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Chapter One
The slam of the back door stirred Artie Gilliam from his catnap in the armchair in his living room. He blinked, glanced at his watch, then frowned as he heard booted feet cross the kitchen and stomp in his direction.
“Bit early for lunch, ain’t it?” he said when Jace Tucker appeared, glowering from the doorway. “Or did my watch stop?” It was the Swiss watch his daddy had given him, the one he’d brought back from Europe after the Second World War.
Artie supposed it could have given up the ghost by now, but he hoped it hadn’t. He was counting on something outlasting his ninety-year-old bones.
“I didn’t come for lunch,” Jace growled. He stalked into the room, still scowling, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans, his shoulders hunched. He strode clear to the end of the room before he turned and nailed Artie with a glare. “She’s back.”
“She,” Artie echoed with interest.
It wasn’t a question. He knew damned well which she Jace meant.
As far as Jace Tucker was concerned, Artie knew there was only one female in the whole universe. Celie O’Meara. Not that Jace had ever said as much to him. Or to anyone.
If there was ever anyone more likely to make a hash of his love life—besides himself, Artie reckoned, and that had been better than sixty-odd years ago now—it was Jace.
For a smart, good-lookin’ feller who oughta be able to sweep a woman off her feet without half tryin’, Jace didn’t have the skills of a push broom.
Artie sighed inwardly and shook his head.
Misinterpreting the head shake, Jace enlightened him. “Celie,” he spat.
“Ayah.” Artie tried to look as if he hadn’t already figured that out. “How nice.”
Jace’s shoulders seemed to tighten more. “Ha,” he said.
He did another furious lap around the living room. The young fool would wear out the rug at the rate he was going, and that would be something else that wouldn’t survive him, Artie thought glumly.
Now he raised his brows. “Thought you was lookin’ forward to her comin’ back.”
Jace, being Jace of course, hadn’t said anything of the sort.
But every day when he’d come back from working at Artie’s hardware store or from training horses out at the family’s ranch he now owned with his sister Jodie, Jace asked if Artie had heard from any of Celie’s family.
The whole O’Meara clan had gone to Hawaii less than a month ago for the wedding of Celie’s older sister Polly to Montana’s gift to the silver screen, cowboy-turned-movie-star, Sloan Gallagher.
Artie was sorry he’d missed their wedding, but the ol’ ticker had durn near give out on him this past winter and the doc had said he wasn’t up for flying halfway around the world yet.
Didn’t matter, really, as they’d kept him posted. He’d not only heard all about the wedding on the beach and the party they’d had with Sloan’s film crew afterwards, Artie had seen some of it firsthand thanks to Polly’s youngest kids, Jack and Daisy, who were only too eager to FaceTime him. He’d always shared the news with Jace.
He’d relayed every scrap of information he’d got after phone calls from Celie’s mother, Joyce, too. And from Polly and Sloan, from Polly’s oldest daughter, Sara, and once, from Celie herself.
“Huh,” Jace had said gruffy when Artie told him about Celie’s phone call. “Managed to tear herself away from all those beach bums long enough to see if you were still among the livin’, did she?”
Had Jace been just a little jealous? The thought had made Artie grin. “She’s a sweetheart,” he’d agreed, knowing that wasn’t what Jace had meant at all.
Jace had frowned then.
Jace was frowning now as he rocked back on the heels of his well-worn cowboy boots.
“Reckoned you’d be glad to see her,” Artie ventured in the face of Jace’s black scowl.
“That was when I thought she’d come to her senses!” Jace’s boots came down flat with a thump.
“What do you mean?” Artie straightened in his chair, worried now. “She didn’t cause problems at Polly and Sloan’s weddin’, did she?”
Everyone in Elmer knew that Celie had had a crush on Sloan Gallagher for years. She’d even bid her life’s savings to win a Hollywood weekend with him at that cowboy auction they’d held back in February.
What’s more, she’d won! But if she’d gone out to California all starry-eyed over Sloan—and Artie wasn’t absolutely sure she had—she’d sure seemed to come back cured. She’d had nothing but good things to say about Sloan, but she’d treated him more like a brother after that.
And a good thing, too, as Sloan had been sweet on her sister, Polly. It could have been sticky, but it hadn’t been. At least Artie didn’t think it had been. Far as he knew, Celie had been delighted to be asked to be the maid of honor at Polly and Sloan’s wedding.
“She behaved herself at the weddin’, didn’t she?” he demanded now.
