Willow fisted her hands at her sides and stifled an exasperated scream. Instead, she counted to five, exhaled a steadying breath, and decided that he could push her buttons all he wanted, but she would not push back. She couldn’t live like that for two days, let alone two months.
“Eli told me that Midnight doesn’t take to maleriders as easily as female, and when I saw her hoofprints and a nick in the fence that indicated she’d jumped when you very well could have used the gate like any other civilized human…”Nope,she reminded herself.Not gonna push.“I did not want to find anyoneunalive orunwell…even if it was you.” It might have sounded like button pushing, but it was the truth.
Midnight gave Willow a cursory glance and then, as if she were a cat rather than a giant equine, she spun once and then laid herself down beside him, resting her head on his lap.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Willow said, letting out an incredulous laugh. “Actually, no. I should have known you’d have that horse wrapped around your finger the second she laid eyes on you. After all, she’s a female, right?”
Willow’s throat burned, and she spun back toward Holiday, who was happily chomping on some grass.
Maybe she was desperate for a song, but at what cost? Her pride? Her dignity?
“Willow, wait…” Ash called from over her shoulder, but he sounded closer than where he’d been lying beneath the tree.
She stopped a foot from her horse, and Holiday lifted her head to ask for a quick pat on the nose, to which Willow immediately obliged.
“I didn’t know you were going to be here,” Ashcontinued, close enough now that he could speak softly. “It caught me off guard, and I needed to get away for a bit to clear my head. I should have said something before leaving. I should have known that you were still you…that you’d worry.”
She rounded on him, her gaze narrowed on his. “It was a few months four years ago, Murphy. You don’t get to pretend like that means you knew me then, and you certainly don’t know me now.”
He nodded. “Plus a few more months of touring before we...” he reminded her. “But fair enough.”
“Or thatyouseeingmecreates any sort of need for you to clear your head,” she added. Because what the hell did that mean, and why did she even care? She didn’t. Not then and not now.
He nodded again. Ugh. Why was he being so agreeable? It made it a lot harder for her to hold on to her anger.
“I can go to your brother’s ranch,” he told her. “Or see if Boone and Casey can put me up…after he reams me for missing his and Casey’s wedding.”
“And Eli and Beth’s,” Willow mumbled. “Plus the births of their children.”
He flinched as if she’d threatened to strike him with another vase, and for an odd moment, her chest ached at the possibility that Ash’s absence from his family’s life might not have been entirely by design.
But then she remembered he was an adult with free will and swallowed the lump of guilt rising inher throat.
Willow sighed. “We already established that you’d turn the guest ranch into a zoo. And last I heard, Boone, Casey, and Kara live in a two-bedroom apartment above her salon. Where are they going to put you?”
He shrugged. “I’m either a couch surfer in the guesthouse or a couch surfer over there. Hell, if Eli and Beth are gone long enough, I can probably crash over there.”
She shook her head. “They’re only in Vegas for a week. Don’t you… I mean, haven’t you talked to your brothers? Didn’t they know you were coming home?”
Ash pulled his hat down further over his eyes so that all she could see of his face were the tip of his nose and the tight line of his jaw.
“Ididn’t know I was coming home until I did.” He shrugged. “And I wasn’t exactly sure they’d be happy to see me after—you know—missing all those things.”
The wordsI’m sorrydangled from the tip of her tongue. But they were also words she’d waitedmonthsto hear from the man standing directly in front of her. Yet it was somehow four years after the fact, and she’d never heard a damned thing.
“It hasn’t even been twenty-four hours, and I already have no idea how this is going to work,” she admitted. “But I need a song. I needthesong.”
“And I, apparently, need yet another imagerefresh,” he added.
Willow glanced over his shoulder to where Midnight now rolled back and forth in a small patch of dry dirt. She laughed. “I can’t believe you had her eating out of the palm of your hand in a matter of minutes.” She flicked the brim of his hat up, and Ash’s eyes widened before he met her grin with his own.
“Come on, Morgan,” he drawled. “You know it was seconds, not minutes.”
She groaned. “Of course it was.” She suddenly eyed him up and down, realizing that when he’d left the guesthouse earlier that morning, he was wearing a different-colored T-shirt, and there’d been no cowboy hat in sight. “Where’s all your stuff?” she asked. “And where did you change?”
He glanced down at his fresh white tee and the same dusty jeans he’d thrown back on that morning. “Turns out,” he began, his eyes meeting hers again. “That I got taken into custody before I had a chance to pack last night, but the hotel boxed up my belongings and dropped them on the front porch this morning. Grabbed a clean shirt and my hat on my way out the door and then tossed the box into the bushes. Didn’t feel like the right time to unpack.”
She’d already seen him nearly naked today, but for some reason the thought of him stripping off his old shirt for a new one—all on the way to hopping onto the back of a horse—knocked her a littleoff-kilter.
