Love me ... Again

Prologue

If anybody had told me last year that I’d be pregnant and homeless on a cold winter’s night and trespassing in an abandoned house, I would’ve told them to go straight to hell.

But things … change.

Lying on my side on a cold, dirty floor, hands serving as a rough pillow, I look apprehensively down at my swollen, taut belly which stares back, mocking me.

I turn slowly and broken shards of rotted wood of the abandoned house I’d spotted from a county road tonight when I’d been too tired to drive another mile, dig into my side. I wince and scoot back. Inside me the baby stiffens in secondary outrage, pushes itself down onto my aching bladder seeking some safety.

I groan and close my eyes trying to think of anything but my aching, full bladder. I’d suffer almost any torture than chance a leak in the hole in the ground that’s left in the bedrooms of this gutted shack.

Why would anyone steal or willingly take
used
toilets?

The urge to pee builds, burning me. I grimace in the darkened room. I’ve put up with worse shit from my last waitressing job where I’d stayed on my feet seven hours at a time. To distract myself I look around at the room I’m in.

A large, tall fireplace sits in the center of the room, river stones that had once decorated its face lies at its feet. The wall behind the fireplace is marred by four large, black holes where bay windows should’ve been. They face east towards the sun.

My throat constricts. Someone had built this house with love … and they’d lost it. Acid tears of regret stings my eyes.

Without warning, Colt’s face leaps up before me. As though from wherever he’s at now he can still see my tears and wipe them away. I tilt my face up hoping for just a touch, anything to fill the hole inside my chest.

Nothing happens.

All I have are images of him. Golden eyes, black hair and that hard mouth that used to fasten onto mine with such breathless intensity. His eyes used to burn as I walked past and more often than not I’d lost the battle to look away.

Now I groan and hide my face, though there’s no one here to see me cry.

I wish to God that I could forget everything or go back and fix what I’ve done. My eyes fall again to the heavy mound of my belly.

Memories strike me from all sides and Colt’s ephemeral face shifts, becomes bloodied, dark, the skin shriveled and dead. Until his golden eyes are the only point of humanity left.

It hurts so much that I dry heave onto the cold, filthy floor, dust races up my nose as I hunch over.  Gagging, my hands clutched protectively over my belly, I cling onto the image of his face. I mouth words that have become an hourly litany as his face begins to fade.

I’m sorry.

His specter doesn’t answer, it just gives me a half smile, hard and final. There is no regret in his eyes. I blink away a rush of tears and with it the image of him blurs and fades away.  The familiar, stinking darkness of the abandoned house floods back in.

Out of nowhere the baby slams a sharp kick into my ribs, I arch back, a groan is buried inside my throat. I shudder and try to swallow the pain whole.

I reach down and with shaking hands rub my stomach gently. It’s so hard. Eight months have gone by since that stormy night.

I try to talk to the baby in my head. You’re okay, sweetie. I’ll take care of you. Another kick tells me it’s not buying it because I’ve sucked at it so far. Rundown apartments, sleeping in my truck and now trespassing in an abandoned house. Not five star accommodations. I strain to the side like an old woman as the throbbing ache starts to slow down. My baby has been using my ribs as punching bag for the last several days. I shift my bottom a little bit on the hard cold floor. Pain and nausea well up in my throat, flood my mouth with tasteless spittle. I grimace and swallow back down the awful taste.

I stroke my belly one more time. Tell the baby to just hold on till tomorrow when I hightail for good out of a town that holds nothing but heartache and emptiness. In the next town maybe I can find some work. I glance down at my eight month belly with uncertainty, just yesterday I had been fired from a shitty job waitressing at the “Empty Hole,” for being
too slow
. That wouldn’t change any-

Out of nowhere a knife blade scraps across the bones in my lower back. I stiffen so hard all my muscles lock up. My mouth opens but no scream can come out, it hurts too bad. I bite my tongue until I taste blood in a desperate bid to counteract it. The pain drops down into my hips and legs, then finally my toes, it starts to pass leaving me huffing and groaning, weak beyond anything I’ve felt before. My forehead hits the ground loudly as I struggle to breathe.

Moments pass before I pull myself slowly to my feet. A sudden spark of pale light reaches into the house and starts to grow. Outside the empty windows the moon is coming out from behind some clouds, inching towards its place in the night’s sky.

I stop and all the pain inside me begins to recede as bright memories flood in. A full moon. Ethereal, innocent. It gives me strength. I drag myself towards its glow. A shaft of silver light catches my face and I smile. Colt is still with me

I bathe my face in the luxury of the moon’s light until I’m wrenched back to reality by the
plop, plop
of something warm between my legs. I look down and with the help of the moonlight see what I had feared. A small puddle leaks down the leg of my jeans and begins to grow between my feet.

