Maxine Morrey - Second Chance At The Ranch

The door behind her banged again, and several more people, in various states of intoxication stumbled out and headed towards the smoking area. Hero knew she should go back in. She didn’t care about strangers thinking she was snooty, but she didn’t want her own behaviour to reflect badly on her sister in her new life out here. Taking one last look at the starlit sky, she drew a deep breath and headed back inside.

Nick had intended to ask Hero to dance. Initially it had been a joke but after the wedding breakfast was over, Pete had told him he had to make good on the tease.

‘She’ll never go for it,’ Nick replied, dismissing his brother’s request.

‘Just ask her, will you, mate?’

‘Yeah, yeah. Right-oh.’ If it had been anyone else, he’d have probably done it a lot sooner. But three minutes worth of awkward dancing with this particular woman didn’t exactly fill him with glee. That was assuming she even accepted. She certainly hadn’t been keen when he’d brought the subject up at the dinner table. OK, so maybe he hadn’t phrased it in the best way he could have. Even behind that cool exterior she projected out to the world, he’d noticed the surprise in her eyes at his jest. Understandable, he supposed, when you were one of the world’s most beautiful women and people were desperate to be in your company, even just be noticed by you, let alone anything else.

After receiving yet another loaded glance from his older brother, Nick nodded and resigned himself to going off to find Pete’s newly acquired sister-in-law. It took him a little while to find her among the many guests, although he had to admit that he hadn’t put too much effort into the actual act of looking, finding himself easily, and willingly, distracted. One of those distractions being in the shape of the barmaid, Susannah Dagmar. And what a shape! She’d always had a bit of thing for Pete, so Nick felt a bit sorry for her having to wait tables at his brother’s wedding when she probably felt that, by rights, it should have been her wearing the white dress, not some interloper. He finally tore himself away when his mother sent him a dagger-laden glance, before making a nodding gesture. Nick sighed. Gill had never liked Susannah.

Following the direction of his mother’s nod, Nick caught sight of Hero. She was sitting alone towards the back of the room looking absolutely stunning. Whether he liked her or not, Nick couldn’t deny that she was beautiful. But he understood the possibility that that same beauty might keep people at a distance. Men might be intimidated and women might be jealous, wary, or both. Then again, it could just be that she was a stuck-up pain in the arse. Nick excused himself from Susannah and made his way towards Hero. Her hands were folded on her lap as she sat, back straight against the wall, looking for all intents and purposes in utter control. Out of her sightline, he hesitated as he noticed her thumb rubbing back and forth at a hangnail. Her gaze was fixed at no clear point, as though she wanted to evade making eye contact with any other guest. The gaze alone he might have put down to her reluctance to mingle in lowlier company than she was used to. But he hesitated in his judgement as he watched her hands. His time in the city had given him more than enough opportunity to observe the habits of the stressed, and he was pretty sure that was exactly what he was watching now. Damn woman. Why couldn’t she just be one thing or another?

‘You ready for that dance now?’ Nick asked. ‘I looked for you earlier, but I couldn’t see you.’

Hero looked up, surprise in her eyes. The look confirmed what he’d begun to think. Yeah, you were hoping no one would notice you sat back here all alone, weren’t you?

‘I went outside for a little while,’ she said, gathering herself a little as she took the hand he offered and stood. Her relief at seeing a familiar face seemed to cause that mask of confidence and indifference to slip. Nick tilted his head.

‘You all right?’ Even with the heat of all these bodies, her smooth, porcelain skin looked a little paler than usual.

Hero caught the concern in his voice and felt something rush through her. Looking up into the intense chocolate-brown eyes now studying her, she gave a small, embarrassed smile.

‘I’m not really very good with crowds. They make me nervous.’

Nick didn’t reply. He was just looking down at her.

She smiled shyly and lifted their joined hands. ‘Are we going to dance or just stand here holding hands all night? Right now, I’m happy either way.’

Nick glanced down at their hands, before turning towards the dancefloor. Their path was crowded as he led the way, holding tightly to her hand, clearing the way for her with his broad shoulders. His eyes were on the way ahead, but his mind was still reeling from the smile Hero had given him.

For the past couple of weeks, they’d done nothing but rub each other up the wrong way, with a large proportion of their conversations edged with sarcasm and spikes. In company, they had silently but mutually agreed to concentrate on being polite for the sake of their respective siblings. Nick struggled with the constant control she kept about herself. There was none of the spontaneity of her sister, none of the laughter and fun Juliet seemed to naturally inspire. He’d even begun to doubt that the woman even had real emotions – something about her seemed so false, so brittle. Pete and his parents had taken to her like she was a wounded bird, but all Nick saw was self-importance and privilege.

But the smile she had just given him had blown all his beliefs about her to bits. For the first time since he’d known her, he saw what the others had been privy to all along.

They reached the dancefloor and squeezed into a space as Nick raised their joined hands and wrapped his other arm around her narrow waist. The crowd of people on the floor meant that Hero was pressed close to him. He could smell her perfume, feel her fragile build beneath his hands as well as her now uneven breaths. Looking down into her face, he saw that striking green gaze dart around as it desperately tried, and failed, to find something familiar to focus on. She felt his own gaze on her and looked up, his eyes holding hers as his arm tightened a little closer around her.

‘Just breathe,’ he said, softly. He kept his eyes on her until her erratic breaths steadied. Feeling his arms strong and steady around her, Hero closed her eyes and felt the world slide away. With just one movement, and with the last person she ever expected, Hero no longer felt alone.

Too near the speakers for any real conversation to take place, Hero was glad. She was tired of keeping her mask in place with Nick, but something about him had unnerved her from the beginning. He hadn’t tried to bow down to her every whim like most men she knew. He made her laugh, although she did her best to hide it. The many conversations she had sat in on proved that he was an intelligent, well-informed man. She’d desperately wanted to take part in them but, despite Pete and Juliet giving her plenty of openings, she kept her participation limited, afraid to make herself look stupid in front of this man who already caused such a torrent of emotions within her. But it seemed that the less she said, the more it irritated Nick. And as much as she had tried to deny it, his reaction upset her. She’d spent the last fortnight convincing herself that he was arrogant and of no consequence. But the truth was that he excited her. She’d never felt like this about anyone. And that fact alone both thrilled and frightened her.

As Hero and Nick moved to the music, she felt the strong hand on her back. Many of the men she knew were muscular, but they were false muscles, born from spending hours in the gym, admiring themselves in huge floor-to-ceiling mirrors as they pumped iron. Nick’s body was strong from hard work and hard play. She felt the slight roughness of his skin against her hand as it held her own. It felt good. Something about those men with their soft, smooth, overly manicured hands had always made her feel slightly queasy. She turned her head slightly against his chest to look at the hand holding hers. The nails were short and had been scrubbed clean. Hero smiled to herself at the effort this must have taken, knowing Nick had spent most of yesterday under the bonnet of the old ute they used to drive out into the fields.