Desert Heart Page 5

  Her lips moved but couldn’t quite find anything to say. What if he was just teasing? What if nine years as a superstar taught him how to make every fan feel like a million bucks?

  Tina couldn’t tell, because he tilted the feed bag just enough to hide his face, then thumped it into the trunk.

  “Well, thanks,” she said, slamming the hatchback and breezing to the front door, trying not to notice how closely he followed, or how good he smelled. She fumbled with the key, then turned to face him and immediately gulped. His face was inches away. So close, she could make out the faint scar on his right temple. The kaleidoscope pattern within the honey brown of his eyes. So close, she could kiss him.

  Her heart stuttered then hurried on.

  “Look, Rick,” she started but immediately petered out. Couldn’t do anything but look. Remember. Feel.

  He stepped a little closer. Boxed her in with his arms.

  “Tina.” One word. Her name. So why were her knees turning to jelly? Suddenly, she was sixteen again, shy and fluttery-eyed and hopelessly silent.

  She ripped her gaze from his, because another second there and she’d be whimpering for something she couldn’t have. But her eyes didn’t venture past his arms. Corded, muscular forearms. Arms she wanted to wake up in. Arms she had woken up in—far, far too long ago.

  Everything in her went pitter-patter, and her inner wolf sat at attention, wagging its tail.

  Arms she wanted around her. Now. Forever. All the time.

  But he was human and she was wolf. It would never work.

  Even if Rick wanted her—even if he had no qualms about her being half wolf—they had no future together. Turning a human into a shifter was a dangerous thing, especially for men. Every shifter knew that. A male wolf could turn a human female into a shifter, but men rarely survived the bite of a female wolf. Something about the chemical change and the way the body fought back. And, the stronger the man, the harder his body would resist the change. Despite the couple of one-in-a-million stories Tina had heard about a female shifter successfully turning a human into a wolf—all of them vague and unconfirmed—she’d heard a dozen grieving stories of things gone wrong. Tragically wrong.

  Even if Rick wanted her, even if he embraced the idea of turning half beast—as if that weren’t obstacle enough—she could kill him with her bite.

  It was no use. Without a mating bite, her shifter lifespan would quickly outstrip Rick’s, and she’d be alone. The thirty-plus years she’d already been alone were bad enough; there were another two hundred-plus to come.

  If she truly loved Rick, she would let him go. She had to let him go.

  “Tina,” he whispered, his voice grittier now.

  Shifter. Human. Those lines were drawn in the sand.

  She flattened her hand against his chest, telling herself it was to push him away and not to count the beats of his heart. The way she’d done their first time together, their second time, and all the imagined times in between. Feeling the steady thump, thump, thump.

  She lifted her face, whether to kiss him or tell him to cut it out, she wasn’t sure. Either way, it was too late. Much too late. He was leaning in already and instinct had her leaning, too. Stretching up, willing his lips to meet hers.

  When they did, a huge sigh coursed through her body. A feeling like the sun coming out after a long, cloudy monsoon. Because his lips were as perfect as they’d ever been, full and soft and savory, and just the right size to slot over hers. His chest was a bed to lay across, his arms thick and firm by her sides.

  She kissed him, trying to untangle thoughts of never and forever from the knotted mess they had become. Even though they stood in the parking lot of Arty’s Feed & Hardware with traffic rushing past, it felt like she was transported back in time to the leafy shade and peace of Spring Hollow, where they’d first made love. Two giddy teens who thought they’d been exploring each other’s bodies when really they were baring their souls. Binding them forever.

  Some delayed reaction in her arm made her push against his chest. It barely budged him, but at least it made her point…or whatever point she’d forgotten about midway through that kiss.

  “See? You did miss me.” He smiled, then went serious. “The way I missed you.”

  “I can’t…” She shook her head, struggling to form words with lips that refused to cooperate on anything but a kiss. “I did miss you. I always do. I always will. But Rick, I can’t. I can’t have you.”