The kids hadn’t said anything about their Celie at all.
“Guess so.” Jace turned and glowered out the window.
He rubbed the back of his neck, then clenched his fists at his sides and hunched his shoulders again. To an old rough-stock rider like Artie, he looked exactly like a bull about to blow.
“She ain’t gone back to hankerin’ after Matt Williams!” Artie said, aghast. It was the worst thing he could think of.
Matt Williams had jilted Celie years ago. At the time, she’d been little more than a child—scarcely nineteen—and besotted with a foolish footloose boy who didn’t know a good thing when he had it. But telling her so hadn’t helped. Matt’s rejection had liked to killed her. It had sure as shootin’ made her scared of trustin’ men.
To Artie’s way of thinking, if you got bucked off, you just got right back on again, met other guys, went out on dates. But Celie hadn’t seen it that way. She’d holed up with her fantasies and her videos and had spent the last ten years dreaming’ about Sloan Gallagher.
As far as Artie knew, she’d barely had a date since Matt had dumped her—not until she’d got up the gumption to bid on Sloan. Of course, by then Sloan had already set his sights on Polly.
Artie hoped to goodness that since her dreams of Sloan had been thwarted, she hadn’t decided to start thinking about Matt again.
“Make more sense if she had,” Jace muttered now.
Artie’s brows lifted. “Since when did you become a Matt Williams fan?”
They’d been buddies back then, of course, Jace and Matt—traveling partners, in fact—going down the road from rodeo to rodeo. But Jace hadn’t agreed with Matt’s way of breaking his engagement. Of course, that could have been because he hadn’t done anything, just left it up to Jace to call Celie and tell her it was off.
“Matt’s a jerk,” Jace said now. He yanked off his straw cowboy hat and raked a hand through his hair. “But then we all know that.”
“She didn’t get her head turned by no surfer, did she?”
Jace snorted. He scowled. He strangled the brim of his hat. “No.”
“Well, then, what the devil’s the problem? She’s back. It’s what you been waitin’ for.” He held up a hand to forestall Jace’s protest. “Don’t tell me you two are fightin’ already?”
It wasn’t any secret that Celie and Jace didn’t see eye-to-eye. ’Course that was on account of Celie always having been a sweet, proper-brought-up girl and Jace being something of a hell-raiser. And if that hadn’t been enough, Artie knew Celie had always considered Jace the inspiration for Matt’s going astray.
“Matt’s role model,” she’d called him. Role model was one of the nicer terms she’d used.
And there was some truth to her accusation. Any young cowpoke with a hankering for women and the wild side could’ve learned a few things from Jace Tucker. But now he was back from rodeoing—his busted knee last winter having seen to that—Artie reckoned Jace had settled down a good bit.
The Jace he’d got to know over these past few months was more interested in building stables out on the ranch and helping Artie at the hardware store than he was about painting the town.
Oh, he drank a few beers and shot pool at the Dew Drop, but he’d been living at Artie’s house since he’d started working for him, and not once had Jace ever come home drunk—and he always came home. Didn’t bring girls with him, either.
He was true to Celie. Not that she knew it.
Jace wasn’t the sort of feller who wore his heart on his sleeve. Most of the time, Artie reckoned, the young fool had it wrapped up in barbed wire and duct tape and buried it under six feet of sarcasm. So, it wasn’t real surprising that Celie didn’t think he had one.
“You two,” Artie muttered, shaking his head in dismay as Jace began pacing again, “are enough to try the patience of a saint. You ain’t seen her but a few minutes this morning, Jace! You couldn’t have, bein’s how it’s not even eleven o’clock. So, what the dickens has she done to tick you off now?”
“She’s leavin’ again!”
“What?”
“She’s leavin’!” Jace looked halfway between angry and anguished.
His blue eyes, generally light and sunny as a summer sky, were now the color of a storm. He flung his battered hat onto the davenport and cracked his knuckles furiously.
“What the devil do you mean, she’s leavin’? Where in tarnation would she go?”
“Remember her singles cruise?” Jace fairly spat the words.
Of course, Artie remembered the singles cruise. When Celie had come home from her weekend in Hollywood with Sloan, heart whole and over her crush at last, she’d been determined to get on with her life.
Jace, who had darned near driven Artie crazy all the time she was gone, had barely breathed a sigh of relief when he’d discovered that just because Celie was over Sloan, it didn’t mean she was going to fall into his arms.
No sir. Instead, in April she’d gone on a singles cruise.
