He made no reply, didn’t continue the conversation, didn’t give her an opportunity to explain. The river of silence widened. Soon, she could stand it no longer. “My mother has always said I have lousy judgement in men.”
“Is she right? Do you?”
She heaved a great sigh. “She has that opinion because both of my exes cheated on me.”
“That’s not good.”
“It gets worse. My last husband took up with our neighbor’s daughter. She was nineteen. They fooled around for a long time. Hell. For all I know, she was under eighteen when he first started... seeing her.”
“How old was he?”
“At the time, thirty-four.”
His head shook, one, two, three times. “That’s unbelievable.”
Not to mention illegal, Sandi thought bitterly.
You’re a beautiful woman,” he went on. “He should’ve appreciated what he had.”
Beautiful? She hadn’t heard a man say he thought her beautiful or even pretty in a long time. She angled her head and looked at him. “Boy, you’re really racking up points. What are you up to?”
“Nothing. I’m just saying you’ve got a lot going on. You’re smart and you seem like you’d be good company if you liked somebody.”
“I don’t know how smart I am. When I told my mom about his girlfriend, she said I should’ve seen it coming.”
“Is that true? Should you have known he was a low-life?”
“You want to know the truth? I didn’t see it because I wasn’t looking. I was too busy building a career at the bank that laid me off even after I had been there over five years. Mom says Ken was immature from the start. And maybe he was. He needed a lot of attention.”
Crap. She was rambling worse than Jake, but she couldn’t seem to shut up. “I don’t know why I’m giving you so much personal information.”
“I’m easy to talk to. I don’t judge.”
“You probably don’t know what it’s like, but when someone who’s supposed to be loyal to you abandons you for someone else, it does something to your self-esteem. And when it happens twice, well...”
He turned toward her and gave her a smile she could only call tender. “I do know.”
Holy cow. Had someone cheated on him, too? How was that possible? He was a scholarship athlete, a football hero. And he looked like Chris Hemsworth. In college, he must have had his own harem. Sylvia Armbruster flew into her mind and she became extremely interested in his history with women.
Before she could pursue his comment or say anything about Sylvia, Waffle began to agitate behind them.
Chapter 19
“Just hold on, Buddy,” Nick said to his excited dog. He gave his companion a look. “He always gets excited when he sees birds. And he knows we’re coming up on the cattle. When he lived with you, you must’ve seen how intuitive he is.”
“Of course I did.”
He stopped the Jeep, stepped out and walked to the backend. The minute he opened the back gate, Buster leaped out and loped across the pasture barking. Nick loved watching him run. Not only was he fast, he was powerful and in his prime. Randy scrambled and whined to go with him, but Nick sat down on the Jeep’s deck and began to pet him and calm him. He would never be the dog Buster was, but that was okay. He was still a good little companion. “You’re still a baby, Little Bit. It won’t be long before you can go.”
Sandi came around to stand beside him, her arms crossed under her breasts as she watched Buster’s activities. “What’s he chasing?”
“A bird. He likes to chase birds.”
“I never knew that about him.”
“That’s because you tried to make him something he wasn’t.”
A hot glare from those pretty green eyes came at him and she made a little gasp.
Uh-oh. He had said the wrong thing.
“How could I know he was a bird-chaser? I have a small yard and I had him only a few months.”
There it was again, that attitude she took on when it came to Buster. Could anything he said or did ever change her mind? The snappish response brought silence to their conversation. She was still bitter and while he understood that, he couldn’t, wouldn’t concede that she was right when she wasn’t. She was a strong woman with her own ideas. Winning her over was going to be harder than he had anticipated.
Looking up at the late day sky, he continued to rub Randy’s head and back. A hawk floated high above them, hunting for his supper. Bird songs from a distant somewhere were the only noise in the air. The quiet sounds of nature seeped into Nick’s soul and he inhaled a deep breath of the fresh air. “Peaceful,” he mumbled.
“You’re right,” she said, brushing back a few strands of her long red hair that had blown across her face. “A person could get used to it.”
“Yep. Sometimes I drive out here and just sit and watch and listen. This is part of why I hang on to this place. No people. There’s always chaos where there’s people.”
The corners of her mouth tipped up into a hint of a smile. “That’s the second time you’ve said something that makes you sound like a recluse, but I know you can’t really be like that. If you were, you couldn’t have made so much success of your life. No one would have hired you as a general manager of anything, not even a ranch.”
“I’m different when I’m here.”
Her head tilted to the right and she appeared to be studying him. “You do seem less edgy. Which person is the real you?”
He lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Most people have two faces. Even two personalities. A person almost has to these days. If how you feel about something isn’t politically correct, you’re better off keeping your mouth shut.”
“That might be true, but you don’t seem like the kind of person who worries about political correctness.”
“Depends on the circumstances.”
He couldn’t think of what to say next, so they stood there until the silence started to
