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Same guy. Same story.
Some things never changed.
And now he might see Jonathan. What if he figured out her long-held secret? One he didn’t deserve to know. If he learned he was her son’s real father and asserted his rights, he’d destroy the stable life she’d reconstructed for her and Jonathan after Kevin’s death.
Tanner cared too much about rodeo—he wouldn’t stick around long enough to be a real father to her boy. And when he left, Jonathan’s shaky confidence would be damaged even further. She couldn’t let that happen.
She studied Tanner from the corner of her eye as she limped slowly beside him. He was as lithe and powerful as she remembered, his back muscles shifting under the white T-shirt tucked into his Wranglers. He still moved with a predator’s grace: coiled strength beneath a relaxed exterior. The chiseled planes of his face hadn’t changed, either, or the level brows over watchful blue eyes. How much would that thoughtful gaze puzzle out when Jonathan came into the picture?
Suddenly the wind rose and the air around them pricked with electricity. Elm trees lashed to and fro as water dusted the air.
“Looks like a bad one,” Tanner hollered when the clouds opened up and threw their first wet volley. A flash lit up the sky, the crash of thunder following close on its heels.
“We’d better run for it,” he said.
She looked down at her throbbing ankle and before she could react, he hoisted her over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold and raced across the road.
“I can walk,” she protested, but he’d already reached his truck. When she pounded on his broad back, he turned, and his breath, barely scented with the tang of cinnamon, was warm on her face, his lips disturbingly close.
“Hold still. You’ll hurt yourself more,” he said in the deep, soft voice he used to gentle two-thousand-pound bulls.
“Let me down.”
“Once you’re inside. Don’t want you injuring that ankle more.” His strong, one-handed grip held her captive as if she weighed nothing. He opened the door and lowered her onto the passenger seat.
She watched him jog around to the driver’s side, wishing she was anywhere but here. She wanted to be alone with her thoughts and memories of a man who’d actually cared about her, not with the one who’d proved he couldn’t care less. A person who’d left her, and an unborn child he’d thankfully never learned of, for what truly mattered to him: fame and fortune.
Tanner slid inside and tossed his hat and jacket in the back. Raindrops fell from his nose and chin. “Here.” He reached behind him and draped a blanket around her. Her teeth chattered and she gathered the covering close. She wanted nothing from him. Not the blanket. Not even this ride. But, given the weather, she couldn’t argue.
“So—so why are you back?” she managed through clenched teeth, her muscles straining not to shake.
“Your father asked me.” He cranked the heat and headed back onto the road.
Confusion mixed with the dull pounding in her head. “Why would he do that? He just had a stroke.”
Blue eyes flicked her way, compassion deepening their color. “He told me about that and the ranch. I offered to help him save it.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Nope.” His mouth and jaw looked as firm as ever. Definitely not joking.
“So you just dropped your career and came? Can’t remember that being an option before.” She pressed her lips closed, mad that she’d let him get her tail up. His leaving her was water under the bridge. It didn’t matter anymore. Unless he found out about Jonathan...
“And you’re too late. The ranch is sold.” At least she’d be seeing Tanner’s taillights soon.
His swift, sidelong glance made her jump and peer out her window at the writhing darkness, rain twirling through the black.
“Your dad said the sale wasn’t final.”
“It practically is,” she insisted, infuriated at his unruffled expression. “He just needs to sign the papers.”
Tanner made a noncommittal sound that she barely heard over the thrumming engine.
“It’s going through,” she vowed, falling into the same rhythm their old arguments used to take. The calmer he got, the more irrational she sounded...and it drove her as crazy now as it had then. Men. Were they born with a straightjacket on their emotions? Or maybe it was just Tanner.
Tanner shrugged. “There’s still time.”
Her heart beat a strange rhythm, stopping then racing. “Why are you butting into my family’s business? Don’t you have bulls to ride, autographs to sign?” She shrugged off the blanket, steaming now.
A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Tore my rotator cuff and got another concussion recently. I need a place to rehab until I’m cleared to ride again.”
She pushed down the sudden, unwelcome concern. He’d stopped being hers to worry about long ago. The wind kicked up and tossed a small branch at the windshield.
“We’re not a spa. You’re wasting your time. Worse, you’re wasting ours.”
In the split second his eyes flashed to hers, something shimmered and stretched inside, a dormant part of herself rattling its chains. There couldn’t be an atom of her that actually wanted him around, could there?