“What the hell does she need a singles cruise for?” Jace had wanted to know.
Artie remembered Jace had been doin’ laps in the living room then, too.
“What indeed,” Artie had murmured, “when she’s got a single feller who loves her right here?”
Jace had stopped dead at that. He’d spun around and leveled a glare at Artie. “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
Artie had shrugged lightly. “Seems to me it’s obvious,” he’d said.
A muscle had ticked furiously in Jace’s jaw. He’d ground his teeth, but he hadn’t denied it. He’d rubbed a hand against the back of his neck and had shaken his head as if to clear it. And then he’d dug the toe of his boot into the rug and muttered, “Damn fool thing to do.”
“Is this the singles cruise we’re talkin’ about?” Artie had asked, hiding a smile.
“What do you think?” Jace had muttered.
He was muttering again now.
“Don’t see how she can go on another one,” Artie said. “Them things are expensive.”
“She can afford it,” Jace said through his teeth, “if they hire her.”
“Hire her?” If Artie had had false teeth, they’d have fallen right out of his mouth.
“That’s what she came in this morning to say. Just waltzed in, pretty as you please, and handed in her notice. ‘Just wanted you to know I’ll be leavin’ in two weeks,’” Jace mimicked Celie’s soft tones. “‘I have a job on a cruise ship,’” he went on in the same furious falsetto voice, “‘so I won’t be around to annoy you anymore.’” He slammed his fist into his palm to punctuate the end of the quote.
Artie’s heart kicked over in his chest. It worried him a little when his heart did that, but not as much as he was worried about Jace.
Artie might be closing in on ninety-one, but he wasn’t dead yet. He remembered what it felt like to look at a woman and want her. He remembered what that hungry hollow feeling was like, how it made a guy follow a woman with his eyes and fall over his own feet if he wasn’t careful. He’d done it a time or two himself.
That was one of the reasons, after his heart attack, that he’d taken Jace on to work for him. To give him a chance.
Even though Celie had her own business—C&S Spa and Video, where she cut hair and gave therapeutic massages and Sara, her niece, rented videos—she still came in most mornings and worked at the hardware store with him.
She could have handled the store when he was in the hospital after he’d had his heart attack. That was the kind of girl Celie was—thoughtful, generous, kind, capable—the sort who’d do an old man a favor, who’d help out wherever she could. The sort of gal who would make somebody a good wife.
Who would make Jace Tucker a good wife.
When Artie saw that Jace was sweet on her—which wasn’t hard to see if you ever looked at him watchin’ her out of the corner of his eye and stumblin’ over his tongue every time he talked to her—Artie reckoned the least he could do was to give Jace a chance to show her he wasn’t a bad guy.
So, he’d got Jace to fill in for him when he was in the hospital. He’d acted weaker and frailer than he really was when he came home, all so’s those two could spend some time together and get their love life sorted out.
But they hadn’t.
Two more stubborn people than Celie O’Meara and Jace Tucker—when it came to falling in love—would be hard to find.
Celie persisted in believing that Jace was no different than he had been at twenty-three, and Jace persisted in stubborn silence when it came to admitting how he felt. They’d been working together four months now, almost five. And as far as Artie could see, things had gone from bad to worse.
Well, maybe Celie’s new job would be the wake-up call. Maybe Jace would finally say something that would stop her from going.
“So,” Artie challenged him, “what’re you gonna do about it?”
Jace slapped his hat back on his head and jerked it down hard. “Get drunk,” he said furiously. “Go find me some other girl!”
He turned on his heel and banged out the door. All the windows rattled.
Artie sighed and shook his head. Life really was wasted on the young.
For as long as she could remember, Celie O’Meara had been in love with the idea of love and marriage. As a little girl, she’d played wife and mommy while her sisters Polly and Mary Beth had played cowboys and Indians and astronaut and doctor.
It was possible, she thought when she was being brutally honest with herself, that she’d still been playing the role when she’d got engaged to Matt Williams.
She hadn’t thought so at the time, of course. She’d thought she loved Matt. Worse, she’d thought he loved her.
She’d been devastated when he’d jilted her. Her world had come crashing down. All her hopes, her dreams, her expectations had been destroyed. She’d felt like a fool.
Even more, she’d felt like a failure. In Celie’s mind, Matt’s rejection had publicly branded her as a woman who couldn’t satisfy a man.
Maybe it wasn’t the way women were supposed to feel in this day and age. Maybe Celie was a throwback. “A dinosaur,” she told herself despairingly.
