“Don’t be ridiculous. I wanted to be a professional hockey player. If I couldn’t be a bull rider that was the next best thing.”
“Why…why didn’t you?”
As if just noticing her difficulty, Kas sped toward her. Tabby stood as still as she could for fear that he would collide with her and they both tumble to the ice. But then he skated to a stop a few feet from her leaving the spray of shaved ice over her cast boot and skate. He wrapped her in his arms and held her tight.
“Because I couldn’t do what I loved, this time because the NHL wouldn’t take an athlete who couldn’t get a doctor to sign off on a sports injury. No team would take me after having suffered a broken neck. Strike two.”
“You’re mixing sports.”
“Yes, I am. Come on.”
“Do I have a choice?”
Kas just chuckled and looked over his shoulder. He began skating backwards again. This time faster than before, making her nerves shoot like fire through her body. Everything on alert.
“This is too fast,” she protested. “Please slow down.”
“Don’t think. Just feel.”
“I feel like I’m going to fall.”
“Close your eyes.”
“Kas!”
“Just close your eyes. Humor me.”
She did as she was told. She had no idea why. But she trusted him. He’d catch her if she fell.
“Just feel,” Kas said again, this time softer.
Tabby held on to Kas and let him move her around the iced pond. She kept her booted cast pressed against her skate to keep it from swaying back and forth with the movement so as not to trip Kas and have both of them tumble to the ground.
“Do you feel it?
She held her breath and kept her eyes clamped shut. “Yes.”
“Good. I’m going to go faster.”
“No!”
“Just let go and feel it.”
She shut her mind down and when she did, she stopped protesting. The wind whipped past her as they moved. Kas’s gentle maneuvers had them skating together. How she didn’t know.
“You can have this again, Tabby. This feeling. I know you don’t think so, but you can. Open your eyes. Look, you’re skating with one leg.”
As soon as she opened her eyes and could see how fast they were going, she panicked. Her grip on Kas’s arms grew tighter and she leaned forward to compensate for what she lacked in balance.
“Trust me.”
“I do,” she said, breathlessly. “I don’t trust me.”
“Whoa, easy.”
Kas skated them both in a circle to slow down their speed. It was scary and thrilling, but when they finally stopped in the center of the pond, Tabby breathed a sigh of relief.
“I won’t let you fall, Tabby,” he said, peering down into her eyes. “Not while I’m around at least.”
Her heart pounded in her chest. “I think I know that.”
His eyes darkened and his expression turned to a frown. “You mean you don’t know for sure?”
She took in each cool breath slowly and then expelled the air from her lungs turning words over in her mind as she looked up at him.
“These days I’m not too sure of anything.”
He reached up and brushed his gloved hand across her cheek, making it cold as the wind hit it. But she didn’t care. Everything about him made her warm inside and that was enough. She had so many questions turning over in her mind. But this was enough for now.
“That’s too bad. Really too bad. I’d hate anything to shatter your spirit.”
“Is that why you’re doing this?”
He frowned again. “Doing what?”
“This. Everything.”
“You have to spell it out for me, Tabby.”
She hesitated. Tabby hated the feeling of being so unsure. “It’s just…I’ve been on the ranch for over seven years. And I’ve been alone. Don’t get me wrong, Trip has been wonderful to me. He and my dad were friends a long time. I think he felt like he owed it to my father to look after me. I didn’t know him much before my dad died because, well, we lived far away and ranching is tough work. Trip was always so busy with the ranch and the rodeo. But they saw each other when they could. And I’d see Trip at the rodeos when Dad used to bring me. Still, I’ve been used to doing things by myself for long time. Relying on myself. I’m not used having someone so…interested in what I was doing or how I was.”
Embarrassed, she laughed and looked away.
Kas pulled off his glove and placed his hand on her chin, forcing her to look at him again.
“Don’t do that,” he said quietly. “I don’t want it to be like that with me.”
“Is that another order?”
A flash of hurt made his expression hard for just a fraction of a second. But he quickly recovered.
“Have you ever kissed by a man before?”
Her pulse thrummed. “What?”
His lips tilted to grin, slow and sexy. “You heard me. Don’t tell me you didn’t.”
“Oh, yeah, I heard you all right. I just can’t believe you asked me that.”
“Why not?”
She looked around and saw the beauty that surrounded them and that big blanket of blue Montana sky above them. It enveloped her like a caress, like the warm hug that she’d been missing for a long time and didn’t ever think should get again. And it pained her inside to admit it even to herself. She’d closed herself off for so long. It had been necessary. But despite all of the warm clothes she wore to keep protected from the elements, she may as well have been standing there naked in front of Kas.
He tipped her chin up with his fingers. “You know, for all your sass, you don’t know very much.”
“How do we go from my being kissed to not knowing very much in practically the same breath?”
Kas bent his head and leaned closely into her until he was just a few inches away from her face. “If you stopped to think about it for second, then you’d know that I want to kiss you.”
Her mouth dropped open just a fraction as
