What had he said?
I’m not the same broke-ass cowboy you used to know.
It wasn’t that he came from a poor family. The Daltons had been ranching in the Rust Creek Falls Valley for generations and his dad was a leader in the community, a lawyer with an office in town. Still, back in high school, Derek hadn’t had much, not in terms of cash in hand. When they ran away to Kalispell, he’d bought her a simulated diamond ring for forty dollars at Walmart.
She’d thrown it at him the day he told her to get her stuff and go with her dad. Where was that ring now? What had he done with it?
Not that she’d ever ask.
“Okay then,” the grown-up Derek said. “We’ll go fifty-fifty on the final bill.”
“Perfect. Thank you. Now, let me see...” She woke her phone, punched up the party file again and brought up the dual lists of what had to be bought and what would need to be made or otherwise assembled.
“How we doin’?” he asked.
She gave him a nod. “Really well, actually.”
“You feel like we’re getting somewhere with this party, then?”
“I do. And I think we’re pretty much set for now.”
Their non-date was almost over.
And somehow, they’d managed to steer clear of the past—mostly, anyway.
All good, she told herself. It was the past, after all, over and done, and they didn’t need to go there.
But then he stretched out on his back, laced his hands beneath his head and stared up at the wide indigo sky. “Lots of stars out tonight, Miss Wainwright.”
Miss Wainwright.
Their private joke. He’d called her that in their first tutoring session and it had stuck.
“Yes, Miss Wainwright,” he would tease her.
“Whatever you say, Miss Wainwright.”
“Miss Wainwright, you’re the boss.”
He looked pretty comfortable, lying there. Not like he planned to get up and leave anytime soon.
Maybe the evening wasn’t over, after all.
Feeling light as air suddenly, and dangerously playful, Amy took his hat off the blanket and put it on. It was too big, and slipped down over her eyes.
Laughing, she tipped her head back. “Yeah. Lots of stars. A beautiful night.”
“You forgive me, for not calling?”
“Yeah.” She said it softly. “Thank you for the picnic. I...feel better about everything.”
He was watching her so steadily. “You’re as pretty as you ever were, Miss Wainwright—hell, you’re prettier.”
She felt the blush as it swept up her neck and over her cheeks. But what with the darkness, she doubted he could see it. She opened her mouth to say something teasing and light. But the memories were pressing in again and somehow, a raw truth slipped out. “I’ve had a crush on you since I was thirteen.”
It was an old confession, one she’d made to him long ago, at a party on New Year’s Eve, the night he told her for the first time that she was everything he’d ever wanted.
Her heart had ached with sheer happiness that night. How impossibly young she’d been, young and absolutely certain that nothing could ever tear them apart.
He reached up, took his hat off her head and set it on his chest. “You never would look at me. Not when you were thirteen or fourteen or fifteen...”
“I had no clue you might be looking at me. Not until that first tutoring session.”
He grunted. “You were seventeen. And you still wouldn’t look at me, even then.”
“So, shoot me. I was shy. But it didn’t take that long once we were stuck in a room together. By the end of that first session, I was looking at you, and right in the eye, too. I started getting the feeling then that just maybe you liked me—but then, I told myself, you liked all the girls.”
“Uh-uh.” His eyes shone almost black in the moonlight, holding hers. “I only wanted you.”
“You asked me out.” She couldn’t help grinning. “I turned you down.”
“But I persisted,” he said.
“Oh, yes, you did.” By Christmas of that year, she totally got that the hottest guy in school was crazy about her. Then at New Year’s, he’d said he wasn’t looking at any other girl. And he proved it, too. He was all about her, about Amy. And it felt so good to be wanted by a guy at last—not to mention by the sexiest, most charming guy in the whole school.
“My dad taught me that,” he said.
“Taught you what?”
“To persist. ‘Son,’ he used to say, ‘above all, if you want something, persist.’ He always said persist with emphasis, you know?”
Amy remembered Charles Dalton as a kind, intelligent man.
“I always liked your dad.” She brushed his shoulder, realized that touching him was maybe a bridge too far, and quickly withdrew her hand. “Um, your mom, too.”
He stared up at the sky for a string of too-quiet seconds before asking, “How are your parents?”
“They’re well. My dad retired two years ago. They moved to San Diego. They seem to like it there. My mom’s in a bunch of clubs—book clubs, bridge clubs. He plays a lot of golf.”
“Well, good,” Derek said. He was watching her again, his eyes so deep, she wanted to fall in and never come out.
There had been no love lost between Derek and her mom and dad. They’d checked and found out that he was not a great student and would likely never even go to college. Derek only wanted to live on his family’s ranch and work all day running cattle. He wasn’t what her parents had in mind for her, their precious only daughter.
Her dad and mom had made it very clear that they wanted her to stop seeing “that Dalton boy.” Amy defied them. She stood right up to them and said she would see him anyway, that he was the best thing that had ever happened to her.
They must have realized she meant what she’d said, because they’d backed off.
And after that, she and Derek spent every spare moment together. That New Year’s Eve, when he’d said he loved her, she’d believed him and declared her love right back. He promised there would never be anyone but her. Amy wanted him so much and he wanted her and, well, it was young love.
She couldn’t wait to have it all—all the kisses, the caresses, the soft, secret sighs. Making love was bound to happen.
And it did. In the early spring.
It was scary, that first time. Scary and a little awkward. But, oh so beautiful.
Already set to go to the University of Colorado on a full scholarship in the fall, Amy turned eighteen in May. In early June, she and Derek both graduated from Rust Creek Falls High.
“Remember graduation?” she asked, lost in the past now.
He made a low noise in the affirmative. “I remember your speech as valedictorian. ‘We don’t have to be perfect. We just have to do the best that we can every day,