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Her mouth gaped open in outrage. A sharp gasp expressed her fury with his suggestion.
He shrugged. “Well, do what you will. Like I said, I got unfinished business. Afternoon, ma’am.”
With that, he turned on his heel and strode straight into the Feed and Grain to get himself one of the flyers that was going to be the undoing of Miss Alyssa Cartwright.
Ka-pow!
Gold, glittering sparks shimmered in the dusky sky. Alyssa tipped her head up, her lips rounded to join the crowd in one collective “Ooooh.”
It had been a great day, a perfect beginning to a terrific new life. She’d given out dozens of business cards and set up meetings with several potential clients. Through it all, she’d been charming, confident and professional, and had still gotten in some quality time with her daughter, who was now on the grandstand with her grandparents enjoying the show.
She shook back her hair, pleased with her new haircut and the way the glossy layers made her feel sassy and sexy for the first time since—
No. She’d promised herself she wasn’t going to think about Cub. This whole day had just gone too well for her to start dwelling on past failures, past mistakes.
A shrieking whistle pierced her stomach-clenching thoughts.
High, high up into the ever-darkening sky a rocket soared, casting a radiant yellow light on the upturned heads of the gathered guests. Across that sea of awestruck faces, someone was not focused on the sizzling light show overhead. Before the fiery blossom fizzled and sent spirals of white vapor plummeting downward, Alyssa caught a glimpse of movement. That one glimpse chilled her to her soul.
A hat, smoked brown, with a cattleman’s crown and Aussie brim—she’d swear she saw it. Her pulse thudded in her ears like a string of firecrackers exploding inside a metal drum. She strained to peer into the dimness, into the murmuring mass of people, but saw nothing. Had she imagined it?
She twisted one finger in her hair but the new cut refused to wind around and only lapped at her circling knuckle. With one deep breath, she squared her shoulders. Exhaling slowly, she patted her hands down her beige linen shortsuit as if needing a physical reminder that this was the new Alyssa Cartwright and she was totally in control.
Pheee-ueew! Another rocket whizzed skyward.
You’re imagining things, she told herself then trained her gaze on the brilliant red fireworks display. She gritted her teeth to keep from scanning the newly lit crowd once more in search of something logic told her she would not find. She tried to breathe steadily but the very air she dragged into her lungs felt the consistency of muddy water—and about as appealing. She tried to swallow. She tried to keep her eyes on the sky. Tried and failed.
“Aaahhh.” The crowd welcomed the next spate of flickering colors.
Alyssa turned and searched desperately for Cub Goodacre’s trademark hat with the anticipation of a shipwrecked sailor waiting for the shark’s fin to appear.
There. She saw it and then the outline of the wearer. It was Cub—and he was headed straight for her. In fact, he looked as if he would reach her any—
The light above faded, putting the whole scene in a blue-black shroud again.
Her pulse hammering, Alyssa turned on the heel of her ballerina flat. She had to get out of here. Yes, she had wanted him to come back, but not like this, just showing up. She needed more time. She needed to prepare herself. She needed to get out of there before he got to her.
“Excuse me,” she repeated again and again as she picked her way toward the house and safety.
Pop. Pop-pop. Pop-pop-pop.
Alyssa nearly leapt out of her skin with every earsplitting snap but she forged ahead. On the steps of the huge white house that looked a tacky tribute to Tara, Graceland, God and country, she relaxed enough to take one last glance back at the crowd.
No hat. No circling shark. She blinked.
A fountain of red and blue sparks shot upward, illuminating the view from the ground up.
No Cub Goodacre.
She exhaled and in doing so realized she’d held her breath so long and so hard, her chest actually ached to release it. How could she have let her mind play tricks on her like that?
Fear of failure, clear and simple, she decided. She had had her first taste of success today, known that this time she wasn’t going to crash and burn like she had in her last attempt to stand on her own. Then what should leap up and try to scare her into behaving like the old Alyssa? Only the image of her greatest failure as a daughter, a wife, and an independent woman—Cub Goodacre.
The very idea was laughable, really. Cub, here. On her parents’ ranch after three years without so much as a “Fare thee well or go to hell.”
