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  “Yeah.”

  “You married Priscilla, didn’t you?”

  Ryan blinked, not knowing what to say. If he admitted to that fatal mistake everything would come out. But keeping it a secret would be like trying to juggle flaming torches on a unicycle. And he wasn’t so great on the unicycle. He also wasn’t wearing flame-resistant pants.

  “Because it felt like you had, and so I asked your family.”

  Ryan winced. “What did they say?”

  “They just kind of stared at me with their mouths open.”

  Ryan let out an amused huff. He bet they hadn’t been blindsided like that in a long time. He felt a spark of pride for keeping Priscilla a secret not only from his family, but in a small town, too.

  “I take it she was a piece of work?” Carly asked.

  “You could say that.”

  There were so many ways Priscilla had betrayed him, and still so many unanswered questions as to why. He hadn’t seen her once since their honeymoon. Not even while he’d successfully petitioned for an annulment.

  “I listened to my family,” Ryan said, shaking his head at the irony of it all. “They seemed to think Priscilla was great even though I had my doubts. They started asking if we were going to get married when I was about halfway through my last year of college. And since we’d been dating for a year and a half, it seemed like it was the next logical step. I trusted their judgment, and she seemed game. We eloped on a Friday night, and by Monday she was gone.”

  He still remembered trying to let himself into her apartment on Monday morning after their whirlwind weekend honeymoon. He’d arrived with a box of possessions under his arm after his morning class. He’d told the college he was moving out of the dorm and in with his new wife. But when he got to the apartment, the key he’d had for over a year no longer fit the lock, and someone new had already moved in. Priscilla was long gone, proving she’d been planning to leave him long before their whirlwind weekend.

  “What did you do?” Carly asked.

  Myles’s dog, Buckey, came onto the porch and placed her large black head in Ryan’s lap and he absently rubbed her soft ears.

  “I went to the pub to try to think my way through what was happening. She refused to answer my calls or texts. It was when I tried to pay for my drink that I discovered my account had been emptied. All the money I’d earned from developing an app had been cleaned out. At least I’d already paid my last semester’s tuition, but I had nothing to live on for the next three months.”

  “You sold an app?” Carly asked. “What was it for?”

  Ryan gave her a blank look. Seriously? He’d just poured out his deepest darkest secret, and she wanted to know about the app? An app he’d told no one about because it had never felt quite real, even after the money had been deposited into his account the month before Priscilla took it all.

  The fact was, he’d been swayed by his brothers’ opinions yet again, and this time it had been over Priscilla.

  “Okay, then tell me about this woman,” Carly said, giving him a hint of that attitude he admired.

  Ryan put an arm around her shoulders, strangely happy she was there, pulling secrets from him. With her at his side, those painful and humiliating moments where his judgment had failed him no longer felt as traumatic. He didn’t even care if his family came outside and saw them cuddling.

  “This is nice,” Carly said, snuggling closer. “But don’t kid yourself that it’ll distract me from needling you for the full story.”

  “I’m just cold,” he protested lamely. “I stormed out and didn’t grab my jacket, and now I’m too afraid to go back in.”

  “You’re such a liar.”

  He smiled and pulled her closer, planting a kiss in her hair, inhaling her scent.

  “It was a dating app,” he said, feeling the slap of irony once again.

  “Did you meet through it?” Carly asked.

  “In creating it, yes.”

  “Sometimes life is just too perfect, isn’t it?” Carly twisted in his arms to look up at him.

  “That’s not my definition of perfect,” he grumbled.

  “So you met because of the app, fell in love, married, then she ran away with all the app money.”

  “Yup.”

  “And you didn’t tell your family because you were ashamed and embarrassed for trusting someone you shouldn’t have? Because you thought they believed she was wonderful, but it turns out they had their reservations about her the whole time?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Did she drop out? Was she a student, too?”

  “She graduated the year before me. I met her the first month of school and let it slip I was working on an app. Turns out she knew a guy up in Canada who could help me. Connor MacKenzie. He was a great partner. And no, he doesn’t know where she went, either. He offered to have his buddy Evander de la Fosse who has people-tracking skills do a search for her. But I just wanted a clean break and to walk away.”

  The swing’s chain creaked as they swung idly, looking out over the darkened yard.

  “Want to hear the full story about why I moved out to the ranch?” she asked.

  “Is it as wretched as mine? Because I don’t want you stealing my thunder.”

  “It shares a similar theme.”

  “How very English studies of you.”

  “Do you teach English?”

  “I did for a semester. Mostly just math and sciences, though.”

  “Well, after my husband passed away, I found myself up to my eyeballs in debt. He’d mortgaged everything to the hilt, but hadn’t insured a thing, including himself. So when he died I found myself in a situation that was not cool.” Her voice had grown thick, and she sat up, no longer cuddling against him. “There was other stuff, too. We weren’t true partners, that was for sure.”

  She inhaled audibly, pulling herself back together. “I managed to sort myself out, but what did I do? I walked right into a terrible business deal. For seven years I ran a company with someone I believed was a friend. I thought it was great because I didn’t need start-up money, but it turned out he was shady. And this time I lost my reputation, which in some ways hurt even more.”

