Chapter Thirteen
This was it. The Telford family ranch. The home his biological father had walked away from.
Telford looked at the wood sign—practical, weathered, hanging down from rusted metal links from a log that sat aside two other large logs like a sentry.
The road leading up was gravel, narrow, twisted, but looked decently maintained.
Ayana rolled down her window, leaned out, and took a couple of pictures with her phone. “Do you want to pose?”
“No. I’m already posing by being here.”
She settled back in her seat, closed the window, and rebuckled. She kept her phone in her palm. She had the cowgirl hat on and looked effortlessly sexy and stylish. He’d never been with a woman he’d wanted more, and she was frustratingly, emotionally off limits.
“You didn’t have to come,” she said carefully, “but I’m happy you accepted. I suspect that for people like you and me, we have to see it through.”
Like you and me. The phrase resonated when it shouldn’t. They’d known each other such a short time, but already he trusted her, though Cam would have warned him they couldn’t trust anyone but each other. The rule had been easy for Telford to live with then but not anymore.
How did she twist her way into his life and consciousness so easily? He thought about her all the time—not Cam, not Cam’s legacy—Ayana. And it wasn’t just sexual desire—they’d barely kissed.
Are we becoming friends?
He liked that idea. He’d lost everything after his mother had been brutally killed—until Cam.
“Do you want children?” The question startled him as much as her.
His foot jerked and slid off the brake, and the Jeep rolled back until he stomped on the brake again. Ayana flinched in her seat, pressing up against the door, as if to escape him. Her eyes went wide, and her hands crossed over her breasts.
“I meant … theoretically,” he tried a save that failed as he hadn’t meant to ask the question at all.
Ever. “I guess seeing you with the teenagers today. You were so comfortable. I never saw myself having any, and I …” He was babbling, and whether she wanted kids or not, she’d be long gone before the subject came up.
Ayana was a sparkler. She lit up a room. She was warm and friendly and curious. She listened to people. Connected. She could go anywhere, do anything.
“Not with me, but in the future.” He tried to steer away from the awkwardness he’d created.
She was breathing a little funny and was pale, then she folded forward, pressed her face nearly against her thighs and inhaled a couple of times.
“Sorry,” he said helplessly, as he’d clearly struck a nerve he hadn’t known existed.
He was the mercurial challenge. Not her.
“I … no. It’s me,” she said straightening up and staring out the windshield. “I … I … I’m not … I don’t …”
“I shouldn’t have asked,” he said formally. “That’s a very private issue. We don’t have that kind of relationship now.”
Why had he qualified the timing? His verbal clumsiness wouldn’t improve.
“You took me by surprise. Babies weren’t part of our negotiation.”
“No. They weren’t. I apologize.” He sucked in a slow, deep breath, sure the Telfords had heard their approach.
They probably had a Ring. He would way out here. And loads of other security.
“Shall we still go or have I ruined the evening?”
She released a gusty sigh and turned in her seat and faced him. The last fingers of the sun touched her cheek, highlighting the hint of sparkle she dusted on each morning.
“I enjoy children. They have such bright, free spirits if treated kindly,” she said carefully.
He listened, his mind turning over her careful phrases. His blood heated. Someone had hurt her and badly. He could feel it. His fists clenched on the steering wheel, and he forced himself to relax.
“There’s things in my past I don’t talk about, Telford,” she said.
“I may never talk about them. This is not a reflection on you. But I’m not sure I can have kids,” she said after a long pause.
“If I felt it was safe to bring a child into the world. We briefly discussed why I didn’t want children.
The time limit, the no-kids agreement is why I felt safe signing the contract. ”
She was silent then. Her gaze troubled. “Are you … changing your mind? Do you want a child, like Cam wanted one? That doesn’t speak to impermanence.”
“No.” Bitterness poured into him. “I am not my bio dad. Nothing like him, even if he is my bio dad. If I had a kid, I’d stick like glue.”
She searched his eyes. “Yes. I can see you mean it.”
“Kids are not part of our agreement.” He heard the now, but kept it silent. He’d contemplate that mischievous devil later. “But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’m very attracted to you physically,” he admitted. “Very.”
She smiled and touched his cheek with her fingertips, then stroked along his jaw with the back of her knuckles. “I know.”
Imp.
“I’m on birth control,” she said. “And I feel like our open-ended business negotiation terms in Denver of if we have sex have firmly slid into when.”
