“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”
“I guess.”
“You thought about this a lot,” he said.
She shrugged. “I’ve had plenty of time to work it out. Sitting up through the night with a sick child gives one a chance to revisit the past.”
“Was he sick a lot?”
“No. Nothing like me who caught every bug in a hundred mile radius and then some. Shane’s a healthy kid, and I’m grateful. I meant the usual stuff. Colds, fevers.”
She looked at him again and found him studying her face. She returned the interest, examining features she’d thought about over the years, noticing the changes and the similarities. Time had been kind to him, turning him from a good-looking teenager to a handsome man.
Jack smiled slowly. The corners of his eyes crinkled, and her stomach lurched in response. She found herself leaning toward him, wanting to hear whatever magic words fell from his firm lips.
“I’ve spent time with Shane and seen you with him. I know he’s your son,” Jack said. “But I have to admit I have trouble thinking of you as the mother of a ten-year-old.”
She splayed her hands, palms up. “That’s me.”
He drew one leg to his chest and rested his arm on his raised knee. “You and Shane both mentioned you were having difficulties with your dad. Is that any better?”
“Not really.” Katie looked at the stars, even though she knew there weren’t going to be any answers there. “My father doesn’t appreciate Shane. All he sees are the differences between them. But I’ve talked to my contractor, and our new house will be ready in seven weeks. I’m guessing we can hold out that long.”
“Tell me about the house,” he said.
Jack listened as Katie talked about three bedrooms and an eat-in kitchen. He couldn’t relate to living anywhere but on the Darby ranch. At one time he and Katie had planned a future together. Who would have thought things would turn out so differently?
“You’re nothing like Aaron,” Katie was saying. “You’ve lived similar lives on the same land, doing the same kind of work, but you’re very different men.”
“I’m like my father,” Jack said flatly, knowing that was the heart of the problem. When he’d been a boy everyone had said he was exactly like Russell Darby-charming, fun-loving. But all that had changed when he’d realized what his father had done by walking out on his family without once looking back. Since that day Jack had struggled to destroy everything his father might have taught him.
“You’re not like him at all,” Katie protested. “You have physical features from both your parents, but in temperament, you’re much more like your mother.”
Her words pleased him. He’d worked hard to make them true. He smiled faintly. Trust Katie to see him as he wanted to be seen. She’d always believed the best in him. When he hadn’t thought he could do anything right, when he’d been all of sixteen and had been trying to grasp the extent of his responsibility, Katie had been the one to convince him he could do it if he wanted to. Her trust and faith had given him the strength to keep trying.
But there were things about him that she couldn’t know. Ways in which he’d come far too close to being Russell Darby-a man who’d walked out on a ranch, a wife and seven children.
He looked at her with the porch light turning her blond hair the color of gold. She wore a sweater over slacks. The soft clingy fabric of her top showed him that she was still as curvy as he remembered. Growing up, she’d been his fantasy. Despite time and distance and good sense, he found himself wondering how it would be between them tonight. They were different. Not children who had fallen in love, but adults who understood the logistics of what went where and how good it could be…even between strangers.
She tilted her head. “You should have asked me to stay.”
He knew what she meant. That summer, when she’d been leaving for college and had wanted him to go with her. Instead of refusing, he should have asked her to stay here…with him.
“No,” he said.
“Yes.” She leaned toward him. “I would have done it. I would have done anything for you. I loved you-you were my world.”
He swore under his breath. “Your world, as you call it, was out in front of you, waiting to be explored. You knew everything there was to know about Lone Star Canyon. You deserved more than this. You wanted more than this.”
He knew all about wanting. Once he’d had wants and dreams, but they’d faded until he could barely remember what they’d been. Once he’d wanted a wife and a family. Not anymore. Love didn’t last, and women didn’t stay.
“Interesting that despite your plans for my destiny, I ended up right back here,” she said. “I wish you hadn’t been so self-sacrificing. I think we could have made it.”
He dismissed her comment. “It doesn’t matter.” But what he wanted to say was, “Don’t talk about it.” Because revisiting the past would start to hurt. He might not remember his hopes for the future, but the pain was still fresh. The pain of having to be in the one place he didn’t want to be; the pain of giving her up, of being nineteen and completely alone and responsible for the well-being of his family. The pain of spending every minute of his life not being his father. Of figuring out he was always going to be alone.
“When you tell me it doesn’t matter I start to think I wasn’t very important to you at all,” she confessed. Her gaze settled somewhere in the center of his chest. She tucked a few loose curls behind her ear and tried to smile. “Silly, huh? It was a long time ago. But it’s weird to think you’ve forgotten it all so easily.”
Without realizing what he was going to do, he reached out and grabbed her upper arms. “What do you want from me, Katie? To know that having you walk away ripped out my guts? That I almost didn’t make it without you?” He shook her slightly. “Guess what? I did make it, because no matter how dramatic it seems at nineteen, no one dies of a broken heart.”
Her eyes sparkled, and for a moment he thought she might be fighting tears. “I know,” she whispered. “I’m being silly. It’s just after all this time, I’m sorry you weren’t my first. Dumb, huh?”
Dumb and wonderful and Lord almighty, how had she known exactly where to stick the knife? He felt the sharp blade slide between his ribs with a surgeon’s precision.
“I wish things had been different,” she went on as if she couldn’t see the bleeding. “I wish you remembered it the way I did and that it had been important to you the way it had been important to me.”
He released her because her warmth burned him. He looked away, at the barn that had fascinated her earlier. “Why is that so important?” he asked. “We were wrong for each other then and we’d be wrong for each other now.”
“I’m not looking for a relationship, either.”
“Then why are you digging up bones?”
“Because I have questions.”
He returned his attention to her beautiful face. Her blue eyes were dark in the porch light, glinting wide pools, and he found himself poised to dive in.
“You always were fearless,” he told her. “That hasn’t changed, has it?”
“I hope not. Sometimes I get scared, but I do whatever it is anyway. I think it’s because-”
Later he would tell himself he wasn’t sure who reached for whom. But his gut knew the truth. He knew he was the one who grabbed her arms again, but not to shake her. Instead he drew her close. But she reacted so quickly, hugging him, sliding against him in a heartbeat, that he was nearly able to convince himself they’d acted in tandem.
One minute she was talking and the next his mouth came down on hers. Lips touched, bodies pressed and the explosion sent them into a time warp. Suddenly it was eleven years ago and they were young and in love and close to dying if they didn’t kiss one more time. He could feel the warm nestling of her breasts against his chest. Her scent was familiar, as was her heat. Her lips tasted exactly as he remembered, only better, if that were possible.
He told himself to back off, to stop it, to end what was obviously insanity, but he couldn’t. He could only hold
