Page 18 of Destined for the Cowboy

“I’d go with the movie on Apollo13,” he said. “Then ask him if he’d like to see where they did it for real.”

“Perfect,” she exclaimed.

“And as long as you’re already in Houston,” he said, sounding now as if he were on a roll, “you might as well slide down to Galveston and see the other extreme, theElissa.”

“That’s the tall ship, isn’t it? The one they designated the official tall ship of Texas?”

“She is. A three-masted barque. One of the oldest still sailing, launched in 1877.”

“That would be a fascinating jump, from going to the moon to traveling the high seas with only sail power.” She found it fascinating anyway. And she thought Jeremy was curiousenough about his new home to be too. “I’ll talk to Jackson, see what he thinks, but I’m sure he’ll be all for it.”

She bit her lip to stop her next words, which would have been, “We could all go together.”

And the entire rest of the drive back to Last Stand, the words and her urge to say them hovered in the back of her mind, as she wondered what had brought that urge on.

*

Silence, it seemed,did not bother her.

As a semi ahead of them let out a short blast on his air horn Logan snapped out of a reverie built of a series of images of today playing back in his mind. He didn’t know how long he’d been drifting, but she hadn’t said anything so he hoped it wasn’t too long. He focused on the road signs, the next one telling him they were nearing Temple, and he thought he’d tuned out about Waco, so not too bad.

“Welcome back.”

Her tone wasn’t critical, it wasn’t even amused, as some people got when he zoned out like that. It was an odd habit he’d had all his life, whenever he wasn’t actually working on something, he could get so absorbed in what was going on inside his head that he was barely a part of what was happening in front of him. The few that knew him well were used to it. They recognized that distant expression he apparently took on, and often used a whistle or snap of the fingers to bring him out of it.

Which brought up the question of how Tris had even known he’d been…gone? They were sitting here in the dimly lit interior of her car. She was focused on the road, not him. So how had she not only known that he’d slipped into that mode, but also when he’d snapped out of it?

He shot her a sideways look, and she smiled. That, at least, he could explain—she had seen his head turn.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Sometimes I get…” He trailed off, not knowing what else to say.

“So do I,” she said, her tone matching the smile. “Ever have those times when you’re heading somewhere and arrive without a memory of how you got there, because some part of your brain’s handling those things automatically, leaving another part to play with that thought you just had, or that thing you just remembered?”

It took him a moment to get past her perfect description of how it worked, for him at least. “All the time,” he finally said.

“I can’t decide if it’s a knack or a curse,” she said lightly.

He was staring at her now. Her profile seemed almost backlit by the various lights they passed, and the oncoming headlights. He thought of that day, of the high school unveiling. He barely remembered the architect, because he’d been so taken by the way Tris had been looking at the man beside her. And he’d wondered again if Carhart knew just how lucky he was.

Yeah, so lucky cancer ate him up a few years later.

And here he was, in a car with the man’s widow, driving through the dark, trying not to dwell on the simple fact of how much he liked her. But at least liking her was okay. He could be friends with her, couldn’t he, as long as he remembered he had no business and no right to be thinking of her any other way?

“Thanks for going with me today,” she said, reminding him he’d yet again let silence take over. “It was a wonderful day, and your take on everything was a big part of that.”

Feeling inordinately pleased at the compliment, he was glad the car was barely lit. “I didn’t mean to launch into the mechanics and methods of working with bronze,” he said, a little embarrassed at the memory of what had turned into almost a classroom-style lecture. But he’d studied a bit about the process,interested in what was, in a way, directly related to his own much more utilitarian metalwork.

“I asked,” she pointed out. “And I learned and enjoyed. For me, that’s a darned near perfect day.”

Before he could stop himself he’d murmured, “It was that.”

“I’m glad,” she said, almost as softly.

And he sat there in the dark as they drove on toward home, the small Texas town beloved by both of them, wishing he had the nerve to suggest they do this again. Soon.

But it was better for both of them if he just kept his mouth shut, for all the reasons he already knew, and probably a few more he didn’t. Because despite the mental wall he’d built, despite all the valid reasons he’d come up with for reining in his unexpected reaction to her, he couldn’t deny one simple fact. When he was with her, all his reasoning took off like a stampeding herd of horses, and the wall he’d so carefully built started to crumble. And no matter how many times he told himself he had no right, that she still loved her late husband, he couldn’t seem to stop it.

So the obvious solution was to stay away.If you can’t have it but can’t resist it, don’t be around it.

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