Oh, Jack did. His older brother had been too busy at college to remember how Jack and Amy had been senior year of high school. Tom knew they’d dated, but not that they’d been in love. Jack and Amy had been planning a life together. Family, careers, everything.
Then, the summer after they graduated, she went off to a university thousands of miles away despite all their plans together, without a word of explanation. He didn’t know what had changed or why she decided not to talk to him again. He just knew it still hurt.
And here was his chance to talk to her, hear her side of it, and finally put it all behind him.
As he and Tom left the barn and walked through the twilight toward his childhood home, he felt the itch to get in his truck and drive straight over to see Amy. He would be there in less than five minutes.
The urge almost made him veer toward the side of the house, but he managed to keep himself in check. If she had just gotten home, she was spending time with her family. Not the best time to drive up and demand an explanation.
No, he could wait until tomorrow, Jack told himself.
“Mom loves that you’re going to be home for a good long while, you know,” Tom said as they neared the house.
Jack could see his mother moving around the kitchen, and he felt a pang of guilt over his desire to drive over to see Amy without a word of explanation to anyone. His mother had likely been cooking up a storm while they were out with the horses.
Jack glanced at his brother, whose mouth was set in a thin line. He knew that Tom was worried about their mother and the ranch she’d lived on for so many years, and that Jack being home wasn’t the godsend their mother thought it was, if only because it brought a halt to any extra cash Jack brought in from riding in rodeos.
Tom hadn’t been kidding when he’d said they could use any extra business their little riding school could get. As the town had shrunk over the years, so had the number of students they could count on coming to learn to ride. After their father died and Tom moved back to pick up the slack, it had only gotten worse; and Jack knew Tom felt that it was his failings as an instructor that was causing the trouble, despite anything Jack said to the contrary.
Jack hated that he had no idea what he could do about all that. Up until last week he’d tried to help by sending home what he could from his earnings on the circuit, but even that never seemed to be enough. He was sure he could become a real champion if the cards fell right, and then they could stop worrying so much, but for that he needed a great partner and a whole lot of luck—two things that hadn’t seemed to come his way lately.
His old partner was decent, but since he broke his leg and decided to call it quits, Jack wasn’t sure what he’d do. No partner, no rodeos. No rodeos, no money.
He loved being home on the ranch he hoped to run one day, but now he needed to find someone to rope with. It was the type of decision that could make or break his career. All that on his plate, and now there was Tom to help, too. It was a tall order.
And now he had Amy McNeal to think about. His stay in Spring Valley was already getting much more complicated than he’d expected just a few days ago.
* * *
AS THE SUN dipped behind the mountains ringing Spring Valley, Amy lowered herself carefully from Brock’s truck until her feet were planted securely on the gravel driveway of their parents’ old sprawling ranch house. The last time she’d come home, she’d fallen and twisted her ankle badly doing that very thing, and she wasn’t about to go through that again. If Cassie, who was a doctor and lived next door, hadn’t taken care of her, she might have ended up missing her departure flight last time.
Amy turned her attention from her feet to the group of people standing on the front porch. Cassie was already there, with her twin sons, and Ma and Pop, all happy to see her. Amy felt a twinge of homesickness, which was silly. She was home, after all.
Cassie, Brock’s fiancée, came down and gave Amy a tight hug. Even though they had only met up a couple times during Amy’s last stay, and that was when she was still just the neighbor, Cassie had been kind and friendly from the start.
“How’s your ankle?” she asked the moment she and Amy broke apart.
“Good, most of the time. Just gives me the odd twinge if I step down wrong,” Amy said, glad to have a doctor in the family.
Cassie nodded sympathetically, but it was clear there wasn’t much to be done about it. Just another sign that she wasn’t in her teens anymore.
The cool evening breeze ruffled Amy’s hair, and she wished she had a jacket. Living out of a backpack for years, she’d learned to just buy occasional items as she needed them, and she certainly hadn’t needed anything heavier than a light sweater in nearly a year, following the summer and staying on tropical islands or in deserts.
She might need to buy a coat. But for the time being, she would just borrow something from her mother, however grandmotherly her Ma’s wardrobe was—and it had been since she’d adopted Amy, if the pictures were any indication.
Ma herself rushed forward and pulled Amy into a tight hug, and Amy felt her heart swell with the feeling of home. As much as she avoided Spring Valley, she missed it, and the people. “Hi, Ma,” she said, hoping the older woman wasn’t going to cry.
Ma was a tough lady, but she never could understand why Amy was gone so much, and it hurt Amy to see the toll it took on her. To avoid it, Amy rummaged in her bag and pulled out two packages, handing one to Ma and the other to Cassie. “They’re some different spices and a grinder,” she explained.
Cassie thanked her, but Ma looked skeptical. “Smell them and give them a shot,” Amy said, sure her adopted mother would manage to make something magical and somehow still completely Southern with them.
Then Amy turned to her soon-to-be nephews. “I brought y’all spices, too!” she told them.
“You did?” Carter asked, not sounding too enthused at the idea.
“No. I want to be your favorite aunt, and I have some catching up to do, so I brought you fez hats and drums,” she said, pulling out the items and handing them to the boys.
Zach immediately began giggling to see the funny little hat on his brother, and they both started hitting the drums enthusiastically. Brock appeared at Amy’s elbow. “Drums? Really?” he asked his little sister.
Amy shrugged. “There were some really cool knives I considered getting them. This seemed like the better choice.”
Brock and Cassie winced at the noise. “I’m not so sure about that,” Brock commented.
Cassie whispered quickly to Zach and Carter, and they both ran over to Amy, giving her a big hug. “Thanks, Aunt Amy,” they said in unison.
Amy nodded to them, fighting tears. She didn’t want to admit how much it twisted her heart to be around these two sweet boys. They reminded her too much of truths she didn’t like to think about.
“Time to get inside,” Ma said, ushering everyone through the door. “Dinner’s ready and will start getting cold any minute.”
Amy, thankful for the interruption, followed the rest of them inside after giving Pop a quick hug. She only paused at the door for a second, looking in the direction of Stuart Ranch, and wondering what her life would be like if things had been just a little different.
Suddenly, she wished she was on a plane to Panama. Or Indonesia. Heck, Idaho would work. Anywhere, so long as it was a couple thousand miles from the painful memories that were threatening to come back to the surface now that she was here.
But those painful memories were the reason she was here, so she bit back the desire to flee