Page 18 of The Way to a Cowboy's Heart

She sighed. “I suppose maybe someday I’ll be able to think of this that way. The wholein hindsight it was a brilliant mistake!thing. But right now, I’m just… I can’t quite see where I’m going.”

“That’s fair. So… tell me what happened. You could start at the beginning.”

The beginning was too far, even for her. But reluctantly, she told him the story of her downfall at Bledsoe, Tamarin, and Carter as they walked beneath the naked maple trees, past the park benches filled with old men sharing coffee, and around slips of ancient rocks that marked the paths. He listened without asking questions, slowing down when she got to the part where the FBI came in, scowling when she mentioned the extent of the crimes they’d already discovered Bledsoe had committed.

“He was my mentor for years,” she finished. “We were introduced six years ago in London at a dinner party and, honestly, I needed something of my own, unconnected to my father or my overachieving brother. I moved to New York City for this job and never looked back. But I don’t know how I could have missed what he was doing or how he hid it all this time. They say it’s been going on for more than ten years. Maybe from the beginning of the firm. It boggles the mind how he could have so betrayed everyone, including his family and friends and all of us, as well. He’s apparently taken full responsibility, claiming he did it all alone, but as you can see from that reporter’s implications, not everyone believes that. So, who knows if anyone will believe me?”

“I do,” he said, though he had honestly no way of knowing if she was telling the truth.

“That’s kind of you. On the bright side, I can only say I’m fortunate that I made it a firm rule from the start not to work with friends and family, and so I sent them elsewhere. I didn’t want to contaminate my friendships with business, especiallythatbusiness. It’s much too volatile. That is one lesson my father taught me that has apparently served me well. But I’m afraid I haven’t seen the last of the reporters chasing me down with microphones.”

“Maybe you need to get out of town for a while. See things fresh.”

She shook her head. “Ineedanother job. I’ve worked too hard at this profession to let this beat me.”

They approached an open field where a boy and his father were flying a kite, in the middle of winter. The boy was determinedly running across the field, boosting the kite while the father cheered him on. The wind was failing them, but the boy who looked to be around six or seven, seemed completely undeterred. She and Liam stopped to watch, fascinated by his determination. Finally, the kite launched into the sky and climbed above the treetops and the boy screamed with joy and jumped up and down while his father proudly watched him from a distance.

“Brilliant,” she murmured under her breath, then exchanged smiles with Liam as they continued on. “Thank you for this. I do feel better just to say it out loud. I… hope I haven’t ruined your day.”

“The opposite. And look. The sky’s still up there. Tonight, the moon will rise. We’re feeling the walk a bit in our legs—”

“Speak for yourself, cowboy,” she teased.

He laughed. “Okay.I’mfeeling it. Probably just the smog.”

“Probably.”

“You know, Montana skies are blue pretty much all the time. It’s cold, but no smog. And definitely no reporters stickin’ microphones in your face. Just sayin’.”

“Is that an invitation, Mr. Hardesty?”

“Oh, it definitely is.”

Embarrassed now, she shook her head and kept walking. “You know, I’ve done nothing but prattle on about myself. That’s horrifyingly rude, really. Tell me about you. I want to know.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Well, what is it you love to do?”

“Love?” he repeated as if that question stumped him. “I don’t know. When I was younger I loved rodeo. But after one too many injuries, I gave that up.”

“The belt buckle?”

He glanced down at it as if he’d forgotten he even wore it. “Yeah. Remnants of my past. I did okay for a while. Now, I don’t know. I… I love building things. Putting this guest ranch we’ve got going together. I love a good ride across a pasture at dawn when the fog’s just rolling off the grass. Seein’ a newborn calf stand up for the first time. I love workin’ with my family. Years ago, I thought I’d do anything just to get away from that place. But now… now I love it again.”

“Why did you want to leave?” she asked. “Before. If you don’t mind my asking.”

“I think…” he said, seeming to work it out in his mind just then, “I was just stuck. Resenting that my life was mapped out for me. Not something I chose. Not really seeing the gift it was.Lonelywas part of it, I guess. But like I said, life’s a choose-your-own-adventure thing. I guess I just created a different adventure out of it.”

She considered him with a sideways look, having vastly underestimated a cowboy’s capacity for insight. She supposed she’d always lumped them together with jocks or construction workers on the streets of New York whose deepest insight was to whistle at her as she walked by.

Life’s a choose-your-own-adventure thing.

Perhaps she was at some sort of inflection point in her life and now the choice was hers. But her apartment rent needed to be paid and her green card was a ticking time bomb now that she was officially unemployed. But she’d think about that tomorrow.

They walked on, talking about cattle and ranches, London and carriage rides through the park. He told her they had pretty much the same thing on the ranch only with hay instead of velvet seats and fuzzy blankets. She told him about the horse she used to own when she was a girl and the dressage competitions she would enter because her father thought it was the only civilized way to ride, unless one was on a hunt.

Eventually, they found themselves on her street, a few parked cars away from the front of her building. From a distance, they could see a bevy of reporters camped out below her window at the brownstone and media trucks parked nearby. She stopped dead, ducking back behind a tree, unsure if she wanted to brave the gauntlet.

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