  “Shoot. That’s worse than my story,” Ryan said, wincing. To be taken twice? “No wonder you want to be independent.”

  “Yeah. See? Same theme.”

  “Same scars on our soul.”

  “I came out to Sweetheart Creek determined to figure out how to take care of myself without getting taken advantage of again. There’s so much more to learn about farming than I thought, though. I grew up on a farm and believed I knew what it took, and how to do it. Put seeds in the ground, hope for rain and sunshine in the right patterns, harvest your crop, rest and repeat. But organic vegetable gardening on a small scale is much more than sticking seeds in the ground, avoiding commercial fertilizers and pesticides, and living happily ever after.”

  “Are you passionate about it?”

  “I love being outside. I love having my hands in the dirt.”

  “But?”

  “It feels like your horse idea.”

  Ryan shifted to look at her better, making the swing’s chain creak once again. “What’s wrong with my horse idea?”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Tell me.”

  “Fine. The roan will always be too slow for rodeo.”

  “Too slow?”

  “You can change fat and out of shape, but you can’t change short legs.”

  “You think he’ll be slow? I thought he’d be nice and compact. He has good bursts of speed.” Ryan had seen him in full gallop before he’d bought him.

  “He’s a nice horse, and might win a ribbon or two for a rodeo kid, but he won’t fetch the price you’re looking for if profits are the name of the game.”

  “Right. You used to ride rodeo.” April had recognized her right away. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You didn’t ask. You were too busy kissing me,” she said with a sl
y wink, and he realized it had been at least an hour since he’d kissed her last.

  “That sounds like it could be true.” He nuzzled closer, leaving a trail of kisses across her cheek until his lips landed on her warm and welcoming mouth.

  “Besides,” she said, when they’d finished kissing, “we weren’t going to open the vault.”

  “The vault?”

  “Share our deepest, darkest secrets. We promised to remain independent and… you know. Teams of one.”

  He thought about that for a second. That had been the plan, but now that they’d shared a bit of themselves he didn’t want to go back to just kissing. He didn’t want to lose this feeling of being close to Carly.

  “Are we no longer good? Now that we’ve shared?” He gave her a long, slow kiss. Every intimate moment with her felt different, and this one felt just as powerful. And yet it somehow felt more personal and like something he couldn’t get from anyone but Carly Clarke.

  He opened his eyes and gazed at her, catching a glint of her ring as her hand drifted down from where it had rested against his cheek during the kiss. He placed his palm over her ring finger. He had a feeling the ring’s presence was still an item for her personal vault, despite what they’d shared today. It would be simple if she was wearing it to honor her dead husband, but it didn’t mesh with her story of betrayal.

  All he knew was that when she took the ring off her finger, she’d be ready for someone like Ryan to enter her life in a serious way.

  The screen door opened and Ryan eased away from Carly, bringing the arm that had been around her shoulders back to his side.

  “Hey, that red roan I bought?” he asked Brant, pressing his feet on the porch floor to set the swing rocking again. “Would it make a good rodeo horse? Barrel racing or a cutter? We’re talking full-out winner.”

  Brant stared at him for a moment, his obvious doubt sending a rush of determination through Ryan to prove it wrong.

  “No.”

  “No,” Ryan repeated, feeling deflated. “Next time, I’m not listening to the auctioneer.”

  “Or you could have a few of us come along,” Brant suggested.

  Carly laughed before Ryan could.

  A decision by committee? Not going to happen. It was his project, his decisions.

  “Would asking for a little help kill you?” Brant leaned back against the porch’s white railing, arms folded.

  “Probably,” both Ryan and Carly said at the same time. Ryan chuckled. So many things to like about this woman.

  “Seriously, I could come with you to the next auction,” his brother offered.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” Ryan said automatically.

  Brant sighed, his head shaking slightly as he pushed himself off the railing. “Why don’t you just develop another app? Seems like an easier way to make cash if you’re feeling broke.”

  “How do you know about the app?”

  “I was standing inside the doorway waiting for the right moment to come out.”

  “Maybe I need to start eavesdropping,” Ryan said, feeling peeved. “That way I’d know you’d bought a house for April. A house her son isn’t supposed to know about. And I presume her husband, too.”

  “Mom’s about to serve dessert,” Brant said, turning away. “You want to finish your plates or should we add your leftovers to the bin of scraps for the sheep?” He headed inside before Ryan could answer or drill him any further about April and the house.

  “Come on, Mr. Independent,” Carly said, pulling him to his feet. “Let’s go get fat on your mom’s cooking before we reveal the rest of our deep dark secrets to each other.”

  “You have more?” he asked.

  “There’s always more.”

  7

  The week after Thanksgiving, Carly sat near the back of the bus heading for the high school football quarterfinals. As predicted by most of Sweetheart Creek, the Torpedoes had won last week’s Black Friday regionals game by a landslide. Carly sat across the aisle from Ryan and three rows behind. From her vantage point, he looked exhausted.

