She had thought him the kind who stayed, but obviously he wasn’t the man she believed she’d fallen in love with.
Addie looked up to find Deke’s cat-eyed gaze upon her, its intense focus as seductive as ever.
She lifted her chin, defiant.
“I thought you were goin’ to town with Connor, darlin’,” her father said, breaking the silence in the stable room.
“I changed my plans,” she answered, stepping inside. She still wore her yellow suit and those infernal high-heel shoes, which she was of a mind to use as hole spacers in Opal’s garden patch. That was all they were good for. “And I thought I’d better find out what’s goin’ on with the Bar G that I need to know about. Or am I consigned to fence-sitting when it comes to runnin’ this ranch—and seeing to my son’s welfare?”
She arched an eyebrow at her father, who gave back as good as he got. She still didn’t know the whole story behind Deke’s hiring, but trusted her father would never do anything to deliberately hurt either her or his grandson. Jud had stuck by her through the abyss of Deke’s leaving, and it had been her one sustaining anchor. Of course, that didn’t mean there weren’t occasions when she could chew a railroad tie in two for sheer aggravation with him.
He no doubt felt the same way about her, too, sometimes.
“Believe me, darlin’,” Jud said, “I surely intended to fill you in on my hirin’ Deke. He wasn’t supposed to get here for another couple of weeks.” He leaned heavily on his stock saddle where it rested on its rack. “I’m sorry to have given you such a surprise. I never meant to.”
“But why didn’t you consult me before hiring him, Daddy?” Addie asked, crossing her arms. “You owed me that, I think.”
“Now, darlin’, we did talk about hiring a troubleshooter—”
“And I felt then as I do now, that I’ve got the ability to bring the Bar G solidly back into the black.”
She refused to look at Deke as he stood there, once again privy to a private family conversation and keeping her from asking her father the real questions she wanted to. Why? Why, of all people, did you bring back Deke Larrabie, the man who broke your daughter’s heart?
But then, deep down, she already knew the answer to that one.
To his credit, Deke was at least making a pretense of not listening to their discussion as he ambled out the wide doorway of the stable, idly spinning his catch rope.
She couldn’t help but watch as he swung a loop over his head, then to one side, then the other, as always his movements smooth, his technique flawless, his rhythm pure poetry. If truth be told, it had been his magic with a lariat that had won her heart, so much was it like the courtship between two lovers.
“Adeline.”
Tearing her gaze away, Addie met her father’s eyes, as keen as always.
“You’re still the go-to man on all the decisions about the Bar G,” he said. “That hasn’t changed and won’t. You know that, don’t you?”
Exasperatedly—lovingly—she studied him as he stood there, hand upon his saddle, its horn still wrapped in inner tube rubber from his working days…days when he’d been in charge and in command himself, no dispute. She had always seen herself as being cut from the same cloth as Jud Gentry: fearless in carving out new territory in ranching, perhaps not literally but in the spirit of their ancestors who’d set down roots in these parts over a hundred years ago, hoping to build a future.
But she was also a woman who’d had some of the choices for her future taken away from her.
“Daddy,” Addie said as gently as she could while still being completely honest, “I just don’t think the Bar G can handle another Larrabie rainmaker coming in with big promises and taking big risks, then leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces.”
“That won’t happen, Addie.”
This had come not from her father but from Deke, his attitude no longer casual as he stood in the dim light from the doorway. He was back to that intensity, again bent upon her.
“How do I know that, Deke?”
“It won’t,” he vowed. “You’ve got my word.”
“But you made such a promise to me once before,” Addie said, still without accusation, just speaking the truth she knew. “A promise to stay. Then you left.”
“I came back, though,” he responded with that maddening certainty. “Here I am. And this time, nothing’ll make me leave.”
He swung the loop around, the gesture automatic, she was sure, but did he have to do it at that moment? Did he know how mesmerizing, how seductive it was to her?
How it made her want to give in to more than just his will?
“Look at it this way—what could it hurt, Addie?” Deke said. “I’m not charging y’all for my time. And you’d have the final say in anything that gets done.”
What could it hurt? Oh, everything and everyone! Jace, for instance. The boy was searching right now. Searching hard. And who knew what he’d find if she let it happen? Or was she the only one who saw the danger on the horizon, coming at them all with the inevitability of a swarm of locusts?
Or was that still the danger within her? Because she’d seen the spark of challenge leap to Deke’s eyes earlier today with Connor. Had seen the spark of desire there, too.
The mere prospect of it had Addie running scared, for she’d once held nothing back from this man, so much so that when he left, it felt like going from swimming in an ocean of emotion to being stranded on a parched, barren desert, where you’d have sold your soul to taste just one drop of those feelings again.
She simply would not—could not—risk taking one step in that direction again.
Yet once again she was being asked to give her trust. And once again she hadn’t much choice but to give it, whether she wanted to or not.
For at that moment Jace rounded the corner of the doorway and stopped dead at the sight of three adults in the midst of one serious discussion.
“Hi there, hon,” Addie said quickly, holding out her hand to him, needing literally to take him under her wing to try to protect him, one last time.
But it was too late. Something had caught Jace’s attention. Fascinated, he came a few feet closer to where Deke stood on the threshold of the stable, on the threshold of their lives.
“Could you teach me how to rope, mister?” he asked, looking up at Deke.
And it was the way Jace said those words, soft and uncertain and more like the little boy he’d been a few months ago, that made Addie wonder if perhaps she was the one who was being shortsighted here.
Except, at the same time the sight of the two of them yearning toward each other almost without conscious thought drove that sense of danger in her even higher.
She was helpless to halt its progress, though, as Jace continued. “Y’see, mister, no one else around here can, but you could, ’cause…well, ’cause, you know, you’re like me.”
Deke’s fingers clenched reflexively on the lariat in his hand. For a wild moment, he wondered if somehow he’d already unintentionally broken his promise to Addie.
His gaze flew to hers in question, in apology, and he saw fear within her blue eyes, too, but not for the same reason.
“What Jace is saying,” she explained, her voice neutral, “is that Daddy and I, and the rest of the boys, have had the devil of a time tryin’ to teach him to rope.” She hesitated. “He’s a southpaw, you see.”
“Yeah.”