Chapter 13
ENTERING THE BARN after fighting knee-deep snowdrifts, Kenzie huffed out a sharp breath, watching as it condensed on the bitter cold air.
This morning hadn’t gone the way she’d expected.
It was supposed to have been fun, full of her and Ty’s signature teasing and laughter.
The passion had proved too intense for that, though.
And then her past had risen up and taken over the emotional bus, turning what had been a Hope Floats moment into a Speed film snippet complete with the bus going airborne, the crash landing imminent.
Grabbing a rake, shovel and cart from the equipment room, she set about cleaning the stalls she was responsible for.
She started with Indie, hoping Ty would come in time to help with Gizmo.
Her mare was quiet, absorbed with her grain ration, allowing Kenzie to work mindlessly as she replayed the conversation with Ty this morning, shying away from the hard parts.
She was nearly finished when she heard the sound that froze her where she stood. Booted feet. Steps slow and measured, the person entered the barn.
He showed up.
Adrenaline trilling through her veins, she set the pitchfork aside and stepped into the alleyway to find a cowboy she hadn’t met emerging from the tack room.
He glanced up, seemed to recognize her, and his face shut down. All he said was “Sleigh ride for the guests,” as he passed by, silently harnessing up a pair of draft horses before leading them out the opposite end of the barn.
Clearly, word about her “designs” on Gizmo had made it down the campfire gossip chain and made her persona non grata on the ranch.
“I swear,” she muttered, scooping up another forkful of straw that needed replacing.
“Men are far more active gossips than women.” She glanced at Gizmo.
“Present company excluded, but probably only because English isn’t your first language.
” He nodded his head dramatically, and she laughed. “You’re such a smart-ass.”
She continued cleaning, the morning’s conversation stuck on Repeat in her mind.
She couldn’t get it to stop, only to pause at highly relevant places or comments.
Sweat trickled down her back, a ticklish, itchy line of irritation.
Stepping over to the edge of the open stall door, she backed up to the corner and rocked side to side to scratch the itch.
Her bra had dampened from the exertion, too.
Glancing around, she shed her jacket and reached under her shirt to unhook her bra and wiggle out of it.
Shoving it down the arm of her jacket, she tossed the garment on the nearest clean straw bale in the barn’s alleyway.
“Better,” she breathed.
Resuming her duties, she tried to ignore the building guilt that held down the trigger on her nerves.
Movements jerky, she finally stabbed the shovel tip into the ground and leaned on the handle, closing her eyes.
As pervasive as the cold was, it couldn’t compare to the frost that rimed her emotional center.
Can’t believe I used Michael’s memory that way.
Exploiting her brother’s death was wrong in a variety of ways, but she was far from the first to use it as a tool.
Her mother had used it to get her father to quit the rodeo circuit.
Her father had, in turn, used it as a manipulative tool to get Kenzie to take the professional rodeo circuit seriously, encouraging her to take over where Michael left off—“in Michael’s memory,” of course.
Her maternal grandparents had used Michael’s death to prod Kenzie into going to college because “Michael would have wanted it.” Her paternal grandparents had suggested she could keep Michael’s memory alive by riding with his bridle and reins in each event.
At age fourteen, she’d balked, even cried, at the heartache caused by holding reins stained by her lost brother’s sweat.
They’d grown stern and told her how much it would have meant to Michael, as well as how much it would mean to her father, their son, to see that bridle worn in their grandson’s memory.
The list went on; everyone from family members to friends to neighbors had exercised their right to gain what they wanted either for Michael or because Michael would have wanted it.
She had despised them all for sullying her brother’s loss that way, and yet here she was, finally succumbing to this warped expression of grief.
Only Ty had ever given her relief from the memories.
He’d never asked because he’d never known, and that had suited her just fine.
She could be normal with him, not the daughter/granddaughter/sister/cousin/friend who linked people to Michael’s memory.
She’d been Mackenzie Malone. Period. Sure, he’d known she was an heiress.
