Desert Heart (The Wolves of Twin Moon Ranch Book 4) (7 page)

The first twenty days of a new job. The first twenty with a new horse.
Then Henry would wink and add,
The first twenty days of marriage
, making the missus chide and hide a smile. The love between them was a physical thing, a calico cat that wound around and around their legs, purring.

The same purr that kicked in any time Rick was near Tina.

“Mr. Rivera! Mr. Rivera!”

He dragged his eyes off her and turned them on two kids. “Hi, guys.”

“Hi,” one boy whispered, slack-jawed now that he was so close.

“Hi,” echoed the other, equally tongue-tied.

“Hi,” Rick repeated. He didn’t mind kids coming up and talking to him, even at a time like this. It was the adults who could be annoying. The ones who liked to show off their knowledge of all the stats of every player in the league. As if numbers said something about the game. As if numbers could bat or pitch, or catch or throw or run.

One kid elbowed the other, who produced a scrap of paper. “Um, could we have your autograph, please?”

“Sure.” He scribbled, smiled, and handed it back. Smiled a little more as he watched the kids walk off, grinning like they’d just won the lottery. Turned back to Tina and found her studying him.

“Do you miss it?” she asked, searching his face.

He laughed. “Do I miss people coming up to me all day? I’ll be happy when it dies away completely.”

She shook her head slowly, sadly. “I mean playing.”

He stirred a dash of cream into his coffee and contemplated the swirling pattern it produced. Major League Baseball. Did he miss it?

“At first, I thought I did.” Might as well tell her the truth, because going straight from the diamond to Ward D of the trauma clinic was like slamming the brakes on a Lamborghini in the middle of the highway. A trick he hadn’t been stupid enough to try the way some of the other guys did. He did take a fancy car for a test-drive once, but he decided a Ford was good enough for him.

In fact, he’d managed to avoid a lot of the stupid things the other young guns did. No bad relationships, no drugs, no arrests. He’d just been standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. That, or destiny had other plans for Ricardo Rivera. Because how else could he explain what happened?

“Maybe the accident was meant to be. It brought me back here, right?”
To you.

The way she looked at him—looked
into
him, almost—suggested she wanted to believe that, too. Maybe they really were meant to be together, for all that she insisted on denying the crazy pull they had on each other. They were meant to be. They could get together and—

“How did it happen?” she whispered.

He put his coffee cup down. Turned it around. Turned it back. “Didn’t you read about it in the paper?”

She turned just pink enough to tell him she’d read plenty. “I never know what to believe in the press.”

Smart girl. Because he shuddered to think what was written about him sometimes. About the accident. About his life. About the people who managed to get photographed with him, looking like they actually had some kind of relationship.

“I don’t even remember it,” he said into the coffee cup. “One minute, I was standing on the sidelines at a high school practice at one of those meet-the-public events. The next, I was in the hospital with a headache the size of Seymour Ranch.” That, and an eye bulging half out of its socket, but he’d spare her the gory details. “They told me the kid at bat cracked a real slammer into foul territory. Right as I was leaning over to sign an autograph.”

No helmet. No warning. No second chance.

At first, it seemed like the end of the world. But slowly, the crack in his skull healed, the brain swelling went down, and the agonizing headaches became mere migraines. But the nerves around his eye didn’t heal, and 80% vision wasn’t good enough—not for hitting the kind of balls big-league pitchers threw.

That had taken a while to accept, but yeah, he’d moved on.

Well, was trying to, at least.

Without thinking, he took her hand. Her warmth traveled up his arm and into his chest.

“And then along came Lucy Seymour’s addendum to the will and this job. And here I am.”

A new beginning, a new chance. His third and final chance at Tina, the way he saw it. A chance at the kind of timeless love his parents had had. Long after his mom passed away, his dad had smiled and called her his princess. The Seymours were the same, weathering the ins and outs of ranch life with a grace fed by their devotion to each other. They were gone now, all of them, buried up on the hill that faced the rising sun, but love was eternal. He could feel it every time he went up there, hear it in the whispers on the wind.

