Allison Leigh - How a Cowboy Stole Her Heart / The Rancher's Dance - How a Cowboy Stole Her Heart / The Rancher's Dance

Meg laughed. “Sheep are so not my thing. Cute and all but no. And no alpacas, either,” she added with a smile. “No, what I want is something all my own. Something I can build and nurture and enjoy.” She locked her gaze with his and he felt a weird sense of unity and rightness in her sharing her hopes with him. “I’m an equine girl at heart, you know that. I want to expand the stable so we can board horses, and I want to build an indoor ring so I can give lessons.”

Clay blew out a breath. Expanding didn’t come cheaply. Or quickly. He measured his words, not wanting to discourage but not wanting to give her false hopes, either. “That’s a big undertaking.”

“Life’s short, Clay. I love this farm and I want to see it succeed. Can’t I do that while fulfilling dreams of my own?”

The Chinook arch crept across the sky, coming closer, warming the air by degrees. They sat silently, watching the unique formation, feeling the change in the air for several minutes.

“Whatever you’re thinking, just say it, Clay.”

He didn’t look at her, just sat straight in the saddle and stared ahead. How could he explain what he was feeling in the wake of her words? He was a neighbor. Their families were friends. It didn’t seem right that his heart should clench so painfully when she said things like “Life’s short.”

“Does that mean you’re worried about …” He felt like an utter coward not saying the word. Damn it, he was getting too invested already. He should have stayed home this morning. Out of her business. He certainly had enough of his own to keep him occupied.

“Reoccurrence?”

She said the word so plainly it jarred him and he nodded, the brim of his black hat bobbing up and down, his lips set in a grim line.

“I’d be a liar if I said it doesn’t cross my mind. But it is not how I choose to live—waiting. Maybe that’s why this is so important to me. Life is happening now, and I don’t want to miss it.”

It had been difficult hearing the news the first time, but even worse now, having eyes wide-open to the possibility that she might go through this again and maybe she wouldn’t win the second time around. He’d watched his father battle lung cancer, watched him in daily pain until the end, and he was pretty sure he couldn’t go through something like that again with someone he cared about.

Then he thought about his mother, and how she’d walked out on both of them, leaving Aunt Stacy to pick up the slack. Mom had been afraid, too, but she’d run away rather than staying and fighting. For weeks, a young and trusting Clay had been certain that if he wished hard enough, believed long enough, it would all be okay. His mother would come home and his dad would be well again.

When Meg had broken the news of her illness he’d automatically been thrown back to that horrible time. It had brought back so many feelings he’d tried to forget. He had accused her of running rather than realizing the truth—that she was trying to protect those she loved.

But he didn’t need protecting, and there was no them . There was just a family friend looking at him right now, asking for advice, giving him a level of respect he wasn’t sure he deserved.

“Clay, you and Stacy kept the Gregory place going all these years. You played hard but you worked hard, too, and you’re the best rancher I know. You have always been brutally honest with me.”

He felt his cheeks heat. He didn’t miss the “brutally” part and he knew he’d been too hard on her at times.

“You’re the one person I can trust to give me an honest opinion. So what do you think? Can I pull it off?” She looked at him hopefully.

Clay shrugged, not wanting to burst her bubble but needing to impress upon her the challenges she’d face. “The work? You could handle that in your sleep,” he said confidently. “I have no doubts about that. But there’s more to it. Who will your clients be? Will there be enough to make the business self-sustaining? How will you pay for the expansion?” He paused before he dropped what he knew would feel like an anvil on Megan’s hopes. “What happens if you get sick again? Who’ll run it? Keep it paying for itself?”

He saw her swallow and she turned her head away. “I am crazy then.”

“Not crazy.” He reached over and grabbed her arm through her heavy coat. “I didn’t say it was a bad idea, or impossible. There’s a lot of sense in it. It’s just not an easy idea and there are things to think about before you move ahead.”

Meg’s shoulders slumped as she turned her horse toward home. He was an idiot. He should have at least expressed some excitement or said something positive before raining on her parade. “At least you listened,” she said darkly as they trudged along. “Mom and Dad wouldn’t hear any of it.”

“They’re just afraid. They’ve only just got you back.”

“They’re trying to put me in a bubble.”

“They love you and don’t want to lose you. So try again. I’ve never known you to quit anything you really wanted.”

“For what it’s worth, I was thinking that there’d be plenty of business from the new developments going in. Professional families whose kids want to take lessons. Ask daddy for a pony. You know how it is.”

He smiled to himself. Good, she wasn’t giving up. “You could be right.”

They went along for a few more minutes. The wind was really starting to blow now, stirring up flecks of snow and dirt. Meg turned up the collar of her coat.

“It’s the money,” she finally said into the awkward silence. “That’s why I haven’t pushed the issue. I haven’t got that kind of capital, obviously. I’ll have to go to the bank for it. And the debt is what keeps stopping me up. Mom and Dad can’t carry the load.” She sighed. “I told you it was foolish.”

“Keep thinking about it. You’ll come up with a way,” he encouraged. “Meg, for God’s sake, you beat your illness. You can do anything you set your mind to. Maybe you just need to think outside the box.”

The horses sensed the barn was near and picked up their pace a little.

“You were a big help,” she acknowledged. “Like I said, no one else would even listen.”

“That’s what friends do.” Friends, he reminded himself. That was the only reason he was feeling so protective of her. So anxious. In Larch Valley friends looked after each other.

Except they didn’t always, Clay thought. He certainly hadn’t listened to her last year when she’d needed him so very badly. He had closed his heart and his mind to their friendship and “would you believe me if I said I was sorry” didn’t quite cut it as far as apologies went.

As they entered the yard, they noticed that both Meg’s car and the farm truck were parked next to the house. “Mom and Dad are back from the doctor.” She smiled up at Clay. “He saw a specialist about an operation that will help his back and ease the constant pain. Dawson’s home, too. You might as well come in and have some cake and talk about whatever it is you really came to talk about.”

They turned out the horses in silence and walked up to the house together. Inside the warm kitchen, Linda cut slabs of coffee cake and there was conversation and laughter around the table, just like old times. Meg reached for a mug on a high shelf and Clay found his gaze locked on her breasts. All Dawson had told him was that she’d had surgery, but Clay didn’t know to what extent. The curve seemed natural enough, and as her heels touched the floor again he quickly turned his eyes toward the plate of cake in the middle of the table.

She poured the coffee and put cream and sugar next to his mug. He’d been close to the Briggs’s for so long she even knew what he took in his coffee. And yet through it all he realized he missed the old camaraderie that used to be between them in years past. The easy friendship was gone but something new, something bigger was taking its place.