“Y
ou should stay here and hang out with me.” Sam pounded his hammer on a chunk of rock that looked like every other rock in the immediate vicinity. “That’d make more sense than working for Krista. Especially when you don’t need the job.”
When a fist-size nodule broke free, he frowned at it and then chucked it aside, letting it tumble-roll down the steep slope with a
clackity-clackity-clack
and a
sssst
of pebbles rattling in its wake.
Wyatt watched it go. “Didn’t you say this was the kind of place where neighbors helped each other?”
“Volunteering for the mayor’s mustang deal, sure. But not something like this. And Krista’s not your neighbor—she’s your ex.” Sam wedged his crowbar beneath a flat rock. “Help me flip this over, will you?”
It had taken them an hour to reach the site on the ATVs, another ninety minutes to work their way up the shifting mountain face to where Sam’s gut said he would find something amazing—pink emeralds, maybe, or more of the colored diamonds that had
turned him from the poorest kid in town to the region’s richest orphan.
It had taken Wyatt that long to mention Krista’s call because he figured he’d get exactly this sort of reaction. And because he didn’t have a good counterargument.
Guys like him didn’t circle back around to an ex. Especially not one like her.
Angling his pick beside Sam’s crowbar, he said, “On three. One, two . . .” On
three
they put their shoulders into it. The rock slab shifted, teetered momentarily on its axis, and then overbalanced and fell, bouncing down the scree—pinwheeling and starting a dozen tiny rockslides shushing down with it.
Sam didn’t watch it go, focusing instead on the darkness that had been hidden behind. He hunkered down and slither-slid his top half into the pitch-black. “I can’t believe she called you.” His voice echoed back at Wyatt.
“Sounded like she was out of options.”
“You never saw her after you disappeared. She was a wreck at graduation.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“Still.”
And he had seen her. He had meant to be long gone, but had driven back to watch her graduate with Sam and the others. Wearing sunglasses and a baseball hat, he had lurked at the edge of the crowd, reminding himself to breathe when she walked across that stage. Then, later, seeing her surrounded by her family, he had walked away. “So what you’re saying is that I owe her one.”
“Yeah. Which means you should take off.”
“Can’t do that. She asked. I said I’d help her out. Besides, I need to get back riding. Not just dinking around on the trails near your place, but real saddle time on a good cow horse.”
“There are other places where you could play cowboy.” Sam backed out of the crevice holding a fist-size chunk of rock threaded through with dark crystal facets.
Wyatt leaned in. “What’s that?”
“Violet iolite.” Sam twisted the rock, which glittered purple, blue, and green in the sunlight.
“Is it valuable?”
“Not especially. But it’s interesting to find it right now.”
“Why is that?”
“According to the woo-woo people, it’s supposed to help you make good decisions.” He held it out. “Here. I’d say you need it more than I do right now.”
*
When Krista reached the Double-Bar H ranch later that night, Shelby was waiting for her on the porch and Jenny was just pulling in. As Krista mounted the short flight of stairs leading up to the renovated farmhouse, she lifted a wrapped plate. “I come bearing brownies.”
“And a story, I gather.” Shelby searched her face. “You okay?” Wearing a sleeveless tee made of silk rather than cotton and jeans from a designer Krista had
never heard of, the curvy brunette was dramatic and put together from the tips of her manicured toes to the top of her every-four-weeks haircut. But despite the city shine that still hadn’t totally worn off—or maybe partly because of it—she and Krista were the best of friends.
“I’m fine,” Krista assured her, going in for a quick one-armed hug and taking a moment to lean on her.
“Baloney.” Shelby pulled away and gave her a little shake. “This is the Girl Zone. You don’t have to be brave in the Girl Zone. It’s in the bylaws.”
“I’m not trying to be brave. I’m trying to be”—
reasonable, logical, rational
—“a grown-up. The ranch needs him.” At least that was what she kept telling herself. The mantra had gotten her through welcoming the new guests, but now it was starting to wear off.
“Ranch, shmanch.” Shelby made a rude noise. “And being a grown-up is overrated.”
“Hey!” Jenny jogged up the steps with a loaded bag. “No fair starting without me. I’ve got Ben and Jerry’s and three bottles of that nice red with the creepy baby on the label.”