  “You can’t have happiness?”

  Her knees wobbled and she dropped her forehead to his chest. What to say to that? No, I can’t. I can’t have you.

  “You didn’t want to leave Arizona before.” His voice rumbled against her chest. “I get that.”

  Did he? Did he know how much it had hurt her—killed her—to say no and see him go? To see pictures filtering back of him at work—and worse, at play, with supermodel-types appearing on his arm as the camera flashed away? A man like Rick could take his pick from dozens of willing women. Any day, any night.

  Of course, he’d always looked a little stiff in those pictures, his smile forced. Not the same shining grin he gave the younger fans. And thankfully, he’d never gotten mixed up in a scandal, never had a steady girlfriend—at least, not one the press caught hold of. Maybe he was just like her, using the occasional lover to take the edge off. Pretending that the loneliness could be remedied by any partner, any night.

  “I get that you love it here,” he rumbled on.

  She did love Arizona. She loved Twin Moon Ranch. But if she could have, she’d have left it all behind for him. Only him.

  “But now I’m here. I’m here to stay. So what’s stopping us?”

  Slowly, gently, he tipped her chin up until she was staring into his eyes. Or rather, blinking frantically to hold back the tears welling up inside.

  She could never say it. She could never explain. Rick, I’m a wolf, and you’re human. I could kill you with my bite.

  Then he shook his head and squeezed her into a hug, tucking her head beneath his chin. A good place, she reckoned, to spend the next twenty or so years, hiding from reality.

  Eventually, the mountain she was wrapped around lifted and sighed, and two syllables echoed inside. At first she thought it was him, shooting thoughts into her mind the way her packmates could. But it was his voice, resonating through her chest at close range.

  “Coffee,” he said, pulling back just a bit. “I’m taking you out for coffee.”

  She blinked. “Coffee?”

  “Just coffee,” he said, running a hand over her arm. “Just to talk. Not while coming or going, but sitting and taking our time.” He leaned in closer, and her heart skipped over the next couple of beats. “Just you and me.” Then he shook his head, unsatisfied with the notion of two separate beings, and corrected himself. “Just us.”

  Chapter Ten

  Why did she do that?

  Rick looked at Tina, wavering between the Yes she seemed so desperate to blurt and the No she felt honor bound to throw at him. Why did she always push him away?

  Well, he wouldn’t push back, but he’d wear her down. Do anything to stretch these minutes with her into hours, at least for today.

  “Just coffee,” he repeated. Didn’t matter that his soul was screaming for more. He had to take it one step at a time. “Please.”

  “Okay,” she whispered at long last.

  He almost did a victory dance right there in the parking lot. But he’d never allowed himself that kind of show-off stuff in baseball, and he sure wouldn’t pull it now.

  “Great,” he said, stuffing a million happy-feet dances and fist pumps into that one little word.

  She looked up at him with wide, wild eyes, and for a second there, he thought she might come in for another kiss. But then she blinked and pressed something soft and squishy in his hands. “Here, hold Bluey.”

  He held up the plastic bag full of water and one little fish. It was blue, all right. He looked back at Tina. “Bluey
, huh?”

  “Greenie needs a new friend.”

  He cocked his head.

  “Don’t ask,” she sighed and motioned to her car. “I’ll drive.”

  Yeah, that was the Tina he knew. Decisive and confident. Except when it came to him.

  He folded himself into the front seat—him and Bluey—without argument because A, sitting a foot away from her was a lot better than sitting in a separate vehicle, and B, it did make sense to take the smaller car into the center of town, where the streets were full of Old West charm but short on parking. That was Tina. Sensible.

  He closed his eyes as she drove, soaking in her proximity, her scent. Sensible, but sensual. And sweet, so sweet. Somehow, her allure had only grown in the years in between.

  And just like that, he lapsed into a full-on flashback of the last night they’d shared together, seven years ago. The way she melted into his arms. The way her mouth opened when he slid inside her. The way her legs—

  “Is that café fine?” she asked, ripping him out of the memories.

