Wishing for the Rancher’s Love (High Country Ranch #5)

Chapter 12

12

Grady had a nagging urge to push the horses to go faster. He wasn’t sure why, because he hadn’t seen anyone on their trail for the past hours they’d been traveling.

Even so, he couldn’t keep from looking over his shoulder every few minutes.

On a sturdy gelding ahead of him, Clementine rode with a proficiency he’d always admired. Of course, having grown up on a horse ranch, she knew horses better than most women, and she also knew how to guide a horse over mountain trails, which was helpful because he’d taken the route through Keystone that led to Argentine Pass. While parts were level and easy, other areas were treacherous, particularly those in the higher elevation that already had a snow covering.

Along the stretch of the Snake River they’d been traversing, the trail was relatively flat. It was filled with aspen trees that had already lost their leaves and the dark fir, spruce, and ponderosa pine trees that grew in thick stands all along the river valley and up the surrounding hillsides.

They hadn’t come across many wild animals, had only spotted moose from a distance as well as a few deer. They also hadn’t run into many other travelers.

He tipped up the brim of his Stetson and peered at the gray sky above them. Although the sun was hidden behind the clouds, he guessed it was midafternoon and they were due for another stop soon. They were making good time, and at the current pace, they would reach Georgetown at dusk.

They’d been careful not to be seen leaving Breckenridge that morning. The stalker likely wouldn’t realize they were gone until Dad started the rumor that his son had run off with Clementine to get married in Georgetown. Even if the fellow rushed to follow them, Grady expected they would have at least a few hours’ lead.

Regardless, he’d remained wary, and Clementine had kept a level head the whole time.

That was another thing he appreciated about her. She wasn’t a frail woman who demanded coddling. Instead, she was independent and never complained. In fact, he suspected as long as she rode with him, she wouldn’t let him know she needed to stop even if she were about to keel over.

The guilt that nagged him occasionally reared up, because he knew he was at fault for the tension between them. He didn’t want her to be unwilling to tell him when she was uncomfortable or needed a break. Maybe it was time to figure out a way to change that.

He peered ahead of her to the gradual uphill climb that led to the pass. They’d do well to stop before they reached higher ground. Once they started up Argentine Peak, they’d likely keep going until they descended the other side. He didn’t like being on a peak in the afternoon with the way storms often blew in without any warning. And this time of year, the rain could easily turn to snow.

“Let’s take a break at that bend in the river ahead,” he called.

“I’m fine,” she responded. “But if you need a break, then I’ll give it to you.”

He didn’t answer, even though he was tempted to defend himself.

She urged her horse faster and moved well ahead of him.

She’d been talkative for most of the journey, and at times they’d had civil discussions about ordinary things like the people moving to Breckenridge, the new businesses being built, and even what was still needed in the high country.

He liked that he never had to come up with things to talk about with her. She carried the bulk of the conversation, and he could always speak his mind rather than saying what was expected.

He also liked that she didn’t hang on to grudges for long. She’d been mad at him last night for leaving her to go play hockey—probably more worried than mad after the threat to his life. When he’d walked in the door later, she’d been in the middle of a game of checkers with his dad and had ignored him except for snippy retorts.

Later, he’d gone upstairs to find her already in bed, facing the wall with the lights out. He knew she wasn’t asleep by how much she was tossing around, and he was tempted to apologize for his cavalier attitude toward his own safety. After all his nagging at her to be careful, it hadn’t been fair of him to rush off. It probably seemed as though he had a double standard. The truth was, he hadn’t done well in his game because he’d been thinking about her and all that was going on.

He’d planned on apologizing this morning once they were on their way, but she seemed to have put the incident in the past, chattering like she normally did. Since she’d apparently moved on from the issue, he’d decided to do so as well.

But maybe he needed to make more of an effort to iron out the tension. And he could start by apologizing for last night.

With a sigh, he nudged his horse to a trot to catch up with her. She was already dismounting by the time he reached her. As her skirt lifted, he got a glimpse of the trousers she wore underneath. The material clung to her legs, outlining the long length.

She’d also donned a thick great coat and battered black Stetson for the journey. But even with the rugged attire, she still had a womanly appeal that couldn’t be hidden. The trouble was that she’d always been too pretty. And he hadn’t wanted to be attracted to her but always had been anyway.

He slid down from his mount. As he started to stretch, he froze in place at the sight of her taking off her hat, bending her head, and shaking out her hair. The long waves had come loose and were wild and free and swirling in the breeze.

As she stood and flipped her hair back, his attention snagged on her neck and the taut line rising from her collarbone. She easily gathered her hair and began twisting it upward into a knot, but each move only emphasized the deftness of her fingers as well as her slender arms and shoulders.