I pale as time stands still.

Another numbing pain bites into my side. It wraps around my middle and it feels as if I’m being sawed in half. This time my body finds the strength and I scream, an ear splitting screech that echoes hollowly back to me from the empty house.

I struggle to think, to reach beyond the grip of pain. I have to stave off the growing panic that I’m alone and my baby is coming.

I’m only eight months along and hours away from the nearest hospital.

But I know what I have to do to save my baby’s life.

Turn around and go back.

To Monte Vista.

To the town of the man I’d betrayed and who I haven’t seen for nearly a year. That thought is worse than the deep, gnawing pains eating through the layers of my belly.

I stiffen as another rush of warmth spreads down my legs. I bend and rub a finger against the soaked jeans, bring it up to the light. My breathe catches in my throat.

It’s black in the night but the metallic, salty smell is unmistakable. Blood.

It spurs me to motion. I clench shaking hands. Pull my winter jacket protectively around the mound of my belly. Outside the empty window a light drift of snowflakes starts to fall, they twirl lazily through a perfect, windless night.

I step out into the deep silence of it. And welcome the tiny stings of cold on my cheek as I head to my truck parked on a dirt road several yards ahead.

With any luck I will give birth, take my baby and get out of town. Before my former fiancé finds out what’s happening and that he’s about to become an uncle.

Chapter one

1 year ago

The sound of a thousand cattle hooves shake the dry ground, clouds of dust swirl up and around them as they head straight for me … or more to the point the tempting watering hole right behind me.

“Get out of the way you idiot!” thunders a voice which despite the pounding of the cattle hooves and their peevish whines manages to tear through everything.

I flinch from the brutal command and scatter from the water as quickly as my sturdy riding boots will carry me.

In no time the lead cow plunges knee deep into the pond followed by hundreds of her compatriots turning the water to a writhing black mass of mooing contentment.

Jett detaches himself from the back of the cattle and races his slate grey stallion up to me.

He smiles as he lowers himself nimbly to the ground, he scoops me up as if I need rescuing and carries me firmly out of the way of the watering cattle. He places me on the rising ground above the water hole.

He shakes his dark head and laughs at my miffed expression, “Angie, don’t bother with Colt, he’s always a freaking tyrant.”

I scowl darkly at him, “maybe you should’ve told me that before I left Denver to come out here with you?”

Jett’s punches my arm playfully, his light blue eyes merry, “Come on Ang, Denver can’t compare to this!” He spreads his hand wide and I’ve got to admit the valley is breathtaking with its thick cluster of pine trees, silver stream beds and grass so lush it feels like you’re walking on a carpet.

“Still,” I grumble, “your brother hates me, he’s wanted to toss me back into the truck since we arrived yesterday.”

Jett rolls his eyes and snorts, sounding too much like his horse, then he grins sheepishly, “he doesn’t. He’s just preoccupied with moving the cattle to their fall pastures.”

I look over my shoulder and barely manage to stifle a gasp, “Really? Then why is he stalking this way looking like he’s ready to rip off somebody’s head?”

I turn and try to hustle away but Jett grips my hands, his blue eyes normally alive with merriment harden a bit, “you’ve got to stand up to him cause you’re stuck with each other for the next four or five days of this cattle drive.”

I glare at Jett’s determined expression, then turn to face Colt.

Jett extends a hand in Colt’s direction, “What’s up Colt, got a burr under your ass already?”

Colt doesn’t spare Jett a glance, his eyes locks onto mine. I puff my chest out in confidence I don’t feel and plant my hands on my hips. It’s a bold attempt to stare down two hundred pounds of honed muscles, black hair and narrowed yellow eyes.

And it doesn’t work.

He’s not scowling, he doesn’t have to. He tips his ratty black Stetson back off his wide forehead and regards me with the exaggerated patience of a parent with their stupidest kid, “what did you think you were doing standing there like a sign post?” his drawl carefully neutral is said between gritted teeth.

I flinch at the explicit criticism to my non-existent ranching skills, I gesture carefully to an elegant patch of water lilies at the pond’s edge which has just caught my eye, “admiring the water lilies,” I reply smoothly.

He doesn’t expect this and his dark brows snap together, “you’ve come to the wrong place for sightseeing. This is a working ranch,” he signals impatiently to Jett, “perhaps you should take her back?”

“No!” I dash forward, grip Colt’s arm.

We both look down in amazement at my fingers wrapped around an arm the size of a small tree branch, I hold on tight, “I’ve always wanted to experience this,” I wave towards the natural grandeur behind me, “it’s so awesome,” I press my lips together in a mulish line,” I’m staying.”

Behind me Jett is silent. Colt’s hawkish nose flares wide, he sends a curt look Jett’s way. Jett nods and heads back to the cattle.