Just like he felt it now between Tina and himself. Love was eternal.

Tina leaned closer, looking so sad, he ached to say more.

“Tina…” he started. How could he put everything into words? That what they’d had together wasn’t just puppy love or a couple of horny teens getting lust mixed up with love. That what they had was a one-in-a-million thing. It had taken a while for him to realize that, but he got it now. Yes, there’d been women who made him laugh. Women who made an hour or two speed by. A couple who’d even coaxed a throaty groan out of him. But he’d never, ever met one who made him cry the way Tina did. Never met a woman who made him believe that he could have the kind of love his parents had. Except her. Tina.

He opened his mouth to say it when a cold, hard voice jumped in first.

“My, my. What do we have here?”

Tina jumped; Rick nearly snarled at the sight of Dale Gordon standing by his elbow. His blind side. Again.

“Hello, Dale,” Tina said. Her voice was flat, not giving any emotion away. When it had been just the two of them, she wore her emotions on her sleeve. Now she’d slipped on a poker face that revealed nothing, nothing at all.

A woman of class. A princess.
My princess.
The reverent words his father had uttered so often echoed through his mind. They fit Tina perfectly. She’d always had that regal, old-world side to her. But there was a cowgirl in her, too—one who didn’t mind getting her hands dirty when the job called for it. Who could work and sweat and grunt with the best of them if need be.

He slammed on the brakes, reeling the image back from where his imagination started hauling it off to like a Viking with his prize.

“Busy day, huh, boss?” Dale snickered.

Rick balled his hands into fists but kept a straight face. If Tina could do it, so could he.

“Apparently, a busy day for you, too,” Tina shot right back.

Touché,
Rick wanted to crow as Dale’s brow furrowed.
Touché.

“I’d hate to hold you up,” she continued, smiling at Dale with an expression that said,
Run along now
. “You must have so much to do.”

“Actually, I have plenty of time,” Dale said in open challenge.

“I doubt that.” Rick stood and stretched to full height, looking down at Dale. Long and hard and unrelenting. The days of Dale running his own show on the ranch while lawyers haggled over wills were over. Rick was the boss now. Not Henry, bless his soul. And certainly not this wash-up of a cowboy named Dale.

I am the boss now.
Every cell in his body united to send that message pulsing over to Dale.
I am the boss.

Dale’s eyelid twitched, and his eyes dropped to the floor. His jaw stopped working his wad of chewing tobacco.

Tina grabbed the fish and stood. “See you, Dale. We have to get going.”

We.
Rick wanted to grab the word and mount it in a frame.

She wove her arm through his elbow and steered him away from the table, leaving Dale behind. And even though Rick could feel Dale shooting daggers at his back, even though he wanted to spin and give the man another withering glare, he didn’t. At Tina’s touch, the rage building in him eased, giving way to something warmer and mushier. Something much more important than a washed-up old man.

“Hey!” he protested as they walked down the sidewalk. “Don’t you know cavemen have to establish rank?”

“Believe me,” Tina sighed, “I could write a book about territorial alpha males.”

He let her maneuver him to the car and shove the fish in his hands, then nod at the door in a command. “Get in, caveman.”

He grinned at her over the roof of the car. “Bossy, much?”

She smiled back, and just like that, they were kids again. Joking, teasing, having fun together.

“I get a lot of practice being bossy, too,” she said.

Good
, something inside him said. His pulse sky-rocketed again as something primal worked at his insides. The urge to possess this woman and to be possessed.

And the vibes coming off Tina as she drove him back to his truck? They screamed exactly the same thing.

To possess, to be possessed.

Tina shook her head at herself. Having a perfectly innocent—well, mostly innocent—coffee with the man she’d never stopped loving was one thing. Agreeing to meet at his place four days later was another.

Pure business,
she reminded herself as she drove down the dirt road connecting Twin Moon with Seymour Ranch. Just one manager helping another out, right?

Her wolf wagged its tail a little too enthusiastically.

Okay, so it wasn’t such a great idea. But how could she say no when Rick Rivera, all six foot two, hundred-and-eighty pounds of muscle, had quietly asked for help? A man capable of asking for help was a novelty, given the family she’d grown up in. Her father, her brothers—all powerful, alpha types.

