“A smokejumper god some of the guys pray to.”
With her coffee prepared, she turned around and leaned against the counter. “Ah. Makes sense. What you’re doing is admirable.”
Now I laughed. “You mean it’s better than riding a bull.”
“You were a great cowboy, Stephen. I meanAxe. But maybe your talents were needed elsewhere.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“So you’re back to being angry with me.”
I placed the mug on the counter and stretched my arms out, crossing my feet as I did. “Not angry. Just… Reflective. Why didn’t you say goodbye before you left for college?”
She seemed genuinely surprised I’d asked her the question. “I think you know why.”
“Why don’t you tell me.”
“If you don’t know why I had to leave then I don’t think we have anything to talk about.”
“Kenzie. Was it because of me? Because of the kiss?”
There was a way women had of making men feel like shit by just offering a look. One look that leveled them straight into the ground. Kenzie Sterling was famous for those looks.
Why was I freaking holding my breath?
“I just… Did you forget I won a scholarship to Columbia to study criminal justice?”
The deep breath slipping past her plump lips was agonizing. “How could I forget? Your mom was thrilled.”
Her eyes clouded over. “Yeah, she was. As crazy as it sounds, all I’d wanted was for my dad to tell me was proud of me. Anyway, you’re right. I accepted the scholarship because I knew you were everyone’s heartthrob, but not everything that happened in Missoula was about you. Maybe you can put that arrogant side of you away. You forget that I know the real you.”
Ouch. She knew how to cut a man down to size. The real me. How she thought she knew that was beyond me.
She skirted away from me and into the living room.
Goddamn, the woman could drive any man completely nuts. I had no idea why a sudden sadness sprang up. She’d always been the overachiever in the family. The funny thing was that I’d wanted to tell her how pissed I was that she’d left me. Me. As if she didn’t have a full life to live.
Only that would fuel her insistence I was just an arrogant ass. She’d had everything going for her and I’d never told her the way I’d felt about her.
Because I would have betrayed Wade.
Maybe she was right. We were adults now. She had her life and I had mine. I headed into the living room, finding her outside on the deck. As soon as I opened the door, she tensed even more. We were oil and water, two people who had no clue how to even talk to each other. “You truly do have the most incredible views.”
I moved beside her, shielding my eyes from the early morning sun. There was a light fog covering a good portion of the tallest peaks. “I know you’re probably not too fond of water right now, but just through those trees is an incredible lake. It feeds the river. There’s some damn good fishing.”
“I didn’t know you liked to fish. That’s too… quiet of a hobby for you.”
Half laughing, I hadn’t realized how much she’d known about me. “Now, why would you say that?
“Oh, come on. I remember you had that souped-up GTO. You had a name for her, didn’t you?”
“You remember that.”
She offered the kind of look that would melt a man. “Are you kidding me? You ensured everyone knew about the car. You could hear it in the next county.”
“That was my Becky.”
“Becky. That’s right. Maybe that’s why I called my baby Bertha.”