  A park bench would have been fine with him. Right here in the car. Anywhere he got to be with her, sex or no sex.

  “Perfect,” he said just as a car pulled out from a parking spot, freeing the space for them. “Our lucky day,” he chuckled. “Fate is on our side.”

  Tina gaped at him with wide, startled eyes.

  What? What had he said?

  A car beeped behind them, making Tina’s eyes bounce to the rearview mirror. She muttered something, threw the car into gear, and parked neatly in the tight spot. Two minutes later, he was sitting across from her at a corner table in the shade. Just the two of them.

  Okay, plus the blue fish, because the thing would probably roast to death if they left it in the car.

  The coffee came, and he tried to work his way into conversation with her. Tina picked at the tablecloth, intent on the red-checkered pattern, or the fish, or just about anything but his face.

  “Tell me about Bluey,” he tried.

  Her smile loosened a little. “Rescue mission for one of my nieces.”

  Nieces. Plural? “How many do you have?”

  She looked at him for a moment as if to question whether his interest was sincere. And it was. Both his parents had grown up in big, extended families, and that was just about the only regret that ever seeped over from his father to him. That he was an only child, growing up far from dozens of cousins back in Texas.

  “Three nieces. Ty has a girl and a boy. Cody has two girls.”And I have none, her eyes flashed.

  His lips moved, and it almost came out. Me, neither.

  Whenever his dad had come out to visit, his first question was never about Rick’s stats or how far away he was from setting a new record, but how far he was from starting a family.

  No wife? No kids? When, then? That was his father’s measure of a man—if he could cook, and if he was a good family man.

  The simple things in life. His dad was a genius.

  Rick looked at Tina and his stomach knotted up. So close, yet so far.

  He made a quick calculation of how many days of his twenty he had left to win Tina over. And right on cue, an image of Henry Seymour popped to mind. Old Henry would wind up a long list of things to be endured and conquered in twenty days.

  The first twenty days of a new job. The first twenty with a new horse. Then Henry would wink and add, The first twenty days of marriage, making the missus chide and hide a smile. The love between them was a physical thing, a calico cat that wound around and around their legs, purring.

  The same purr that kicked in any time Rick was near Tina.

  “Mr. Rivera! Mr. Rivera!”

  He dragged his eyes off her and turned them on two kids. “Hi, guys.”

  “Hi,” one boy whispered, slack-jawed now that he was so close.

  “Hi,” echoed the other, equally tongue-tied.

  “Hi,” Rick repeated. He didn’t mind kids coming up and talking to him, even at a time like this. It was the adults who could be annoying. The ones who liked to show off their knowledge of all the stats of every player in the league. As if numbers said something about the game. As if numbers could bat or pitch, or catch or throw or run.

  One kid elbowed the other, who produced a scrap of paper. “Um, could we have your autograph, please?”

  “Sure.” He scribbled, smiled, and handed it back. Smiled a little more as he watched the kids walk off, grinning like they’d just won the lottery. Turned back to Tina and found her studying him.

  “Do you miss it?” she asked, searching his face.

  He laughed. “Do I miss people coming up to me all day? I’ll be happy when it dies away completely.”

  She shook her head slowly, sadly. “I mean playing.”

  He stirred a dash of cream into his coffee and contemplated the swirling pattern it produced. Major League Baseball. Did he miss it?

  “At first, I thought I did.” Might as well tell her the truth, because going straight from the diamond to Ward D of the trauma clinic was like slamming the brakes on a Lamborghini in the middle of the highway. A trick he hadn’t been stupid enough to try the way some of the other guys did. He did take a fancy car for a test-drive once, but he decided a Ford was good enough for him.

  In fact, he’d managed to avoid a lot of the stupid things the other young guns did. No bad relationships, no drugs, no arrests. He’d just been standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. That, or destiny had other plans for Ricardo Rivera. Because how else could he explain what happened?