But she couldn’t help who she was or what mattered to her. What Matt had done had gutted her.
Her sisters tried to be supportive. “You’ve just got to meet some other guys,” Mary Beth had said.
“Better guys,” Polly had insisted firmly.
“It’s like fallin’ off a horse,” Artie Gilliam, the closest thing she had to a grandfather, had told her. “Jest pick yerself up an’ get back on.”
“Yes, you do,” her dad had said firmly. “You gotta find a good one.”
“And you will,” her mother had vowed. Then she’d given Celie a hug of encouragement. “You’ll find the right man someday.”
But Celie wouldn’t even look. She wasn’t about to get back on. She’d been humiliated once. She’d trusted Matt. She’d given him her heart and he’d trampled it into the dirt. Let another man do the same thing?
No way. Once was enough for any lifetime, thank you very much.
But even though Celie had vowed never to trust another man, her old dreams of love and marriage had died hard. In fact, they hadn’t died at all. And even though she had given up on real men, she’d kept her fantasies.
Like Sloan Gallagher.
Ex-cowboy, current Hollywood star Sloan Gallagher was everything she’d ever dreamed of in a man. He was handsome. Strong. Brave. Resolute. Clever. Determined. Sexy.
Mostly, though, he had been safe.
She’d seen him in theaters and on television, she’d read about him online and in magazines, and she had allowed herself to imagine what loving him would be like.
For a decade it had been wonderful because it had been impossible—until Sloan agreed to come to Elmer for the Great Montana Cowboy Auction to save Maddie Fletcher’s ranch.
Then Celie’s fantasy world had collided with her real one. Her two-dimensional Sloan had become a real person. Her dreams were no longer safe dreams, they were possibilities—if she dared let them.
For weeks before Sloan had come for the auction, her dreams had tormented her, taunted her, challenged her. Wrestling with them, Celie realized what a hollow empty place her real life had become.
She might have been able to ignore it, to pretend it didn’t matter—if it hadn’t been for Jace Tucker.
She might have been able to ignore herself—but she couldn’t ignore Jace.
No one ever ignored Jace!
He was too vital, too intense, too . . . too everything. She remembered him from childhood—watching him from afar, always aware of him—wary of him—because he seemed different. Fascinating. Bigger, tougher, louder, rougher. Alien. Other.
Unlike Polly, who had been her dad’s sidekick, and Mary Beth, who had tagged along after them, Celie had never been entirely comfortable at the brandings, hanging around the fire teasing with the cowboys. She’d never wrestled with the boys on the playground. She’d liked Matt because he hadn’t been as rough-edged as some of them. He’d been quieter. Gentler.
A man after her own heart, she’d thought. But in the end, even Matt had rejected her.
And it had all been Jace Tucker’s fault.
Matt had come home from the Wilsall rodeo that summer, saying he’d been talking to Jace and was thinking maybe he’d go down the road with Jace for a spell.
“Sow me a few wild oats,” he’d said with a grin, “before you tie me down.”
Celie should have worried then, but she hadn’t. She hadn’t believed he was thinking about sowing wild oats.
But she had known enough about Jace to warn him. “Don’t let Jace lead you astray.”
Matt had laughed. But it turned out her fears had been realized. That winter Matt hadn’t come home to get married. Instead, Jace Tucker had called to say Matt wasn’t coming.
“He says he’s not ready,” Jace had told her fifteen minutes before the wedding was to start.
“What do you mean, not ready?” Celie could still remember her high, tight voice. But even then, she’d had her head in the sand, believing that Jace must mean that Matt simply hadn’t figured out how to tie his tie or button his suit coat yet.
“Not ready to get hitched.” Jace had spelled it out.
“What?”
“He says he can’t do it. That he’s got places to go, things to do, to see . . .” Jace’s voice had faded away. There had been a considerable pause during which he obviously expected her to say something.
But Celie had been incapable of speech.
She’d been strangling her phone in disbelief. There were close to a hundred people just up the street going into the church at that very moment.
Her mother had been telling her to get off the phone. Her dad had been standing in the doorway wearing a wholly uncharacteristic suit and tie of his own as he’d grinned at her.
But Celie hadn’t grinned back. She’d stood there staring at the phone, listening to Jace Tucker sigh and mutter under his breath, then say, “For crying out loud, Celie, Say something!”
“It’s a lie,” Celie had said, because it was all she could think right then.
This was Jace, after all! She knew Jace would think getting married was a joke. She hated him right then more than she’d ever hated anyone.
