Page 2 of His Cowboy Heart

I dreamed for the first time in ten years on the night before my engagement party.

With my cowboy hat in hand, I wandered through the apple trees in the orchard behind the O’Toole family home. Light spilled outside from the upstairs windows gleaming at me like eyes in the dark.

I was eighteen again, before Shea had broken my heart.

I stood in the dark staring at that house on the hill. My heart thumped. Blood thrummed through my veins. I felt alive with youth and desire.

Then a light in Shea’s bedroom window flashed three times.

I took a breath trying to fill my lungs but feeling as if I’d failed.

The light flashed again and I could hardly breathe.

Shea Marie was inside and she’d given me our secret signal.

One, two, three.

There was no mistake.

Three lights equaled three words.

I love you.

This was my second chance. I wanted to hold Shea in my arms on more time. I wanted to right a terrible wrong that I couldn’t explain. I needed to find a way to reach her to prove that the love we shared was real.

It was as if no time had passed yet years of mistakes stood between us.

Did she still want me? Did she still need me the way my body and soul craved her?

I felt the answer in my bones: yes.

I ran to her.

I had to reach her. Shea would wait for me in our secret meeting place beneath the circle of Honeycrisp apple trees. She knew I was in the orchard and she’d given me the signal. I had to be there when she came outside.

Meet me cowboy.

Make love to me in the dark under a blanket of stars.

I ran faster; my arms pumping, but the trees grew taller all around. I turned in circles and panicked. I’d lost the path. I caught glimpses of the house as I spun around but it was no use I couldn’t reach her. Panic seized me, and I was lost. Too much time had passed and I understood that I no longer belonged in this time or place. The tug of the present ripped me awake as I shouted her name.

“Shea! Wait for me, Shea!”

I woke myself up with shouting. Gasping, I sat up in bed. My body felt slick with sweat, and my breath shaking.

“Troy, honey, you okay?” A woman mumbled. Slender fingers danced across my chest. For a split second, I thought it’s her. I’m back in Salishan and I have another chance. For a few blurry moments, I believed the woman beside me in this bed was the woman of my dreams.

“Wait. What were you just saying?” Abigail said, all traces of sleep in her voice gone. She sat straight up in bed beside me. Her brow wrinkled and jaw tightened. She chewed on a nail and stared me down. Her wavy dark hair looked rumpled, the sheets gathered at her waist beneath her naked and exposed breasts.

“No. Sorry babe,” I said. “Just a bad dream, I don’t even remember it. Go back to bed.” I reached for her hoping I could pull her close and get off easy.

“Wait, I thought you didn’t dream?” Abigail asked. She brushed my hands away and the diamond on her left hand flashed at me like an accusation in the dark.

“I don’t.” I felt like such an asshole.

“You said, Shea. Who is Shea?”

I hadn’t cheated on my fiancé with my body, but how do you tell the woman you are supposed to be in love with that you’d been dreaming about another woman?

---