But beyond the scars, Zach had been struck by the uninjured side of her face—the wide, green, wary eyes behind the clunky-looking glasses, the full lips and high cheekbones. Practically flawless beauty juxtaposed against stark injury and inexcusable behavior.
He drove across the county road that separated his property from hers and into his own driveway, pissed that he’d hit such a brick wall. There didn’t seem to be much else he could do, considering who he was dealing with, other than to take the loss of the pastures like a man and figure out how to pay for hay. Obviously there would be no dealing with a person who’d closed a door in his face.
Zach pulled the truck to a stop in front of the workshop and got out. Benny, whom he’d left at home because he didn’t trust him in the good truck alone yet, came bounding out and proceeded to demonstrate exactly why he wasn’t allowed out in polite company.
“Off,” Zach scolded as the young collie jumped up on him, chewing and tugging at his sleeve. The teenage pup bounced backward, ready to play. “Behave or I’ll turn the girls loose on you.”
The pup grinned.
“Come on,” Zach said, starting for the bull pen. The pup fell in beside him. Benny was going to be a good dog as soon as he got through his adolescence...and then Zach only had three more adolescences to go through after that.
Darcy would be an official teen on her next birthday.
It didn’t seem possible. The years since Karen had died had in some ways crept by so slowly that Zach sometimes felt as if he’d never be able to fight his way through one day and into the next. But in other ways the time had sped by and it seemed as if he’d missed so much.
It wouldn’t be long before Darcy was out of the house and on her own—probably before he had a chance to do all the things he’d wanted to do, provide all the stuff he wanted to provide.
He hadn’t even taken his girls on a real vacation yet.
Zach lifted the gate latch, felt cool metal through the hole in the glove he hadn’t bothered to tape up the night before. He was too young to feel this damned old.
* * *
TEN MINUTES AFTER the cowboy left, Tess collected her box of refinishing supplies and headed out to the barn. There was no reason that a neighbor’s visit—business-related at that—should be so upsetting. Although, upon reflection, maybe the upsetting part was that she’d assumed when she moved to a rural area, people would leave her alone. She hadn’t counted on them calling her and showing up at her door. No. That hadn’t been in the game plan at all.
It was just one guy with a legitimate reason for being there.
Tess doubted the cowboy would be back. He hadn’t seemed too impressed with her manners.
Once outside, the dogs barely sniffed the air before putting their heads down and investigating scents along the path to the barn, obviously at ease. Tess set the box on top of an old rabbit hutch and then rolled the heavy barn door open. It squeaked and protested until she had it wide enough to give light to her project.
The barn had electricity, but the lightbulbs were all burned out or broken, so Tess simply left the door open as she worked. She didn’t really want to be closed up in the barn, peaceful as it was with the old farming implements stored along one wall and dim light filtering in through the dusty windows. She felt vulnerable closed up in a place where she couldn’t lock the doors. Besides, she enjoyed the sight of the mountains rising up behind the small town on the other side of her largest field.
Tess opened the cardboard box and took out the package of dust masks. She broke open the plastic, snapped on a mask and adjusted the plastic string. She felt a bit like Darth Vader and the stiff cellulose put pressure on the tender part of her injury, but it beat sucking in sawdust.
Mac and Blossom settled outside the door in the grass, Blossom rolling over onto her back and letting her tongue loll out, looking nothing like the lethal weapon she was supposed to be. Tess picked up a piece of sandpaper, rolling it around the pencil in order to get into the nooks and crannies of the scroll work on the legs of the table.
She’d finished sanding the top and sides of the table yesterday, having eventually worked her way through four coats of different colored enamels—white, red, green and then white again—before she’d hit the gorgeous oak below.
Tess was in no hurry because once she finished, she had little to do except sketch. Sketching had been her escape since her teen years when she’d lain in her bed—shutting out the sounds of Eddie and her mother sniping at each other, or her stepbrother’s overly loud music—and created beautiful people wearing beautiful clothing.
But one could only sketch so much, and Tess planned on tackling more pieces once she finished her table. In addition to the table, she’d found three grimy oak chairs and a bureau. The bureau was, quite frankly, gross, since many generations of mice had taken up residence in it, but the chairs were salvageable. They reminded her of chairs her grandmother had treasured. Chairs she’d inherited from her own mother. Jared, Tess’s jerk of a stepbrother and Eddie’s oldest son, had sold them after her grandmother died to settle a debt.
If only that’d been the only thing he’d done to her. It wasn’t. When Tess had moved back in with her mother and Eddie after her grandmother’s death, Jared had subtly terrorized her, making sexual innuendos, brushing up against her whenever they were alone. Tess had had a buffer while Mikey, her younger stepbrother, had lived there, but after he’d left home, at the ripe old age of fifteen, Tess had been on her own.
She was still amazed she’d escaped without being sexually assaulted. But it had been a narrow escape—no thanks to her mother, who was too caught up in her drug use to notice or care.
Tess pushed the bitter thought out of her head, focused again on the rhythm of the sanding, which was oddly calming.
Eventually she would have to come up with some other way to spend her time—preferably something that allowed her to earn a living at home. She had a decent nest egg, since she’d chosen to save her money rather than party it away. No matter how steadily she worked, Tess had never ever been able to believe her modeling career would last for longer than the next contracted job, because nothing else in her life, other than her grandmother’s steadfast love, had ever lasted.
How wise she’d been.
Decent as it was, though, what was left of her nest egg after leasing the ranch wouldn’t last for the rest of her life.
* * *
IT WAS PAST two o’clock when Tess finally finished the first table leg and sat back on the grass to admire her handiwork. Why on earth had someone stuck such a gorgeous table in a barn?
Because someone else had painted it white, then green, then red, then white and it had been pretty ugly, that’s why.
The dog closest to her sneezed, an open plea for attention and Tess reached out to ruffle Mac’s ears. He lazily rolled over on his back, giving her access to his itchy belly. She patted him a few times and he sneezed again.
“Come on, guys,” she said as she got to her feet. “I need to hit the shower.”
She rolled the barn door shut and headed to the house, wondering if talking to her dogs as if they were people made her the canine equivalent of a crazy cat lady. Somehow crazy dog lady just didn’t have the same ring.
Tess had never had a dog of her own, but had once shared a house with Demon, her grandmother’s sausage-shaped Chihuahua. Demon had put her off dogs, but after the attack she’d changed her mind and told William she wanted to find a guard dog—or four—to live with her. Lethal killing machines if possible. She was a scared woman who needed protection.
William had lined up the deal for her, finding not lethal killing machines, but two retired personal protection dogs in need of a home. Tess hadn’t been certain that, despite their fearsome appearance, two older dogs