“It’s not a lie, Celie,” he’d said, his voice harsh. “Matt isn’t coming! Call the wedding off.”
Mortified, she’d dropped her phone. Then, numbly, she had walked to the church and done exactly that.
And all the while, she’d burned with a white-hot fury at Jace. At his impatience. As if she should have known! As if she should have expected it because obviously no man in his right mind would want to marry her!
Jace hadn’t even said he was sorry.
Of course, why should he?
He probably thought Matt had come to his senses just in time.
Celie remembered how he had come to pick up Matt at her parents’ ranch the first time they’d left together. He’d barely looked her way, standing in the kitchen, waiting, shifting from one booted foot to the other, impatient to be gone. He’d obviously thought she was a loser from the very start. And eventually he had convinced Matt.
In those months they’d spent rodeoing, Jace had influenced Matt. Inspired Matt! Celie still resented that.
But mostly she resented Jace because every time she saw him, she was reminded of her failure.
She was not the person she had wanted to be.
She was a reasonably successful small-scale businesswoman, true. She was the owner of Elmer’s only hair salon and video store. She was a volunteer at the library, the doting aunt of six nieces and a nephew, and the person that Sid the cat liked better than anyone else on earth.
But she didn’t have anyone of her own. Not a boyfriend. Nor a husband. Nor a child.
She wasn’t a wife. Or a mother.
She was a reject. And every time she saw Jace Tucker she remembered that.
For most of the last ten years she hadn’t had to see him. Footloose rodeo cowboys like Jace didn’t hang around hair salons in Elmer, even if his sister and her family still lived on the family ranch five miles north of town. A year could go by, and Celie might only catch a glimpse or two of him.
She did hear about him now and then, of course. Several years ago, she heard that he was engaged. That had thrown her for a loop. Jace Tucker? Settle down? Get married? It hadn’t seemed likely. So, she really hadn’t been surprised when she heard a month or two later that it had fallen through.
A couple of years ago, she’d heard of another rumored engagement. But that apparently had come to nothing as well. Figured. Jace wasn’t the settling sort.
He’d done well over the years in rodeo. He’d never been a world champion bronc rider like Noah Tanner who lived west of Elmer. But he’d got to the national finals several years, and this past year he’d gone to Las Vegas in the number-one spot.
“Jace says this is his year,” his sister, Jodie, had said proudly right before Thanksgiving last fall when she’d come in to get her hair cut. “Maybe if he wins, he’ll retire and move back to town.”
Celie’s heart had jerked in her chest at the very thought of running into Jace Tucker every time she turned around. But she hadn’t said a word. She’d kept right on clipping, pleased that at least her fingers hadn’t jerked as well.
“Maybe he’ll find himself a good woman and have a passel of kids,” Jodie had gone on.
Celie couldn’t help snorting at that.
Jodie had looked in the mirror and their eyes had met. She’d smiled mischievously. “Maybe I’ll send him around to see you.”
“No, thanks,” Celie couldn’t get the words out of her mouth fast enough.
“You used to think he was handsome,” Jodie reminded her.
That was the trouble with living in the same place your whole life. People remembered all kinds of foolishness—like the fact that in seventh grade at a slumber party Celie had once let slip that she’d thought Jodie’s big brother was good-looking.
“I’ve developed some taste since then,” Celie said sharply. She had, thank heavens, never admitted to her full-blown eighth-grade crush on him when her hormones had awakened big time.
“He’s a good guy,” Jodie had defended her brother.
You could also count on Jodie not remembering that Jace had been the one who’d broken the news to Celie about Matt. Unless he hadn’t told his sister.
But Celie doubted that. He had probably shared the news as soon as he’d come home for Christmas. The notion could still send a shiver of dismay up her spine. She made herself focus on Jodie’s hair again, only replying firmly, “I’m not interested in your brother.”
She had, however, said a fleeting prayer that Jace Tucker would not become the World Champion Bronc Rider the following month. And had felt a momentary pang of guilt when a couple of weeks later she heard that he’d been injured at the NFR.
She hadn’t wanted him to win, but she hadn’t expected he’d wind up in the hospital. Not that it had been her fault.
If Celie’s God were the sort who exacted divine retribution for such selfish behavior, though, putting Jace to work in the hardware store after Artie had his heart attack would have been right up His alley.
But if Celie wasn’t blaming herself for Jace getting injured, she could hardly blame God for Jace being in the store when Artie had had his heart attack, or for Artie being determined to have Jace take over running the store.