She forced a chuckle through her dry throat, shook her head and turned to go inside.
Pshhheeeuw! Boom. Bang. Bang. A blaze of colors bloomed like enormous flaming parachutes opening against the star-strewn sky, bathing the scene below in a red and yellow glow.
Pppt...Pppt...Pppt...
“Hello, Alyssa.”
Pow!
“Cub!”
Alyssa shut her eyes, half hoping the mirage would fade.
Red shone against her lids with another burst above her. Even so, she could still see the image of a man in faded jeans so perfectly snug they could have grown over his lean thighs and tight calves instead of being bought from a rack. She saw in tantalizing detail the denim shirt, tailored to fit against the rock-hard torso tapering upward to shoulders so broad they made a woman lose herself in sweet dreams of safety and security—and lovemaking as wild as any bull ride.
She could even see the scar that trailed along his jaw to just under his chin. An old rodeo injury had given him that little souvenir, the damage leaving his voice perpetually husky, so that even when he asked someone to pass the sugar, it sounded like an indecent proposal.
She laid her palm across the open V above her breasts. Her skin felt damp. Her head swirled. No mere mirage could make her feel this way.
Slowly, she opened her eyes. He loomed real and dangerously sexy before her. Cub Goodacre was here in the flesh.
Glistening golden and tinged with red light, he stood on her doorstep. He pulled his hat from his head and pushed his long, blunt fingers through his closely cropped black hair. “Looks like a perfect night for a few fireworks, wouldn’t you say?”
After three years, he’d hardly changed at all. His body still looked as hard and exquisite as any marble statue, his face rough-hewn as any jagged piece of South Dakota Badlands. The glittering sparks reflected in the depths of his ice-blue eyes, made them seem bottomless and cold—yet lit by some distant incandescent fire.
She didn’t need to look long into those eyes to know that he was angry. Good, she thought, she was angry, too. She had three years of anger and disappointment and pain in her. If he expected to let her have it for what she’d done to him, well, he’d get as good as he gave—and then some.
This wasn’t the old Alyssa he was dealing with now. This was Alyssa the strong independent thinker. Alyssa the savvy, charming businesswoman. Alyssa the mother.
Her stomach lurched. Jaycie. She whipped her head around to make sure the baby remained in Yip Cartwright’s capable grasp before she turned to Cub again. The best defense is a good offense, she told herself, going on attack.
“You have some nerve showing up here, Goodacre.” She planted her hands on her hips, hoping her moist palms would not stain her linen outfit and give her nervousness away. “I’d ask you what you wanted but that might give you the impression I give a damn.”
He had no answer for that. Clearly, he hadn’t reckoned on meeting up with anything but the docile, doting girl she had once been. He studied her from beneath the sharp angles of his dark eyebrows.
Taking advantage of his hesitation, she decided to make a hasty retreat. Yes, she would have to see him sometime, and she would have to find a way to tell him about their child, but not here, not now. She lunged for the door but as her hand closed over the big brass door handle, Cub closed in on her.
The heat of his body pressed down over her. Her racing heart stilled as a shudder crept up her spine. The fervor of the crowd and the rumblings of the fireworks faded in her ears; her entire world narrowed to just this moment, just this man.
“Whoa there, Alyssa Cartwright.”
She tensed at the name, his veiled accusation of her betrayal in proclaiming their marriage a fraud. His callused palm closed over the soft skin of her hand, stopping her from opening the door.
“I didn’t come out here to be treated to a view of your backside.” Cub’s chest rose and fell. The scent of her hair, her skin, her nearness filled his lungs and his very being. He held it trapped inside him as he fought to keep his cool exterior. He clenched his jaw and lowered his voice to a rasping, bedroom growl. “Not that I don’t thoroughly enjoy the view.”
It was no lie. The sight of Alyssa again startled his senses in ways he hadn’t thought possible. Her hair, her eyes, her willowy body aged into womanhood with a fullness and rounding like ripe fruit about to burst from its skin, all tempted him. He had no way to prepare himself for the reality of seeing her again, of being so close neither of them could move or even breathe without the other feeling it.
He had no way of preparing himself for the woman he now saw, full of grit and a grace under pressure he hadn’t suspected lurked beneath the blushing sweetness of her innocence. A woman who, it seemed, had no other response to him but scorn.
