Page 11 of A Longtime (and at one point Illegal) Crush

He hauled her up on the horse behind him. “Probably. I imagine there’re a lot of things you never forget, Elsie.”

What was that supposed to mean? She opened her mouth to ask, then decided against it. She was done wasting her time trying to figure out what Kye was thinking.

“Hold onto me,” he told her.

She wrapped her arms loosely around him. It was disconcerting to sit so close to him, to feel the movement of his body along with the horse’s plodding.

She looked at the wide-open spaces around her, the sea of pine trees that spread across the distant hills. The trees were scarcer down here where it was flatter. It looked like a few dozen of them had wandered away from the hills, probably to round up the stray bushes that dotted the landscape. The sky above her spread out vast and open. When she was a little girl, she used to think that if she looked hard enough she could see all the way to heaven.

The hills and trees and sky were all saying, “Come back and stay where you belong.”

Elsie kept gazing at the scenery so she wouldn’t think about Kye sitting so closely to her. He was warm and smelled of leather. The last time they’d been sitting so closely together—nope, there was no point in letting herself think about those two seconds…the feel of his mouth against hers…the taste of mint on his lips. Had he actually kissed her back or had his mouth only moved in horrified alarm?

“So,” Kye said. “I hear you’re majoring in business.”

He’d heard? She hadn’t expected him to know anything about what she’d been doing. She’d hoped he’d forgotten about her as soon as she graduated, although she supposed that had always been a fruitless wish. He was her brother’s friend, and besides, she had given him enough reasons to remember her.

“You heard right,” she said.

“I always expected you to pick a major that used a lot of math. You were so good at it.”

Yeah, but only because she had wanted to impress him. She shrugged. “I guess I lost my taste for math after high school.”

Kye’s voice had the same smooth tone he used when teaching and trying to get a point across. “Maybe you should pick it up again and see if tastes better now.”

Was he flirting? Teasing? Or just being a math teacher? Well, it didn’t matter. She was over him. She didn’t care how he…um, how math tasted anymore.

She had gone too long without speaking. He went on, asking her generic sorts of questions about college. Did she like Missoula? How were her classes going? How many credits was she taking?

She answered as succinctly as possible, then asked him questions about the ranch and his family so she could get out of talking about herself. It all felt formal and stiff, like two strangers forced into a conversation. On the bright side, at least their first meeting was out of the way. Pleasantries exchanged. Now they could cordially ignore each other at the wedding and be done with it.

They’d reached the house. It was a sprawling red-brick home with pine trees planted at each corner, framing it in a continual Christmas evergreen sort of way. Elsie dismounted and then waited for Kye. He swung his leg around the horse in one swift, well-practiced motion. His legs were still lean and muscular, perfection in faded blue jeans.

“Go on inside,” he told her. “I’ll be in as soon as I put my horse in the stables.”

“Okay.” She headed up the walkway, feeling the awkwardness of every step she took to the door. She had seen Kye’s house before. When Carson had been younger, their parents had dropped him off here often enough. Elsie had never been inside, though. Was she supposed to ring the doorbell? Was anybody else home? Probably not. Otherwise, Kye wouldn’t have sent her in without any sort of preamble.

She opened the door, said a tentative “hello?” and stepped inside.

No one answered. Elsie relaxed and shut the door behind her.

Kye’s house was decorated in shades of testosterone tans and browns. The couch and loveseat in the living room looked comfortable and well worn. A stone fireplace stood against one wall. A large bookcase flanked the other, complete with dog-eared books. Some work boots sat on the tile by the front door. Only the flourish of silk flowers and the gilded family photos placed around the room let Elsie know that Kye’s mother had any part in the decorating.

Kye would probably be gone for a while. After all, it took time to unsaddle a horse, brush it down, and do that sort of stuff. He undoubtedly wasn’t any more eager than she was to sit around and make small talk. She would most likely be here by herself for half an hour. By that time, Kye would report that Frank was done feeding the cattle, and he would offer to drive her back to her car in his truck.

The worst was over.

Elsie texted her dad to let him know she’d been delayed, then wandered over to the bookcase to look at the titles. Most of them were nonfiction. Books about history. Biographies. Ranching. A few novels were scattered in with the rest.Lord of the Rings. Tom Clancy. They might have been Kye’s parents’ books. It was their house after all, but she knew Kye well enough to know most of the books were his. His parents weren’t the type to read biographies about Newton, Tesla, or Einstein. Kye had told the class about those men and used them as examples of the way math changed the world.

She saw the bookEndurance, the story of Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic. Without thinking, she ran her fingers along the spine. She had recommended that book to Kye. It surprised her to see it on his shelf.The Book Thiefsat next to it. She’d told him that the novel was one of her favorites. She dropped her hand away. She shouldn’t be surprised, really. Kye had rejected her, not her reading list.

“Good heavens! Who are you?”

Elsie spun around to see Mrs. McBride standing at the edge of the living room, hand pressed against her chest in alarm.

“Oh, sorry,” Elsie stuttered. “I didn’t know anyone was here. Kye told me to go inside. He’s putting his horse in the stable.” Her words fell from her mouth in an embarrassed jumble. She gestured toward the stables as though this would help her explanation make more sense.

Mrs. McBride dropped her hand from her chest. She was a middle-aged woman with dark hair like Kye’s and a thick waist. “Oh. Sorry to snap at you like that. You startled me, that’s all.” She smiled politely at Elsie now. “You’re Kye’s friend?”

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