She could have handled the hardware store herself. She’d said so. But Artie hadn’t listened.
He was stubborn and set in his ways, and even though he counted on Celie and her mother and her sister and nieces to do a lot of things, he was obviously old-fashioned enough to think a man ought to be in charge.
He’d thought Jace ought to be in charge!
It was having to deal with Jace regularly that had made her bid on Sloan. Seeing Jace day after day, being treated to his teasing, his speculative winks and knowing grins had driven her right up the wall.
A day hadn’t gone without him making some remark about Sloan Gallagher—and her!
Celie had seethed and fumed. She’d felt first hollow and then angry and then desperate. She tried to cling to her dreams, but reality—and Jace—kept getting in the way.
As the auction drew closer, Jace had turned up in her dreams as often as Sloan! It was transference, she’d assured herself. He was still good-looking, damn it, though she’d never admit that out loud.
He had thick dark hair and blue eyes very much like Sloan’s. But while Sloan’s were warm and tender—at least in his films—Jace’s laughed and crinkled at the corners whenever he grinned and teased her, which was almost all the time.
Celie wanted to throw things at him. She wanted to kick his shins. Mostly, she wanted not to be so aware of him. She tried to stay out of his way.
But that didn’t mean she didn’t notice him. How could she not?
When he wasn’t teasing her about Sloan or flirting with her, he was flirting with every other woman who came into the store. She didn’t remember nearly as many women with hardware store fetishes before Jace had come to work there!
And it hadn’t been just the local girls, either, whom he flirted with as a matter of course, but all the ones who’d come to Elmer to bid on Sloan.
“You’d think they came to bid on you,” Celie said to Jace one afternoon.
He’d grinned. “I’m not for sale.”
“No one would buy you,” she’d retorted.
Jace had just laughed. But Celie didn’t think it was funny. She also knew it wasn’t true.
If Jace Tucker had been auctioned off, lots of women would have bid on him. Plenty of them had clamored to stay with him in the extra rooms at Artie’s house while they waited for the auction. A couple of them had actually done so.
But when Celie had muttered something disparaging about Jace and his harem in the days right before the auction, he’d just shaken his head.
“Jealous, Cel? Want to join ’em?”
“Never!” Celie had snapped. “I won’t share my man.”
“If you ever get another one.” Jace’s tone had been flippant. Then, at the look on her face, he instantly said, “Sorry.”
But the shock of his words had struck her to the core.
That was when Celie had begun to consider bidding on Sloan. At first, the idea was so wild and preposterous that she couldn’t believe she’d ever thought it. But the more she did think about it, the more she realized that she had to do something. If she didn’t, they’d be nailing her in her coffin and they’d write on her tombstone, Here Lies Cecilia O’Meara—She died before she lived.
And Celie wanted to live.
Fantasies weren’t enough anymore. Dreams didn’t suffice.
And so, on the day of the auction, she’d mustered her courage, marched into the town hall and had bid her entire bank balance on Sloan Gallagher down to the last red cent.
She’d won. And she’d been panic-stricken.
And yet, it had been worth it—just to see the look of stunned disbelief on Jace Tucker’s face.
The memory still made her smile. It had been so satisfying, so uplifting, so utterly pleasurable that it was addictive—the joy of shocking Jace.
He’d looked stunned when she’d seen him later that evening. His eyes had bored into her as if he thought she was certifiable. He’d looked furious—as if he couldn’t believe what she’d done.
She had wanted to see that look again.
Of course, if Sloan had fallen in love with her, no doubt she would have seen Jace’s jaw dragging on the ground. But Sloan hadn’t.
And just as well, because while she liked him a lot, she didn’t really love him. Certainly not the way her sister Polly loved him. And not the way Sloan loved Polly.
But seeing them together, Celie knew she wanted that kind of love. She had been wrong about Matt, but she wasn’t wrong about knowing what she wanted. And what she didn’t.
She didn’t want to be alone for the rest of her life, didn’t want to be a spinster hairdresser with no one to love but her cats.
So, she made up her mind to keep looking.
She didn’t know where she was going to look. Broke as she had been after her splurge on winning the weekend with Sloan, she imagined she’d be stuck in Elmer and environs checking out cowboys for the rest of her life. But Sloan had nixed that.
He’d refused to cash her check, instead donating the entire amount himself, and telling Celie, “Go do something wild.”
“I already did something wild,” she’d told him. “Bidding on you may be all I can manage.”