“What’s wrong?” She paused with her hair coiled, a pin sticking out from between her pursed lips. Her eyes were wide, the green light in contrast to the dark forest behind her.

A biting comment rose to the tip of his tongue—one about how she didn’t have to try to look pretty for him out here. But he swallowed it. He had to start being more polite to her sometime. Why not now? “Was just thinking how pretty your hair is, that’s all.” It wasn’t all . He’d been thinking about a lot more than her hair.

The truth was, he could understand why the stalker was infatuated with Clementine. She was the kind of woman a man could only dream about having.

At his compliment that didn’t contain even a hint of the usual sarcasm, she remained in the same position, the pin between her lips and her eyes still wide. She clearly hadn’t been expecting him to say something nice—because he never said anything nice to her anymore, and because he was a blasted cad pretty much all the time.

What had changed in his relationship with her to cause the rift?

The question was nagging him again today, just as it had the other night. Was it because they’d both moved from childhood into adulthood and he hadn’t known how to handle her transformation into a gorgeous and desirable woman? Hadn’t known how to handle the attraction he didn’t want to feel toward a friend or the way his body reacted to her even when he didn’t want it to?

Maybe in his confusion, he’d found it easier to distance himself, to pretend he didn’t care, even to make himself dislike her in an effort to keep from thinking and dreaming about her.

Whatever the case, he didn’t want to be that man anymore. He had no reason to be that man. He understood now that he could be attracted to a woman physically and even find her beautiful. It was a normal reaction.

But he’d learned the key was what he did with his reactions—how he channeled his thoughts, how he resisted temptations, and how he kept from viewing women as objects for a man’s pleasure.

He could do that with Clementine. He could acknowledge how stunning she was but also keep himself from getting carried away by selfish cravings that had no place in any relationship.

“I’m sorry for last night.” He blurted the words before he could make any more excuses for not apologizing.

She still stood unmoving, one hand holding up her messy knot of hair and the other pressed against her chest. Her brows lifted a fraction, as though she was waiting for him to say more, to add a biting remark or to smirk.

“I shouldn’t have run off the way I did.” He kept his voice level. “It was hypocritical of me to expect you to hide away while I went out and made myself a target.”

She dropped her hand from her hair, and it spilled in a glossy cascade all around her, making her even more stunning, especially as she gaped at him.

“Will you forgive me?” He needed forgiveness for a lot more than just his response last night, but it was a start.

She watched him another moment, narrowed her eyes, and then fisted her hands on her hips. “Of course I do. If you’re serious about it. But since when are you serious about anything?”

He shrugged. “I’ll try to do better.”

Her mouth stalled around a ready response.

He ducked to hide his efforts to restrain a grin. He liked making her speechless. Maybe that needed to be his new tactic. It was better than irritating her.

Almost as if she was too flustered to fix her hair—or had forgotten—she slipped off the canteen she wore diagonally over her coat. She unscrewed the top, fumbling with it more than usual.

Oh yes. He liked this flustered Clementine a lot. He removed his canteen, easily popped off the cover, and took a large swig. Even if he knew he needed to be more polite with her, he was still a rogue at heart, and he wouldn’t pretend to be someone he wasn’t.

She tipped her canteen to her lips, but nothing came out. She glanced in the direction of the river, which was visible through a shadowed wooded area filled with boulders. “I’ll fill my canteen and then we can get going.”

He held out his hand. “Here. Let me.”

She stared at his hand and then back up at his face.

Without giving her a chance to protest and be stubborn, he stalked over to her, took the canteen, and then strode away in the direction of the river. With each step he took, he could feel her gaze upon him, questions radiating from her.

He didn’t turn around. But he was sorely tempted to stop and stare back at her, especially while her hair was down. He’d always loved seeing her with her hair unbound. In fact, the first time he’d met her, shortly after he’d moved to Breckenridge, he’d been practicing hockey with a broom and a ball in the alley behind the store on a hot summer day. She’d raced around a corner, soaking wet from having fallen into the river after failing a dare to walk across the railing of the bridge, and was trying to escape being seen by her ma, who was in town shopping.

At fourteen, he’d still been more interested in hockey than girls. And of course, she’d only been twelve, hardly more than a waif. But he’d loved her hair even then. He’d stopped his hockey game to help her get it untangled, and he’d even gone inside his mom’s bedroom and found a brush and towel for her.

They’d become friends after that, and during the rest of the summer, she’d come to town several times a week to see him. If he was playing hockey, she’d chase after the ball for him. If he was doing chores, she’d help him. If he was going fishing, she’d tag along. Even back then, she’d done most of the talking, always having funny stories to share about her day or her family or the horses. She’d made him laugh and brightened his life when he hadn’t known he’d needed it.

