He’d never left her side, not once, since the coyote attack, and Briar cleared her throat, the words she needed to say about to vomit out of her throat.
five
Tarr shifted in his seat, the tension coming off Briar almost more than he could stomach. He wished she’d just be able to relax around him without the aid of a narcotic. He’d just glanced over to her when she opened her mouth.
“Thank you, Tarr,” she blurted out. “I’ve been so mean to you, but you never gave up on me, and you kept showing up, and I really do appreciate it.” She took a deep breath and looked over to him. “I’ve never said it, but…thank you. I’ve never met anyone like you, who….”
Just as quickly as she’d started blurting things out, she trailed off into silence. That adorable frown appeared between her eyes, and Tarr simply kept driving. He could barely comprehend that Briar had thanked him, because no, she’d never done that before.
Sure, he’d heard her be grateful to Tucker, to Ashton, the stable manager, to a random waiter who took her coffee order.
But him?
She’d never been grateful to or forhim.
Warmth kindled in his stomach, and Tarr once again found himself shifting in his seat. “Who what?” he asked, wanting to hear the end of that sentence.
“Who didn’t do exactly what I yelled at them to do—who left.” She gave a cute little shrug, and Tarr’s heart tore and bled for her. Just a little bit. But her eyes looked bright like pure ocean waves when she dared to glance over to him again, and that only made Tarr’s hormones fire at him again.
“Tell me how you came to Deerfield,” he said.
Briar drew in a deep breath and blew it out. “I wanted somewhere with the small-town feel of Western Canada, but I needed to get out of Western Canada.”
He nodded, his memories returning—the ones of her slipping into a rodeo ambassador persona and talking about the Calgary Stampede. “Maybe you’ll tell me more about why.” He cleared his throat. “I came from Utah, from a rodeo there where I got injured.”
“But not a career-ending injury,” she said.
“No, I could’ve gone back.” Tarr glanced out the window, this topic of conversation not what he wanted to be doing. He knew a few things about Briar, and one of them was that she hated the rodeo.
Funny, considering she’d definitely been part of it at some point.
“I didn’t want to,” Tarr said simply. “Tuck was really disappointed. He loves the rodeo. He lives for the lights, the jokes, the events, the scent of dirt.” He chuckled. “I’d had enough of the travel, of living in a trailer—which is funny, considering where I’m living right now—in a new city every weekend.”
He glanced over to her. “Tuck brought me to his family farm after my surgery, so I could recover, and I don’t know. I’ve always loved the mountains, and I didn’t want to leave this place.”
She gave him a small smile. “Colorado is beautiful.”
He sighed. “Yeah, this Texas boy can’t quite understand the wintertime yet, but it’s only my second one, so I’m trying not to flee too quickly.”
She laughed lightly, and Tarr marveled at the sound of it. Briar didn’t laugh easily, that was for dang sure. “I love the winter.”
“Yeah? What do you like about it?”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice a little too casual. That meant she did know. “There’s something…simple about its beauty. Without the leaves, the trees are just bare. Open. All their jagged branches and flaws exposed. It’s pretty.”
“I like it when it snows and all the branches are covered in the white.”
“Yeah, exactly that,” Briar said. “I like that something so pretty can be made out of white, brown, and blue. It’s…simple. A gorgeous kind of simple.”
Tarr could sum her up the same way, and he yearned to know more about her. No, to knoweverythingabout what made Briar Prescott into the woman riding in his passenger seat in that very moment.
Tarr noted at least three hotels on the way to Yolks Up, and he managed to find a parking spot despite the busyness of the Black Friday shopping crowd.
He congratulated himself as he hurried around the front of the truck to let Briar out that they’d managed to have a semi-decent conversation on the way here.
“Yeah, about the weather,” he muttered, but Tarr would take it, because having a casual conversation about the weather far exceeded fighting or arguing with Briar.
She joined him, and he once again tucked his hand in hers before facing the restaurant.
