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Zane rubbed one thumb over the other and eyed the phone. Think about the filly. Damn it, even if he’d royally screwed up his life, the filly deserved help. He’d call.
Allie would hang up on him.
Angrily he pushed the phone aside and rose. Allie roamed through his mind the way she used to roam around his family’s ranch. At the uncurtained window, he stared into the black night. Nights were the worst. Thinking about Allie. Remembering. Little things. Like the way she stuck her tongue out of the corner of her mouth when she concentrated. He used to tease her that one day she’d be on a horse, concentrating, and the horse would buck and she’d bite off the end of her tongue.
His body tensed with need. He wanted to nibble that tongue. Gently. Lovingly.
He’d thrown away that privilege. Thrown away love.
Horses moving in the home pasture caught his eye. The filly would be in the middle. She never let herself get isolated. The other horses were her protection. She didn’t trust men.
Allie could teach the filly to trust.
If he didn’t call, Allie couldn’t help the filly. He started to turn toward the phone, then stopped.
If he didn’t call, Allie couldn’t say no. There was no reason for her to say yes and too many reasons for her to say no. If she said no...
Zane couldn’t remember when he hadn’t known Allie. At first she was merely one of Worth’s sisters. Then she’d turned sixteen, and he found himself falling in love with her. On Allie’s eighteenth birthday he asked her to marry him.
Allie’s mom asked them to wait. Mary Lassiter had married young. Beau Lassiter had been a rodeo cowboy, long on looks and charm, short on character. Beau had left Mary on her parents’ ranch when she became pregnant with Worth. After that, Mary stayed on the ranch while Beau rode the rodeo circuit. Whenever a bull stove him up, Beau would head to the ranch where Mary nursed him back to health. Then Beau returned to the bright lights, alone. More often than not, he left Mary pregnant.
With the help of her widowed father, Yancy Nichols, Mary had raised four kids. Greeley not even hers. No one ever heard a word of complaint from Mary. When Mary asked them to wait, Zane assumed she wanted Allie to be sure. Later he wondered if she’d seen something of Beau in him.
He was nothing like Beau Lassiter.
Hearing the lie, Zane felt like smashing his fist through the window.
He wanted to blame Beau for what happened. Beau, whose irresponsible behavior had rushed his children into adulthood. Six years older than Allie, Zane had often told her she needed to lighten up, to live a little, but she’d been inflexible, and intolerant with youthful high spirits in others. In him.
No. He wouldn’t make excuses. The sole responsibility for what had happened belonged to one person. Zane Peters.
He shouldn’t have gone to Cheyenne’s wedding, but the temptation to see Allie, to speak to her, had been overwhelming. Watching her stand tall and slim beside her sister as Cheyenne said her vows, he’d ached to touch her. When he’d seen her smile at Hannah, he’d craved one of her smiles.
One look at her face told him she hadn’t forgiven him. If not for Hannah, he would have left.
She’d been kind to Hannah.
His daughter had rattled on about Allie all the way home. Zane had lost count of the things he regretted, but he’d never regretted Hannah. It wasn’t Hannah’s fault Allie hated him. He knew who to blame.
So did Allie. Allie would never blame Hannah, because she loved kids and animals.
She’d help the filly. Allie hated him, but she’d help the filly. And then, maybe... Taking a deep breath, Zane dialed.
At the sound of her voice, intense longing swept over him. He couldn’t speak.
Allie had polished the kitchen and bathroom, cleaned the cat box and walked Moonie so long the greyhound had practically sighed with relief when they’d returned to the condo. She’d washed windows, done her laundry, baked a loaf of bread and caught up on filing for C & A Enterprises, the small, specialized tour agency she and Cheyenne owned and operated. The night stretched endlessly before her.
She should have stayed in Hope Valley at the Double Nickel, the family ranch named for her great-great-grandparents. Or persuaded Davy to stay in Aspen with her instead of at the ranch. With Cheyenne gone, the condo had too many empty corners. Too much quiet. She needed a roommate. Someone who’d fill the silence. Silence led to thinking. And remembering. Allie didn’t want to remember.
As if she’d ever forget.
By the time she was ten, Allie knew every nuance of Zane Peters’s walk. She’d memorized his low-pitched laugh and his slow and easy way of talking. The way he’d drawled her name and called her honey had sent shivers down her spine. She’d teased him, telling him he was a Southern boy, not a true Westerner.
