A Real Cowboy Rides a Motorcycle (11 page)

"Welcome to the Garage." Ross swept his hand out. "This place used to build and service farm equipment, but now we try to keep kids out of trouble. There's not a lot to do in these parts, so we try to give them a chance."

Taylor took a deep breath and focused on Ross and Zane. This was about them, not her. "This is what you do when you're not at the ranch?" She asked Zane, and then her heart seemed to freeze when she saw the look of raw anguish on his face as he stared across the warehouse. The pain in his eyes jerked her out of her own melodrama and twisted at her heart. Instinctively, she wrapped her hand around his arm, trying to support him. "Zane? What's wrong?"

He didn't answer, and she tore her gaze off him to try to ascertain what had caught his attention so ruthlessly. On the other side of the basketball court, a boy was leaning against the wall, staring at Zane. He looked about fourteen years old, all bones and ratty, baggy clothes. His eyes were big and dark, sunken into the shadows on his face and his arms were folded across his chest. His dark hair was a little long, and even the light brown tint to his skin couldn't hide how pale he looked. He looked lost and so much younger than his years.

"Shit," Zane muttered under his breath.

"Talk to him," Ross said. "You have to do it. He needs you to do it."

The other kids saw Zane, and he got some shouts and waves that were clearly very enthusiastic, and he acknowledged them, but he never took his gaze off the boy by the wall. "I don't know what to say," he said, his voice strained.

"It doesn't matter. He just needs to hear something from you."

Zane's face was pale, but he nodded. He glanced at Taylor. "I'll be right back."

"Okay." She squeezed his hand, her fingers drifting off his as he walked away. The basketball game stopped as he neared the court. The boys swarmed him, all of them talking over each other in their attempts to get Zane's attention. He took the time to acknowledge all of them, but the boy on the other side of the court continued to stand silently, waiting. "What's going on?" she asked Ross.

Ross sighed. "One of the kids Zane had been working with died a few days ago. He got in trouble with some kids, some shit went down, and he wound up dead. Zane had been trying to get him to spend more time here, but he wasn't interested. This place wasn't his thing, but Zane thought he could help him."

"Oh, no. How awful." Now she understood Zane's earlier question about whether she had ever failed anyone, and she knew who the funeral was for. He blamed himself for the death of that boy, a devastating burden that he was carrying silently. Her throat tightened, and tears burned at the back of her eyes. Her own trip down self-pity lane seemed so pathetic now, in comparison to what Zane was going through. "And the boy over there?"

"Luke? It was his older brother, Brad, who was killed."

"Oh, God." As she watched, Zane made his way over to the boy. Luke turned his back on Zane and walked away. Zane's hands clenched, and for a moment, he hesitated, then he followed the boy, clearly talking to him. Luke stopped, his arms still folded across his chest, his back toward Zane. He cocked his head, however, clearly listening to Zane, even though he wasn't facing him.

"Zane started coming by a year ago," Ross said. "He's made a big difference for the kids. Zane's not some big star trying to throw some charity their way for PR purposes. He
was
them, when he was younger. He lived their life. They know that, so they listen. Zane paid for the basketball court to be built indoors. He wanted them to be able to play even during the winter. Before that, they just played in the dirt parking lot."

Taylor's throat tightened as she watched Zane and Luke. There was so much tension in both their bodies, so much distance between them. "Zane was homeless? Poor?" She'd seen only evidence of family and love on the Stockton ranch. What else did she not know about him?

Ross glanced over at her. "That's for Zane to tell you, not me. Ask him."

She nodded, tears burning in her eyes as Luke finally turned around to face Zane. His jaw was thrust out, and he looked hostile and angry, but his earnest gaze was riveted on Zane's face, as if he were inhaling every word Zane spoke.

It was clear there was a deep connection between the two, and this time, Taylor didn't need to turn away to protect herself from her own emotions. She watched them, her heart aching for the depth of caring so evident in the way Zane was talking to Luke. He was such a good man, so caring, so different from how he pretended to be. "It looks like they're talking. They might be a while," she said, hoping she was right. She had a feeling Luke needed Zane in a big way. "How about a tour while we wait?"

