Page 54 of Texas Made
He shrugged. “Sometime, but I don’t know when.”
“I think I was too hasty. So what if we can’t see each other all the time? Some would be better than none.”
“You didn’t think so when we broke up. We’ve been through this. I can’t come that often. I can’t drop everything and come see you. I’d have to plan it out, and even then, emergencies happen.” He shrugged. “Things like a fire.”
“I was wrong. Why should we break up just because we can’t be with each other constantly?”
He shoved a hand through his hair. Paced back and forth down the barn’s center aisle. “That’s what I believed when you first said we should break up. But I’ve had time to think and if I’m honest with myself, I have to admit I won’t be able to come to you very often. And not at all for the foreseeable future. It won’t work. You were right about that. I can’t move to Dallas. Not without giving up my life here. Leaving aside that I can’t bail on my family like that, what would I do if I didn’t raise horses? I’ve tried other professions. I know myself well enough to realize none of those make me happy or satisfied like raising my horses does.”
“I would never ask you to give up the ranch. I know how much it and your horses mean to you.”
“And I’d never ask you to give up your company. So here we are with a problem that seems awfully damn insurmountable. It isn’t fair to you to expect you to do all the traveling.”
The hell of it was, he was right. Long distance wasn’t working for them. He couldn’t move to her. She couldn’t move to him.
Or could she? Maybe she’d been too quick to give up looking for a solution. Long distance wasn’t ideal but it was a hell of a lot better than not seeing each other at all. “I don’t care about fair. I just want to be with you, whenever we can manage it. No matter who goes where.”
There had to be a way to solve the problem. She just had to figure it out.
*
“Do you wantme to leave?” Jaclyn asked him.
What kind of question was that? Hell, no, he didn’t want her to leave. “Why did you come, Jaclyn?” he repeated. He didn’t think that she missed him was all of it.
“Because—” She looked away then looked back. “I told you when I first got here. The truth is I missed you. Horribly. Even more than I thought I would. It’s been awful without you. According to Rachel I’ve been impossible to be around.”
He snorted at that. “That sounds familiar. Chase and Damaris have been saying the same about me. Ella thinks it, though she doesn’t say it. And Gabe and Chantel have completely avoided me. Not that I blame them.”
“We’re both miserable.” She stepped forward until she stood directly in front of him. “Shouldn’t that tell us something?”
“Yeah. That we’re screwed.”
“No, it tells us we shouldn’t break up.”
“If we don’t? We’ll still be long distance. I thought that was a deal breaker for you?”
“I thought it was. Until I spent two miserable weeks without you. Knowing how bad it’s been after just two weeks apart made me realize anything would be better than that.”
“Come here,” he said.
She stepped into his arms. Where she belonged. He took her face in his hands and kissed her, then looked into her eyes. “I don’t want you to regret this. We still have no solution to our problem.”
“We’ll figure something out. In the meantime we’ll just have to adjust to long distance.”
“Even though I can’t come to you very often? Even though you’ll have to do most of the traveling? I’ll try, but nothing about my situation has changed. Or is likely to change anytime soon.”
“We’ll both do the best we can. I was too quick to say it wouldn’t work. We’re adults. We should be able to deal with not being together all the time.”
He wasn’t about to argue with her. What reservations he had, he buried. He let go of her then grabbed her hand and pulled her along with him toward the back entrance of the barn.
“Where are we going?”
“Either my room or the cottage and there’s no one in the cottage. Besides, it’s a lot closer.”
“Oh? And that would be important, why?” she teased.
He stopped, yanked her close to him and kissed her, tasting her, reveling in the feel of her in his arms. “Unless you want me to get you naked right here, right now, we should go to the cottage.”
