Hitched to the Horseman

Twisting her head, she peered skeptically at him. “You think you want to apologize? Or you know that you want to apologize?”

He moved closer, until the scent of horse and woman mingled and swirled beneath his nostrils.

With a rueful grimace, he said, “I want to apologize. I was out of line this morning. I had no right or reason to—uh—grab you the way I did in the office. You were only teasing and I should have took it as such.”

He watched her blue eyes widen with surprise. Her whole body turned to face him.

“Do you really mean that?” she asked softly.

Gabe could feel his heart jerk, then take off in a hard gallop. God, but this was crazy. No woman, including his ex-wife, had ever affected him this much. He’d thought about her all day. All day.

“I really mean it,” he said.

She let out a long breath, smiled briefly, then quickly dropped her head. A few moments passed before Gabe realized she was crying. Seeing her in such a vulnerable state stunned him, tore him like the tip of a lashing whip.

“Mercedes?” he asked softly, then carefully placed a hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

Blinking back her tears, she lifted her eyes to his face. “Forgive me, Gabe. I—I don’t normally behave as though I’m having an emotional breakdown.”

His fingers tightened and unconsciously began kneading her shoulder. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Forget what I said this morning.”

She sucked in a deep breath. “It’s not you. Although I’m glad we’re not at war with each other. It would be pretty awful for the two of us to circle each other like mad dogs every time we crossed paths.”

“Yeah. Someone might have wanted to shoot the both of us,” he teased.

She tried to smile, but fresh tears spilled from her eyes. The urge to pull her into his arms and kiss those tears away rushed over him like a sudden, unexpected rainstorm. The strange reaction dazed him, making him feel worse than gullible. Hell, he’d never felt the urge to console anybody. Except maybe as a very young boy when he’d found his mother crying over the empty cupboards and unpaid bills. Yeah, he’d hugged his mother tightly and told her how much he loved her. As if love would fix anything, he thought bitterly. He’d tried to comfort Sherleen when she’d been upset, but she’d never been the tearful sort. She’d been a screamer and his attempts to placate her had been shunned.

Shoving that unwanted thought aside, Gabe watched Mercedes dash the tears away with the back of her hand. “I got into a quarrel of sorts with Mother this morning. I’ve been riding out over the range this afternoon thinking about her and the ranch and—a lot of things.”

His gaze touched the sweet lines of her face. “Coming home isn’t as easy as it sounds.”

Mercedes realized his simple statement completely summed up the emotional turmoil inside her, and she looked at him with new regard. “Sometimes I think I’ve been gone too long, Gabe. Maybe I’ve forgotten how to be a part of this ranch.”

“You haven’t forgotten.”

His gaze was piercing, unsettling, forcing her to look away from him and swallow.

“Mother expects me to make my home—my life—here now.”

“And what do you want, Mercedes?”

She could feel his fingers cease their movement on her shoulder, as though every part of him was waiting for her answer. Could it really matter to him whether she stayed on the ranch or left for parts unknown?

“I rode Mouse all the way to the river,” she said quietly. “And by the time I got back here to the ranch yard, I realized how much I still love this place.”

“Enough to stay?”

A wry smile touched her lips. She’d already made up her mind that the Sandbur was her home now, but she wasn’t comfortable sharing that information with Gabe just yet. It was hard enough for her to have a simple conversation with him. “You’ll have to ask me that later, Gabe. Right now I’d better go make peace with my mother.”

She turned to untie the reins from the hitching post, but Gabe’s hand suddenly swept hers away.

“You go find Geraldine. Let me take care of Mouse for you.”

She hesitated, feeling both awkward and touched that he was being so thoughtful. Maybe he had truly put their cross words of this morning behind him. She hoped so. The sexual tension between them was more than enough to handle without adding hostility to it.

“He needs a bath,” she said of the horse.

His grin was droll. “I know how to give him one.”

The playful look on his face filled Mercedes with relief and a lightheartedness she’d not felt in a long, long time.

Laughing, she rose on her tiptoes and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Yes, I guess you do. Thanks, Gabe!”

As she turned and hurried away, Gabe stared after her and, like a fool, wondered how long it would be before he watched her walk away from the Sandbur. From him.

Chapter Four

An hour later, freshly showered and dressed in shorts and a tank top, Mercedes came downstairs to find her mother sitting on the front porch, talking on a cell phone. Near her armchair, on a low wicker table, sat a small pitcher filled with what looked to be margaritas. Next to it was an insulated ice bucket, along with empty glasses.

Mercedes helped herself to one of the drinks, then eased down in a rocker angled to her mother’s right. By the time she’d swallowed the first sip of the icy lime and tequila concoction, Geraldine had folded the phone shut and tossed it onto the table.

“That was Mrs. Richman, scolding me for not being present for the library fund-raiser last week,” she said. “I was trying to explain that my daughter had just come home from a job that has kept her halfway around the world for two years, but that didn’t faze the woman. I guess the five thousand dollars I contributed wasn’t enough to suit her.”

Geraldine sighed with frustration and Mercedes tossed her an understanding smile.

“Sounds as if things haven’t changed a bit around here. Everyone is always wanting more and more from you. If not your money, then your time. I honestly don’t know how you do it, Mother.”

Geraldine reached up to push a hand through her hair and, not for the first time since she’d been home, Mercedes noticed that her mother no longer wore the wide gold wedding band on her left hand. Her father had been dead for eleven years and Mercedes was glad to see that her mother had moved on, but it still affected Mercedes to see the empty ring finger. To her, it signified the end of a beautiful union that had produced her and her two siblings. It also said that relationships, even the best of them, sometimes ended in tragedy. Something she was definitely acquainted with.

“You just deal with things one at a time, honey. Otherwise, I would have been be carted off to the psychiatric ward a long time ago.” Turning her head, she leveled a look on Mercedes. “I’m glad to see you’re in a better frame of mind than you were this morning.”

Shamefaced, Mercedes dropped her gaze to the drink in her hand. As she swirled around the milky green liquid, she said, “I want to apologize for my behavior this morning, Mother. I was acting like a shrew—or a spoiled brat—or something that I shouldn’t have been. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

Geraldine’s soft laugh drifted on the muggy breeze and Mercedes lifted her head to look at her.

“You never have to ask for my forgiveness, kitten. You know that. Besides, I said some pretty harsh things to you.”

“You were only trying to shake me up,” Mercedes reasoned.

The faint grin on Geraldine’s face faded. “Did I succeed?”

Mercedes absently plucked at the hem of her shorts. “Well, it made me realize how much I love this place and still think of it as home.”

Her mother reached across the space separating their chairs to pat Mercedes’s forearm.

“I always knew that, darling. But it’s very nice to hear you say it.” She studied her daughter’s serious face. “Does this mean you’ve definitely decided to stay on the ranch?”

Mercedes gave her a brief nod. “It does. But only if I can be useful. I’m not a hanger-on, Mother. You know that. I never was, and I don’t intend to start now. I guess—well, I’ve done a lot of growing up since I’ve been away from the ranch and this morning—I’m ashamed that you had to remind me of my responsibility as a Saddler.”