Ross smiled back, and in his eyes, she saw decades of wisdom, kindness, and understanding, the kind of patient man it would take to work with kids who carried trouble on their backs. Suddenly, all the lies she'd been telling herself about the importance of her work were shattered. Ross and Zane were the ones making a difference. They were the ones giving hope and opportunity to kids who had no one else. She did what? Sat in boardrooms talking about how a company could earn more money? God, no, she couldn't think like that. She had to live her life. She couldn't see it for what it was, or she'd never survive it.

"Sure thing, Taylor," Ross said, jerking her back to the present. "It's not much, but we do what we can." He led the way, and she hurried across the cement floor, glancing back just in time to see Zane hug Luke.

Her throat tightened, and she turned away. Zane wasn't the man she'd thought he was, an isolated loner who didn't connect with anyone. He wasn't the man he'd claimed he was, either. He was the man she'd feared he might be, the kind of man who could never accept her for who she was. He was the kind of man she could really fall for…and lose.

She had to let him go.
She had to.
She couldn't play this temporary game with him anymore, not now that she'd seen the side of him he'd kept hidden so well.

But as she followed Ross up a set of narrow, metal stairs, she realized she didn't want to let him go. It was too late.
It was too late.

Zane knew he was cranky. He knew he wasn't in the right frame of mind to have any kind of constructive discussion, but by the time he and Taylor walked into his apartment, he was too pissed to hold it in.

He shoved the door open, no longer caring about how small his place would look to Taylor. He didn't give a shit about the peeling paint on the walls or the mismatched chairs and kitchen table that had come with the place. He'd gotten the place to prove a point, even though he could have bought a damned ranch with the money from his earnings. He'd felt the need to be in this kind of place after he'd walked away from the spotlight. He'd been prepared for Taylor to hate it and walk out, and he'd been planning to let her, but now, he didn't even care what she thought of it. They were way past that.

He slammed the door shut behind her and leaned against it, folding his arms, anger building inside him as he watched her walk into the middle of the one bedroom apartment, slowly turning around as she inspected it. "It's not exactly high fashion," she said, "but I'm impressed with how clean it is. I was expecting some typical bachelor pad, but it's immaculate." She turned toward him. "What exactly was I supposed to hate about it?"

"What's going on?" He didn't mean to snap the question, but he was tired and felt like shit from going to the Garage today. "You've shut down ever since the Garage. Dinner was like trying to twist answers from you. I'm tired, and I don't want to deal with this. You don't like the kids? You think they're shit just because they don't have money? You think it's a waste of time to try to help them? That they'll all end up like Brad, dead after some bad choice, because they have no parents to guide them? A waste of the earth's resources?"

He spat the words that he'd heard so many times, unable to keep the venom out of his voice. He wasn't a kid anymore, but he'd never stop being one of
those
kids, and the words still felt like a personal insult every time he heard them, because they were. He didn't have to take that kind of shit anymore, and he didn't, but as hell was his witness, he never thought Taylor was the type who'd say them. Some people, he expected to feel that way, and he wasn't disappointed when they proved him wrong.

He realized, too late, that he'd had faith in Taylor, and he was shocked that she was like the others. It pissed him off that he was wrong about her. He felt like she'd betrayed him, and that made him even more angry. Not that she'd betrayed him, but that he'd let himself trust enough that she could make him feel like this.

Her eyes widened, and she stared at him. "What?"

"Just say it." He shoved himself off the door and tossed his bag on the ratty couch. "Just admit what you were thinking when you walked in there. The minute we got in there, you shut down." He stalked over to her. He couldn't believe how pissed he was. He hadn't expected her to be like that. He hadn't even considered it as a possibility, but he shouldn't have been surprised. He knew what to expect from people, and her nice rental and well-mannered ways should have told him what she was like. She'd just been so real. He'd believed in her, and he didn't believe in many people. "I'm surprised you didn't demand I take you to a hotel tonight, although you can probably guess there aren't a lot of luxury accommodations in this town."

"Hey." She narrowed her eyes at him. "I completely understand that you're going through something really difficult right now, but it's not fair to strike out at me—"

"Strike out?" He ran his hand through his hair. "I know what it's like when a man strikes out, and I've had the broken bones to prove it. I'm not lashing out. I'm pissed, and I'm calling it like it is. I have no time for this crap."

