Rose swallowed down disappointment when he hesitated, as if his answer was off limits. She wanted to know more about him. He knew everything there was to know about her.
“I don’t normally talk about that part of my past.” He took a sip from his mug. “If you were any other woman, it would be off limits.” He pinned her with his eyes. “But for you—I’ll spill the beans.”
Wow, talk about making a girl feel special.
“You don’t have t—” He started talking and she clamped her mouth shut.
“A family secret ripped through our tiny ass town like a rabid Mississippi squirrel. Our name was mud after that.” That must have sucked for them; people could be so cruel. “Us kids were more or less pariahs, never mind my folks. Those damn Christian ladies would come out of church and cross the street to avoid us like we’d caught the plague or something. Our folks got fired from every single job they had. They lost the house, and the younger kids were taken away by the state.”
Her heart ached for the kid he’d been. Rose reached for his hand and intertwined their fingers.
“The only way to fix it was to leave, earn money, and help get them into a house so they could get the kids back.” He shrugged as if he and his brother hadn’t managed to do something epic. “The school principal told me and Kace that we’d never amount to nothin’. He taunted us with it for months, and finally we had enough.”
“And you both said, ‘watch this, Mofo?’”
“Pretty much.” He nodded. “When the recruiters came through, Kace went Army, I went Navy. The rest was pure stubbornness—no give, all grit, and there wasn’t much the military could say or do to make us back down. We learned from the best of them that doing so wasn’t worth it.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and snorted. “Want to know what irony is?”
The game was forgotten, and she gave him her full attention. “Go on.”
“That bumfuck town in the ass end of Mississippi has a sign outside the school these days, boasting of having produced two heroes.” He snorted. “They wouldn’t have spit on us if we were on fire, never mind brought a hose, but memories are selective there, and now they try to claim they shaped us into the men we are.”
“I suppose they did in a way—by being jerks,” Rose muttered behind her mug. “I’d like to give them a piece of my mind for five minutes straight.”
He snorted. “I don’t think I’ve seen you talk for five minutes straight with anyone besides me all week.”
“I said give them a piece of my mind,” she muttered. “That’s not talking—that’s giving them what for. Big difference.”
A fat snowflake landed on her cheek, and he brushed it away. “I don’t think about them so much anymore. Neither me nor Kace go back there, so they don’t get to parade us around like zoo animals.”
Rage for the child he’d been and the horrible situation his family had been in tugged at her heartstrings. She dropped her cards, and before she could think too much about it, she hugged him. “They don’t deserve to ride on the coattails of your sacrifices for this country.”
“I know.”
Despite the serious direction their game had gone, the child inside her that she’d suppressed for way too long was delighted at the snowflakes which now fell steadily around them. “Dance in the snow with me, Caleb.” She scrambled to her feet and tugged on his hand. “Please.”
“We really should go back.” He looked at the sky. “It’s getting dark, and with the snow…”
“Just a few minutes. Please.”
“Come here.” He wrapped her into his arms and they swayed to a tune only they could hear in their heads. “Five minutes, then we have to go.”
Rose snuggled into his chest. “Deal.”
26
For the first time in his life, Caleb threw caution to the wind. He took time for something he craved. Dancing with Rose in the snow wasn’t something he’d known he needed until right this second when it happened. Lost in watching the expressions on her face as they danced, he ignored the weather, ignored the darkening sky, and how the wind speed picked up.
When she shivered, common sense slammed into him, and he mentally kicked himself. He was a fucking idiot; he knew better than to leave his guard down. But with Jack’s reassurances about the weather being clear and knowing the line shack was close enough to run to, even when the snow had started to fall, he’d allowed himself to keep his attention on Rose and not on what Mother Nature was doing. Ten minutes. They’d been dancing for ten freaking minutes and instead of giving them a dusting, the snowflakes grew bigger and bigger. A gust of wind cut through his jacket and Rose shivered in his arms. “We gotta go.”
Rose sucked in a breath as if she’d just realized what was happening around them. “Is it safe?” She looked dubiously at the way they’d come. “What if the horses slip?”
He heard the concern in her voice, and maybe if she’d been a more experienced rider or he’d been alone, he’d have made a run for the house. He made a snap decision and turned toward the horses. “We’ll go to a line shack. It’s about half a mile that way. Jack told me about it before we left.”
“Okay. I’ll gather our stuff if you do the horses.”
He nodded and as he crossed to where the horses stood under the shelter of a couple of spruce trees. He saw her gathering what was left of their picnic. She gathered up the cards, shook the snow off the blanket, and rolled it up to stuff it in the rucksack.
Caleb took a second to shoot off a text to Dalton.