The accent came from his Texas-born mother. Dolly Peters had ridden the barrel-racing circuit where she’d become fast friends with Mary Lassiter, and like Mary, had married a rodeo cowboy. The difference was Buck Peters quit the rodeo and came home to his family’s ranch near Aspen. Buck and Dolly had moved to Texas when Dolly’s aged parents needed them, and now they operated the Texas ranch Dolly had inherited while Zane raised and trained horses and ran some cattle on the Colorado ranch.
Her thoughts always circled back to Zane. If Allie hadn’t agreed to her mother’s request to wait, she and Zane would have been married almost eight years now.
Or divorced.
Loving Zane hadn’t blinded her to his flaws. He had a reckless streak and took too many chances. Allie had been away at school, but reports filtered to her about his partying. She’d worried about him drinking too much and driving too fast on the curving mountain roads back to his ranch. Home on a holiday visit, she’d nagged him; he’d accused her of not trusting him and of asking friends to spy on him. The argument had escalated until she’d ripped off her engagement ring and shoved it in his shirt pocket. Told him to go away, that she’d never marry him.
If he’d apologized, begged her to take back the ring... He hadn’t. Without a word, he’d left her standing in front of the ranch house. She’d watched him tear out the gate and down the dirt road, driving so fast his truck fishtailed on the curves.
Her throat ached with angry, unshed tears. She didn’t want to think about Zane. The shock of his betrayal. The wrenching pain. The slow, agonizing realization that her life had drastically changed.
Resentment flared. He didn’t look like a man who’d suffered. He looked... She searched for an acceptable word. He looked well.
The phone rang sharply, startling her and providing welcome respite from unwanted, bitter memories. When she answered, silence greeted her. “Hello? Hello? I’m hanging up.”
“Don’t hang up, Allie. I’m calling about a horse.”
Allie’s brain went blank, rendering her incapable of uttering a word.
“I have this filly who needs help. She’s a good-looking two-year-old who’s been mistreated. I’ve watched her in the pasture, and she’s quick and smart. She might make a good little cow pony for Hannah in a few years. I don’t think there’s an ounce of vice in her, but she’s terrified of people. I’d like you to work with her. I’m willing to pay whatever you want.”
The uncharacteristic fast-paced flow of words told her how nervous Zane was. Let him be nervous. She was hanging up.
“She needs you,” Zane said quickly, as if reading Allie’s mind. “A man goes near her, she gets the shimmering shakes so bad, her hide’s going to fall off. I can’t use her, and even if Hannah would let me, I can’t sell her. It’s not the filly’s fault she learned to distrust men.”
“No, it takes a man to teach a female that men are the lowest of scum.”
A stark silence met her bitter retort before Zane asked, “Will you help the filly?”
“No.”
“You didn’t used to hold an owner’s behavior against an animal,” he said evenly.
Allie wanted to scream he’d destroyed the person she used to be. She said nothing, wrapping the phone cord so tightly around her fist, her fingers ached.
“So much for all your animal-rescue rhetoric.”
How dare he try to shame her into helping him?
“Don’t worry. Your friends won’t find out from me you refused to help an animal in need.”
Allie yanked the phone cord tighter around her fingers. His subtle blackmail wouldn’t work. Zane could call any number of people to help him with a horse. She had a tour business to run.
Amber strolled into the living room and jumped lightly up onto Allie’s lap. Curling into a furry ball, the three-legged cat gave Allie an unblinking yellow-eyed stare. Allie had found the cat abandoned and half-dead beside the highway.
Zane exhaled loudly. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”
Stroking Amber’s neck, Allie knew she couldn’t ignore the filly’s plight. “I’m taking a family with a blind child up Independence Pass tomorrow to the Braille trail and to the ghost town of Independence. I won’t be able to get to the Double Nickel until after four. That gives you plenty of time to trailer the filly over to Hope Valley and be gone.”
“I’m not trailering her anywhere. She went crazy coming here. Luckily she didn’t injure herself, but I’m not putting her through that again. I’ll move her to the round pen by the barn.”
Allie didn’t want to go anywhere near Zane’s ranch. She didn’t want to see Zane again. Amber rolled on her back, presenting her stomach for Allie to rub. The cat bore no resemblance to the pitiful near-skeleton Allie had brought home from the veterinarian’s office. Then, Amber had lashed out in a fear-crazed fury at every kind overture.
