That treacherous softness fluttered inside her. Even after she forced herself to look away—to focus instead on the rare beauty of the night settling in more deeply across the mountainside—she couldn’t ignore that tangled mix of fierce attraction and dawning respect.
As they descended the trail, Winder Ranch came into view, sprawling and solid in the night.
“Home,” Jo said in a sleepy-sounding voice that carried across the darkness.
“We’re nearly there,” he assured her.
When they arrived at the ranch house, Quinn dismounted and then reached for Jo, who winced with the movement.
Worry spasmed across his handsome features but she watched him quickly conceal it from Jo. “Tess, do you mind holding the horses for a few moments while I carry Jo inside and settle her back in her bedroom?”
This time, she was pleased that she could dismount on her own. “Of course not,” she answered as her feet hit the dirt.
“Thank you. I’ll trade places with you in a few moments so that you can get Jo settled for bed while I take care of the horses.”
“Good plan.”
She gave him a hesitant smile and was a little astonished when he returned it. Something significant had changed between them as a result of one simple horseback ride into the mountains. They were working together, a team, at least for the moment. He seemed warmer, more approachable. Less antagonistic.
They hadn’t really cleared any air between them, other than those few moments she had tried to offer an oblique apology for their history. But she wanted to think perhaps he might eventually come to accept that she had become a better person.
AFTER QUINN CARRIED Jo inside, Tess stood patting the mare, savoring the night before she went inside to take care of Jo’s medical needs. Quiet moments of reflection were a rare commodity in her world.
She had gotten out of the habit when she had genuinely had no time to spare with all of Scott’s medical needs. Perhaps she needed to work at meditation when she moved to Portland, she thought. Maybe yoga or tai chi.
She was considering her options and talking softly to the horses when Quinn hurried down the porch steps a few moments later.
“How’s Jo?”
“Ready for pain meds, I think, but she’s not complaining.”
“You gave her a great gift tonight, Quinn.”
He smiled a little. “I hope so. She loves the mountains. I have to admit, I do as well. I forget that sometimes. Seattle is beautiful with the water and the volcanic mountains but it’s not the same as home.”
“Is it? Home, I mean?”
“Always.”
He spoke with no trace of hesitation and she wondered again at the circumstances that had led him to Winder Ranch. Those rumors about his violent past swirled through her memory and she quickly dismissed them as ridiculous.
“I’m sorry. Let me take the horses.” He reached for the reins of both horses and as she handed them over, their hands brushed.
He flashed her a quick look and grabbed her fingers with his other hand. “Your fingers are freezing!”
“I should have worn gloves.”
“I should have thought to get you some before we left.” He paused. “This was a crazy idea, wasn’t it? I apologize again for dragging you up there.”
“Not a crazy idea at all,” she insisted. “Jo loved it.”
“She’s half-asleep in there and I know she’s in pain, but she’s also happier than I’ve seen her since I arrived.”
She smiled at him, intensely conscious of the hard strength of his hand still curled around her fingers. Her hands might still be cold from the night air but they were just about the only thing not heating up right about now.
He gazed at her mouth for several long seconds, his eyes silvery-blue in the moonlight, and for one effervescent moment, she thought again that he might kiss her. He even angled his head ever so slightly and her gaze tangled with his.
Her pulse seemed abnormally loud in her ears and her insides jumped and fluttered like a baby bird trying its first awkward flight.
He eased forward slightly and her body instinctively rose to meet his. She caught her breath, waiting for the brush of his mouth against hers, but he suddenly jerked back, his expression thunderstruck.
Tess blinked as if awakening from a long, lovely nap as cold reality splashed over her. Of course he wouldn’t kiss her. He despised her, with very good reason.
With ruthless determination, she shoved down the disappointment and ridiculous sense of hurt shivering through her. So what if he found the idea of kissing her so abhorrent? She didn’t have time for this anyway. She was supposed to be working, not going for moonlit rides and sharing confidences in the dark and fantasizing about finally kissing her teenage crush.
Since he now held the horses’ reins, she shoved her hands in the pocket of her jacket to hide their trembling and forced her voice to sound cool and unaffected.
“I’d better go take care of Jo’s meds.”
“Right.” He continued to watch her out of those seductive but veiled eyes.
“Um, good night, if I don’t see you again before I leave.”
“Good night.”
She hurried up the porch steps, feeling the heat of his gaze following her. Inside, she closed the door and leaned against it for just a moment, willing her heart to settle down once more.
Blast the man for stirring up all these hormones she tried so hard to keep contained. She so did not want to be attracted to Quinn. What a colossal waste of energy on her part. Oh, he might have softened toward her a little in the course of their ride with Jo, but she couldn’t delude herself into thinking he was willing to forgive and forget everything she had done to him years ago.
She had work to do, she reminded herself. People who needed her. She didn’t have time to be obsessing over the past or the person she used to be or a man like Quinn Southerland, who could never see her as anything else.
* * *
SHE DID HER best the rest of the night to focus on her patients and not on the little thrum of desire she hadn’t been able to shake since that almost-kiss with Quinn.
Still, she approached Winder Ranch for her midnight check on Jo with a certain amount of trepidation. To her relief, when she unlocked the door with the key Easton had given her and walked inside, the house was dark. Quinn was nowhere in sight, but she could still sense his presence in the house.
Jo didn’t stir when Tess entered her room, which worried her for a moment until she saw the steady rise and fall of the blankets by the glow of the small light in the attached bathroom that Jo and Easton left on for the hospice nurses.
The ride up to the lake must have completely exhausted her. She didn’t even wake when Tess checked her vitals and gave her medicine through the central IV line that had been placed after her last hospitalization.
When she was done with the visit, she closed the door quietly behind her and turned to go, then became aware that someone else was in the darkened hallway. Her heart gave a quick, hard kick, then she realized it was Easton.
She wasn’t sure if that sensation coursing through her was more disappointment or relief.
“I hope I didn’t wake you,” Tess