Something primal in him wanted to make her pay for that—not to hurt her, but to put things on equal footing between them.
“Listen, Goodacre.” She tossed back her hair, keeping her face forward. “One scream from me and you’re off this ranch on the next skyrocket.”
“Ain’t scared of that,” he murmured into the thick warmth of her hair. “I’ve ridden hotter things. Ridden ’em hard and fast, till I reckoned we’d both of us burn up from the heat and fury.”
He heard her pulling in a long, soft gasp and he smiled.
“Remember, Alyssa?”
Her spine went rigid. She turned her profile to him, her voice as dry as sparks when a knife scrapes flint, her words sharpened by her strangled emotion. “I remember, Cub. I also remember thinking I’d nearly drown in my own tears when I realized that for all its fire, that passion had only been a convenient lie.”
He should have seen that one coming, but he hadn’t. He knew she’d used his going back on the circuit to get herself an annulment—marriage under false pretenses, she said. But until this moment, he hadn’t understood that she thought that meant nothing they’d shared had been true or valid. The realization stuck low in his gut and sent searing pain through his entire body. A lie—that’s how she summed up what, for him, had been the pivotal experience of his life.
“I...I can’t have this discussion with you now,” she said.
The pleading in her tone, joined with the stark devastation he felt at learning how the woman who held his heart saw him, made him step back.
A liar. He’d been called worse but it had never sliced into his soul as Alyssa’s accusation did.
The lever of the door handle clicked quietly.
Somewhere behind them a band blared to accompany the frenzied finale to the fireworks show.
She pushed the door open. “Call the house tomorrow and maybe we can set up a time to talk.”
“No.”
“What?” For the first time, she turned to face him.
He forced his gaze to lock with hers. Don’t back down now, he told himself. He’d come here for a reason, to purge her from his system or at least ensure she wouldn’t be there to jinx his all-important next ride. Despite the pain just standing here caused him, he wasn’t about to go with that mission left unaccomplished. “We both know a busted-up bull rider like me ain’t good enough to be husband nor lover to a woman like you. No reason to pretend otherwise.”
Something flickered in the liquid pools of her hazel eyes. Her gaze denied his words but her lips did not.
He nodded and glanced down at his hat in his hand. “But I won’t be dismissed by you Alyssa. Not this time.”
“I never dismissed you.”
“No, you just had me annulled.”
Her straight white teeth sank into the glistening flesh of her lower lip. He kind of got the notion she wanted to say something, but didn’t have the courage.
Guess that meant she did need him, after all; she needed him to keep her from saying something her eyes told him she might regret. “You recall the last words you said to me, darlin’?”
She tilted her chin up but said nothing.
“You said, ‘If you can’t accept my help to support a ranch, then we aren’t partners. If we aren’t partners, then in my eyes we aren’t married and we never were. From this day out, you are not my husband, Cub Goodacre.”’
Alyssa’s gaze never faltered, though her voice did tremble as she said, “And do you recall your last words to me?”
“You know I do,” he forced the words hard through his teeth.
“You said you’d come home to me when you’d proved yourself worthy.” Moisture shimmered in her eyes but not a single tear fell, as if she willed them not to betray her. “If that’s why you’re here now, Cub, I have to tell you, too much has happened since you left. It’s too late.”
That’s exactly what he had wanted to hear. Why, then, did it rip at his heart so? His mind unable to settle on any one response, he pressed his fingers to the crown of his hat. The paper tucked inside crackled, drawing him back to his purpose and providing him something to focus on.
“I came because of this, Alyssa.” He reached inside the inner brim of his hat and withdrew the yellow paper he’d taken from the feed store. He pushed his hat down on his head, glad to have the brim dipped over his eyes again. He didn’t want to accidentally reveal anything to a woman who thought so little of him.
Slowly, he began to unfold the single page.
Alyssa’s peaches-and-cream face went pale. She studied the flyer as though she’d never seen it before—or maybe as if she had seen it and it somehow contained her greatest secret come back to haunt her.
He gave the flyer one firm shake, playing it up big for her sake. One corner of the page lifted and Cub shook it again to put the picture side to her instead of the blank side.