The truth was, those had been dark days for his family, especially the couple of years leading up to their move from Georgetown to Breckenridge. After years of miscarriages and struggling to conceive another child, his mom had gradually sunk into a heavy despair, on many days not even getting out of bed.

Grady hadn’t understood at the time why his dad had initiated the move away from the town they’d lived in since Grady was three. But in hindsight, he understood that it’d had to do with his mom. His dad had wanted to take her away from the difficult memories weighing her down, and he’d hoped she could find a fresh start someplace new.

After the move, his mom hadn’t adjusted right away. She’d still stayed in bed far too often, but she’d started making her candy again and had more energy than she’d had in a long time.

Then she’d met Clementine. Sweet Clementine had burst into her life like sunshine after a long, dark winter. Clementine had never met a person she didn’t consider a friend, and that was how she’d treated his mom. Clementine had loved Mom with the same unreserved love she gave to everyone.

But a spring thaw was gentle, and the new blooms poked through in their own time. So it had been with his mom. The changes had been gradual, the return of life slow, and the joy had pushed through in small clusters.

Eventually, his mom had begun to spend more and more time with Clementine, especially as Clementine got older and became more interested in making candy. As a result, Clementine had stopped seeking him out as much. Maybe that had bothered him and affected his relationship with Clementine too. After all, Clementine had been his first friend in the new place—probably one of his best friends.

Whatever the case, Clementine had made his mom happy in a few short years, when he’d failed to bring her happiness during all their many years together.

The truth was, he’d never been enough for his mom. All those years when she’d been trying to have more children and failing, she’d never been satisfied with just him, had needed more than him in her life to be happy—or so it had seemed at the time.

Maybe he’d been jealous of Clementine’s ability to win his mom’s love. Maybe he’d even grown to resent her relationship with his mom. He wasn’t sure. But he did remember one time after an argument with Clementine, when he was about eighteen. He’d stomped into the house to where his mom was working in the kitchen. She was standing in front of the stove, her face flushed and her eyes bright with tears.

“Grady, I hate when you fight with Clementine.”

“She’s so childish,” he responded, having just admonished Clementine about her need to stop going barefoot because the fellows were making comments about her ankles and how pretty she was.

He’d demanded that she wear shoes around town. She’d hotly told him she’d do whatever suited her. Of course, he’d responded that the next time he saw her barefoot, he would tie her up and take her back to the ranch.

“Clementine is a good girl.” His mom’s beautiful face had already been growing thin at that point from the pneumonia that never seemed to go away. “You’ll always take care of her and love her, won’t you, Grady?”

He hated seeing her upset or in tears, so he agreed with her like he always did. “Of course I will.”

“She’s become the daughter I always wanted but never thought I’d have,” his mom had said softly through a smile as a tear slipped down her cheek. She’d loved Clementine until the day she’d died, probably more than she’d loved him.

Grady released a tight exhale. He glanced behind him through the woodland to where Clementine was standing with the horses, still in the process of pinning up her hair.

Was it possible that, over time, he’d started resenting Clementine because he’d believed—rightly or not—that she’d stolen his mom’s love and affection away from him?

A pinch in his gut told him that’s what had happened and that things had only gotten worse when his mom had called Clementine a daughter. After that, he’d felt even more insignificant and unimportant to his mom.

With a heaviness filling his heart, he knelt among the small stones that lined the riverbank and began to fill Clementine’s canteen. Yes, there were varied reasons why he’d pushed Clementine away as his friend. But he knew he’d finally landed on the biggest reason—he’d been resentful of her relationship with his mom.

But that resentment hadn’t been fair to Clementine. It wasn’t her fault his mom had never loved him the way he’d needed and hadn’t been happy with just one child. And it wasn’t Clementine’s fault she was a vivacious and outgoing person who made friends easily.

He’d pushed Clementine away because of issues that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with himself and his own insecurities. Now, three years after his mom’s death, he needed to come to terms with all that had happened with his mom and stop blaming Clementine.

At the crackle of brush near the riverbank beside him, he startled and glanced over to find a coyote crouched low to the ground and staring at him with dark, hungry eyes. It gave a low growl, revealing its sharp canine teeth.

Grady moved slowly, lowering his hand toward his revolver at his waist. He didn’t think the coyote would actually attack him or that he’d have to shoot it, but he might need to scare it off.

Another growl came from behind him. Grady glanced over his shoulder to find two more coyotes only an arm’s length away. Before his fingers could close around his gun, the first coyote snarled and lunged, sinking its fangs into Grady’s leg.