"What crap?" She put her hands on her hips, her eyes flashing with anger. "You think I looked down on those boys because they're poor, and come from broken homes? Is that what you really think of me?"

"Yeah, I—" He stopped mid-sentence at the expression on her face. There was something about the outrage in her eyes that made him pause. It wasn't indignant anger. There was something else there. Hurt? Vulnerability? "Isn't that what's going on?" he asked, hesitating ever so slightly. "You shut down. I know you did." He searched his mind for anything else that had happened, but he couldn't think of any other explanation. "You were fine, completely wrapped around me before we went in, and after I talked with Luke, you put up a wall so fast I couldn't have gotten through it with a jackhammer. If it's not the boys, what is it?"

"It's not—" She paused, her face stricken.

A cold chunk of ice settled in his gut at her refusal to answer. "It
was
the boys, wasn't it?" He couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice. "You think they're dangerous and should be in juvie instead of someone giving them computers, don't you?"

Wordlessly, she shook her head, and suddenly he saw tears shimmering in her eyes. His anger stalled out instantly, and he stopped, staring at her, his heart clenching at the pain in her eyes. Shit. What was going on? "What? Tell me what it is."

She let out her breath, staring past him at a spot on the wall. "My whole life, I've loved kids," she said softly. "All I ever wanted was to be a teacher, and I wanted a dozen kids of my own. I'm an only child, and my mom died when I was little, and my dad was always working, so I grew up in a quiet house. I hated it. It felt so lonely, which is why I wound up hanging out at Mira's all the time."

Zane's fists unclenched, and he rocked back on his heels, trying to wrap his mind around the story she was telling. "You didn't have a mom?" He'd figured her for a perfect childhood, not a one-parent household like he'd had. Well, he'd had more like a sliver of one parent, and that was on his mom's good days. He'd hadn't spent much time at the Stockton hellhole once his mom had ditched the old man, but he'd been screwed no matter which parent he was with.

"No." Taylor dropped her bag on the floor. It landed with a soft thump, and she walked over to the window, staring out at the landing of his apartment. Her only view was the parking lot and another tenement apartment building across the street, but that didn't seem to bother her. "I got married a week after I graduated from college. Dan Parker. He wanted a family as much as I did. We got jobs as teachers in the same school district. It was perfect."

Dan Parker. The name of the man she'd given herself to. Zane took a deep breath, trying to let go of the sudden surge of jealousy. Taylor wasn't his, and he had no claim on her, not her present, not her future, and certainly not her past. "What happened?"

She looked back at him, and there was a single tear trickling down her cheek. "I can't have children. I had an infection when I was a little girl." She shrugged. "I didn't know. Dan was mad. He said I should have known, and that I misled him."

Zane swore softly. "Bastard."

His reply made her laugh, a teary, heart-wrenching laugh that hurt to hear. "We talked about adopting. He said he'd be okay with it." She shrugged again, a casual gesture that was a total lie. "And then he got one of the other teachers pregnant, and he left me for her. He said he could never love a woman who was broken."

"Broken?" Outrage began to pour through him. "He said you were
broken
?"

She held out her hands. "I am," she said quietly. "Everyone at the school knew what had happened. I...couldn't stay there. I left the school. I couldn't be a teacher and look at all those children I could never have. I found a corporate job, and I got away."

He stalked across the room and grasped her shoulders. "He's an idiot," he said. "And a scumbag."

She met his gaze, ignoring his comment. "Since then, I've kept it light. I didn't get serious with guys, not enough to talk about the long term. But there was one man who got under my skin. We started to get serious. I was falling in love with him, and he said he was, too. He was talking about getting married, so I had to tell him. He said it was fine, that he didn't care, that we could adopt or not have kids. I was so happy." She managed a half-smile. "Then a couple months later, one of his friends had a baby, and he said it made him realize that he wasn't willing to give up on the chance for a biological family. He was too young to settle. If he didn't find anyone in a few years, then maybe we could try again." She looked at him. "Do you know how much that hurts, Zane? To be told by the man I loved that I should try him again in a few years and if he was desperate enough, maybe he'd be willing to settle for me?" She shook her head. "I believed in him, and I was so wrong."