Linda Goodnight - Sometimes When We Kiss

She burst out laughing. “A Dum-Dum sucker. How appropriate.”

He pushed off the fence and strutted toward her in that loose-hipped, rolling gait of a man who’d spent plenty of time on a horse and was comfortable in his own skin. Digging in his shirt pocket, he extracted another candy and thrust it toward her. “Want one?”

She eyed the treat with suspicion. “Your idea of a peace offering?”

“Do I need a peace offering?”

She snatched the sucker from his outstretched hand. “It’ll take more than this.”

One side of his mouth kicked up and a dimple deep enough to swim in winked at her. “Then give it back.”

Like the kid she’d been when Jackson Kane had broken her heart and left her with enough guilty regrets to last a lifetime, Shannon ripped off the paper and shoved the sucker into her mouth. A burst of syrupy cherry didn’t do a thing to sweeten her mood.

“Some things, once taken, can’t ever be given back, Jackson, or had you forgotten?”

Her jibe wiped the grin off his face. Good. She didn’t want him having fun at her expense. Not anymore. Because the things she’d given him—and lost because of him—were far too painful to joke about.

Spinning away from his disturbing presence, Shannon searched for her hat. Domino stood in the corner near the barn entrance, eyeing her with caution. The Texas morning was heating up and a bead of sweat tickled the back of her neck. She slapped at a gnat that found the sweat enticing.

“Looking for that?”

Jackson aimed the Dum-Dum at what had once been a nice white, rather pricey Resistol, lying crumpled in the dirt not three yards from him. A gentleman would have picked it up for her, but not Jackson. He stood there with that ’possum-eatin’ grin on his face and mischief in his eyes while she stormed across the paddock. Domino, that worthless piece of horseflesh, had taken his frustrations out on her new hat.

With the crumbled straw in hand, she turned her attention to the horse. Mad as he made her, Domino wasn’t really worthless. Doc Everts was paying a nice price to have his new mount trained at the Circle W Ranch. Moving quietly, she went to the animal, took the dragging reins and led him out of the paddock and away from Jackson Kane, taking the memories of their past along with her.

“Hey, Shan!”

Shannon’s shoulders slumped. The thud of boots against hard ground warned her of his approach. She should have known he wouldn’t be that easy to get rid of. After ten years, he was bound to have a reason for showing up this way.

“Don’t let the gate hit you in the backside on your way out,” she called over one shoulder.

He caught up to her. “I take it you’re still mad.”

Incredulous, she stopped in the entrance of the shadowy barn. Standing right next to her this way, he looked gigantic. She’d forgotten how tall he was, how he dwarfed her completely. As a love-struck teenager she’d felt so protected by his size. As an adult she was unnerved.

“You are amazing, you know that?” She gave him her frostiest glare.

Eyes brightening, he pumped his eyebrows. “That’s what they tell me.”

“That was not a compliment.” She swung around to face him, caught a whiff of grape sucker and a certain manly something that was Jackson Kane and no one else. “Why are you here, Jackson?”

Without a word, he took the reins from her and led the paint into a stall where he began the task of unsaddling. Dumbfounded, Shannon followed, taking refuge in the familiar scents of alfalfa hay and sweet-feed and leather tack.

“I asked you a fair question.”

“All right then.” He looked up from loosening the cinch and wallowed the sucker to one corner of his mouth. Shannon struggled not to follow the action, but lost that battle. His talented mouth had always fascinated her.

“Your granddad thought you could use some help out here. I was available so he hired me.”

“You? Available? What happened to the rodeo circuit?” She refused to acknowledge the part about him being hired. Not to work for her, he wasn’t. And she’d tell Granddad that herself.

“All my rowdy friends have settled down.” He grimaced as if the admission pained him no end, then dragged the saddle off the prancing horse and tossed it over a saddletree. “So I’ve retired.”

“Why don’t you go back to Louisiana?”

“Nobody there I know anymore. Most of my kin are gone, except for Aunt Bonnie. And she’s here in Rattlesnake.”

Shannon knew Jackson’s great-aunt Bonnie, a feisty twig of a lady, whose husband had died a couple of years ago. She worked at the grocery store in Rattlesnake, though she must be up in her seventies by now.

“I thought,” Jackson went on, “my aunt could use a relative close by, and Jett and Colt figured work wouldn’t be hard to find.”

Opening the stall door, he led the horse forward and waited for the animal to head, bucking and kicking up dust, into the open corral. Sunshine gleamed on the black and white hide.

“Then go to work for them.” Colt and Jett were the Garret brothers, two former rodeo cowboys who owned the largest ranch in the panhandle. Jackson and Jett had been traveling partners until an injury had forced Jett to retire from the circuit. “I don’t need you or want you on the Circle W.”

“Look, Shannon, can’t we let bygones be bygones? We were kids back then. Kids,” he added again with emphasis. “I didn’t realize I’d hurt you.”

She stiffened. “You didn’t hurt me. You made me mad. No one had ever jilted me before.”

“Who said I jilted you?”

“What other term do you use when a guy calls a girl and says, ‘I’ll catch you later, darlin’,’ and then never does?”

“Shannon.” His voice fell to that honeyed baritone that had talked her into too many things. To her total amazement and eternal discomfort, he stroked one finger down her cheek. “Don’t be mad.”

How was it that she hadn’t seen this man in nearly ten years and yet, he could stroll back into her life, and she felt as though he’d never left?

Yes, they’d been kids, foolish, imprudent teenagers who hadn’t considered the consequences of their actions. He was a rodeo cowboy so she’d known he wouldn’t stick around, and she’d promised herself not to be hurt once he was gone. And she wouldn’t have been, except for what he’d left behind.

“All that happened a very long time ago, Jackson. I’m not mad. I’m not hurt. I’ve simply grown up and moved on.”

“Then why the chilly reception?”

“Maybe I was surprised to see you after all this time.”

He laughed, appreciating the ironic understatement. “Maybe.”

“I’m too busy with the future to revisit the past, so if you don’t mind…” She waved a hand around at the small ranch, the barns, the corrals, the modest brick house snuggled between two thick pines. “I have work to do.”

“Show me the way.”

“Excuse me?”

“Work is why I’m here, remember? Your granddad hired me?”

Shannon stewed over that little piece of information. Though she’d grown up here, her grandfather was the true owner of this place. But since his heart attack six months ago he’d let her call the shots. That he’d hired Jackson Kane irked her no end, but they’d been thinking of taking on a hand and Granddad couldn’t know that Jackson would be a problem for her. After all, their brief fling had happened a long time ago.

Yes, she needed more help now that Granddad was no longer able to carry his weight, but Jackson? She didn’t think so.

“Then perhaps you should get your duties from him. I don’t need you.”

Jackson removed the lollipop from his mouth and studied the now empty stick. “He said you needed some help breaking these new colts and from the looks of that paint, I’d say he was right.”