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“Trevor, hello,” a feminine voice called.
Trevor spotted the neighboring rancher’s daughter. He’d been going to see her last night when he’d run Lyric off the road. “Hey, Jane Anne,” he called.
She crossed the parking lot, then hesitated when she saw he was with another woman. “Hi,” she said to Lyric.
Trevor introduced the two women. “Lyric and her aunt are here for the month.” He explained about the accident.
“Are you okay?” Jane Anne asked.
Lyric nodded.
The rich brown of her hair picked up shades of auburn and golden amber in the sunlight, he noted. The gold of her eyes flashed when she glanced from him to the other woman. Her face was tanned, her cheeks rosy. Her smile was warm and friendly.
By contrast, Jane Anne looked pale. Her hair was blond, almost white, inherited from Scandinavian ancestors. Her eyes were light blue, her skin very fair. Her smile was cautious. Jane Anne was only eighteen and had graduated from high school in May. In June she’d been dumped by her longtime boyfriend for a girl he’d met in college.
Trevor had started seeing her out of sympathy, his attitude that of a big brother since he was ten years older than she was. “We’ll have to think of something to entertain Lyric and give her a sample of mountain hospitality. She’s from Texas.”
“I have a suggestion,” Jane Anne told them. “I was thinking of having a barbecue. I thought you could help me with it,” she said to Trevor, giving him a somewhat flirty glance, which startled him. “Let’s do it Friday night. We can introduce your guest to the local men.”
A spark of something very like jealousy shot through Trevor. He shrugged it off. What Lyric did was nothing to him. They’d had a few laughs, that was all.
Okay, so the last laugh had been on him. He could live with it. He had lived with it and gotten over it.
“Great idea,” he said. “What time?”
“Around seven-thirty?”
“That’ll give me time to help Travis with the chores, so that’ll work out.”
“I’ll call him and Alison. Also Janis and Keith. I want them to come, too.”
Trevor nodded. After Jane Anne said her farewells and went inside the lodge, he glanced at his guest. “Alison is married to my twin. Janis is her sister. Janis is married to Keith. He and his partner own the ranch to the north of our place and are running one of those paramilitary camps that are popular now.”
Lyric nodded. “I remember you mentioning them.”
“Yes.” He’d told her all about his family the three weeks he’d been in Texas. They’d laughed at his tale of all the weddings that had been going around like a rash.
Yeah, funny. He’d even thought he’d be among the married men before the year was over. Man, he had gone off the deep end.
But no more.
When he’d learned she was engaged—sort of, according to her story—he’d felt he’d been blindsided by an invisible giant with a club. His heart had been flattened.
An echo of pain chimed someplace deep inside him. He set his jaw and ignored it. He was nearly a year older and a hell of a lot wiser. “Let’s go,” he said.
Her smile disappeared while her eyes searched his as if looking for his deepest secrets. He stalked around the pickup and got in, cranking the engine after she did the same and was buckled up. They returned to the ranch without another word.
His uncle was waiting for them to return. “Beau came out during his lunch hour and checked Fay over. He left some pills in case you two gals get to hurting. He said you’ll probably feel worse before you’re better.”
“I think I’ll take some,” Lyric said.
Trevor looked her over. Damn, he’d forgotten his intention of taking her by the clinic to be checked. He’d noticed she’d moved carefully all morning. A couple of times she’d winced, like when she swung onto the mare up on the ridge. Also when she’d stepped up into the pickup at the garage and again when they’d left the lodge.
Guilt ate at him. He wished he’d been more careful with his driving yesterday. He hadn’t, and, as his uncle had often told the kids, there was the devil to pay.
His uncle continued. “Your aunt did, too. She’s napping now.”
Lyric smiled at the older man. “That was next on my list.”
Trevor thought of her in his bed and of holding her while she slept. His body reacted at once. When she recovered from the accident, he could imagine lots of enjoyable things to do in bed.
But not with a woman who responded passionately to one man while thinking of marriage to another.