“Coming here makes sense,” he said obliquely, returning his gaze to the slick road. The windshield wipers swished ragged sheets of water back and forth, the purr of heat lulled her.
“None of this makes sense.” Despite everything, she dropped her head back and closed her eyes. She had to keep Jonathan and Tanner apart, but how? It seemed impossible. With Tanner around, would her lies be challenged? Suspected? Her reasons for keeping quiet ten years ago still made sense. Tanner might have done the responsible thing and returned home, but he would have felt resentful. Tied down. Obligated. She wouldn’t let him blame her and Jonathan for losing out on his dreams. That wasn’t the kind of dad Jonathan deserved. The partner she’d wanted.
“Don’t go to sleep, Claire,” he commanded, his voice suddenly sharp.
Her lids flew open and she noticed the line of cypress trees that marked the start of the Bakers’ land. “I wasn’t.”
An uneven breath escaped him. “I should drive you to the hospital.” He started to slow the truck as they approached an intersection and she waved a frantic hand.
“I need to get home. My family will worry if I’m gone too long.” She had to get to the bottom of Tanner’s stay. Convince her father to change his mind. She couldn’t let him get stressed again trying to save the doomed ranch with some crazy, reckless scheme of Tanner’s. The doctor had ordered rest. Calm. Two things Tanner knew nothing about.
“You have a son. Jonathan?”
She pressed her shaking lips together, fighting to keep her face neutral. Already, the questions...
They rolled up to a stop sign and idled. Out of the gloom bounded a pair of braying Labradors, breaking the potent silence that stretched between them. At last, her vocal cords unstuck. “How do you know that?”
His forearms flexed as his fingers tightened on the wheel. “Heard about him from your father.”
Her stomach clenched. “Then he told you I married nine years ago.”
It hadn’t been hard to convince her dad Kevin had fathered Jonathan, since she’d truly fallen for the wonderful man who’d married her three months after Jonathan’s birth. Her father couldn’t have shared anything incriminating with Tanner...
“I’m sorry about Kevin.”
His sympathy fired through her, making her uncomfortable in her own skin. He had no business talking about her husband. Or Jonathan. She leaned her head against the window and stared out at the dim roadside pastures as they flashed by.
“Dad should have mentioned your visit.” She wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed the bumps on her arms.
Intensity deepened the light creases that bracketed his mouth. “I asked him to. Must have forgotten.”
Claire thought over her father’s recent absentmindedness. It could have slipped his mind... Still, why hadn’t he consulted her right away? If he had, she might have stopped this catastrophe. Tanner staying with her family? On her ranch? Impossible. He would be a bad influence on her boy and her fragile father.
“How are you two still in touch?”
“When my tour group passes by he comes to watch and we go out to eat. Talk on the phone around the holidays.”
“Birthdays, too, I suppose?” Bitterness colored her tone. How had her father kept this from her? Then again, he’d hidden the ranch’s desperate finances. They passed Mr. Ruddell’s ranch, his pear trees flanking the wagon wheels at the start of the drive.
“Sometimes.”
Her temperature rose at his offhand admission. She knew her dad wished he’d had a son to help with the bulls, and Kevin had been more interested in machines than livestock. When she and Tanner had dated, her father had treated Tanner like family. Even trusted him to work with their prize animals, sorting their breeding stock, keeping the best for their program and selling the rest privately or at auction.
“How long is Dad’s invitation?”
Tanner rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s open-ended. I’ll be gone once I get the all-clear, though.”
A short laugh escaped her. “Sounds right.”
“Claire—”
She waved off his appeal. “Look. Whatever my dad and you planned...please forget it. Tell him you stopped by to say hello, wish you could help, but another commitment came up.”
“I didn’t expect you still felt that strongly.”
“I don’t.” The rise in her voice made her pause and swallow her agitation. She wouldn’t give Tanner the wrong impression...let him think he still affected her.
“We just don’t need your kind of help.” Don’t need you, she added silently. Her increasingly withdrawn son could use a father figure, but not someone like Tanner. Never him.
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “And what kind of help is that?”
“The type that ends with people in hospitals,” she snapped, her control breaking. Lightning forked down the road. An exclamation point on her mood.
He blew out a long breath then said, “You know I wouldn’t have dared you to try out that new barrel horse if I’d known her history.”
