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He should have stopped this, should have left it at friendship. Sex always screwed things up.
He pulled his arm out from under her head and sat up. He looked frantically around the room. Shadows of bad memories danced in the corners, thickening the air, choking him.
Bile rose in his throat.
Get the hell out of here.
No way did Matt do the white picket fence, the vows at the altar and the “I’ll love you forever” crap. No way did he do kids.
Marriages ended badly. With a bang.
I love you. What was he thinking?
The fire had long since died, and now the candle flickered out. Darkness pressed on his lungs.
Matt dressed in the dark, his fingers thick and clumsy. He fumbled on the table for his hat, slammed it onto his head and stepped toward the door. The floor creaked.
When Jenny rolled over, his throat constricted, and he felt that marriage noose tighten around his neck.
She sighed, still asleep.
With shaking hands, he pulled on his boots. Opening the door a crack, he squeezed out then rushed through the storm and climbed into the Jeep, the lowest of the low, a jerk. A coward.
He’d never promised Jenny he was anything other than that, any better than his father or his grandfather before him. Long men didn’t do responsibility.
He couldn’t have been more honest. This is sex. Nothing more.
But was it only sex?
Aw, shut up.
When he roared out of the clearing and across the prairie, the Jeep sprayed rooster tails of mud and water. Sayonara, Jenny.
Five years later
JENNY LIFTED another forkload of hay into Lacey’s stall. She had mucked out too many stalls today, fed too many horses. Her muscles throbbed with the strain.
She’d been exhausted lately, doing both her jobs and Angus’s.
Angus hadn’t even turned out for the branding last week. Jenny had handled it all, had called in friends and local teenagers to help with the job. It had been a big one. They’d had a good crop of calves this year.
Maybe soon, he would feel up to doing more around the ranch. He’d been grieving for his dead son for a long time, a couple of years now. It was time to rejoin the land of the living.
The low rumble of a pickup truck caught her attention as the vehicle pulled into the Circle K’s yard.
Jenny tossed her rake against the wall and stepped outside, happy for the break until she recognized that black truck and the horse trailer behind it.
Her heart writhed against her ribs.
Why was Matt Long in this corner of Montana five years after he’d left?
She’d hoped never to see him again.
When he stepped out of the truck, still as gorgeous as ever, Jenny’s traitorous heart twitched, but she forced it to settle down. Fast.
Shallow charm and a killer grin wouldn’t turn her head this time. She’d learned her lesson when he’d run out on her.
He could no longer set her on fire. The only thing that burned for him within her now was anger.
His five-year absence hadn’t been anywhere near long enough for her to forgive him.
Had he heard the news? Was he here to mess it all up for her? She wouldn’t put it past him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, striding to within a couple of feet of him, not a trace of welcome in her voice.
He slammed the truck door, then saw her. His mouth dropped open then closed just as quickly. The line of his jaw hardened. “What are you doing here?” he asked in return, leaning against the door of the truck, crossing his arms. “Thought you’d still be working for Hank on the Sheltering Arms. You just visiting here today?”
His mirrored sunglasses shielded his eyes.
She needed to see them, to figure whether he was a better man than he used to be. Not that it mattered to her. She should have never trusted the rat. Matt, the rat.
“I work here.” She stepped closer.
“Since when?”
“Four years now.”
He didn’t comment, just brushed past her and opened the back doors of his horse trailer. Masterpiece let out a demanding whinny. They must have been on the road awhile.
“You have a lot of nerve coming back to Ordinary,” she said. “Especially after the way you left. You couldn’t have said goodbye? Or left a note?” He shrugged.
No conscience.
Once a rat, always a rat.
Good to know. She wouldn’t feel guilty about the decisions she’d made anymore. She’d been right to do what she’d done and the hell with Matt’s feelings. They weren’t her concern.
Matt backed Masterpiece out of the trailer.
Master nudged his chest and Matt took a caramel out of his shirt pocket, unwrapping it. The horse picked it up from Matt’s palm with the delicacy of a surgeon.
Jenny still didn’t know what he was doing here, and really didn’t care, but she was booting him off this ranch.
“Load Master right back into that trailer,” she ordered, her tone so cold her tongue got frostbite. “Get out of here.”
“Nope,” he said, ignoring her as if she were of no more consequence than a flea. “I take my orders from Angus, not from a ranch hand.”