The fraught moment faded, and he felt his own tension uncoil. He hadn’t spoiled everything between them by pushing when he’d had no intention of pushing.
She reached behind her and pulled out her work tote and the gift bag of chocolate and sweet and salty varieties of popcorn.
“Let the next adventure—spying on your birth family while assessing some … what did she call them … bulls and buckin’ bronc skills—begin.”
“That hardly seems conducive to a romantic conclusion of the evening.” His tension was back.
Again, he was the outsider. All the Telfords would know what to do. Have a routine.
She laughed, the sound lighting him up as much as soothing the tension creeping up his spine to his shoulders, neck, and jaw.
“You’re kidding right? Bulls thrashing around.
Broncs bucking—all those feral muscles and then the cowboys in dusty wranglers and leather chaps dropping down and straddling all that surging primal masculine energy—trying to hang on?
Staring beast and fate in the face and saying yeah, I’ll take that dare. I’m hot already.” She fanned her face.
“When you put it like that …” He stared at the hint of color back in her cheeks. “So am I.”
She laughed and placed her hand on his thigh, splayed her fingers.
“I know it’s probably weird and a whole lot of other things coming here this evening for you—but props for grabbing the bull by the horns to use a Montana-appropriate analogy—and walking into the arena to face your past and your blood.
I’ll follow your lead, but if you feel uncomfortable just try to take yourself out of it—pretend to be an actor, observing, participating, playing a role. ”
He’d felt like that most of his adult life, playing a role. The realization tasted sour.
“Might help to keep some of the emotional baggage out of the barn, so to speak.”
“Improv again laced with western-themed speak.”
“That’s the spirit.” Ayana leaned over and kissed his cheek. “The power of yes and sweaty cowboys showing off. Who knows where it will lead?” she teased.
Telford wasn’t sure, but he no longer dreaded driving under the Telford family ranch sign and onto a legacy family ranch he had no part of, but his bio dad had hinted he could and should earlier.
Reconnaissance, Cam would have called it.
Curiosity he could have dismissed as of a week ago.
But no lie, when he drove onto the birth land of his blood ancestors, something inside him—he didn’t know what, good or bad—shifted.
*
“Girl, you are going to be missing one heck of a show if you’re going to be knitting.” A beautiful strawberry blonde swept back her thick mane of hair so that it fell over one shoulder and sat down next to Ayana on the metal risers.
“Oh, I’ll be watching,” Ayana said, wondering if she should have left her work tote in the truck. Some people found it off-putting, but it could be a conversational starter, and she was here for information. “Hard not to.”
“Impossible.” The woman laughed; her green eyes sparkled. “Cowboy watching never gets old. I’m Piper. That one’s mine.” She pointed to a sandy-haired man, who was explaining something to Telford.
Telford listened in that still-impassive way of his. She blew out a breath. This was probably overwhelming to him and seeing him at one end of the arena by a gated area standing with several other cowboys, he stood out for his height, but that was it at first glance. The men all had a look.
That was good, wasn’t it?
“I’m Ayana. I haven’t had many cowboy sightings in my life,” she told Piper, keeping the triangle scarf she was crocheting on her lap. She found keeping busy with her hands soothed her, and she loved creating something pretty and colorful she could sell or gift or donate.
Proof that I exist.
Why had that popped in? She’d eschewed negative thoughts for years. She thought of optimism and confidence as her hard-woven freedom flags.
“Tonight will end that drought.” Piper smiled.
“You are on a legacy ranch in Montana. Home of cowboy sightings. I grew up all over—military brat. I met Boone in California eight years ago. I followed him on the pro rodeo circuit for a spring and summer and never looked back. Telford men are impossible to resist.”
Ayana was impressed that Piper was leading the conversation without any backup from the other women—probably also Telfords—who stood in a different area of the arena near a stack of plastic totes with color-coded lids.
One of them held an iPad and pointed up to the rafters in the large wooden barn that looked old but well kept.
“You got that right,” Ayana said, feeling a spurt of mischief rise up. Should she say how she and Telford knew each other? “I didn’t even bother to try.”
“Me neither,” Piper said. “I fell like a redwood tree.” She propped one elbow on her other palm and mimed timber, slapping her hand down on her upper arm. “I was a goner with one look from his sparkly blue eyes and his smile. Soul mate.”
Ayana smiled, ignored the yarn in her lap.
“When you first saw Telford did you know?” Piper asked.
“Know what?”