“Shhh,” he said, pulling her to him in an all-enveloping bear hug. “Stop apologizing. It sucks, it does, but I’ll live. We both will.”
If he was honest, despite the sadness, he already felt the tiniest flicker of relief. Few things in life are more agonizing than clinging on to vain hope, and part of him was glad to be put out of his misery at last.
Pulling away, Milly got into her car.
“I’ll call you in the morning,” he said, waiting for her to buckle up and turn on the ignition before closing the driver’s door behind her.
“Not if I call you first.”
She kept the smile glued to her face as she pulled out of the car park and all the way to the A145. It wasn’t until she reached the drizzly outskirts of Newmarket that she allowed her mask to slip. Pulling over to the side of the road, she turned off the engine, undid her seat belt, put her head in her hands, and started to cry.
It was almost eleven thirty by the time she finally parked her mud-splattered car in front of Linda’s town house.
She grabbed a dirty old sweater from the passenger seat and pulled it over her head. It was covered with horsehair from her earlier ride, but she didn’t care. She was suddenly freezing cold, despite having had the car’s heat fan on full strength all the way home. Besides, no one was going to see her.
Fumbling in her purse for her house keys—her eyes were so red raw and puffy from crying she could hardly see in the lamplight—she swore under her breath as she struggled to get them into the lock with her cold, useless fingers.
“Jesus!” Leaping out of her skin as the front door suddenly sprung open, she found herself looking at a shadowy male figure, standing in her mother’s hallway like the grim reaper.
“If you’re looking for money you can fuck off!” she shouted, adrenaline turning her fear into fury. “My brother’s upstairs and he’s built like a brick shithouse. One scream and he’ll be down here to sort you out.”
“I doubt it,” said the figure.
The familiar cowboy drawl froze Milly to the spot.
“He was the one that let me in.”
Turning on the light, she saw Bobby, leaning back against the wall with his long legs crossed, like he owned the place.
“Nice dinner?”
“No,” she said, cursing her mother for opting for such glaring overhead lighting. It must be making her mascara-streaked cheeks and throbbing red nose look even worse than they had in the car. “It was awful, if you must know. Bloody awful.”
“Good.” Stepping forward, Bobby pulled her to him. “Because that’s the last time you’ll be having dinner with that guy. Or any other guy for that matter.”
Milly wasn’t about to argue. Nor was she going to make the same mistake twice and interrupt him while he kissed her. Which he did now, so passionately and for so long that she started to wonder if they’d still be standing in the hallway at daybreak, glued to each other like clams.
“Come with me,” he said, leading her outside when he finally did come up for air. Dragging her down the street to his parked rental car, he opened the passenger door and ushered her inside. She still hadn’t uttered a single word. There were so many questions flying around her head—what was he doing here, how did he know where she lived, was he staying, had he forgiven her—she didn’t know which one to start with.
In the end she opted for the most obvious.
“Where are we going?”
Starting the engine, he looked across at her and smiled.
“Home.”
By the time they pulled into the drive at Newells, the drizzle had turned into a full-blown storm. At night the empty house looked even more desolate than it did by day. Particularly tonight, with the wind whistling through the pine trees, bending their spindly trunks this way and that like tortured souls in hell, and the driving rain battering down on the iron roof of the old stallion barn like clattering arrows in some hopeless, endless battle.
“Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” said Milly, as Bobby turned the engine off and sheets of water began flowing over the windscreen, making her feel like they were trapped in a submerging submarine. “It was a nice thought. But we shouldn’t be here. It makes me feel . . .” She shivered. “Weird. Sad, in a way. And anyway, the place has been sold now, so we’re officially trespassing.”
“No we’re not,” said Bobby.
As overjoyed as she was to be with him, and as happy as she was to follow his lead, his arrogant pronouncements from on high were starting to get a bit annoying.
“It’s all very well saying we’re not,” she said. “But we are. This isn’t my home anymore, Bobby. I wish it were but—”
“Come on.” Jumping out into the downpour, he ran around to her side and pulled her out with him. It was so cold, and she was so instantly drenched from head to foot, that for a moment all she could do was gasp with shock.
“This way.”
Running across the yard, they headed for the shelter of the stallion barn, where the faint glow of an electric light was dimly visible through the cold, black wetness. When they got there, Milly expected it to be locked. But in fact the door wasn’t bolted, and after a swift yank from Bobby it opened and she found herself being shoved unceremoniously inside.
“Sit down,” he said excitedly, leading her, dripping and shivering, to an old wooden bench in the corner. “And shut your eyes.”
Too cold and shell-shocked to resist, Milly did as he asked.