  “Maybe the accident was meant to be. It brought me back here, right?” To you.

  The way she looked at him—looked into him, almost—suggested she wanted to believe that, too. Maybe they really were meant to be together, for all that she insisted on denying the crazy pull they had on each other. They were meant to be. They could get together and—

  “How did it happen?” she whispered.

  He put his coffee cup down. Turned it around. Turned it back. “Didn’t you read about it in the paper?”

  She turned just pink enough to tell him she’d read plenty. “I never know what to believe in the press.”

  Smart girl. Because he shuddered to think what was written about him sometimes. About the accident. About his life. About the people who managed to get photographed with him, looking like they actually had some kind of relationship.

  “I don’t even remember it,” he said into the coffee cup. “One minute, I was standing on the sidelines at a high school practice at one of those meet-the-public events. The next, I was in the hospital with a headache the size of Seymour Ranch.” That, and an eye bulging half out of its socket, but he’d spare her the gory details. “They told me the kid at bat cracked a real slammer into foul territory. Right as I was leaning over to sign an autograph.”

  No helmet. No warning. No second chance.

  At first, it seemed like the end of the world. But slowly, the crack in his skull healed, the brain swelling went down, and the agonizing headaches became mere migraines. But the nerves around his eye didn’t heal, and 80% vision wasn’t good enough—not for hitting the kind of balls big-league pitchers threw.

  That had taken a while to accept, but yeah, he’d moved on.

  Well, was trying to, at least.

  Without thinking, he took her hand. Her warmth traveled up his arm and into his chest.

  “And then along came Lucy Seymour’s addendum to the will and this job. And here I am.”

  A new beginning, a new chance. His third and final chance at Tina, the way he saw it. A chance at the kind of timeless love his parents had had. Long after his mom passed away, his dad had smiled and called her his princess. The Seymours were the same, weathering the ins and outs of ranch life with a grace fed by their devotion to each other. They were gone now, all of them, buried up on the hill that faced the rising sun, but love was eternal. He could feel it every time he went up there, hear it in the whispers on the wind.

  J
ust like he felt it now between Tina and himself. Love was eternal.

  Tina leaned closer, looking so sad, he ached to say more.

  “Tina…” he started. How could he put everything into words? That what they’d had together wasn’t just puppy love or a couple of horny teens getting lust mixed up with love. That what they had was a one-in-a-million thing. It had taken a while for him to realize that, but he got it now. Yes, there’d been women who made him laugh. Women who made an hour or two speed by. A couple who’d even coaxed a throaty groan out of him. But he’d never, ever met one who made him cry the way Tina did. Never met a woman who made him believe that he could have the kind of love his parents had. Except her. Tina.

  He opened his mouth to say it when a cold, hard voice jumped in first.

  “My, my. What do we have here?”

  Tina jumped; Rick nearly snarled at the sight of Dale Gordon standing by his elbow. His blind side. Again.

  “Hello, Dale,” Tina said. Her voice was flat, not giving any emotion away. When it had been just the two of them, she wore her emotions on her sleeve. Now she’d slipped on a poker face that revealed nothing, nothing at all.

  A woman of class. A princess. My princess. The reverent words his father had uttered so often echoed through his mind. They fit Tina perfectly. She’d always had that regal, old-world side to her. But there was a cowgirl in her, too—one who didn’t mind getting her hands dirty when the job called for it. Who could work and sweat and grunt with the best of them if need be.

  He slammed on the brakes, reeling the image back from where his imagination started hauling it off to like a Viking with his prize.

  “Busy day, huh, boss?” Dale snickered.

  Rick balled his hands into fists but kept a straight face. If Tina could do it, so could he.

  “Apparently, a busy day for you, too,” Tina shot right back.

  Touché, Rick wanted to crow as Dale’s brow furrowed. Touché.

  “I’d hate to hold you up,” she continued, smiling at Dale with an expression that said, Run along now. “You must have so much to do.”