“Sounds like the makings of a Girl Zone to me.” Shelby herded them through the front door and into the main living space, which was sleek and modern but still felt very much like a home, with soft fabrics and family photos galore. “I thought we’d set up at the breakfast bar. Foster, Lizzie, and the dog are down in the man cave watching a
Firefly
marathon, so we should
have our privacy—or at least fair warning before we’re interrupted.”
Krista hesitated, looking toward the stairs leading down to the finished basement. “I should say hi and see how he’s doing.”
“He said to tell you hey and that he’d catch you later. I mentioned that we were going to be engaging in Level Five girl talk, and he bolted.”
Which totally sounded like Foster. “His second surgery is next week?”
“Yep. Then rehab.”
“Is he going stir-crazy yet?”
“Actually, he’s doing okay. He’s being stubborn about the pain meds, no surprise there. But rather than staring out the window and bitching about being stuck inside, he’s signed up for a couple of online sci-fi writing classes, and he and Lizzie have been talking about collaborating on a story. I’m sure he’ll get itchy before too long, and well before he’s cleared to be off his crutches, but for now he’s doing okay.” When they reached the gleaming, open-concept kitchen, she pointed to a padded bar stool. “But enough about him. Plant it, girlfriend, and start talking. What
happened
?”
Krista sat as Jenny stuck a glass of wine in her hand and Shelby put a plate of ice cream–topped brownies in front of her. But despite having spent the afternoon alternating between thinking she had lost her mind and looking forward to hashing things out with her sister and their best friend, now she hesitated. “I don’t know where to start.”
“How about with ‘I just sort of hired Wyatt,’” Jenny suggested. “But drink up first.”
The first sip of wine fought a battle of tart and sweet on Krista’s tongue, while the second loosened up the tightness in her tonsils. Reminding herself that she was the one who had called for emergency chocolate and wine, she said, “I called him. I wasn’t going to, kept talking myself out of it, but after the guests left I got to chatting with Mom and Gran, and going over the to-do list in my head, and it hit me that we can’t keep going on like we did last week.” The third sip went down smooth and warmed her insides. “So I called him. And he said yes. Well, he said okay, but it’s the same thing. He’ll be at breakfast tomorrow.”
“I don’t know,” Jenny said, shaking her head. “This is Wyatt we’re talking about. Your one-and-only. There’s a whole lot of worms loaded to come out of that can.”
“I’m not opening any cans. I’m just hiring a wrangler.”
“There’s nothing ‘just’ about it. You were head over heels for the guy, and he took off without an explanation.”
Krista stared into her wineglass for a moment. “He explained.”
“He left a note. That’s not the same thing.”
“Hang on. Time out.” Shelby made a “T” with her hands. “What note? What happened between you two? It’s hard to know whether to hate him or give him a second chance when I’ve only got the CliffsNotes.”
It was part of the Girl Code that they tried not to swap each other’s secrets. Otherwise, Jenny would’ve undoubtedly spilled the whole cringe-inducing story. A few minutes ago, Krista might have said it didn’t matter how it ended, only that it had. But wine and friendship made it easier to say, “Wyatt and I met our senior year, right after spring break. And if it wasn’t love at first sight, it was darn close.”
She had ridden out that day with her friend Darcy, and on the way home the conversation about their final projects—converting a multigeneration cattle station into a dude ranch for her, eco-friendly guest accommodations for Darcy—had turned to gossip about the new guy at the barn. “He’s older,” Darcy had revealed. “I heard that he rode bulls for five or six years between high school and college. And he’s got that swagger, you know?” She made an “mmmmm” noise of approval as Krista maneuvered her horse to open the gate and let them through the perimeter fencing. “Sooo cute. And nice! Even cranky old man Briggs likes him, and he doesn’t like anybody. In fact, I heard— Oh!” Darcy squeaked at the sight of a small herd in the courtyard. “There he is!”
The cowboy was still astride, guiding his horse from one student to the next as they climbed down and fumbled with their reins and cinches. He sat straight and easy in the saddle, his cues nearly invisible, reminding Krista of the hardcore, tell-a-man-by-his-horse cowboys who worked for Big Skye.
