To look at the pictures.
Amanda looked at her own reflection in the mirror and realized that she’d passed up her chance to force the issue last night. She couldn’t pass up that chance again. She couldn’t let Jake go on torturing himself with the thought that she didn’t know. That no one knew. That once they did, he would somehow be less of a man.
If she was right.
But even if she was, the battle had just begun.
Fate conspired against her—the weather and Betty’s legendary dedication to the Diamond K and the erratic foaling habits of mares in the spring.
For the next four days, the temperature rose back into springtime, melting the ravaging snow and uncovering the bodies of three of Jake’s yearlings out in a far pasture the hands hadn’t been able to reach. Three more horses gave birth in quick succession, one of them in a labor so protracted that the vet had been called out and the chains put into use. Amanda had watched, thinking that she’d certainly seen such devices in woodcuts of medieval tortures, and then thankful for them when the foal arrived healthy and both baby and dam were back on their feet.
Betty coerced her son into breaking out the four-wheel-drive truck and made it back over the roads before they were passable, bringing Maria and an end to the cozy kitchen meals.
Neither Betty nor Maria said a word about the coffee stain on the wall. Within half an hour of showing back up at the ranch, Betty had walked into where Amanda was picking at her dulcimer and handed her a cup of coffee, her only comment, “You realize, don’t you, that nobody on this good, green earth has ever succeeded in keeping Jake Kendall from one of his mares before.”
And then she’d simply walked away, smilingand shaking her head with what Amanda thought was great satisfaction.
As the snow melted, the world cranked back into gear and Amanda felt herself being left behind. Electricity flickered on, life returned to order, and Amanda had no excuse left to remain behind at the ranch house. Finally, she saddled up Sweet William, hooking her bag and dulcimer over the saddle horn just as she had coming this way, and headed back to the cabin.
“I can’t guarantee the electricity’s back on up there,” Jake protested, his hand on Bill’s withers, his eyes brimming with unspoken emotion.
Amanda thought she saw distress, hoped she saw disappointment. She smiled for him, anyway, resurrecting every moment they’d spent in proximity with that big down comforter. “If it isn’t, I’ll come back for my heater,” she assured him. “Besides, the electricity won’t do me much good without a computer.”
“About that, Amanda, I’ll—”
“About that, Jake,” she interrupted, knowing exactly where he was going with it. “I’ll probably have to go into a city a little bigger than Lost Ridge to replace it.” She shrugged. “Probably needed a new one, anyway. Do you want me to look into something for the ranch?”
His scowl was magnificent. “I’d rather ride buck naked through a sandstorm.”
“That’s quite an image.” Amanda proffered a grin. “With or without your hat?”
“I’ll repay you for the computer.”
“You did,” she assured him. “You got me here before my toes fell off. I’ll see you in a couple of days, Jake.”
For just the briefest of moments he let his eyes communicate for him. She saw the surge of yearning, the uncertainty, the fierce need. She saw him shutter it all away again.
“Don’t forget that Lee’s coming in.”
Amanda nodded. “Don’t forget where I’m staying,” she suggested, her own expression not shuttered at all.
Jake tensed alongside her. He dipped his head a little so that she couldn’t see past the brim of his hat. Amanda ached for him, ached for herself that she had to leave him, burned with the world that had flooded back in just when she’d thought they might escape it. Even so, she patted his gloved hand once where it rested near her leg, and turned Sweet William off toward the high meadow. And she fought tears all the way along that chattering, crackling mountain stream to where the rustic little cabin waited in cold silence.
Jake lasted two long days. He put up with Clovis’s fussing and Betty’s bossing and the demands of the ranch that had once kept him too busy to think. He stalked his silent house late at night when Amanda should have been there, and fought the urge to ride through the dark to that little cabin. Each time he set his hat up on the rack in the mudroom, he expected to find Amanda there on the couch, just as he had that last night they’d made love. He swore he still smelled her on his sheets, heard her laughter in the fire, caught her shadow next to his own when he woke.
But she wasn’t there. He was alone, just as he’d always been. No, he realized, not as he’d always been. Before he hadn’t known what he’d forfeited. He’d shut it out as deliberately as the regret of lost parents. He’d constructed his life so that it would be superfluous.
He’d been deceiving himself, of course. All along, every cold winter night and soft spring morning. He’d been waiting for Amanda to arrive and bring the world to life. For Amanda to leave again, taking the warmth and grace and beauty away with her again.
The sun was riding high in a cold blue sky when he set off for the meadow on Alabaster. A little barn-sour after all the bad weather, the white Arabian quarter mix danced beneath him. Usually Jake let Alabaster have his head, but his ribs still weren’t quite up to it yet, leaving the horse as impatient as the rider.
The snow was almost gone, the spring wildflowers beginning to peek through. The stream tumbled and sang to his right and the mountains brooded beyond. It was a glorious spring day. The world was coming back to life, there were new foals in his yard, new business waiting to be transacted. Jake’s favorite time of the year, his mind full of plans and action, his body ready to gear up after a hard winter.
Today, he left the ranch behind. His mind was ahead, on that cabin. On the cabin’s occupant. He hadn’t slept, he’d lost his taste for whatever food Maria had fixed, and he’d been chewing Clovis out for imagined mistakes. If he didn’t resolve his own problem soon, he wasn’t going to have anything to go back to.
If he didn’t resolve his problem soon, he wouldn’t care.
It was exactly as it had been that first afternoon. Alabaster flicked his ears and whuffled. Jake saw the red four-wheel vehicle parked alongside the cabin. And then, like a gift being opened, he turned his horse toward the cabin to find Amanda standing in the doorway.