Lyric woke slowly, groggily. The knock came again, and she realized that was what had roused her. Glancing at the window, she saw the sky was brilliant with the colors of sunset. “Yes?” she called, sitting up with an effort.
The bruise on her left shoulder where the seat belt had dug in was bluish purple.
“Uncle Nick sent you some salve,” Trevor said.
She went to the door and opened it.
He handed over a tube of cream. “Rub it in good. We use it on the horses when they get a sore leg. It seems to work.” His grin was wry.
“Thank you. I’ll try it.”
“Dinner’s in about ten minutes.”
She nodded. After closing the door, she used the salve on her shoulder and knees. Her skin tingled, then heat spread throughout the sore places. It felt so good, she smoothed the cream over her shoulders and the calves of her legs, too. The scent of camphor, peppermint and cinnamon engulfed her.
After changing from her rumpled clothing to blue slacks and a long-sleeved white silk blouse, she freshened up, then went to the living room. The two men were putting the finishing touches to the table in the dining room. Her aunt was already seated there.
“Join us,” the older man said, welcome in his smile. “We were getting worried when you didn’t show up all afternoon. You must have needed the rest.”
Her eyes burned with sudden tears at his kind tone. Lyric blinked them away as rapidly as they formed, horrified that she might cry in front of them. She sat opposite her aunt while the two men sat at each end of the table.
“I don’t recall ever having a three-hour nap. It must have been the pills. I feel great now,” she lied.
Trevor made a low sound of disbelief.
Raising her chin, she dared him to dispute her word. He didn’t, but his eyes were cynical as he passed a basket of rolls to her.
“What did you think of the mare you rode this morning?” Uncle Nick asked.
“She was smooth and well behaved.”
“We’re going to breed a championship line from her and the stallion.”
“Show horses?”
“Cutting ponies,” the uncle corrected.
“That’s why you bought the stallion when you were at the stock show,” she said to Trevor.
He nodded. “To introduce new blood. Zack wanted to develop a line closer to the Thoroughbreds. He wants them a little taller and quicker than our present stock.”
She knew the Seven Devils cow ponies were well-known in ranching circles. “You already raise the best in the West.”
His uncle beamed. “Yes, but we can’t rest on our laurels. The rancher across the creek is determined to beat us at the state fair next year.”
“Is that Jane Anne’s father?” she asked.
“Yep,” the uncle said. “That girl is a crackerjack rider, too. She wins any competition she enters.”
Lyric’s heart dropped a couple of inches. Ah, well, one couldn’t be the best at everything, she consoled herself.
Smile and be nice for three weeks, that was all she had to do to get through this awkward period with grace. She could do that. Smile and hold the tears inside as she’d done all fall and winter…
Uncle Nick broke into her introspection. “How about a game of Fantan?” he asked. “Do you ladies feel up to it?”
“I do,” her aunt declared.
Lyric nodded as three pairs of eyes looked her way. They played cards until ten o’clock. After that, Trevor turned on the television so they could check the news and weather report.
“Clear tomorrow,” he said. “Trav and I are going to cut hay before the weather changes.”
The local channel came on after the national news. The anchor reported an accident on the highway that had killed a man returning to Boise after a business trip. The camera focused on a woman holding a baby while a little girl clung to her skirts. The little family looked scared.
Lyric pressed a hand to her throat as a terrible ache settled there. She felt their fear and bewilderment, the disbelief that this tragedy could be happening to them. They seemed so alone—the woman, the child and the baby, standing there in front of a little house, the glare of the camera lights catching every nuance of emotion.
Tears, horrible and hurting, flooded her eyes and poured down her face.
“Lyric, honey,” her aunt said.
She shook her head. “It’s just…they look so sad,” she said, trying to explain. She stood. “I’m all right.” She rushed from the room.
In the neat bedroom she closed the door and lay down with her hot, streaming face pressed into the pillow.