Yum,
she thought. But when he turned and looked at her from beneath the
brim of his chocolate-brown Stetson, Krista saw that Darcy had been way off. There was nothing cute about his square jaw and the aggressive jut of his nose, nothing so bland as nice about the way his dark eyes locked with hers. He was gorgeous. Arresting. One hundred percent male. And the way he was staring back at her suggested that he liked what he saw.
“He asked me out the next day,” she told Shelby. “We went to dinner and a movie, and he kissed me good night. Then a couple of days later, we took a long moonlit ride out to this little hidden waterfall he knew of. It was . . .”
Magical.
“Overwhelming. It was like I had designed my perfect match from the ground up, and then he turned real. I didn’t tell him about Mustang Ridge right away, but when I showed him my final project, he understood what I was going for right away and had some ideas of his own. Good ones. Eventually, I told him it wasn’t as much of a dream as it seemed—that I had the property in my family, just had to get the others on board. We used to stay up late, talking about what it would be like to run the guest ranch together.” She hesitated. “I thought we were planning our future. So I didn’t listen when his roommate tried to warn me off.”
“That would be Sam Babcock?” Shelby asked.
Krista nodded. “He wasn’t talking behind anybody’s back—he’d said it right in front of Wyatt, how I’d better watch out because for him relationships were like bull riding, only the buzzer was set for eight weeks, not eight seconds.”
Shelby winced. “Ouch.”
At the time, it hadn’t stung so much as annoyed her. “I liked Sam well enough, but this was Wyatt we were talking about. The man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with.” How strange to say that, to remember what it had felt like to be twenty and so sure of everything—her man, her plan, what her life would look like five years down the road. “When I asked him about it, he said it didn’t matter because I was different. That he felt more for me than he had those other girls, wanted more with me. That was the first time he told me he loved me.” They had been cuddled together in his bedroll on the shore of their waterfall, drinking cheap wine from the bottle while their horses grazed nearby. “He told me that he’d never said it before, never felt it. That I was the most important thing in the world to him, and he’d do whatever it took to keep us together. And I believed him . . . for seven and a half glorious weeks.”
“Here.” Jenny nudged the ice cream in her direction. “Dig in.”
“I’m okay. It was a long time ago.” Except that talking about it put her right back there. “He started acting funny around week five or six, but I chalked it up to the stress of finals. Turned out, he was looking for his pickup rider.” The cowboys who rode up, flanked the bucking bull and got the rider loose after the eight-second buzzer. “Things came to a head the day before graduation. My whole family was due in and I was dying for them to meet Wyatt. But when it came time for
us to go pick Jenny up at the airport, he bailed. Said he’d meet us later at the restaurant.”
She had stared at him, wondering how hard to push. “Are you nervous about meeting them?” she had asked. “Don’t be. They’re going to love you, I promise.”
Settling his hat lower on his brow, he had brushed a kiss across her cheek. “Thanks for understanding. I’ll see you later.” He had headed out of her apartment, sketching a wave over his shoulder like it was no big deal, just a couple of errands like he’d said.
That was the last she’d seen of him.
Jenny dropped a hand on her shoulder. Krista covered it with one of her own, appreciating the contact as she said, “We waited an hour for him at the restaurant. By then I was past worried and headed toward frantic—he wasn’t answering his cell and nobody was picking up at the apartment. I insisted that we bag the big, fancy dinner and go over there.” Three generations of Skyes in their party clothes, trooping up the stairs to the dingy off-campus apartment he and Sam had shared, and watching while she let herself in with her key. “He wasn’t there, though. And neither was his stuff.”
“He cleared out?”
Krista nodded. “There were two notes on the kitchen table, one for me and one for Sam, with the rent money. Mine was a whole lot of
it’s not you, it’s me
and
I’m sorry
. There weren’t any details, nothing about where he was going or what he was going to do. Just that I deserved better.”
“Well, he was right about that!” Shelby said. “Jerk. You totally deserved better than that.”
I didn’t want better. I wanted him.
But he hadn’t wanted her, had he? Not enough to stay. “You’re supposed to get your heart broken at least once when you’re a teenager, right? Well, I guess I got mine in right after the cutoff.”
“Why did he do it?”