A Cowboy's Pride

“Why’d you dye your hair?”

“Platinum looks better on screen. You don’t like it?” Her teeth appeared on her bottom lip, white against scarlet, and he had the crazy urge to kiss her lipstick off to reveal her natural rose mouth underneath.

“It’s different. I liked it darker. Honey-brown.”

She tilted her face to the sun and closed her eyes. “I’m different.”

“I noticed.” She’d changed, and he hadn’t, living a hermit’s life except for volunteering at Fresh Start, a local rehab and mental health facility, and working the ranch with two of his siblings, Heath and Daryl. The chasm that’d opened between him and Katie-Lynn when they’d argued over their wedding yawned again at his feet, still too wide to be spanned.

“Wow! I forgot what cold felt like!” Katie-Lynn’s dress collar lifted in the wind and she hugged herself, shivering. His arm wrapped around her shoulders protectively, settling her against him, warm and snug. The remembered feel of her, the seamless fit, the sense of completeness, returned to him, sharp and sweet. Then she ducked away and slid a small distance down the fence. “I’m sorry your dad sprang me on you.”

“If I’d known, I never would’ve let you come.”

She fussed with the black-and-white concentric rings encircling her neck on a silver chain. “Why’s that?”

He hesitated a second. “Because I would have asked you... Heck...I am asking you to stop this production before it starts.”

Her perfectly shaped eyebrows came together as she frowned. “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. You’re the star.”

“I don’t have that kind of power.”

His breath hissed between clenched teeth, and he forced himself to simmer down. “Who came up with this idea?”

She stiffened. “I did.”

Her words knocked thought clean out of his head, so he stared at her, mute.

“I’m sorry, Cole. I am.” She sighed and stuffed her hands in her pockets. “I would never have come back unless...”

“Unless what?” he managed, reeling. She’d dealt his family this blow on purpose. She’d caused it, just like the wound she’d inflicted when she walked away from him and the life he’d offered.

“Nothing.” She stared straight ahead again. Overhead, barn swallows swooped and dived against a cloudless sky.

“Katie-Lynn—”

She held up a hand, interrupting him. “It’s Katlynn now.”

“Not for me. Because Katie-Lynn knows, better than anyone, why my family doesn’t need media digging up old secrets. Tell them you did some investigating and the story’s fake.”

“You’re in foreclosure. You need this money.”

He looked down at her; she was staring at the mother and calf. “I need my pa to have a peaceful, happy wedding. Quiet and uneventful.”

“Sounds like the one you wanted for us.”

He pointed to Mount Sopris, where one lonely hawk circled. “On a mountaintop, just our families and the preacher. What was wrong with that?”

Their disagreements while planning the wedding had revealed fundamental differences. Katie-Lynn wanted a large affair too showy for him. Worse, he would have gone into debt funding it given his family’s limited means.

“You knew how much I wanted a big wedding. Lots of people.”

“Lots of strangers,” he interjected. “People just coming for cake and booze. Why want them there?”

“Because I wanted them to know I was there. No one ever noticed me, and I wanted my wedding to be different. Just one day where I felt special, but you didn’t understand that, or me.”

“You wanted everyone’s attention. I wasn’t enough.” Because of their wedding arguments, he’d sensed, deep down, she’d never be content with the quiet, humble life he was prepared to offer.

“It’s the other way around,” she insisted. “You didn’t love me enough to move to LA when I got the job offer.”

“You knew me better than anyone else. Tell me...would I have liked it in LA?”

Just weeks before their nuptials, she’d received a major network job offer she couldn’t resist. When he told her he didn’t feel comfortable leaving the ranch, which had hit a rough patch, they’d called off the wedding. She couldn’t understand why he felt more responsible for taking care of the ranch than being with her, and he couldn’t understand why she cared more about a job than him... Clearly their priorities hadn’t been in sync.

Now as much as then it seemed...

They studied each other for a long moment then she shook her head, her face an open wound. He was pretty sure he didn’t look much better. “You’d hate it there.”

“And you hated living here. Deep down I knew this wasn’t the life you wanted. You love the spotlight and I’m...”

“Closed off,” she finished for him. “We were too young to make such a big decision.”

A gust of wind fluttered a strand of hair across her face, and he gently tucked it behind her ear. “We’re lucky we avoided making a big mistake.”

“Very lucky,” she said quietly, sounding immensely sad.

“Will you talk to someone about canceling the episode?”

“I can’t.”

He reined in his frustration. “Then promise me this won’t turn into a circus. You’ll stick to the feud story and nothing else. Not my mother’s suicide or the ranch’s troubles.”

“I’ll follow wherever the story takes me, and I’ll do my best to prevent anything from harming your pa’s big day. I care about him, too.”

“I guess we still have that in common at least.”

Then she smiled, just a flash, and something moved in Cole’s chest. Something warm, and something he hadn’t felt in a long time. “Let’s go back,” she said, jumping from the fence.

He paused to study the mother and calf a moment longer, his mind on Katie-Lynn and the danger she posed...not just to his family, but to his susceptible heart if he wasn’t careful.

CHAPTER THREE (#uf565d4ba-a430-5d93-8122-1534b2b84435)

LATER IN THE AFTERNOON Katlynn knocked on her parents’ screen door and peered into the modest, cluttered home. Strange how small it looked. Foreign. She was the outsider looking in.

“Hello?” she called for the third time. “Anybody home?”

She paused and listened for footsteps.