RaeAnne Thayne - The Pines Of Winder Ranch

She made a face. “It shouldn’t be. I’m embarrassed that it is. I grew up around horses—how could I help it in Pine Gulch? Though my family never had them, all my friends did, but I’ve had an...irrational fear of them since breaking my arm after being bucked off when I was seven.”

“And I made you come anyway.”

She mustered a smile. “I survived this far. We’re halfway done now.”

He remembered Jo’s words suddenly. You’ll never find a happier soul in all your days. Why, what she’s been through would have crushed most women. Not our Tess.

Jo thought Tess was a survivor. If she weren’t, could she be looking at this trip with such calm acceptance, even when she was obviously terrified?

“That’s one way of looking at it, I guess.”

She didn’t meet his gaze. “It’s not so bad. After the way I treated you in high school, I guess I’m surprised you didn’t tie me onto the back of your horse and drag me behind you for a few miles.”

His gaze narrowed. What game was this? He never, in a million years, would have expected her to refer to her behavior in their shared past, especially when she struck exactly the right note of self-deprecation.

For several awkward seconds, he couldn’t think how to respond. Did he shrug it off? Act like he didn’t know what she was talking about? Tell her she ought to have bitch tattooed across her forehead and he would be happy to pay for it?

“High school seems a long time ago right now,” he finally said.

“Surely not so long that you’ve forgotten.”

He couldn’t lie to her. “You always made an impression.”

Her laughter was short and unamused. “That’s one way of phrasing it, I suppose.”

“What would you call it?”

“Unconscionable.”

At that single, low-voiced word, he studied her in the moonlight—her long-lashed green eyes contrite, that mouth set in a frown, the auburn curls that were a little disheveled from the ride.

How the hell did she do it? Lord knew, he didn’t want to be. But against his will, Quinn found himself drawn to this woman who was willing to confront her fears for his aunt’s sake, who could make fun of herself, who seemed genuinely contrite about past bad behavior.

He liked her and, worse, was uncomfortably aware of a fierce physical attraction to her soft curves and classical features that seemed so serene and lovely in the moonlight.

He pushed away the insane attraction, just as he pushed away the compelling urge to ask her what he had ever done back then to make her hate him so much. Instead, he did his best to turn the subject away.

“Easton told me about Scott. About the accident.”

She shoved her hands in the pocket of her jacket and looked off through the darkened trees toward the direction of the lake. “Did she?”

“She said you had only been married a few months at the time, so most of your marriage you were more of a caregiver than a wife.”

“Everybody says that like I made some grand, noble sacrifice.”

He didn’t want to think so. He much preferred thinking of her as the self-absorbed teenage girl trying to ruin his life.

“What would you consider it?”

“I didn’t do anything unusual. He was my husband,” she said simply. “I loved him and I took vows. I couldn’t just abandon him to some impersonal care center for the rest of his life and blithely go on with my own as if he didn’t exist.”

Many people he knew wouldn’t have blinked twice at responding exactly that way to the situation. Hell, the Tess he thought she had been would have done exactly that.

“Do you regret those years?”

She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes wide with surprise, as if no one had ever asked her that before.

“Sometimes,” she admitted, her voice so low he could barely hear it. “I don’t regret that I had that extra time with him. I could never regret that. By all rights, he should have died in that accident. A weaker man probably would have. Scott didn’t and I have to think God had some purpose in that, something larger than my understanding.”

She paused, her expression pensive. “I do regret that we never had the chance to build the life we talked about those first few months of our marriage. Children, a mortgage, a couple of dogs. We missed all that.”

Not much of a sacrifice, he thought. He would be quite happy not to have that sort of trouble in his life.

“I’ll probably always regret that,” she went on. “Unfortunately, I can’t change the past. I can only look forward and try to make the best of everything that comes next.”

They lapsed into a silence broken only by the horses stamping and snorting behind them and the distant lapping of the water.

She was the first to break the temporary peace. “We’d better go check on Jo, don’t you think?”

He jerked his mind away from how very much he wanted to kiss her right this moment, with the moonlight gleaming through the trees and the night creatures singing an accompaniment. “Right. Will you be okay without a flashlight?”

“I’ll manage. Just lead the way.”

He headed up the trail toward Jo, astonished that his most pressing regret right now was the end of their brief interlude in the moonlight.

* * *

THOUGH TESS LOVED living in the Mountain West for the people and the scenery and the generally slower pace of life, she had never really considered herself a nature girl.

As a bank manager and accountant, her father hadn’t been the sort to take her camping and fishing when she was younger. Later, she’d been too busy, first in college and then taking care of Scott, to find much time to enjoy the backcountry.

But she had to admit she found something serene and peaceful about being here with the glittery stars overhead and that huge glowing moon filtering through the trees and the night alive with sounds and smells.

Well, it would have been serene if she weren’t so intensely aware of Quinn walking just ahead of her, moving with long-limbed confidence through the darkness.

The man exuded sensuality. She sighed, wishing she could ignore his effect on her. She disliked the way her heart picked up a beat or two, the little churn of her blood, the way she couldn’t seem to keep herself from stealing secret little glances at him as they made their way toward the lake and Jo.

She hadn’t missed that moment of awareness in his eyes back there, the heat that suddenly shivered through the air like fireflies on a summer night.

He was attracted to her, though she had a strong sense he found the idea more than appalling.

Her gaze skidded to his powerful shoulders under his denim jacket, to the dark hair that brushed his collar under his Stetson, and her insides trembled.

For a moment there, she had been quite certain he wanted to kiss her, though she couldn’t quite fathom it. How long had it been since she knew the heady, exhilarating impact of desire in a man’s eyes? Longer than she cared to remember. The men in town didn’t tend to look at her as a woman with the very real and human hunger to be cherished and touched.

In the eyes of most people in Pine Gulch, that woman had been somehow absorbed into the loving, dutiful caretaker, leaving no room for more. Even after Scott’s death, people still seemed to see her as a nurturer, not the flirty, sexy, fun-loving Tess she thought might still be buried somewhere deep inside her.

Seeing that heat kindle in his eyes, replacing his typical animosity, had been both flattering and disconcerting and for a moment, she had been mortified at her little spurt of panic, the fear that she had no idea how to respond.

She just needed practice, she assured herself. That’s why she was moving to Portland, so she could be around people who saw her as more than just Pine Gulch’s version of Mother Teresa.