He shifted his hips, using the pain that movement caused to add substance to his voice when he thrust the photo of his boots in her face and said, “I came because when I saw this I realized that you have something that belongs to me.”
Chapter Two
He knows!
Heat flushed her face. The shuffling sounds of departing party-goers filled her ears. Shock stopped her breath cold in the back of her throat.
Her once fondest desire and now greatest fear had both become reality in one ruthless flash of paper. And it was all her own fault The picture she’d used to launch her new career had accomplished what three years of prayers and tears and searching could not.
Cub knew about their daughter. And now that he knew, everything she’d planned for her own future hung in jeopardy.
A thousand questions flew through her mind, none of them lingering long enough for her to form any clear conclusions. What did Cub want? He’d said no wife of his would work in town; she could only conclude that went double for the mother of his child. Would he fight her for custody now that she had chosen to pursue a career outside the home?
Her eyes darted to the creased picture of the precocious child with so many of Cub’s physical attributes and every ounce of his disposition.
Surely, Cub hadn’t come here to try to take her child. He wouldn’t do that. Her heartbeat slowed to a heavy, thudding knell. Would he?
She raised her chin and concentrated on looking self-confident. “I don’t think we should have this discussion without our lawyers present, Cub.”
“Lawyers?” The paper crumpled in his fist and he lowered his outstretched arm. “Why the hell would we need lawyers to talk about you giving me my boots back?”
“Boots?”
She batted her lashes, trying to make all the pieces fit. Cub didn’t know diddly—at least not about their baby. He’d come here to lay claim to a pair of sorry old sod-kickers, not his one and only flesh-and-blood baby.
Cocking her hip, she cupped one hand to her ear to compound her sarcasm. “Excuse me? But did you say...boots?”
“Yeah, boots.” He shifted his feet, a quick grimace passing over his features when he did. “Don’t try to deny they’re mine, Alyssa. The proof is in the picture.”
He held the photocopied flyer up again.
Alyssa pretended to skim the page but her gaze quickly fixed past the picture to its real-life subject. Jaycie, riding high on her grandfather’s shoulders, giggled and waved a merry “bye-bye” to the thinning crowd. Meanwhile, every stride of Yip Cartwright’s long legs brought them closer to a confrontation with disaster.
She did not have a minute to lose. She would tell Cub that she’d never gotten the annulment, that she wanted now to proceed with a divorce. And, of course, she’d tell him about his daughter, even make arrangements for the two of them to meet. Then, somehow, she’d find the strength to deal with the consequences of that meeting. But not now, not under these strained circumstances.
“You’re right, Cub, those are your boots.” She edged sideways drawing his gaze like enemy gunfire, away from her approaching child. “I’m sorry I used them without your permission, but it isn’t exactly like I could have gotten your permission if I had wanted it, now could I?”
“Well...”
“I mean, it isn’t like you wouldn’t have just sent my letter back unopened, right?” She took another sidelong step, keenly aware that her father and her daughter were getting closer by the second. “You sent back every letter that ever reached you.”
He glared at her, huffing hard through his nostrils as his lean cheek ticked in tightly reined anger.
Good, she thought. She might not have known Cub well enough to make a life with him, but she did know this: if she made it clear enough that she did not want him here, he’d go.
“I can’t believe that after all this time, you’d come way out here to pick and quibble over some beat-up old boots, anyway, Cub.” The night breeze lifted the layers of her hair as she spun on her heel and marched down the side steps of the brick porch. “It’s just too ridiculous. Why don’t I walk you to your truck and we can set a better time to talk?”
He did not follow her lead.
Her neck cramped as she twisted her head to cast a frosty look over her shoulder. “You did drive out in a truck, didn’t you? I don’t recall seeing a twin suspension, four-hoof-drive bull parked out—”
“The only bull around here, Alyssa, darlin’, is what’s pouring out of those pretty little lips of yours.” He planted his big boots at the top of the stairs and folded his arms over the fresh cotton of his shirt.
“Me?” She cursed the squeak of surprise in her forced response but thanked her lucky stars that was all that her voice betrayed.