Claire’s head throbbed harder as she recalled the weeks she’d spent in the hospital and then at home with a shattered pelvis, fractured skull and broken ribs after a competition practice gone bad more than a decade ago. “That’s the thing. You rush into everything. Don’t consider safety. Worse, you push others, too. It’s all about the thrill.”
“Better than the way you’ve been hiding ever since the accident.”
His words echoed in the pit of her stomach. Her mouth opened and closed. After her accident, quickly followed by her mother’s death, Claire’s world had spun out of control, her emotions as bruised as her body. Her priorities shifted, transforming her from a young woman who never considered safety to one who understood human frailty and the importance of family.
Dani’s dude ranch only allowed her a couple of weeks off, and Claire hadn’t wanted to leave her grieving father alone to follow Tanner. And even if she had, how would she have coped watching the man she’d loved risk his life every day? Impossible. No. She’d made the right choice in giving him that ultimatum, as painful as his answer to it had been.
At last, she whispered, “These have been the happiest years of my life.”
He ran a hand through the flattened hair at his crown. “We’re almost there.”
He flicked the blinker and turned onto a road only a mile from her drive. The truck’s leathery scent grew strong as rain drummed around them, closing them in when all she wanted was to escape.
“You’re not staying here.” The words came out of her mouth strangely, making a flat splat like the water against her window.
The truck signaled then turned again before Tanner answered her.
“Let’s hear your father out.”
Another turn had them swinging, at last, onto Denton Creek Ranch’s long drive. When they stopped, his warm hand fell on her arm before she could bolt.
“I’m not playing some game, Tanner,” she exclaimed, “This is my life. Not a competition.”
His eyes tightened in the corners, small flares appearing. “You used to like competing.”
She thought back to her old rodeo dreams, how she’d once imagined crowds cheering her name.
“That girl’s gone. Some things matter more than winning. I wish you’d learned that lesson.”
“Maybe I should have,” he said beneath his breath, his voice so low she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right.
He settled his hat on his head and ducked out of the truck, leaving her to stare after him.
Whatever his plans, she’d stop them. It’d taken a good man’s love to reassemble her broken world. She wouldn’t let Tanner Hayes smash through it again.
* * *
TANNER REMOVED HIS hat and thrust open the porch’s screen door for Claire. He studied her, drawn, as he’d always been, by some intangible quality. Something in the way she moved, in the straight back and the swing of her shoulders, her quick-fire expressions.
“Dad!” she called. A small terrier charged them and sprang as high as Tanner’s belt buckle, barking.
“Settle down, Roxy.” Claire scooped up the yapping dog and kissed it on the nose.
He followed her into a large, adobe-style kitchen and spotted her father and a young boy seated at a long oak table, hunched over chocolate cake.
“Hello, Martin.”
The man looked up, surprised, before one side of his mouth twisted in a smile, the other frozen in place. Dismay filled Tanner to see his old hero brought low, followed by a fierce conviction to restore him and his ranch to their former glory.
“Hey, Tanner. Glad you made it, but...” The furrows in the old man’s brow dug in deeper. “Didn’t expect you for another week or so.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Claire’s sundress dripped as she crossed the room and placed her hands on her father’s rising shoulders. She’d always been a loving daughter. Had been devoted to Tanner that way once. What if they’d never split? Would she be caring for him now, too? Helping him figure out his bleak future?
Martin peered up at her. “Thought I had more time.” His deep-set green eyes narrowed, disappearing inside heavy lids. Under the harsh light, the extent of Claire’s scrapes made Tanner suck in a fast breath. It unsettled him. Seeing her hurt. Knowing he’d caused it. Again. A reminder that he was no good for her.
“And why are you banged up? Are you hurt?”
The freckled young boy watched Claire under pulled-down eyebrows, rabbit-gnawing absently on his cake. Tangible proof that Claire hadn’t really loved Tanner. She had a child whose age meant Claire had moved on to another man fast. Had found love, marriage and a family—everything she’d wanted that Tanner couldn’t give. But what if he had...he wondered, eyeing the youth. If he’d chosen Claire over rodeo, this could be his son.
“Are you okay, Mom?”
Claire scooted around the table to kiss his cheek, their sunset-colored hair mingling. “I’m just fine, honey. I had a little accident and Mr. Hayes drove me home. Why don’t you and Roxy go upstairs? I’ll be up in a bit for a story. Guff and Lottie.”
“Can I take my cake?”