“What are you talking about? What orders?” Dread circled around her belly. Why would Angus be giving Matt orders? “Why are you here on the Circle K?”
“Angus hired me.”
No way. She stared at Matt. No freaking way.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Nope.” He raised his eyebrows at her tone. “What business is it of yours?”
She’d gotten over him years ago, but she sure didn’t want to work with him. Never again. And what about Jesse?
Jenny leaned forward, getting into Matt’s space. He smelled good. He still used the same aftershave and it brought back memories. Those memories were tainted, though. They weren’t the gorgeous dreams she’d wanted with Matt when she was a teenager.
But then, adolescents weren’t always the smartest creatures, were they?
Matt had forced Jenny to become a realist overnight. To start planning. She would never again be a dreamer. “Angus wouldn’t have hired you without consulting me first.”
“Why would he ask you who he’s allowed to hire?”
“I’m ranch foreman.”
Matt’s jaw dropped. “You?”
“Yes, me.” She smiled meanly. “He didn’t tell you?”
“Why aren’t you still on the Sheltering Arms?”
What could she possibly say? That they’d worked there together for too many years? That after he’d run away it had hurt her to stay, to see him in every corner, to picture him on Master racing with her across the prairie? That she’d missed him every minute of every waking hour, and that they had all been waking hours?
She hadn’t eaten or slept much for weeks until she’d discovered she had something worth living for, worth fighting for. She’d gotten over Matt pretty damn quickly after Jesse was born.
When she left Sheltering Arms, Angus had given her a job on the ranch he’d bought after her parents had gone bankrupt all those years ago.
She’d come home.
“I wanted to come back to my ranch,” she said, finally answering his question. “Angus said nothing about hiring you.”
“Well, he did. I know Angus Kinsey well enough to recognize his voice on the phone.”
God, no.
Jenny turned and strode toward the house.
“Where are you going?” The deep timbre of Matt’s voice, flavored with anger, washed over her.
“To talk to Angus,” she called over her shoulder. “To get this straightened out.”
“There’s nothing to straighten out. Angus hired me and I’m staying.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“He owns this ranch. Even if you are foreman, why would he care what you want?”
She suddenly felt good enough to shout. Payback was so sweet. Matt had hurt her badly when he’d abandoned her. Let him hurt for a while.
Jenny paused on the top step of the veranda and turned around slowly, savoring the moment. With enough smug satisfaction to drown a prairie dog, she said, “In two weeks’ time, I’m going to marry Angus.”
Matt whipped off his sunglasses. She wasn’t sure what she saw in those blue eyes, but it wasn’t happiness.
Good. She’d gotten to him.
As if sensing his owner’s tension, Masterpiece stirred restlessly. Matt rubbed his hand down his neck and the horse settled.
“Angus is old enough to be your father,” he said, his voice little more than a growl.
“So what?” Jenny frowned. “He’s a good man. He’ll make a great husband.”
Take that and shove it up your nose.
She slammed the screen door behind her, shaken, letting everything that she’d just hidden from Matt flood through her, anger so piercing it wounded her, fear so deep it shredded her stomach.
Memories so shaming they burned.
This is sex. Nothing more. The cold-hearted bastard had been telling the truth. For him, it had never been more than sex. How could she have been so mistaken about Matt Long?
I love you. She’d heard him say it so clearly, but it had been a lie.
She stared at her trembling hands. If Matt had had to leave her after their night together, he should have had the good sense to stay away forever.
His timing couldn’t be worse.
But she couldn’t blame him for this, really. Angus had brought Matt here.
Standing in the hallway, Jenny forced herself to get control of her nerves or she’d rip into Angus with both barrels blazing. He didn’t deserve that. He’d been good to her.
Dread balled up in her stomach like undigested steak. Matt couldn’t possibly screw things up for her when she was so close to getting everything she’d always wanted in life. Could he?
She needed reassurance. She needed an Angus Kinsey hug.
She found him in the living room.
He stood in front of the lace-curtained window, one arm stretched high and braced against the wall. Obviously, he’d just witnessed the scene between her and Matt. He glanced at her over his shoulder.
Graying temples and the beginning of a soft middle betrayed his fifty-eight years.
He looked tired.
Angus owned the Circle K, but Jenny ran it. For two years, he’d been detached from the ranch. The death of a man’s son could kill a lot of things in him. Even the love of his land.
She liked Angus, cared for him deeply.