Nothing like making an utter fool of yourself, she scolded, but the tears wouldn’t stop. She’d held them too long…through the turning of leaves in the fall, the rains and ice of winter storms, the blooming promise of a spring that never came. Spring would never come for Lyle, her oldest friend, the playmate of her youth.
But he’d seen the opening of the daffodils and the brilliant show of the tulips. That had made him happy.
The tears continued, each one a separate ache as memories unreeled like a movie—picnics by the river, climbs along the Pedernales River cascades, games of Kick the Can at twilight with cowboys and the ranch children joining in.
She’d loved it all, had reveled in life and its great and wonderful freedom. So had her brothers. So had Lyle.
Sobs shook her body. Grief took her to the far shore of despair. She’d wanted so much for everything to stay the same, locked in its perfect little niche of happiness.
But her mother had wanted to leave her father; her old friend had wanted more than friendship; and a stranger had entered her idyllic world, forcing her to face its imperfections. Lyle’s car wreck had been the final blow to her fantasy.
The woman with the little girl and the baby must have thought her world was perfect, too. She’d baked a cake for her husband’s birthday. That was why he was rushing home, so they could celebrate together.
The tears soaked the pillow, their supply seemingly endless. Lyric willed them to stop, but they wouldn’t.
The air stirred, and faint light brightened the room for a second as the door opened, then closed. She heard the footsteps on the oval braided rug. Not her aunt. Trevor.
“Lyric?” he said in that uncertain way men had when confronted with an emotional woman.
“Go away,” she said. “Please. Go away.”
“I can’t.”
He sat on the side of the bed, then leaned close. His big hand stroked down her hair, stripping away the band that held it in place so he could run his fingers through the strands.
“Don’t,” he murmured.
“I c-can’t h-help it.” Each word was whispered on a sobbing breath, like a child trying to hold the tears back but unable to.
She felt him release a deep breath as he bent close to her temple. His lips touched her there ever so gently.
“Your aunt said you’d been unhappy for a long time. She said I should ask you to tell me about it.”
Lyric shook her head and kept her face pressed into the pillow. The tears were never going to stop, not in a hundred years, and she wasn’t going to share any tales of woe with a man who hated her for deceiving him.
He shifted until he stretched out beside her. He rubbed her scalp and her back, massaged along her spine. “Then cry, if you have to, until the tears are gone.”
A fresh flood ensued at his words. He silently waited for her to finish. After a long time, she became aware of his heat along her right side. She realized that deep within she was cold in spite of the hot tears. She moved closer.
She felt his hesitation, then he laid a leg over both of hers. Lifting her hair, he kissed the back of her neck and along her blouse collar.
“You smell so good,” he said. “Like ambrosia. You remind me of days spent working in the sun, the scent of summer in the air. Of coming to the house and finding my favorite cake cooling in the kitchen, the aroma making my mouth water. You make me hungry for things that used to be.”
Lyric felt his words sift down to her soul, saw them as sun motes that danced in the air. Need and longing stirred in her, blending all the unspoken desires of her heart into one yearning. She turned to her back so she could study him in the faint glow of an outside light.
“Are you feeling sorry for me?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe for both of us. And Lyle.” He gave a half laugh that sounded infinitely sad. “The other point in this odd triangle.”
She lifted one hand and pushed back the stubborn lock of hair that fell over his forehead. His uncle’s was the same, she’d noted. A family trait.
Tears filled her eyes again.
He brushed them off her lashes with his finger, then he kissed the moisture off her cheeks. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
As sudden as the tears had appeared, passion took their place, rushing through her in a great tidal wave of hunger that had been suppressed much too long. Gazing into his eyes as he tried to understand her outburst, she knew they were too vulnerable at this moment to stay in the room alone.
Knew it, but didn’t stir, didn’t suggest they go.
She laid her hands on his chest and soaked in the warmth there. She touched his throat, followed the strong cords of his neck, explored his jaw where muscles quickly contracted and relaxed.
