

He shook his head, marveling. “You already were pretty.”

He preferred pretty to beautiful the way he liked a daisy better than an orchid. One was fresh, open and bright. The other was perfect, waxy and exotic, which was why people prized them, he guessed. He’d always been more partial to natural wonders.

“Not pretty enough. Not by Hollywood standards.” She ran her hands through her tousled strands, smoothing them flat to her skull like a ribbon of golden silk.