The Littlest Wrangler. Belinda Barnes

take back the words.

      “Why did you run out on me, Kel?”

      She could hear the hurt in his voice, but knew well enough from her youth that people often forgot promises when it was convenient. She knew the pain of waiting for someone who never returned. At some point she’d quit believing anyone ever would.

      After their one night together, she couldn’t stand by not knowing whether he, too, would withdraw from her emotionally. Past experience had forced her to leave, so she wouldn’t have to face him pulling away. But she couldn’t tell him that now. He wouldn’t understand; she wasn’t sure she did, either. Not anymore. Not after missing him so much.

      She shrugged. “I had to get back to school.”

      James shifted his weight to the other hip, drawing her attention to the soft jeans molded to his powerful thighs and the shirt stretched tight across his broad shoulders.

      His amber eyes beckoned, darkening until she could no longer distinguish his pupils from the irises. Time had deepened the creases that fanned outward from his eyes and set off an avalanche of memories of the last time they’d shared this room, that night after he’d won the rodeo.

      They hadn’t talked. They had communicated with tender caresses that made her burn, heated kisses that left her breathless and an insatiable need for each other that had kept them from sleeping until dawn.

      Then she’d awakened. Alone. Even after learning he’d had an early clinic appointment, she couldn’t shake her growing fear of abandonment.

      She suddenly was almost too weary to stand. “If there’s nothing else you want to know, I’d better get some sleep.”