Page 17 of Take Me Away, Cowboy

“Whether or not this is a one or two-horse town, the world is big, an expanse that I couldn’t possibly understand in a thousand lifetimes, let alone one. So, I plan to see as much as I can, for as long as I can.”

“Why?”

“Why what?” Hadn’t he heard her?

“Why do you want, or need, to see all that to understand it? I mean, if it’s all too much to accomplish in one lifetime anyway, why not get to know one spot, one place, as intimately as you can?”

Paige opened her mouth to answer but found she didn’t have anything to say. Once again, a man she barely knew asked her a question she had absolutely no idea how to answer.

Damn him.

“Because it seems to me you’d love to see as much of the world as possible, experience cultures, languages, foods that would otherwise be unavailable to you—which I get, believe me. Remember, I signed up for the world’s deadliest fighting force and not because I liked the day job.”

He paused, looked out at the farm while Paige nervously tapped her foot. She didn’t like where this was going. “But each time you get restless, you leave the culture, language, and food, people behind. Do you ever really give yourself time to intimately know a place you visit, because, if I’m being honest, you’re just a visitor in those places, aren’t you? You lived there, sure, but you don’t stay long enough to build relationships where people can count on you, where you can count on them. You never build or buy a home, or a practice. What happens to your patients when you leave?”

Owen sat back in his chair, his gaze never leaving hers. Paige was stunned silent. She hadn’t thought about that before because she’d never had to. She didn’t like needing to now.

She reached over to the small coffee table in front of the window, grabbed the rum, and refilled their glasses. Such heavy talk needed reinforcements.

“Um, well, this town is small,” she said, picking up speed as she talked, “and I want big things. Maybe not so intimate. I want to see more, not less. What’s wrong with that?”

She’d passed defensive a few stops ago. Her patients’ faces in Turks loomed over her, taunting her with Owen’s accusations.

“Nothing’s wrong with that.”

“But…?” she asked, knowing it couldn’t possibly be that easy. Nothing about this man was easy.

“But nothing. I will ask you to do one thing for me though,” he said.

Ah, there it is.

“Which would be?”

“Look out this window. Tell me what you see.”

The dusk in front of her wasn’t as dark as it had been the month she left. A full moon shone through the window and over the first three fields her parents owned and worked daily. It illuminated the fields, the animals, the fence that rode the line between properties on both sides. It was bigger than she remembered.

She shared this with Owen, who listened, an easy smile on his face.

She waited for something, anything, from him, and finally, when the silence got to be too much, she coughed.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well, I think you just showed me you know a place as intimately as anyone could. Look out at that land, that field, at each stalk of corn that shoots from the ground, reaching for the sun, at each mouse that tries to make its home in the shadow of the crops, at each cloud that covers the expanse of sky over the farm, and tell me again that where you come from is too small. It seems to me this big, broad expanse of land hasn’t gone overlooked by you. I just wonder why the places you travel do.”

Paige was frustrated by his answer. That was his point? That her farm was big? That shesawa place? Of course, she understood her farm. She was raised there. That didn’t mean she should stay.

“You don’t know anything about me, Owen. Or why I do what I do. Which, I might add, is none of your damn business.”

Owen kept smiling and sipping. It was maddening.

“I think you’re awfully pushy for someone I barely know, someone who’s got his own stuff to work through.”

When that just elicited a deeper smile from him, she threw her hands up in exasperation. “Jesus. Please tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Maybe I’m pushy, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

“Ugh,” Paige exhaled, angry at him, at his unending questions. “It’s getting late. You should get back home. Farm life starts early, you know.”

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