  He’d been spending hours each morning before school helping with her farm plan. Then after school working on the family ranch, with his horses or with his team prepping for their next game. Despite her gratitude for his willingness to bounce ideas and brainstorm ways to bring her dreams to fruition faster, Carly had told him her farm could wait. He’d refused to listen, determined to help. But he’d been burning the candle at both ends, not even getting a good night’s rest, since he’d spent the first few nights after Thanksgiving in the stable at her ranch, worried about Blackberry. Finally convinced the horse was well, he was sleeping at home again, and Carly missed how she’d find Ryan wrapped in a straw-covered saddle blanket in the stable each morning. He’d be nestled between a hay bale and his dog, his hat pulled low, after spending the night on watch like a worried father.

  She’d made a habit of coming out in the morning with a cup of coffee before inviting him in for bacon and eggs to warm up, a routine she adored.

  The red roan Brant had declared not built for rodeo star status had gone to one of the special needs kids enrolled in the Sweet Meadows Ranch riding program, for less than a song. For a man eager to make money, Ryan had likely taken a large loss with that horse, and his cheerful acceptance of the situation endeared him to Carly even further. In every way Ryan proved he was different from Peter, revealing his scars and caring for others in a way her husband never had.

  In the bus, Ryan looked up from the stack of homework papers he’d been marking, and stretched his neck, tipping his head from side to side. It seemed as if nearly everyone on the bus had checked in with him during the almost-two-hour ride, seeking advice, and interrupting his work.

  Carly got up and moved down the narrow aisle toward the empty seat across from him. The man had to be under tremendous pressure from the community, the school, parents, players, and most of all himself, when it came to each game. She figured if nothing else, she could let him know she was here for him to lean on. But before she reached him, quarterback Blake Hernandez shot into the vacant seat. Carly ended up dropping into Blake’s seat, just behind Ryan.

  “Trust your gut,” he was saying to the athlete when she leaned forward, accidentally eavesdropping.

  “If it’s telling you something different from what I’m saying, trust it. Experts, family, coaches, parents—we all believe we know best. But listen to your gut and it’ll get you to the place you’re meant to be.” Ryan reached over and gripped Blake’s shoulder. “In life and on the field. If your gut’s saying you can make a pass, and Wiggins can get his wheels there in time, do it, even if I’m over on the sidelines hollering at you not to. You hear me?” He gave the player a small shake, and the boy nodded even though he looked conflicted.

  “I’ll be mad,” Ryan said with an easy smile, releasing the young man’s shoulder. “I always believe I know what’s best, but I’m not the one out on the field. I’m not the one in the game, feeling it, making eye contact with my players and knowing what they can endure. These last three games are your moments to shine.”

  Blake grinned, a flash of cocky, unflappable confidence common to teenage boys.

  “No. We don’t do that,” Ryan said immediately, shaking his head.

  “What?”

  “Don’t let your ego take the wheel. It’s ruined a lot of scholarship opportunities for a lot of players. Stay humble. Stay in the game. Stay grounded with your team.”

  “And trust my gut.” The teen nodded, his voice serious.

  “And trust your gut.” Ryan held out his fist and Blake tapped it with his own. The quarterback pointed his index fingers at Ryan and he echoed the pose.

  “Huzzah!” the two said in an undertone, lifting their arms.

  “This is your moment,” Ryan said. “You know what to do.”

  Carly wondered what would be different in her own life if she’d listened to her gut rather than the people around her.

  She couldn
’t help but wonder if Ryan was following his gut where she was concerned. Was it whispering to him that maybe this time he’d found someone who wasn’t looking to use him, but rather someone who might complement his already full life?

  Carly leaned out into the aisle, to find Ryan looking down at his papers, signaling he was done talking to Hernandez. She lifted her hand to the back of the seat, ready to swap places with the quarterback, but stopped when the teenager bent close to the coach.

  “I’m afraid I’ll lose her,” he said, his voice cracking with worry.

  Ryan turned to him, watching him silently. His eyes cut to Carly, who was half out of her seat, and she edged back, casting her gaze out the window at the rolling Texas scenery.

  “What if everything changes after she has the baby?” Blake asked, his voice laced with fear, and Carly immediately knew he was talking about his girlfriend. “What if I get into a good college and make the team?”

  “Things will change no matter what happens over the next few months. That’s part of finishing high school.”

  “I love her.”

  “Good.”

  “But what if she leaves me?”

  Carly held her breath as she waited for Ryan’s reply.

  Finally he said, “Blake, here’s the thing.”

  The teen swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

  “You know what I said about your gut? Listen to it. And when you listen, ignore everyone and everything else, and especially what you think they’re saying.”

  Priscilla. Peter, too. She’d ignored that niggling feeling of doubt she had whenever he’d change the subject. When she’d asked where he’d been, how their finances were, why he smelled of perfume... What would she have done if she’d discovered the truth before he’d died? How different would her life be now if she’d allowed herself to trust her instincts instead of his smooth words?

  With Ryan, her gut told her the only thing he was hiding was his old scars. But she’d also seen him airing those old wounds. He was healing and recovering, just as she was every time she stuck her shovel in the ground at her farm, every time she shared bits of her past with Ryan and built a stronger plan for her future.