Page 33 of Taken, Not Spurred (Lone Star Burn 1)
She walked back to the house, head held high, and slammed the front door behind her.
Melanie was the first to speak after Sarah left. “Well, I feel like an ass.”
Her son said, “Isn’t that a bad word, Mama?”
She ruffled his hair and smiled. “Yes, it is. Don’t say it when you go to school or your teachers will give you the same lecture Sarah just gave us.”
Tony watched the light in his room go on, followed by the light in the spare bedroom, and he knew his plans for that night had just changed. He wasn’t going to chase her, but that didn’t mean he didn’t feel badly about how it’d turned out.
In the quiet late-evening air, no one spoke. Then Melanie interrupted the silence, saying, “Just for the record, I never actually threatened to poison her. I only implied I might.”
Dean said, “You sure picked a high-strung one, Tony.”
David leaned back in his chair, noting the upstairs activity as Sarah continued to move back and forth between the two bedrooms. “We may have driven her to it a bit.”
In the face of the truth, Dean’s stance softened. He looked at Tony and said, “I didn’t mean to ruin the evening.”
Tony let out a slow sigh. “I don’t actually want to punch you.”
Dean crossed the short distance between them and stood shoulder to shoulder with his brother. “Don’t let her leave.”
Across the table, David chimed in. “She did bring us together. We may need a woman around here.”
Melanie punched him in the arm. “And what am I?”
David rubbed his arm and said, “You know what I mean.”
Temper rising, Melanie snarled, “No, I don’t know what you mean.”
Tony practically jumped when he felt a small hand touch his. He looked down and found Jace, Melanie’s son, at his side. “Just tell her you’re sorry. That’s what Mama tells me to do when I do something wrong.”
Shaking his head, Tony looped a thumb in his jeans pocket. “It’s not always that easy, son.”
Jace mimicked Tony’s stance, right down to watching Sarah’s shadow go from room to room as she moved her things down the hall. “Yes, it is. You say you’re sorry and she says okay. That’s how it works.”
Dean added his opinion from Tony’s other side. “I’m with Jace on this one.”
Jace puffed up with pride at the endorsement from his other idol.
Squaring his shoulders, Tony said, “I’m not real good with words, but I owe her that much, I suppose.” More gruffly he added, “She’s right about our behavior. We’re out of practice when it comes to being civil. We might need to eat together once a week so y’all don’t embarrass yourselves like this again.” After a moment, he added, “You, too, Dean. You’re the worst of the bunch.”
He didn’t wait for their response to his announcement as he had much more pressing matters on his mind. Like how to get his little blonde angel’s pink-and-green checkered luggage out of the guest room and back where it belonged.
Sarah was still fuming ten minutes later when she heard the sound of Tony’s heavy boots on the main stairs. She peered out the small window in the guest room and saw Melanie and the men gathering up the plates and clearing the table.
The door behind her opened and shut.
Without looking away from the window, Sarah said quietly, “If you’re here to say anything except you’re sorry, do yourself a favor and leave now.”
After a pause, Tony replied, “And if I am?”
Sarah turned slowly toward him, clasping her hands in front of her to stop them from shaking. She was angry, hopeful, scared. Maybe this was one day that should end the same way it started, with them not talking to each other. She looked up at him and waited.
He stood there, frowning at her for a painfully long time.
When she couldn’t take it anymore some of her frustration burst out. “Do you know what the worst part about the whole thing was? You didn’t even introduce me.”
Tony looked a bit cornered when he admitted, “I didn’t know all of their names.”
Sarah’s mouth fell open. “Are you joking?”
“No.”
She shook her head in wonder. “You honestly didn’t know their names? So, David was serious when he said you didn’t notice he rehired men you’d fired?”
Tony’s steady look was as much of an affirmative as she was going get.
“How does that happen?”
Tony shrugged. “I don’t want to know them. David deals with them. All I do is train the horses.”
Sarah sat on the edge of the bed, absorbing the enormity of what he’d shared. “I knew you distanced yourself from everyone, but I didn’t realize the extent of it.”
He leaned on the doorjamb without responding.
In a near whisper, Sarah asked, “What are you afraid of?”
Tony straightened from the door. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
Sarah stood and moved to stand directly in front of him, searching his face for signs of what she suspected. “Are you sure? You can’t be happy with your life the way it is.”
He glared down at her. “I was happy before you came.”
His comment hit Sarah like a punch, knocking her momentarily off balance. Then a thought occurred to her, and she set her mouth determinedly. He wants me angry. That’s how he keeps everyone at a distance. She countered his jab with a smack of reality. “No, you weren’t.” You were hiding, numb. Too afraid to even get to know the names of the people who work here.
He pushed a hand through the back of her hair and dragged her closer to him, tipping her head up toward him. “You’re not the first woman to think she can change me.” When she gasped and struggled to pull away, he held her there, with her chest heaving against his own. He ran the finger of his free hand down the exposed arch of her neck and traced the round neckline of her dress. “But I do enjoy letting you try.”
Despite how her body pulsed and yearned, Sarah stood rigid in his hold. Strangle him or kiss him?
Both sounded equally pleasurable. “Do you want me to hate you?”
His hands dropped away, his face tight with torment as he glared down at her. “No.”
There it is, just the slightest ray of hope—the reason I can’t give up on him.
Sarah took in a steadying breath and said, “Then stop pushing me away.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, leaving it mussed in a sexy way that Sarah cautioned her libido to ignore. He met her eyes with an openness she hadn’t seen since the cabin and said, “I’m sorry about dinner.”
Sarah touched his tense jaw with one soft hand. “It’s okay. Part of it was my fault. I knew you didn’t want it, but I thought that once we were all together, you would see how it could be. I didn’t mean to make things worse.”
“You didn’t.”
Really? Then why do you look so miserable? What is holding you back from being happy? “When we were at the cabin you laughed. You smiled and joked. Why can’t you do that here?”
At first, she didn’t think Tony would answer, but then he took her hand from his cheek and held it in his. “The cabin was different. It wasn’t real, so I didn’t care.” Sarah tensed and pulled at her hand, but he gripped it and said, “That came out wrong.”
It better have.
Tony tipped her face up again with a finger beneath her chin. “When I start thinking I know what I’m doing, really know—that’s when things fall apart. It’s never as good as you think it is, and if you let yourself believe it is, you’re setting yourself up for a bad fall.”
Sarah looked up into his beautiful green eyes and prompted, “Please tell me. Let me in.”
Tony pulled her to his chest, unwilling or unable to look her in the eye as he opened up to her. “My mother left when I was real young. I don’t remember her, but I do remember wanting to find her. I used to ask about her all the time. Didn’t matter who I met, I interrogated them. I was sure that if I asked enough people, I’d find her. You know what I found? Dean. Seems my mother left soon after I was born because she found out my father had been married before and never told her. Neither woman wanted anything to do with my father until Dean’s mother decided it was important for brothers to know each other.”