“Wait there.”
After what felt like hours to Milly but couldn’t in fact have been more than a minute, he was back.
“Okay,” he said, no longer able to keep the excitement out of his voice. “You can open them. Happy Valentine’s Day.”
Standing not three feet in front of her, wrapped ridiculously in the most enormous red ribbon that went all the way around his barrel chest, swinging his tail and rolling his eyes like a dopey donkey, was Elijah.
“Oh, my God!” Milly screamed, flinging her arms around his neck and breathing in the scent of him that was like a magic carpet back to her childhood. “But where did you . . . ? How did you find him?”
“With difficulty,” said Bobby, overjoyed to see the look of pure ecstasy written all over her face. It was even better than he’d imagined.
“I thought he was in Saudi Arabia,” she said, stroking his mane in wonder. “I thought he was dead.”
“Saudi, yes. Dead, happily not,” said Bobby. “It wouldn’t have felt right to restart the stud without him.”
“Hmmm?” said Milly. She was so blissful to see her dear old friend again—Radar was going to go ballistic with happiness tomorrow when he saw him—she was only half listening. “What stud?”
“This one,” said Bobby. “Here’s part two of your valentine.”
He handed her two identical sets of keys.
“You?” she said, openmouthed. “You’re the one who bought Newells?”
“Strictly speaking I was the second buyer,” he said. “A very nice Texan bought it from Rachel, but he ran into some cash-flow problems before he could complete. Right around the time my own cash-flow problems were resolved, as luck would have it.”
“But three million, Bobby! You don’t have that kind of money.”
“Noooo,” he admitted. “No, I don’t. But Jimmy Price helped guarantee me a pretty spectacular mortgage.”
“He did?” Milly looked suitably amazed. “Why?”
“I’m a nice guy.” Bobby gave her that naughty, Cameron smile, and she felt herself melting like chocolate in a sunbed. “And . . . I sold him my stake in Thunderbird.”
“But you can’t do that.” Milly looked aghast. “You love that horse. He’s all you’ve got left now, with all the quarter horses gone.”
“No he isn’t,” said Bobby, stepping forward and pinning her between his body and Elijah’s. “I have you. And this place. We can build it back up together. Make your father proud.”
He leaned forward to kiss h
er again, but this time she did hold him back.
“No, Bobby,” she said. She was grateful, more grateful that he would ever know. But she’d lost him once through her selfishness, through blindly following her own dream at the expense of his. She wasn’t about to do it again. “I can’t let you do that. Highwood is your life. And what about making your father proud?”
“Turns out,” he said, kissing her softly despite her protests, “my father wasn’t much to live up to, after all.”
She looked at him quizzically, but he didn’t explain. Instead he took her hands and looked searchingly into her eyes.
“Highwood is a big part of my life. It always will be. But so are you. Besides, this whole nightmare with Todd and Comarco made me realize one thing: Highwood is a cattle ranch. That’s all she’s ever been and all she ever should be. And running a cattle ranch . . . well, it just isn’t for me.”
“But if you’re not there, who is going to run it?” asked Milly. “Wyatt can’t go on forever. And Dylan has a whole new life now.”
“That’s where Tara comes in,” said Bobby with a smile. “Turns out the most natural rancher and cowboy of all of us is actually a girl. She told Wyatt a few weeks ago that she wanted to take on more responsibility at Highwood. He was a bit skeptical at first—you know how unreconstructed he is—but he’ll come around.”
“Yes, but, Bobby—”
“Listen,” he interrupted her, placing a finger softly against her lips. “Training horses is what I do. It’s all I can do, and all I’ve ever wanted to do. And all you’ve ever wanted to do was ride them. Here, we can do both. Together.”
She opened her mouth to protest again. But then she realized he really meant it. And there were only so many times she could say “but” to someone who was offering to make every one of her dreams come true.
So she kissed him instead. And she would’ve kept on kissing him if Elijah hadn’t decided he’d had more than enough of all this schmaltzy nonsense, not to mention the damn stupid bow he was wrapped up in like a Christmas cracker, and wandered off in search of a bucket of oats, sending both of them tumbling to the floor in a wet, giggling, surprised heap.
“Of course,” said Bobby, peeling back Milly’s wet sweater and running one hand hideously slowly over her smooth stomach, “we’ll still spend a lot of time at Highwood. I want our kids to get to know their heritage. And I don’t mean the T-Mobile version.”
“Kids?” said Milly.
“Of course.” He smiled. “Why not?”
And for once, she couldn’t think of an answer.
Tilly Bagshawe, Showdown
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends