Page 87 of Hard to Love
Which implied he did. “Greer, I—”
“Do you remember what just happened right here—” she flung a hand out toward the rumpled sheets, “—over the past hour?”
He wouldn’t forget tonight when he was ninety and couldn’t remember his own name.
“I told you I loved you.” She shoved her feet into her boots with a violence that pained him. “Now, whether or not you wanted to hear it—or believe it—is another story. And before you say it was just some girlie orgasm-induced emotional outburst, let me go ahead and call bullshit. I don’t say things I don’t mean. Even if I’m stupid and shortsighted enough to have those feelings for a man who doesn’t deserve them, much less accept them.”
She looked at him, still naked without even a sheet to protect him from her scathing perusal, and her expression closed up. But her eyes couldn’t lie about her feelings—she’d flashed from pissed to heartsick.
She walked through the door and closed it calmly behind her, and Alex’s whole body shook with the need to yank the damn thing open and chase her down the stairs.
But a clean break was always the best break.
So he reached for his phone and dialed a San Antonio number he never thought he’d call again.
Eyeshalf-blinded by the pain in her heart, Greer stumbled down the stairs outside Alex’s apartment. She cast a glance at her car, but something compelled her into the trees instead. Hopefully her stomping footfalls would ward off any animals that might think she was a midnight snack waiting to happen.
When she emerged from the woods separating the barn from her dad’s small log cabin, she stopped, couldn’t takeanother step. Almost as if the house had some kind of barrier bubble around it.
But the bubble was around her. And it was filled with grief.
She forced herself to take steps across the yard. It hadn’t been easy to go inside when she’d chosen some furniture for Alex’s apartment, but she’d been able to keep her mind on the goal instead of the memories. Now she unlocked the front door and let the emptiness roll over her.
Daddy, I need you. I just want to curl up in your lap and have you tell me everything will turn out just fine. Either “This ain’t nothin’ for a stepper” or “Girl, I don’t care if it harelips the queen. You dust yourself off and get on your horse. You hear me?” will do fine.
Inside, she flipped on the hall light and made her way to the back bedroom, the one where her dad had spent too much time battling his arthritis and gout. She and Cal had cleaned out most of his clothes months ago, but something important was still in his closet. There, in the corner, were two pair of cowboy boots, and just looking at them made Greer’s chest ache. How was it fair that her parents’ prophecy boots should outlive them?
Pieces of footwear made of leather and thread and wood.
Not people made of skin and bone and…
Greer slumped to the closet floor. Neither the boots nor the people were about actual construction. They were both about what they held inside them.
Life and fate and love.
She’d always assumed her parents’ boots fated them as soul mates, but she’d never actually tried to read them as she’d done with other peoples’, including Delaney’s and Cal’s. With gentle hands, she picked up one boot from eachpair and cradled them in her lap.
Her dad’s boots were made of a brown leather worn butter-soft over the years, and her mother’s were a gentle yellow. Closing her eyes, Greer smoothed her hands over the shafts, letting the textures of inlay and stitching soothe her. She didn’t have to see them to know what they looked like. The brown boots featured a West-Texas-type scene with prickly pear cactus, red rocky outcroppings, and even a rattlesnake ready to strike. As a little girl, she’d been fascinated with that snake, which had tickled her dad to no end. Said it meant she’d grow up to be a tough ol’ heifer. She smiled at the memory. Only someone from Texas would take that as the compliment it was.
The yellow ones felt even softer under her fingers. Interesting, since they hadn’t been worn since her mom died. Then again, her dad would’ve never allowed them to age from lack of care. Their shafts were a peaceful flock of cardinals, bluebirds, and doves, while the vamps were a bumpy contrast of ostrich hide.
Greer willed her heart rate—erratic since she left Alex’s—to steady and simply breathed, allowing the leather to speak to her through her fingertips. A smile lifted her lips. Even if she hadn’t known her own parents, these boots would’ve told her they were a classic case of opposites attracting—a calm, nurturing woman and a driven, hard-headed man. The sheer emotional bond between them rippled Greer’s skin and softened her own anxiety.
They reminded her that destiny wouldn’t be rushed, would only be revealed on its own schedule. Her being hurt and angry over Alex cutting her out had no bearing on the future. If they were soul mates, they would find their way back to each other.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The morning of the competition, judging dawned with an endless Texas sky so blue and bright it seared Alex’s eyes. Or maybe that was because he’d barely slept since he’d made the call to Ruben, head of the Tejanos Pintados,asking to meet with him. Between worrying about Nicolás and busting his ass on a piece of leather and thinking about Greer, there hadn’t been much point to closing his eyes. Because when he did, it was just a floating mess of beige and brown and mold green in his head.
Better—much better—to stay awake.
As he shuffled over to the kitchenette, his stomach made a noise like a street dog fighting over the last bone in an alley.Keep up your bitching, but you ain’t getting fed.
Because he knew better than to put anything in it. All that had gotten him lately was a raging case of indigestion.
Today, though, he had to put on a happy face while people strolled by judging his work. None of them experts on leather tooling, but each of them with an opinion on who should win the ten grand.
What a fucking mess. He’d been so close to moving on. That was what coming to Prophecy and putting himself, his work, and his ego on the line had been about. And today he was kissing that future goodbye. Now, even if he won the competition, he wouldn’t win PBC’s tooling business, notafter the way he’d hurt Greer.