I panic,
don’t leave me,
but the words never make it out of my mouth.  It dawns on me that acceptance here will not be based on my romantic involvement with Jett the younger son. Colt is running the show.

Colt looks pointedly at my fingers still clutched on his arm, “you can let me go now,” he says calmly.

I don’t budge, “Not until you promise not to send me away no matter how much I fuck up later on …” and here I smirk, “cause I will.”

The humor I expect doesn’t materialize on his still scowling face, instead disgust stains his golden gaze, “in that case I should make your ass walk all the way back to the ranch where you can do something you’re good at. Perhaps tweet all day?”

Stung, because it’s partly true, I lash out, “you don’t know shit about me.”

He laughs and it’s a hard grating sound, his eyes rake me up and down making me feel inadequate even beneath the sturdy cover of new jeans and a brown plaid cowgirl shirt I’d picked up at Target.  He stops and says with slow deliberation, “you’re twenty-one, smart as a whip but don’t know what you’re going to do when you graduate in the fall. You think you’re in love with Jett,” he shrugs dismissively, his eyes catch the fire in mine and he smiles widely, a feral grin that makes him look ruthless splits his sunburned face, he shrugs, “Perhaps you are. And coming out here is your way of getting away from all the reasonable shit expected of you. Did I miss anything?” he raises a thick black brow innocently.

Incensed, I can only glare impotent daggers up at him.

I’m still holding his hand and I let go but before I do he catches my fingers, grips them in his own work roughened hands, not hard enough to hurt but with enough pressure so that I can feel the bottomless will inside him. I stare pointedly down at his large hand. My mistake.

His hand is long and broad, stained a deep brown by the sun, they are roped with muscle, yet the fingernails are clipped and neat. Dozens of calluses on his palm grate against my skin. It’s a hand that has done back breaking work for decades while I’ve been agonizing over whether I can still fit into my skinny jeans from last year.

An unaccustomed, incredibly unwelcomed lump forms in my throat, I struggle to push it out of the way but it won’t budge.

Angry at myself, I toss off his touch.

His eyes glow with fury, “just don’t hurt my brother too much when you decide that this isn’t some fuckin fantasy but real work that’ll take your whole life,” he barks savagely.

It wounds me and I place my hands protectively around my middle, the first drops of hatred for him bubbles inside my veins, “I don’t have to justify a thing to you. You’re nothing to me, just my boyfriend’s older brother,” I snap.

His golden eyes flare at the jab at his age when in truth despite the horrible scowl and the bushel of dark, wet curls plastered on his square forehead he can’t be above thirty-five.

He yanks off his Stetson and grips the battered brim in his palms.  He stares at it as he speaks, “listen up I don’t care that you’re sleeping with my brother or that you took your summer off from college to help us out,” he glances at me skeptically making clear the assumption that my helping is a total joke, he barrels on, “if you don’t want to dodge rattlesnakes all the way back to the ranch you’d do better to learn right quick who’s the boss on this cattle drive.”

I bristle and itch to call his bluff but I can’t. I glare glacially into those yellow eyes, “yeah, whatever, I’ll be sure to remember that buddy.”

He is in the process of putting his crushed hat back on his head but he stops midway, his mouth a generous wide line flattens, he advances a full step towards me.

I don’t back up, we’re too close, the spicy, earthbound scent of him invades my senses. He stares down at me hard, “what did you just call me?” he asks quietly, menace drips from his words.

My feet turn to jelly in my boots but I somehow remain upright, I toss my chin into the air, “take your pick,” I say breathlessly.

“Repeat it,” he demands softly, inching closer. I want to shove him back but I’m suddenly terrified of touching him.

I suck in gulps of warm, clean air, “I called you
buddy
,” I mutter mutinously.

He stops, tips his head back and unbelievably a ripple of darkly amused laughter trickles from the corded muscles of his strong throat.

Moments pass before he looks back at me and the laughter has somehow made it to his eyes, the golden depths are soft and looks like freshly made butterscotch candy.

His lips are quirked in a half grin, “I am definitely not your buddy,” he shudders delicately at this.

Stung I fling back a weak retort, “Naturally. We’ll probably never be friends.”

He stiffens and any visages of laughter disappears into the sun baked ground beneath his very worn cowboy boots, he becomes cold and stiff once more, “you’d be right about that, now go back and play make believe with my little brother, I’m sure he wants your company.”

The barb hits and stings like the spines of the small balls of dried pronged weeds tucked in the grass around us. I turn sharply on my heels and march back towards my horse and Jett. I pause midway and throw a dirty look over my shoulder, I know it’s childish but I can’t stop myself. But he’s waiting and just quirks an insolent, smug brow at me. I stomp the rest of the way to Jett.