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “Check out the rest of the world. Splurge a little.”
He’d paid her own bid on him in the end, so she did have her savings still. So, she could afford the singles cruise she’d gone on last spring. It had been so completely different from her landlocked, down-home existence that it had seemed like the next logical step for a woman who was trying to jump start her life.
It had also had the advantage of flabbergasting Jace Tucker once again.
“A singles cruise?” He’d stared at her as if she’d announced she was going to dance naked on the counter in the middle of Gilliam’s Hardware Store. “You?”
As if a singles cruise was out of the question for a woman like her. As if she wouldn’t know what to do there!
Celie knew what to do.
If she had been scared spitless the day she’d boarded that giant ship in Miami, she soon discovered that it wasn’t as terrifying as she’d imagined. Her ability to talk to people when she was cutting their hair was useful. She met a lot of people. She met a lot of men.
She was still a bit hesitant. Sometimes she wasn’t sure what to say. But eventually she figured out that it wasn’t very different from when she was at work, and she had a good time. Besides, she was never as nervous around any other man as she was around Jace Tucker.
She had hoped the cruise would cure that. But it hadn’t. She’d hoped he’d go back to the ranch, and she wouldn’t see him and it wouldn’t matter. But he hadn’t done that, either.
“Artie needs the help,” he’d said. “And Ray and Jodie’s place at the ranch is too small for us all. They’ve got three little ’uns now. I’ll just stay with Artie while I’m building my place. Unless you object . . .” He’d given her a patented Jace Tucker teasing grin.
Of course she couldn’t. But she understood what he was telling her.
He was building his place on the Tucker ranch. He was settling down, just the way Jodie had said he might. In fact, Jace had told her so himself. He’d even as much as implied he had a particular woman in mind to share his place—and his life—with him. But he wouldn’t tell her who.
And Celie couldn’t guess. It seemed to her that every time she saw him he was with someone else from her niece Sara to the actress Tamara Lynd, one of the women who had stayed at Artie’s during the auction.
Was it Tamara he had his eye on? Celie refused to ask. But she didn’t want to be around to watch, either.
And that was when she’d decided that a job on a cruise ship was a better alternative. She was almost thirty. She wanted a life. She wanted a husband. A family. And taking a job on a cruise ship seemed as good a way as any to make that happen. She applied and crossed her fingers and hoped.
And when she got back from Sloan and Polly’s wedding, there it was—the job offer she’d been waiting for. The very thought of going was terrifying.
But it was also enormously satisfying to see the look on Jace Tucker’s face when she told him she was leaving Elmer for good.
Jace should have known better.
By the ripe old age of thirty-four, he should have figured out that drinking himself under the table was a stupid way to deal with anything that ailed him—and that included getting Celie O’Meara out of his mind.
He didn’t know why she was in his mind. She was out of his life. She had been for a month already. A month that seemed like a year.
He still couldn’t believe she’d left. If ever there was a homebody in the world, Celie was it. But twenty-four hours after she’d told him she was moving away—going to sea, for heaven’s sake!—she’d put a Going Out Of Business sign in The Spa window, and two weeks later she was gone.
“She didn’t even say good-bye!” Jace had been indignant on Artie’s behalf.
The old man shrugged. “Said good-bye to me. Reckon you were still in bed,” he’d added with blunt disapproval, “sleepin’ off that bender.”
It was true that Jace had been doing his fair share of drinking at the Dew Drop and down at The Barrel in Livingston since Celie’s announcement. Every day, he expected her to change her mind. But, every day, he heard more about her plans to go, and every evening he ended up at the Dew Drop or The Barrel drinking beer and looking for a woman to take his mind off her. He hadn’t found any, but it wasn’t for lack of effort.
“You mighta stopped her,” Artie told him after Polly had taken Celie to the airport.
Jace bit off an annoyed laugh. “You expect me to beg her not to go?”
Artie nodded. “Coulda.”
Bare his heart to a woman who seemed to think he was lower than dirt? No way.
Yeah, okay, he was interested in her. Had been ever since she’d caught his eye a decade ago when he’d stopped by O’Meara’s ranch to pick up Matt to go rodeoing.
His bad luck that the pretty curvy girl ironing Matt’s shirts turned out to be Matt’s fiancée. Jace wasn’t a poacher, so he’d steered clear of her as long as she was Matt’s. But, honestly, he thought she was lucky Matt had got cold feet.