But until the accident when he’d pleaded with her to save Gizmo, until she’d invested over one hundred thousand dollars of her trust fund money into saving Ty’s horse and covering his medical bills, her money hadn’t mattered.
And for a few hours last night and this morning, she’d totally forgotten about the whole mess money and obligation and memories created.
She’d just been Kenzie Malone in the arms of the man she loved.
She gasped. The man she loved...
No. Not possible. She’d be a fool to fall in love with a man like Ty.
Yet the longer she looked at what she felt for the man and what she’d done for him, the more she realized what a fool she really was.
She staggered across the wood chip–covered floor and crashed into the stall wall. Chest heaving, she shook her head and watched the fall of her hair move in slow, measured sweeps. And still, her internal argument carried on.
Love? This isn’t love. This is...something else. But not love. It couldn’t be.
How did she know, though? She’d never been in love. Not romantic love. Not spend-your-life-together-forever love. No. This couldn’t be that. Not with Ty. She might have strong feelings for him, feelings so vibrant they marked her a neon idiot, but love?
“No,” she whispered, thumping the edge of her fist against the thick wooden wall.
Her mind drifted back to the conversation she’d had with her father when she was only a teen. His words, so profound even then, had stuck with her.
I don’t care if the man you fall in love with is an artist, a pilot, a musician, a doctor or a garbageman, he’d said.
He’d made absolutely sure she understood that the amount of money her potential spouse had—or didn’t have—meant little to nothing, that her inheritance afforded her the means to choose a life partner based on love alone.
How would her dad feel about Ty? Would he hold true to his word?
He’d been proud that she’d managed to secure a partnership with Gizmo’s owner, but also protective when he’d believed Ty was taking advantage of her.
What would he think of her falling in love with that man?
“This isn’t going to end well,” she whispered.
Twisting, she leaned her shoulders against the stall and thumped her head against the wooden wall.
How had she ended up here, of all places?
She’d been struggling with her developing feelings for Ty even before the accident, but not once had she suspected they ran this deep. What would he do if she told him?
Probably grab his passport and disappear into a Brazilian jungle, she thought with an involuntary smile.
But then he’d probably charm a young woman in some undiscovered native tribe and have to move on to Siberia when the respective father took offense to Ty’s practice of short-shelf-life relationships.
A small laugh escaped Kenzie at the thought of Ty being the only person with a tan in Siberia.
She’d be willing to bet he didn’t sport tan lines, either.
That image led her mind straight back to a montage of memories, all of them centered around the myriad ways he’d pushed her body to new heights, had encouraged her to embrace the pleasure he could offer and then seen her to her own end before achieving his.
Her nipples pearled.
The response had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with her cowboy.
She couldn’t let her need for him supersede his want of her.
Not without consequence. But she hadn’t been able to help it, hadn’t been able to reject the psychological convenience of using Eli’s promises as her excuse to see Ty.
In the quiet aftermath of lovemaking, when heart rates thundered and minds weren’t quite clear, she’d been able to tell herself she was doing it to help Ty.
It had also been a way to hoist her butt out of the sling she’d so efficiently parked it in with the very first lie.
She could let Eli assume the responsibility of Ty’s wrath over breeding Gizmo, get out of the partnership claiming that the ninety-day rights to the stud horse satisfied the debt owed, and she wouldn’t have to tell her dad she’d made the whole thing up.
If Ty was up and mobile before she left, even better for the Covingtons and her conscience.
A cold gust of wind curled around the door and stirred up straw motes.
The pungent scent of animal grew sharper on the crisp, dry air.
Outside, the merry jingle of sleigh bells and the hiss of wide steel runners over snow advertised the passage of the sleigh on its way to the chow hall to pick up guests.
She envied them the view of the ranch, pristine as it would be.
Nothing could beat the views from solitary vistas and the otherworldly quiet of snow-packed plains in either New Mexico or Colorado.