Just like Rick. The man had gone pure, animal alpha with Dale at the café, and Dale had just about shrunk into the woodwork. She couldn’t get that out of her mind. If Rick were a wolf, he’d be right up there in the hierarchy with her brother Ty or her father. That raw, male power, that authority. Rick’s version, though, was balanced by something softer, more forgiving. Something his mild-mannered father had instilled in him, like the ability to ask for help. The open, easy capacity to love.

She frowned. Rick was so unlike her father in that way. So unlike her grouchy, growly brother Ty, despite the soft side Lana brought out in him. Rick was just so…so…Rick.

In her mind, she replayed his smile and melted all over again. It wasn’t a once-a-year phenomenon, like Ty’s—okay, once a week, now that Lana was in her brother’s life. Nor was it one of Cody’s dime-a-dozen smiles, promising everyone he was their best friend—which wasn’t exactly a lie, because he practically was, damn him. Rick’s smile was warm, genuine, broad. It lit up her world like a goddamn sunrise.

So she’d said yes.
Sure, I’d be happy to help.

She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel.
Business, pure business
.

Sure,
her wolf hummed inside, swiping its tail in long, sultry strokes.
Business.

She crested the hill leading to Seymour Ranch and drew a deep breath, looking over the familiar features once again. The Seymour homestead, shaded by lazy sycamore, facing the southwest. The big barn on the left and the smaller outbuildings behind it. The paddocks and the bunkhouse on the opposite side. There was something cozy, homey about it, even if it didn’t reach out with the same vibrant feel it had when the Seymours were alive. But it had potential. A new paint job would spiff up the house. A couple of new fence posts for the front paddock and it would be ready for that new breed of cattle Henry had been planning to try out. Grain-fed, organic beef; an honest way to work the land. The ruined foundation of the original barn, set back to one side, that would serve perfectly for a greenhouse, where she could—

She caught herself there. This wasn’t her home. Not her place to interfere. So what if her heart was leaping half out of her chest at the possibilities?

She coasted down the hill and rolled to a stop at the porch. And just like the first time, when she’d driven up with Ty, Rick emerged from the shade wearing that easy, glowing smile. Moving down the three steps in his graceful, athletic stride.

But this time, her brother wasn’t around to chaperone. This time, it was just her and Rick.

Mate
. Her wolf nodded inside.

Her soul urged her to jump straight into Rick’s arms, while her mind forbade anything but sticking out a stiff hand for a formal shake. Rick solved the stalemate by leaning in for a loose hug and a peck on the cheek. A peck that sent tingles all the way down her spine. Then he turned sideways, draping an arm lightly over her shoulders, and let her lead the way into the house. Giving her space. Letting her choose just how close to walk to him and just how far.

Close
, her wolf purred, sidling closer with each step.

Far,
her human side barked, trying to summon the willpower to lean away.

She was about to make the sharp turn into Henry Seymour’s office, the first room on the right, when Rick tugged her down the hallway, past the grandfather clock.

“Lunch first.”

“Lunch?”

She glanced at the walls as they went. Everything was all so familiar, as if she’d been over for Thanksgiving a month before. Everything except the empty feeling of the place these days. The house begged to be filled with the laughter of children, the whispers of lovers, the promise of family.

Their footsteps echoed, amplified by the emptiness until Rick tugged her out onto the back veranda.

“A late lunch,” he said as they stepped out of the doorway and into the light.

She caught a breath and held it, rooted to the spot. Held that breath a little longer, because she wasn’t quite ready to believe.

The table was covered in one of Lucy Seymour’s gorgeous lace tablecloths and dotted with colorful dishes. Feta-stuffed peppers, grilled eggplant. Tamales that could only have been made by hand. Dips, spreads, a salad. A couple of hand-picked desert flowers, popped into a tiny vase. Plus Rick, in a clean white shirt that showed off his bronze skin, pulling out a chair for her.

“Wow,” she breathed.

He grinned. “Cook’s son, remember?”