Taking a deep breath, Allie buried her fingers in Amber’s fur. “I’ll look at her tomorrow, but I’m not making any promises. There’s no reason for you to be there. I’ll call you with my answer.” Allie put down the phone. She’d leave a message on his answering machine. After she found someone else to work with the filly.
Even with Amber’s contented purring, thirty minutes passed before Allie quit shaking.
CHAPTER TWO
INCREDIBLY stupid didn’t begin to describe Allie driving to Zane Peters’s ranch. Ahead of her tourists in a rented vehicle rubbernecked at the palatial homes while the September sunlight sparkled off the creek rushing beside the road. Two deer stood motionless in a mowed field watching a flock of magpies erupt into the sky. The black-and-white birds circled to land on a dead stag high up the ridge. Clumps of aspen trees splashed the hillside with gold.
Curves of the road and breaks in the trees provided glimpses of the Elk Mountains. Normally the sight of the rugged peaks raised Allie’s spirits and brought her peace. Not today. Not when she couldn’t quit wondering why Zane Peters had telephoned her. Not that his reasons mattered. She’d agreed to see the horse for the horse’s sake. Not to renew any kind of relationship with Zane.
Allie had dressed to make that point perfectly clear, digging the stained, worn jeans from the dirty clothes hamper. Moonie had slept on her shirt, an ancient one of Worth’s.
Driving slowly into the ranch yard, Allie parked by the barn. She had no intention of going anywhere near the house.
The horse in the round pen dashed to the far side where she stood stiffly facing Allie.
Allie shut the car door and leaned against her sport utility vehicle admiring the paint filly. Large patches of white splashed her black shoulders and flanks and blazed down her face. The filly’s well-muscled shape and compact build showed why Zane thought she’d make a good stock horse. With her beautiful head, the filly was the kind of horse little girls fell in love with.
And big girls. To Allie, the colorful paint horses symbolized a mythical, magical, romantic Old West.
The paint maintained her vigilance, never taking her attention from Allie. Allie could read the fear and distrust in the filly’s stance, in her stiff mouth, flared nostrils and wide-open eyes. The horse wanted to flee; the enclosed pen gave her nowhere to go.
Allie didn’t need the increased flicking of the filly’s ears to tell her Zane had walked up. She’d sensed him standing in the shadows of the barn’s interior. Watching her. Before he spoke, she said, “A beauty like her, you’ll have no trouble selling her. You don’t need me to train her.” Allie wanted to run as badly as the mare. Coming here had been a mistake.
“Selling her’s not the problem.”
The silence lengthened while Allie watched the filly. She wouldn’t ask why he’d called. She wouldn’t mention the past, his daughter or his wife. They had nothing to talk about. The only thing she wanted to say was goodbye. “What’s wrong with her?” she blurted out and wanted to kick herself for showing interest.
“Some fool over near Rifle decided to play cowboy and raise quarterhorses. No one told him if two solid-colored horses each have a recessive overo gene, they could produce a paint foal with an overo-patterned coat. When he found out he couldn’t register the filly as a quarterhorse because of her paint markings, he sold her for chicken-feed to a kid who’d never had a horse and didn’t have a clue how to train one.”
Allie refused to look at him. “I suppose he mistreated her.” Dumb, dumb, dumb to prolong the conversation when Allie had no intention of helping with the filly.
“No, but he expected her to act like a ten-year-old trained mare, and when she didn’t, he sold her to a spoiled teenage girl who thought the filly was cute and whipped her when she wasn’t. The girl sold her to a man who bought the filly for his daughter and he turned her over to one of his hands who tried to break the filly through fear and punishment. When the owner told me about the paint, I thought she deserved another chance.”
To a stranger, their conversation might sound normal, but Allie heard the tension in Zane’s voice.
The filly watched them apprehensively. Experience had taught her humans couldn’t be trusted. She didn’t know she could trust Allie. Or Zane. No matter what Zane had done to Allie, he’d never abuse an animal. “You could train her,” Allie said.
“You get her started and I’ll finish her.”
Her cue to refuse, but the filly’s fear tugged at Allie’s heart. The wrong approach could ruin the horse forever. Allie walked around her SUV to the driver’s side. “She’ll take time.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“I’ll see how it goes.” The setting sun heated the side of her face. “With Cheyenne away, I’m running the agency by myself, so I’ll have to schedule around work.”