One more long look at Cub, from the set of his custom-made hat down the length of his bull rider’s body, filled her with far more than astonishment. “I don’t know whether to be flattered that you think I’m suddenly so sly that I’d dare to match wits with an old bull artist like yourself or just angry at the fact that you won’t respect my wishes and let me walk you—”
“I ain’t a dog that needs walking anywhere, Alyssa.” Cub’s shirt rustled as he shifted his expansive shoulders.
Jaycie’s laughter drifted above the clatter of lawn chairs and the murmuring crowd.
Alyssa faced Cub, taking a step backward in hopes of coaxing him to follow.
“What I think,” she said, taking yet another small step, “is that this is neither the time nor place for us to talk.”
His lips twitched but he said nothing.
“Let’s get this little one to bed, Ma,” Alyssa heard Yip tell her mother, Dolly.
Drastic situations called for drastic measures, she thought. If she truly was a new woman, strong enough to stand on her own without Cub Goodacre, then she surely could be strong enough to stand up to him. “I’m not trying to walk you like a dog, Cub, but if you don’t stop being so stubborn about leaving, I may just grab you by your collar and run you off my ranch.”
The thin scar along his deeply tanned jaw and neck shown pinkish red in the moonlight as he tipped his head to one side. He didn’t smile, but amusement tinged his tone when he ran one finger along the side of his thick neck and said in a gruff whisper, “Is that so?”
Despite her anxiety, she couldn’t help noticing how his dark skin contrasted against the crisp whiteness of his stiff collar. Or how his sandpaper-and-velvet voice massaged her prickling nerves like warm fingertips over aching muscles.
“That’s so.” The answer lacked the conviction she’d hoped for but it got her message across. She wasn’t the guileless child he’d once known. She was the woman in charge.
Just over Cub’s shoulder, Alyssa watched Yip pause to strike up a conversation with someone just a few feet from the porch. Nothing she had tried worked, and any second now her father would move right behind Cub. Perhaps sooner, her daughter would see her and call out. She had to find another way to get Cub to leave before that happened.
“And now I suggest, Cub, that you—” Somewhere in the crowd, she heard her name.
Shelby Crowder, her new business partner, held up one hand to her.
“Who’s that?”
It interested Alyssa that she still had enough innocent dreamer left in her to convince herself she heard jealousy in Cub’s quiet question.
“That’s my...” She paused to lick her lips. Even beneath the cover of his hat brim, she saw a glimmer of an old familiar emotion in his eyes. He was jealous.
A flash fire of feelings singed her cheeks.
Cub’s face told her he saw her response.
“Your what?” he asked in a husky bass.
Don’t blow this, she told herself. Tomorrow when she was calm and prepared, she’d straighten everything out, until then...
“That’s Shelby Crowder.” She turned to wave back at the handsome red-haired man in the impeccable designer western clothes. When she faced Cub again, she’d puffed her confidence up to meet the enormity of the situation.
Smiling broadly, she told the only lover she’d ever had, the father of her beloved child, the only man who could turn her to jelly with a glance, the one thing that would get him off the ranch in a huff and a hurry. “He’s the man I’m going to marry.”
Alyssa had fallen in love with another man.
Cub dipped his hands into the cool water pooled in the gold-veined sink in his hotel bathroom. Streams of clear liquid slid between his fingers to trickle back into the sink as he lifted his cupped palms.
He swallowed a gasp as the cold water stung his face and icy droplets splashed onto his bare chest. But when he raised his gaze to confront the man in the mirror, he knew that nothing could wash away the grim reality etched in his features. Alyssa would become some other man’s wife and he would wear the pain of losing her for the rest of his life.
He snapped the hand towel from the rack, closing his eyes against the blinding whiteness of the morning sun gleaming on the white-tiled room. As he scrubbed the rough terry cloth over his face, the picture of Shelby Crowder haunted him.
Successful, handsome, well-educated, the solid type—everything Cub was not. Oh, Cub was solid, he supposed, solid with rock-hard muscles and a head to match. As for higher education? He had a couple advanced degrees by now from the school of hard knocks. He’d never been handsome and a few falls facedown in the dirt and one real good slam into an iron gate hadn’t prettied him up any.