Page 10 of Destined for the Cowboy

He did groan aloud at that one. Why not, since there was no one to hear him? No one in that passenger seat she’d just occupied. Which he could imagine her in regularly. She’d taken no offense at the rather worn interior of the cab, or if she had she hadn’t voiced it. He had a habit of tossing his worn gloves and any material they’d accumulated when working at the forge or with a torch, and the heavy leather apron that kept the sparks from igniting his clothing, into the footwell on the passenger side, and as no one usually sat there he took his time about cleaning that out. But she had simply climbed in and dodged the debris and brushed off his apology for the state of things with those words that had made him feel…he wasn’t sure what.

Because you work and work hard out of it. That’s nothing to apologize for.

Her tone had been both approving and admiring, something he had to admit had felt good. Very good. Too good.

Didn’t learn your lesson with Gretchen?

His jaw tightened at just the thought of the disaster that had been.

But this wasn’t the same. At all. There was simply no comparison between Tris and the flashy, image-conscious woman who’d picked him up in a bar and lured him into a relationship he’d never understood until much later, when he’dfinally realized she’d been using him as a merit badge of sorts, to show off to her friends how egalitarian she was, a woman like her dating a mere blacksmith.

He might not be sure of much else, but Trista Carhart was not that kind of woman.

A memory struck him then, of the dedication ceremony at the opening of the high school sports complex that had been part of David Carhart’s redesign. He’d only seen video of it on the local news that night, but even then it had struck him, the way the architect’s beautiful wife had looked at him with such love and pride. In fact, it had been one of the things that had awakened him to the difference in the way Gretchen looked at him.

It had left him in a ruefully painful position. Stay with Gretchen because, at least for now she wanted him, or go on alone, hoping one day he might find a woman who would look at him that way, as if he was all she needed in this sometimes crazy world. He wasn’t sure exactly how much that image had had to do with it, but two weeks later he put an end to whatever that relationship had been, even knowing the likelihood of him finding something better was slim to none.

As he reached the city limits of Last Stand, he was wishing he’d thought to ask Tris where she planned to go next weekend.

Whether it was so he could avoid her or be there, he wasn’t sure.

Chapter Six

Tris had hada bad week, and it was only Wednesday.

No, she told herself, not bad, just…distracted. It was her own focus that had caused the problems. Or rather, her lack of focus. She’d been spending an inordinate amount of time trying to decide where to go this weekend. Usually, she’d simply head for whatever was next on her list, this time the Mustangs of Las Colinas in Irving. It had made the top of the list because she’d been reading about the brilliant sculptor of the herd of wild horses running through a fountain cleverly designed to splash around their hooves. The man had died fairly recently, which had reminded her how much she loved both the sculptures and the entire concept. But the nearly five-hour drive one way seemed a bit daunting at the moment, so she’d put it off.

Maybe she’d skip down the list to someplace closer. She’d been meaning to get to the French Legation historic site, at the outpost for the French diplomat Alphonse Dubois de Saligny, who first recommended that France recognize Texas as an independent nation. Opened as the legation in 1841, it was one of the oldest houses in Austin, and close enough that she could easily do it in a day and perhaps accomplish a couple of other tasks, too.

When she found herself wondering if Logan Fox had ever visited the place, she knew what her real problem was. She was trying to guess where he might be going this weekend.

So you can avoid him? Or see him again?

That she wasn’t certain which was the right answer was the most unsettling thing of all.

She tried to focus on the bunch of essays she had yet to grade. She was about halfway through, and while there had been the usual array of results, from ho-hum efforts to surprisingly interesting takes on the assignment, she was, unusually for her, having trouble staying focused on the task. Her mind kept wanting to drift, and to a place she did not want to go.

Finally she resorted to self-bribery, telling herself if she got through this she could go into town and peruse the bookstore for anything new that reached out to her. That was a bigger temptation than just buying another e-book, because she could stop at Char-pie for a slice of her absolute favorite dessert, their lemon meringue pie.

Although that peach cobbler is a very close second.

“Stop it,” she muttered out loud, irritated that her brain kept wanting to go there.

Eventually it worked—as the temptation of new reading material usually did—and she marked the last piece, a skillful intertwining of the assigned story with the student’s favorite superhero, in a clever way that made it work, with an A for content and approach, which she explained in a note of encouragement, and a B– for grammar, punctuation, and spelling. She added a second note telling him to keep his focus on the story for now, but eventually he was going to have to learn the nuts and bolts.

Then, the files saved and closed, she stood up and stretched before taking her now empty coffee mug out to the kitchen. She felt a little pang at the silence. It wasn’t just that the unit adjoining her half of the duplex was empty and quiet, awaiting new residents. It was that her place had seemed so much fuller, so much more…alive, when Jackson and Jeremy had been staying here. She hadn’t really realized until then just how quiet her life had become. But she was still certain it would have been worse had she stayed in their home, where the memory ofDavid’s hearty laugh seemed to have become part of the walls, and where the images from his agonizing battle were etched into her mind as if with acid.

If she didn’t have this lifelong passion for history, if she hadn’t been determined to know as much about this state she now claimed as home as she had the one where she’d been born, she didn’t know how she would fill these weekends. But these treks she loved gave her a reason to look forward instead of ever backward, and that they had the capacity to completely distract her was a bonus.

The mug now in the dishwasher, she headed for her bedroom to change into something more suitable than the worn, comfy sweats she’d donned for this morning’s task. She went with her favorite jeans and a soft, blue cotton sweater that would be just right for this sunny spring day. So sunny, in fact, that as she headed for the garage she grabbed the sunglasses hanging on the rack near the door. And her mood brightened correspondingly along the way, so that by the time she was walking through the door of the Last Stand bookstore, she was considerably more cheerful.

She stopped to chat for a few minutes with Lauren, the clerk working today, who happened to also be reading the same book she’d just finished.

“—is beginning to get on my nerves,” Lauren was saying about one of the main characters.

“Oh, she got on mine as well,” Tris agreed with a smile. “I kept yelling at her, ‘Wake up, you idiot!’”

“Exactly! But the hero’s pretty cool, the way he’s going after that crooked judge.”

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