Ride A Wild Heart. Peggy Moreland

with him…but she’d never been able to forget him. Not entirely. Not when a part of him would be with her always as a reminder.

      Her gaze strayed to the oak tree that stood like a sentinel on the small rise behind her house. Tears blurred her vision as she stared at the old tree with its barrel-size trunk and its low-hanging limbs. So many memories were tied to that tree. So many heartaches.

      Slowly she climbed from the truck and started toward the tree, stopping along the way to gather a fistful of wildflowers. When she reached the top of the rise, she dropped to her knees beneath the spread of the oak’s comforting limbs and carefully laid the flowers on the ground. Sinking back on her heels, she dipped her chin to her chest and let the tears she’d suppressed all day fall.

      Fresh from a shower and dressed for bed, Carol stood in the doorway, tray in hand, staring at Pete, unable to take that first step into the room where he slept. He lay just as she’d left him earlier that evening—flat on his back, his propped-up knee tenting the sheet she’d draped over it. Earlier, when she’d helped him back to bed after his fall, he’d flung an arm across his eyes, as if to block out the last rays of sunlight that had spilled through the bedroom window…or to block out the pain. His other arm lay across his abdomen, bunching the sheet low on his waist.

      A wistful smile trembled at her lips as she noticed that his thumb was hooked in the waist of his briefs, a habit of his when he slept that she had often teased him about.

      She eased across the room and set the tray on the bedside table, then turned to look down at him, unable to resist this unobserved opportunity to do so. Each feature of his face was so painfully familiar to her, so dear. The roman-shaped nose, the high slash of cheekbone, the faint scar—a parting gift from a bronc he’d ridden—that ran like a railroad track along his right jaw. She had to lace her fingers together to resist the temptation to reach out and touch him.