Carolyne Aarsen - The Cowboy's Homecoming

First she shrugged off her backpack and set that in the box fixed to a rack across the back of the quad. Then, putting her weight on her good foot and using her crutch for balance, she managed to get her bandaged foot up and over the seat. She shifted her weight, pulled up her crutch and...voilà! She was on.

With no falling whatsoever. Always a good thing.

Lee dropped onto the seat, hit a button on the handlebar and the quad lurched ahead. She caught herself in time, but her grip on the seat was precarious.

“The field’s a bit rough, so brace yourself,” he cautioned as he flicked the quad into the next gear up.

Rough was an understatement, Abby thought as the quad jostled and bounced over ruts in the field that she suspected were from a tractor. But the worst part of all was that every rut they hit made the quad bounce, had her bumping up against Lee.

She wondered if he had done this on purpose, but when she saw him move forward on the seat, as if to avoid her, she guessed this was a decision he regretted, as well. A few more bounces later, he stopped and turned the quad off.

He quickly dismounted but stayed beside the vehicle while she got off. Then he grabbed her crutch and handed it to her, and while she fitted it under her arm, she forgot her earlier reminder to take her time and she stumbled. He caught her, steadying her, his hand warm on her upper arm.

Abby jerked back, but she almost lost her balance again. This time Lee caught her with both hands.

They stood that way a moment, Abby wishing, praying, she could stop the blush that she knew made her cheeks flame.

“Please let me go,” she whispered.

“I will if you promise not to act so jittery. You’re going to fall again.”

“I’m not jittery,” she retorted, tossing her hair back and lifting her chin as if to face him down.

His dark eyes held hers, his expression serious.

“I think you are,” he said quietly.

Abby suddenly found herself unable to speak as their gazes locked. The faintest whisper of a breeze rose, cooling her heated cheeks, toying with her hair.

Lee finally released her, then heaved out a sigh. “Look, I know things are weird between us. I get it. But right now I have to help you with this story. I don’t like the idea either, but we gotta find a way to work together without being uncomfortable. Put what happened behind us and move on.”

Annoyance flickered through her at the seeming control he had of his emotions. Behind that came anger. As if he could simply put behind them what had happened. He was talking about more than something as innocuous as hurt feelings. But on the one hand he was right. Better to address the unpleasantness and get it out of the way than dance around it.

“I’m sure we can do that,” she conceded.

He gave her a quick nod of acknowledgment, but when he turned away from her to retrieve her backpack, she also knew her feelings toward Lee wouldn’t disappear simply because she wished they would.

They were too complex and too deeply ingrained.

She just hoped she could maintain a semblance of civility with him and not let old memories of her silly schoolgirl crush supersede the reality of what he had done to her family.

Chapter Four

Who did he think he was fooling?

Lee clutched the padded backpack Abby had set on the back of the quad, taking a few seconds to contain himself. The tension between him and Abby was almost thick enough to see. So, obviously, his little speech about moving past what had happened between them wasn’t changing anything.

But at least he had gotten it out in the open. They wouldn’t have to pretend the pain and uncertainty weren’t there.

“I’ll take my backpack, please,” Abby said as Lee slipped the one strap over his shoulder.

“I don’t mind carrying it. I’m afraid it will throw you off balance in this high grass.”

“Those cameras and lenses in there are my livelihood,” she informed him, her hand still out. “I have never entrusted that backpack to anyone before.”

He wanted to protest, not sure he should risk helping her again if she stumbled, but she seemed adamant, so he reluctantly handed the bag over to her. He shoved his hands in his back pocket so he wouldn’t be tempted to rush to her rescue again.

That moment, when he had held her arms, it was as if something electric surged between them. He blamed his reaction to the heightened feelings she created in him all across the board. It was just their history that made him so aware of her, but for both their sakes, he knew he had to find a way to keep a tight lid on his emotions. Otherwise this whole arrangement could become untenable.

Lee slowed his steps to match her pace and when they came to a depression in the ground, he stopped.

“Don’t know if you can make it out from here, but that’s what’s left of the first foundation of the house that my great-great-grandfather Cecil Bannister built.”

“Is it a darker color?” she asked, pointing to the mounded rectangle in the grass.

“It is. My grandfather used sod from a field closer to the river for the foundation. Different grass type, that’s why it shows up.”

“A soddy house, I’m guessing?”

“When Grandpa Cecil and his wife came here in 1865, they stayed with a single man who lived a ways down the road. Apparently he was a head case, so Cecil decided he needed to get out as soon as possible. So he built the sod house. It was a quick shelter for them.” He spared her a look. “When I was growing up we would come up here for a picnic at least once a year, as if to remind us of the ranch’s humble beginnings. When Heather came into the family, this was one of the first places we took her.”

“Heather was adopted, wasn’t she?”

He nodded slowly. “She was ten when she came into our family.”

“I vaguely remember that. Must have been hard for her.”

“It was. But she had come from a bad situation. Her mother pretty much neglected her. But she loved the horses...and me and Keira and John took her riding whenever we could. It was the best therapy for her, apparently. It helped her settle in here.”

“There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man,” Abby said quietly.

He shot her a quick glance. “You know that quote?”

“I know lots of quotes. They rattle around in my brain, taking up space, waiting for the right opportunity to get hauled out,” Abby quipped.

“Well, my dad would say it whenever we were out riding the hills, checking cows and pasture, and he was right.” In fact, Lee had hoped to go riding this morning, to reconnect with the land and his legacy, but then he heard Abby was coming. This afternoon, he thought, turning to look at the valley below. The hills called to him and seemed to soothe the restless wandering that defined his life the past couple of years.

“I can see why your great-great-grandfather built up here. It’s a beautiful view,” Abby murmured as she looked in the same direction.

“It gets windy up here. And when those sod walls dried out, not so good for the relationship between Cecil and Betty, apparently.”

“Betty being your many times great-grandmother?”

Lee nodded, drawing in a cleansing breath of the fresh mountain air.

He heard the distinctive click of Abby’s camera and glanced over his shoulder to see her with her crutch under her one arm as she took pictures of the foundation. She looped the camera around her neck and made her way to the far side of the old foundation and lifted her camera again.

Lee stepped aside to get out of the picture.

“No, stay there,” she said. “But with your back to me.”

He did so reluctantly, hands on his hips, feeling suddenly self-conscious. Though he was looking out at the view that he had so missed while he was gone, his attention was focused on the woman behind him, taking picture after picture, her camera beeping, clicking and whirring.