“I heard you resigned your teaching position.” He paused. “Want me to bring in a horse for you tomorrow?”
“I’ll bring Copper. Nothing spooks her.”
“Would you like a cup of coffee? Some iced tea or lemonade?”
“No.” Allie reached for the door handle. All she wanted was to escape.
He couldn’t let her go. Not yet. Zane pushed against the car door, preventing her from opening it. There were so many things he wanted to say to her. About how much he’d missed her. How much he regretted hurting her. How much he loved her.
Afraid to say any of it, he said, “We’ve known each other a long time, Allie. Couldn’t we at least try to be friends?”
“No.” She directed a cool look at him. “I want to be able to trust my friends. Move your hand before you lose it.”
“I’d give anything, my right arm if I could, if it would change what happened.”
“How dramatic,” she said lightly. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you, you can’t change the past?”
He wanted to smash through the thick wall she’d built around herself, but he didn’t know how. “I didn’t plan to hurt you.” Her face dismissed his words for the inadequate excuse they were.
“I lived.” She pushed at his arm to remove his hand from her car door.
Her touch sent a shock of longing through him. He wanted to explain. He wanted understanding. Forgiveness where forgiveness was impossible. He wanted her to love him. “Just listen to me.” Zane plunged ahead before she could argue. “You told me to go away, said I was too much like your father. You said you’d never marry me.” She’d sounded so adamant, he hadn’t tried to dissuade her, but had stumbled to his truck and driven to the nearest bar.
“I was angry and hurt, and Kim listened to me. I didn’t sleep with her to get back at you.” Allie flung up her head, making no effort to hide her disbelief. “All right,” Zane said savagely, “maybe I did. Maybe I wanted to prove to you that another woman wanted me in spite of all those flaws you’d enumerated at great length.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, I proved something, didn’t I? I proved I was every bit as immature and irresponsible as you said I was.”
She didn’t bother to disagree. Zane doggedly continued. “No matter how juvenile my reasons for sleeping with Kim, she became pregnant with my child. I couldn’t ignore the situation. I had to marry her.” Despite what Allie believed, that was the first time he’d ever gotten drunk. The first and only. Although when he realized the bitter cost of his shameful behavior, he’d been tempted to drown his troubles in alcohol. “It wouldn’t have been fair to marry her and then refuse to try to make the marriage work. I hoped we could be comfortable together, raise our child. I intended it to be a real marriage.”
He held Allie’s gaze. “In every way.” The way her eyes darkened told him she knew what he meant. He locked his hands on Allie’s arms, forcing her to stay and listen. “Our marriage was not a success.”
“I’m not interested.”
An urgent need to break through the barriers she’d erected compelled him to go where he knew he had no business going. “Get interested. Ask me why our marriage didn’t work.”
“I don’t care why.”
His fingers tightened. “Ask me,” he ordered through clenched teeth.
This time he had no trouble reading her face. She wanted to tell him to go to hell. She wanted to ask.
She gave a long-suffering sigh. “All right. Why didn’t your marriage work?”
Her patronizing voice filled him with fury. He was practically on his knees, and she wanted him to think she was humoring him. She couldn’t quite carry off a contemptuous twist of her lips. Or disguise the heaving of her breast. Zane tossed common sense in the dirt. “This, is why.”
She made an O of surprise with her mouth as he lifted her to her toes. He kissed her before she had a chance to argue. Her body went stiff as a fence post. He wanted to toss her down on the ground and rip that filthy shirt off her. He wanted to nuzzle her breasts and wrap her long legs around him. He wanted to touch her in a million and one ways and places. He allowed himself to touch nothing but her mouth and her arms.
Allie didn’t respond, but she didn’t pull away. His body hardened as he feasted on the fullness of her bottom lip. She hated her lower lip, thought it pouty. Loving it, he ran his tongue over it. When her mouth softened, he slid the tip of his tongue between her parted lips.
Her breathing quickened. She wasn’t as disinterested as she pretended. Her body betrayed her arousal. Zane wondered how far he could go, and his body grew so tight at the thought he almost lost control.
Knowing she’d never forgive him if he did what he longed to do, Zane eased his grip and stepped back. His shallow, rapid breathing echoed hers. He didn’t care if she noticed. “I think you get the picture.”