Her fiancé hadn’t exactly been faithful when he’d been Jace’s traveling partner. Not that Jace had ever said so to Celie. He rarely said anything to Celie as long as she was Matt’s. No sense in lookin’ in the shop window when you weren’t allowed to buy.
Bad enough that he’d had to be the one to call her to say that Matt wasn’t coming home for their wedding. Matt hadn’t been going to call at all!
Jace thought she’d be mad at the moment, but that she’d realize she’d dodged a bullet and maybe even be grateful that he’d warned her. She should’ve been. Instead, she acted like it was all his fault.
He wouldn’t have cared except that after all these years, he was still attracted to her. But tell her that?
“I’d have looked like a damn fool,” he said to Artie.
“There’s lookin’ and there’s bein’,” Artie pointed out. “Reckon you’re comin’ close to bein’.”
“Thanks a lot.”
Anyway, Jace had a better idea. He would wait her out. Celie would be back. She wasn’t meant to be a wanderer. She was an Elmer girl down to her toes.
A week away, yeah, he could see her doing that. But make a career out of working on a cruise ship?
Nope. That wasn’t Celie. Not at all.
So, he whistled while he was at the hardware store during the days, and he worked hard on the stables he was building out at the ranch after the store closed each evening. He waited for the day Artie said Celie was tired of traveling around, that she was coming home.
And he didn’t let the grass grow under his feet while he waited. He went to the Dew Drop in the evenings. He drank beer, he shot pool, he even did his best to meet women, to chat ’em up and flirt with them. Maybe he’d meet someone who could make him forget Celie O’Meara.
He was damned if he was going to pine away.
He was having a fine time even though it was a lot of work dealing with the hardware store all day, then going out to the ranch and working on his new stables after that.
Some nights he wanted to turn in early rather than go to the Dew Drop or head down to The Barrel to have a beer, meet some women, try to be flirtatious and charming, especially when he didn’t want to bother, especially when it didn’t seem to be doing any good!
Artie was disgusted. He sat there in his damned recliner every evening. with that book of Zen wisdom Celie’s mother had given him in his lap, and regarded Jace with sad resignation over the top of his spectacles as Jace headed for the door every night.
“Again?” Artie said tonight when Jace came back from the ranch just long enough to shower and change into clean Wranglers and a shirt before heading out the door.
“It’s Nickel Nite at the Dew Drop,” Jace told him, and at Artie’s blank look, explained, “Ladies play pool for a nickel a game.” And with luck there might be a single female that he hadn’t already met.
He was feeling a little desperate. It had been a month since Celie had left. She should have learned that the big wide world wasn’t for her by now.
Artie shook his head. “I’d think you’d get tired of it.”
Jace was tired of it, but he didn’t see an alternative. “You got any better ideas?”
Artie shrugged. “Could be.”
Jace stopped, his hand on the doorknob.
He gave Artie a hard look. “Which means?”
“Life is what you make it.” He tapped that blinkin’ Zen book on his lap again.
Jace ground his teeth. “Sure it is.” Platitudes he didn’t need.
Artie nodded sagely. “You are what you do.”
“I’m doin’ something!” Jace retorted, goaded.
“Getting drunk. Picking up women. Trying to pick up women,” Artie corrected himself, since he knew Jace was home in bed before midnight every night.
“I’m not getting drunk!” He wasn’t picking up women, either. He’d met a few but, somehow, they just never clicked.
“And thank God for that,” Artie said piously.
“It didn’t hurt you,” Jace pointed out. “I was the one hung over.”
“Didn’t help you neither, did it?”
“Nothin’s helping!”
“Seems not,” Artie said thoughtfully. He patted the book on his lap. “Maybe you should try somethin’ else.”
“Like what?” Jace said belligerently. He nodded his head at the Zen book. “I suppose that book has all the answers.”
“’S got some.”
“Such as?”
Artie shrugged. “Wherever you go, there you are.” At Jace’s confused stare, Artie sighed, then amplified. “And if you don’t go, well, then you ain’t there, are you?”
Jace blinked, not following at all. “I haven’t gone anywhere.”
“That’s God’s honest truth,” Artie muttered. He looked up and met Jace’s gaze squarely. “Think about it,” he suggested. “Mebbe something will occur to you.”
At one o’clock in the morning, something did.
Jace was staring at the ceiling in Artie’s spare bedroom after another fruitless night at the Dew Drop, when he had had enough of waiting.
If the boat wasn’t coming back to him, he would damned well go to the boat.
End of Excerpt
