And there were a whole lot of conversations that she was due to have. Mostly because Griffin didn’t even know that she was moving to Gold Valley.
Her parents didn’t even know what she was doing.
Par for the course, isn’t it?
Maybe. But there were just... There were some things she just wanted to keep to herself. So she didn’t have to feel the sting of their disappointment. Her own failures mixed together with disapproval from the two people who mattered so much to her.
She’d always tried to cover for Jared too. Every time he’d left and hurt her, she’d tried to minimize it. Every time he’d spent three weeks or a month apart sleeping at another woman’s house, only to come home, she’d tried to hide that.
And she’d tried to forget it.
Her relationship with Jared was fifteen years long. They’d grown up together. Well, he’d grown up less, she’d grown up more. But they’d shaped their lives around each other and she’d felt like...
Like he was the only person who knew everything about her. Things she’d never shared with her parents, never with her brother... He’d been there for.
And in the darkest time, he had been there. And she’d clung to that through every bump in their road.
But this time, he’d cheated. They hadn’t been separated before he’d found his way into another woman’s bed. She’d thought everything was fine. Great. Better than it had been for a long while, in fact.
And that was what hurt the most.
She gritted her teeth. Feeling angry. And she looked back over at her mystery cowboy.
Yeah, the thing was, he had probably cheated on her before. He had probably been cheating for their entire relationship, and she had just believed him every time he ever said that the only times he’d touched another person had been when they were on a break.
That had hurt. It always had. Because she had never...
He was her one and only.
And of all the silly things that had enraged her, the one that had fueled her down I-5 the whole way here, was... That.
Was the fact that she had seen a man that had made her feel things just with one look that no one, not even Jared, had ever made her feel before.
She’d felt that deep connection back then. Sitting there with a man who was tipsy off his sixth beer, which she’d paid for, while she looked at another man who incited some kind of fire in her stomach—it felt unfair. And in that period of time when she’d been in that house she used to share with Jared in a town that she wanted to leave desperately, she just decided she needed to... Go.
And she could stay in a motel until the rental date.
But she needed to be gone. And she had told herself that it wasn’t the vision of that man’s eyes that had propelled her. She had told herself that it wasn’t why, after she checked into the little Wine Country Motel on the edge of Gold Valley, she’d taken a shower and freshened up, put on some makeup for the first time in three weeks and a light, summer dress.
No, she had told herself that none of those things had anything to do with her mystery man.
And then, when she was bored and hungry and had bypassed any number of actual restaurants on the main street of town, walking to the Gold Valley Saloon, she had decided that there was no way she had any hope of seeing that man. Because what were the chances?
But then, in the back of her mind it was there. How people did like their regular bars. How it was possible.
But so not likely that, six months from the first time she had seen him, he would be there. Just happened to be there.
When she was free and unattached, angry and needing desperately to reclaim something... Or rather, claim it for the first time.
But there he was. There he was. And she was frozen to the spot in that Western bar, her feet grounded to the rustic wood floor. People were talking and laughing and dancing all around her. Country music was playing over the jukebox, and there was tension filling the air. Couples were everywhere. New and old, she imagined. Some who had forever. Some who were looking for a night.
But he was alone. Standing there at the back of the bar with the neon light from a beer sign shining over him like an unholy sign from the heavens. She knew it was him. Because she could never have confused him with anyone else. Sure, there were other handsome men in the room. But none of them made her feel like fire.
None of them made her feel like everything she’d ever known before was a pale, cardboard construct, and he might be the only thing that was real.
The only thing that could make her real.
She swallowed hard, walking over to the bar. The bartender was a handsome man, broad chested with a quick smile, tattoos up his brown forearms, a bright gold wedding band and a twinkle in his eye. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah. I... Whiskey. Please.”
“All right. Any particular kind?”
She didn’t know anything about whiskey. “Do you have a special kind that makes you brave?”
He grinned. “Even cheap stuff will do that. Just comes with a headache.”
“It’s my experience that just about everything in life comes with the headache,” she said, trying to smile. And then she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Goose bumps broke out over her arms.
And the fire inside her flared.
That happened a split second before she heard a low, husky voice just behind her.
“It’s you, isn’t it?”
She turned, and there he was.
So close.
Impossibly close.
And she didn’t know if she could survive it.
Because those electric blue eyes were looking right into hers. But this time, it wasn’t from across a crowded bar. It was right there.
Right there.
And she didn’t have a deadweight clinging to her side that kept her from going where she wanted to go, doing what she wanted to do. She was free. Unencumbered, for the first time in fifteen years. For the first damn time.
She was standing there, and she was just Mallory.
Jared wasn’t there. Griffin wasn’t there. Her parents weren’t there.
She was standing on her own, standing there with no one and nothing to tell her what to do, no one and nothing to make her feel a certain thing.
So it was all just him. Blinding electric blue, brilliant and scalding.
Perfect.
“I... I think so. Unless... Unless you think I’m someone else.” It was much less confident and witty than she’d intended. But she didn’t feel capable of witty just now.
“You were here once. About six months ago.”