LITMIR.BIZ

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Chesney Roy, you’re gonna get hungry real quick.’ And now you’re hungry and we don’t even know if your grampy can feed us.”

      Her father bristled at her words. “You like beans and franks?” he asked Rose, gruff as a bear.

      Rose nodded up at him, wide-eyed. “And I like burgers and french fries.”

      “You’ll have to settle for cowboy fare tonight.”

      “Okay,” she said eagerly, scrambling to her feet. “Can you teach me to ride tomorrow, Grampy?”

      He matched Rose’s intense blue gaze with one of his own and fingered his mustache. “This is a real busy time of year. I doubt I’ll have a chance.” They heard a vehicle approaching and Shannon turned to see a dark pickup truck bouncing down the last rutted stretch of ranch road, kicking up dust. “That’ll be Billy Mac. He’s been staying here while he builds his house.”

      The anger that had drained from Shannon returned with a vengeance and heat rushed back into her face. “Billy Mac’s living here? With you?”

      Her father nodded. “Bunks in the old cook’s cabin. Likes his privacy.”

      The truck pulled up next to Shannon’s car and the engine cut out. Door opened. Driver emerged. Stood. Looked up at them. Shannon stared back. It had been ten years and people changed, but the changes in Billy Mac were the result of more than just the years. He stood just as tall, with those same broad shoulders and the lean cowboy build that had made him a star quarterback and rodeo rider. But he wasn’t a kid anymore. Whatever he’d been through in the past ten years had turned him into a man. He reached his fingers to the brim of his hat and gave her a formal nod.

      “Hello, Shannon,” he said. “This is quite a surprise.”

      “Hello, Billy. You sure got that part right,” Shannon replied. Her face burned as she remembered like it was yesterday his passionate and unexpected kiss, and how she’d slapped him afterward. “This is my daughter, Rose.”

      Billy nodded again. “Nice to meet you, Rose.”

      Rose skipped down the porch steps and stuck her hand out. “Momma told me it’s polite to shake hands when you meet people,” she said.

      Billy took her little hand in his own for a brief shake. “Your momma’s teaching you good manners.”

      “Supper’s about ready,” her father said. “Come on in.”

      Billy hesitated. “The two of you have some catching up to do. I don’t want to intrude.”

      “You’re not intruding,” her father said, then turned before Billy could respond. The screen door banged shut behind him.

      “Nobody argues with Ben McTavish,” Shannon said. “You should know that by now. You’re working for him, aren’t you? Come on in.” As much as Shannon dreaded sharing supper with Billy Mac, she dreaded sharing it alone with her father even more.

      Billy’d gained a limp—probably from getting thrown off some snuffy bronc or bull. The injury made climbing the steps slow.

      “Are you a real cowboy?” Rose asked when he reached the top step.

      “Not anymore, Rose, but I used to be a fair hand at rodeo.”

      “What’s rodeo?”

      Billy glanced at Shannon. “Your momma hasn’t told you what rodeo is?”

      Shannon smiled and tousled Rose’s curls. “I’ve been remiss.”

      Billy gave Rose a solemn look. “Better ask her to bring you to the next rodeo, so you can experience it firsthand.”

      “Can we go, Momma?” Rose asked, excited.

      “We’ll see. Come on, supper’s ready and we need to get washed up.”

      Billy opened the screen door and held it while Shannon, Rose and Tess went inside. Shannon had envisioned dirty dishes stacked in the sink, counters crowded with empty cans of food and trash everywhere, but the kitchen looked much the same as it had when she’d left. More tired and worn after ten years, but surprisingly neat. Her father was adding another can of generic pork and beans to the pot on the old propane cookstove.

      “Won’t take long to heat,” he said.

      “I thought Rose and I could share my old room,” Shannon said. When he didn’t respond except to nod, she took her daughter’s hand and led her up the stairs, remembering the feel of each worn tread, the creak of the floorboards, the way the late afternoon sunlight beamed through the west-facing hall window and splintered through the railings at the top of the stairs.

      “Is this where we’ll be living, Momma?” Rose asked as they stood in the open doorway of the small room at the top of the kitchen stairs. The room was just as Shannon remembered. Just as she’d left it. Bed neatly made. Braided rug on the floor beside it. Posters of country-and-western singers pinned to the walls. High school text books stacked on the battered pine desk, as if waiting for her to return and finish up her senior year, as if she could step back in time and magically erase that unforgivable mistake she’d made, running off to Nashville with the slick-talking Travis Roy.

      “I don’t know, Rose,” Shannon said, because in all honesty, she didn’t. “We’ll be staying here for a few days, anyway.” She felt a little dizzy, standing in this musty-smelling time capsule. A little sick at heart and a little uncertain. Coming back home hadn’t been such a good idea, after all, but she was here. The only thing she could do was try to make the best of it. She had to get beyond the little house Billy Mac was building on the very spot she’d coveted—and the fact that Billy Mac was downstairs in her father’s kitchen.

      Billy’d had a tough-guy reputation in high school, maybe because being born on the rez had left him with a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas. But he’d been a wonderful athlete, and handsome enough to make all the girls swoon. He’d had his pick of them, too.

      He’d asked Shannon out a couple of times, but even her father had heard that Billy was a player and warned her away from him. Though she’d heeded his warning, that hadn’t stopped her from being attracted to him, and it hadn’t stopped Billy from trying.

      Though she’d been a year younger, Billy’d been her lab partner, and they’d shared an edgy class fraught with a different kind of chemistry that could have taken her down a completely different path and very nearly did. But along about then, Travis Roy moved to town, asked her to sing with his country-and-western band and then dazzled her with promises of a life of fame and fortune in Nashville.

      Billy had asked her to his senior prom, but she’d gone with Travis, instead, and not just because of Billy’s reputation with the girls. Travis’s band was playing at the prom, and she’d written a song for him to sing. He was going to dedicate it to the graduating class as well as the song they’d recently recorded for an agent from Nashville. The song that was about to pave their way to fame and fortune. But Billy’d been at the high school dance, and he and Travis had gotten into it out in the parking lot. Billy’d flattened Travis in a fit of jealousy, busted his nose, then had the audacity to tell her he loved her.

      As if that wasn’t enough, he’d showed up at the ranch a few weeks later under the guise of apologizing and found her crying on the porch after yet another argument with her father about her wanting to head to Nashville with Travis. He attempted to comfort her and one thing lead to another, culminating in The Kiss.

      It was a kiss she’d never forgotten, a kiss that ignited enough passion to make her momentarily forget she was with Travis, but she’d come to her senses, slapped Billy and stuck with Travis, believing her life would be far more rewarding in Nashville with a country music star than with a guy whose sole aspirations were to win a rodeo belt buckle and to have his own ranch someday.

      Shannon already knew about ranch life. She’d lived it for seventeen years and wanted something a whole lot more glamorous for the next seventy.

      Shannon

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