Despite the pulse racing in her throat and the breathing she couldn’t control, she tried to act cool and unaffected by his kiss. “I get the picture. You forced your kisses on your wife, and she didn’t like them any better than I do.” Allie’s voice barely shook. “Do not kiss me again.”
She deliberately misunderstood him. Just as she was deliberately ignoring her response to his kiss. Fighting her feelings and fighting him. He wanted to smile. Allie would go down fighting. He did smile at that. He liked a good fight.
When he won. His smile vanished.
He’d been stupid to risk everything by kissing her. He’d waited five years. He could have waited longer. Given her time.
If that much time existed.
He wanted to kiss her again. Instead he brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. “I won’t kiss you again until you want to kiss me.” The words he’d meant as compliance with her wishes echoed arrogantly.
Quick anger flashed in her eyes before they narrowed with cunning. “It’s a deal. We won’t kiss again until I want to kiss you.” Taking his silence for agreement, Allie reached for the car door handle.
“Who’s here, Daddy?”
Hannah’s voice came from the direction of the house. Zane didn’t take his eyes off Allie. “Allie Lassiter. The lady you met at the wedding.”
“I wanna see Allie.”
“I have to leave.”
Zane held on to the door. “You can stay long enough to say hello to Hannah.”
“I’m not interested in saying hello to your daughter.”
Her cold, brittle voice cut like ground glass in his gut. He’d done this to her. Nothing he could do or say would ever change that fact. Or reach the depths of his regret. She’d agreed to help the filly. She would come to his ranch. He could see her. Talk to her. That would have to be enough.
Hannah skipped to his side. “Hi, Allie. How come you’re here?”
“To see the paint,” Allie answered curtly.
Zane smiled down at his ragamuffin of a daughter. She looked as bad as Allie in her dirty jeans and shirt. She’d lost another button. He’d be glad when she learned to do her own mending. Little needles and his big hands didn’t go together.
“Isn’t she beautiful? Daddy said she has to go to school. He said you’re a teacher.”
“I used to be. I don’t teach anymore.”
Red curls bobbed as Hannah nodded her head vigorously and pointed to the filly. “Daddy said you’re gonna teach her. He promised.”
Hannah had a habit of taking every word he said as a kind of pronouncement from on high. Zane smiled wryly at Allie.
She glared back. “Your father’s good at making promises. He’s not very good at keeping them.” Jamming her key into the ignition, Allie added in a tight voice, “I won’t be back.”
He couldn’t believe it. Damn it, she’d been a teacher. She ought to know how kids interpreted things. She did know. Hannah’s remarks had given her the excuse she wanted
Zane wanted to throw back his head and howl in despair. Frustration and pain boiled up from deep inside him. Slamming her car door shut, Zane braced his hands on the rolled-down window and stuck his face close to hers.
“Does this make you feel better, Alberta? I betrayed you so you’re refusing to help a blameless filly and rejecting a little girl who’s reaching out to you for friendship. Do you think sinking to my level will make you feel better? I’ve got news for you, honey. Life down here in the slime pits is dark and dirty and rank. and you’ll hate yourself from the moment you wake up in the morning until you work yourself into an exhausted sleep at night. And every time you look in a mirror, you’ll loathe the person looking back at you.”
“My, don’t we feel sorry for ourselves? Why don’t you have a beer and forget your troubles? It worked for you before.”
Her words slashed painfully deep. Zane dropped his hands and stepped back. Allie’s car roared into life and tore out of the ranch yard. The dust swirling around his boots smothered the false crumbs of hope he’d secretly nourished.
A car honked behind her. Allie checked her rearview mirror as an unfamiliar car flashed around her. Her eyes darted back to the mirror and her own image. She looked no different. The same blue eyes, shaggy blond hair, chopped-off chin, ordinary nose. Only the mouth seemed different. As if it didn’t belong to her. Because she didn’t want to lay claim to a mouth that could say such horrible, hurtful words. The ugly taunt replayed itself endlessly in her mind.
Hateful words. Said in a reasonable, quiet tone of voice, which made them all the more hateful. “Proud of yourself, Alberta Lassiter?” she mocked her twin in the mirror. Worse was the shameful knowledge Zane had been right. She’d refused to help the filly because she didn’t have the power to hurt Zane the way he’d hurt her.