Page 31 of Take Me Away, Cowboy

“What about your folks?” she asked him. His hand tensed beneath hers, twitched like she’d stung him. His gaze wavered from hers. “Do you get to see them often?”

“No,” he said, his voice gruff like it’d been that morning when he’d been preoccupied with his fencing. She was starting to notice a pattern.

“Well, they’ll be proud of everything you’ve done so far,” she ventured, searching his eyes for anything to give her a clue about why he’d shut down so suddenly. When he didn’t say anything, she squeezed his hand. “Owen?” she asked, getting his eyes—now a dark brown like the bark of a fir tree after a strong rain—back on hers. “What’s up? We can go if you want.”

He shook his head, smiled weakly in a way that didn’t reach his eyes.

“No, I’m sorry. They died when I was little. I just don’t talk about it that much.”

“Oh, Owen,” Paige said, her voice a scant whisper as tears welled up in her eyes and her throat constricted. “I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head again, cleared his throat.

“No, it’s fine. It’s been fine a while, anyway, but you’re right. Every now and then it hits me how much they missed. They’d love this,” he said jutting his chin towards the valley floor below them.

It was canvassed in gold and violet. The sun cut through the stone-gray clouds across deep blue sky, sending down striations of light that bathed the rugged terrain in swathes of yellow.

Paige nodded her agreement. Not many people on this earth wouldn’t appreciate the perfect display of Mother Nature showing off below them.

“When did they pass?” she asked, hesitant to dig too deeply.

If she let it go now, though, it would indicate to him that she didn’t care. And she did, oh how she did.

“When I was six. Car accident.”

Paige put her hand to her mouth, not sure what to say. He was so young when he’d lost them. His whole life ahead of him, and theirs cut violently short. What an incomprehensible loss. She couldn’t imagine life without her mom and dad, couldn’t picture who she’d be without their influence over her. Even that morning, she’d put two Splendas in her coffee, tossed the tops of the packets in the bottoms before she threw them out, then stirred the whole thing with the fork she’d used to cut her eggs. The whole routine she’d picked up from her dad, much to her mom’s chagrin.

Owen hadn’t had time for any of that.

“Where did you live after?”

“An uncle,” he spat out, his voice an octave deeper. The muscles in his jaw went tight and restrained, keeping something in that Owen clearly didn’t want out.

Paige shivered. This man had been to war more times than she could count, had narrowly survived death on more than one occasion, and still, whatever he kept from her seemed to loom more terrible than anything else he’d shared so far.

“You can talk to me, you know.”

He looked out to the north, his eyes watering in the corners.

“That’s not as much fun as teasing you,” he said, his mouth relaxing into a smile that seemed too easy to Paige.

He winked, blowing her a kiss to top it off. He was dangerously close to her now, and her body remembered in vivid detail what it was like to kiss the lips that were now only centimeters away from hers.

He’d blown her off with the serious talk, but they had time. A little, anyway.

“Owen,” she said, pulling back from him, sitting up straighter so her lips didn’t feel as drawn to his. “I’m still leaving.”

He smiled that infuriatingly adorable crooked smile of his that let her know he was up to something. That all-serious talk was off the table for good.

“That’s what you keep telling me.” He laced his fingers with hers. “You start the job search yet?” he asked her.

“I will. I just haven’t had time,” she lied.

“Um-hmm,” Owen chided. “It looked like you were up all night searching when I saw you this morning,” he teased.

He tossed her a wink that made her stomach flip like she was on a roller coaster. In a sense she was. At times, this man made her crazy and furious, and the rest of the time, she oscillated between wanting to hug him while both their clothes lay at their feet.

“Ha, ha. I’ll get to it. For the first time, I’m actually enjoying being home,” she admitted. “I’ll look when I’m ready. I just wanted to remind you it’s inevitable.”

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