He’d rejected her soundly—so why couldn’t she let him go? Why was she so afraid of seeing him?
When she’d fled Yella six years ago, she’d been too traumatized to ever imagine coming back. In Austin, she’d tried to better herself, tried to live down the mother who hadn’t wanted her, the sorry trailer in Yella where she’d been raised, the terrible night that had driven her away. Most of all, she’d fought hard to be a better mother to Noah than her mother had been to her.
Not that juggling single motherhood while working full-time and going to college had been easy. Especially not when the nagging fear that she really was what everybody here had believed—no good—had remained.
Then, five days ago, just when she’d been on the verge of setting a date for her wedding to the man who valued her, Miss Jennie had called from the hospital and said she’d fallen. Miss Jennie was the one person in Yella who’d always believed in Maddie, the one person who’d been there when Maddie had been terrified and desperate. So, when Miss Jennie had mentioned she’d just love it if Maddie could come for a few days because her niece, Sassy, lived in Canada and needed some time to wrap up her affairs before she could fly to Texas, Maddie had agreed to come.
Not that Miss Jennie’s neighbors hadn’t all offered to fill in, but Miss Jennie had made it clear that she would prefer spending a little time with Maddie…if only that were possible. “Time seems more precious as you get older,” she’d said, her voice sounding frail.
Still, since Miss Jennie had helped her relocate and had lent Maddie money to go to college, there was no way she could say no, even if it meant facing Cole and the prejudiced town.
Up ahead Maddie heard the jingle of dog tags. Just as she was about to call him, Cinnamon barked exuberantly from the sun-dappled brush. Her heart sank as she realized that he’d set off for the swimming hole on the Guadalupe River where she and Cole used to secretly meet. Where they’d made love countless times. Of all the places she would have preferred to avoid, the icy green pool beneath tall cypress trees on his land topped her list.
For here she could be too easily reminded of Cole, of their brief affair. Back then she’d been young and in love and filled with anticipation for their every meeting. She’d been so sure that he’d loved her and would love her forever, and that his love, once known publicly, would change other people’s opinions and she’d gain the respectability she’d craved. Even when he’d insisted on keeping their relationship a secret from everyone important to him, especially his mother, she’d believed in him.
It had taken a crisis of the worst magnitude to make her see him for what he really was—a typical boy in lust out for a few cheap thrills with the town’s bad girl, a boy who’d never respected her and couldn’t be counted on to save her. No, she’d had to save herself.
Maddie had had six years to deal with the trauma of the past. She was all grown up now. She knew that life wasn’t a fairy tale, that she needed to get over the hurt that Cole and his mother had inflicted on her.
The last thing she wanted or needed now was to see him again and reopen all those old wounds. If she were lucky, Cole would keep to his oil fields while she was here with Miss Jennie.
Maybe then she would escape Yella unscathed.
Two hours after he’d left the drill site, Cole pulled up to Miss Jennie’s white house on the edge of town where her property backed up to a corner of his own estate. Miss Jennie’s house, with its sagging wraparound porch, was a sorry sight in the middle of an overgrown, brown lawn. Not that Cole’s mind was on the lousy condition of her house and yard as he slammed the door of his big, white truck and strode up her walk.
He was a little surprised when Miss Jennie’s fool of a dog didn’t race up to him, yapping. Whenever Cole rode on this part of his ranch he usually ran into the mongrel. On hot summer evenings Cinnamon loved nothing better than lying on a shady rock along the bank where the river was spring-fed and icy cold.
That particular swimming hole had often been Cole and Maddie’s secret meeting place.
All he could think of was Maddie.
He knocked impatiently, but when the screen door finally opened, it wasn’t a reluctant Maddie prettily greeting him, but sharp-eyed Bessie Mueller from next door.
Cold air gushed out of the house around her as she set fists on her solid hips. Her wrinkled face was brown from working outdoors. She had a way of standing that made her look bolted to the earth.
“Your mother told everybody you weren’t coming home till tomorrow, so, what has got you planting your dusty boots on Miss Jennie’s doorstep today?”
It went without sayin’ that everybody in Yella knew everybody else’s business.
“Ranch affairs,” he drawled, hating the way the lie made heat crawl up his neck. “Is Miss Jennie doing okay?”
“She’s just fine, but she’s restin’ for a spell. She’s had so much company this mornin’—all male. She’s plumb tuckered out.”
“And Maddie Gray?”
Bessie grinned slyly. “Oh, so, it’s her you’ve come to see…like every other man in town?” The knowing glint in her black eyes irritated the hell out of him. “Well, she’s out looking for Cinnamon, if you have to know. That’s why I’m here. I told Maddie it wasn’t no use chasin’ that mongrel. When that fool dog isn’t barking loud enough to wake the dead, he’s after my poor chickens or diggin’ up my pansies. He always comes back—when he takes a mind to.”
Like all mammals, human or otherwise, living in Yella, Cinnamon had acquired a reputation.
Cole tipped his hat. “You tell Miss Jennie I’ll be back a little later, then.”
If Maddie was chasing Cinnamon, he knew where to find her.
When Cole tugged lightly on the reins, Raider snorted and jerked his head, stopping just short of the small creek that fed the river where ancient trees grew in such dense profusion they were almost impenetrable.
“The brush is too thick from here on,” Cole said, “so this is where I’ll leave you.”
On a hunch that Cinnamon would lure Maddie to the pool by the dam, he’d saddled his large, spirited bay gelding and set off.
Dismounting, Cole looped Raider’s reins over a fallen log near the rushing water and left the horse grazing in the shade.
Pushing back a tumble of wild grapevines that cascaded from the highest branches of a live oak, Cole made a mental note to get his foreman to send a hand out to clip the vines before they smothered the tree. Then, as he stalked through the high brown grasses toward the emerald pool, memories of Maddie played in his mind.
He and Maddie had ridden these trails together. When they’d dismounted they’d often played hide-and-seek. How he’d loved catching her and pulling her slim body beneath his. She would smile up at him, her flushed face thrilled and trusting in the pink glow of a late-afternoon sun.
After she’d left, he’d posted signs that read No Trespassing and No Swimming.
At the sound of a dog barking, Cole’s heart began to race. When he recognized Maddie’s low, velvety voice, he went stone-still.
“We shouldn’t be here. We’re trespassing. But you don’t care.”
Stealthily he inched forward until he caught glimpses of dewy skin and ebony hair through the trees.
Sitting on the dam, dangling her long legs in the water, she wore nothing but a blade of wet grass on her left nipple and a pair of black thong panties. Her exotic face with those arched,