Forever A Hero

Mace made the introductions. “Kelly Wright, meet Tom Harper.”

Kelly and Tom shook hands. The man had a thick head of dark hair, bright brown eyes and a great smile.

“Tom is the proverbial jack-of-all-trades,” Mace told Kelly. “As you’ve just seen, he isn’t above loading trucks, but his official title is wine master.”

Tom acknowledged Mace’s remarks with a slight nod. “Kelly Wright,” he said musingly, making a lighthearted pretense of trying to place her. Then his eyes flashed with a smile. “That’s right,” he said, all but snapping his fingers in that now-I-remember way. “You’re the damsel in distress.”

Mace glowered at him. “Hardly,” he said.

Kelly smiled, amused at Mace’s reaction. “That would be me,” she told Tom, “though, as you can see, I escaped the dragon unharmed.” She turned and batted her eyelashes at Mace. “Thanks to the prince here.”

Tom chuckled. “In case you’re wondering, my boss—aka, the prince—didn’t say a word about what happened the other night. My wife’s a nurse, and she was on duty when Mace brought you to the hospital.”

Kelly vaguely remembered telling Dr. Draper all about what had happened while she was being examined in the emergency room. A nurse had been present, as well—Mrs. Tom Harper, no doubt.

Mace gave Tom a benign but pointed look. “Must be about quitting time,” he said.

Tom ignored Mace’s annoyance, although he must have noticed. “Good to meet you, Ms. Wright,” he said. “And I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks.” Kelly smiled, liking the guy more with every passing moment. “And it’s Kelly, not Ms. Wright.”

“Guess I’d better run,” Tom said.

“Best idea you’ve had yet,” Mace grumbled.

Tom laughed, said his goodbyes and left the winery through a side door.

“Nice guy,” Kelly said when she and Mace were alone again.

“Yeah,” Mace agreed, finally lightening up a little. “Except for his big mouth.”

Kelly laughed. “Relax. I know you didn’t brag all over town about saving the poor, silly California woman from certain disaster.”

Even though you did save me, like it or not.

Twice.

Mace glanced away, sighed, muttered something to himself.

“Why are you so sensitive about this?” Kelly asked, serious now.

He turned his head, met her eyes. “It was no big deal,” he said.

“It was to me,” Kelly told him, still solemn. And when Mace didn’t reply, she spoke again. “What’s really going on here, Mace? Why are you so touchy about taking any credit for what you did?”

He was silent for a long time, although he never looked away from her face. Then, after another sigh, deeper than the last and more exasperated, he said, “Because I don’t want you thinking you owe me anything in return. You said thanks and that was enough.”

Kelly was at once intrigued and frustrated. “Are you afraid I’m going to follow you around from now on, adoringly, babbling words of gratitude?”

Mace seemed taken aback. “No,” he said.

She wasn’t letting him off the hook. “What, then?”

He rested his hands on her shoulders, his touch light, even tentative. “All right,” he muttered. “It’s just that I think something might be...starting. Between us, I mean. And I’m not talking about any business deal here.” He drew a long breath, released it. “Maybe it’s just my imagination and I’m making a damn fool of myself, but if we have a chance, the two of us, we need to be equal partners from the start.”

Kelly stared at him, momentarily speechless.

When she finally found her voice, it was barely more than a whisper. “It’s not your imagination,” she murmured.

That was when he kissed her.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE TOUCH OF Mace’s mouth was gentle, warm, more promise than demand.

More question than answer.

It never occurred to Kelly to push him away, or turn her head. No, she rose onto the balls of her feet, became neither giver nor recipient, but part of the kiss itself, part of Mace, as he was part of her.

He didn’t use his tongue, though she would have welcomed that—and a lot more. She felt charged in every cell, as if she were dancing on an arc of lightning.

When Mace broke the connection, Kelly plunged from the heights like a skydiver without a parachute, half expecting to strike hard ground and shatter into pieces.

Mace cupped her right cheek in his hand, thumbed away a tear she hadn’t known was there.

Kelly couldn’t speak. The ordinary world felt thick around her, as though she’d been caught in a mudslide, or quicksand, and might be sucked under at any moment.

Reflex made her grasp Mace’s shoulders, hold on for dear life.

He covered her hands with his own.

“Are you okay?”

“Um, I think so,” Kelly murmured, loosening her grasp on Mace by degrees as she settled back into herself. There were so many questions she wanted to ask—had he felt the power of that kiss, the way she had, or was it just another flirtation to him, soon to be forgotten? And if he had felt it, what did it mean?

“If that was too much, too soon...”

“No,” Kelly said so quickly that heat stained her cheeks. Then, again, more slowly, “No.”

Mace drew Kelly close, kissed the top of her head. “This might be a good time to show you the vineyard,” he said.

Kelly allowed herself to lean into him, just a little. To rest against the hard width of his chest, listen to the steady thud-thud-thud of his heart.

It had been so long since she’d taken shelter in a man’s arms, felt safe there.

“This would be a very good time to see the vineyard,” she said with laugh.

They left the winery then, neither one saying a word, and after Mace had punched in another code to lock the doors, they headed for the leafy rows, the vines rimmed in the last fierce light of the day.

Mace didn’t hold her hand as he had before, but their arms brushed against each other at intervals.

Kelly had that strange, otherworldly feeling again, although it wasn’t urgent, like before, when Mace had kissed her. She wondered if she’d bumped her head, after all, when her rental car went off the road, and done something to her brain, something the scans hadn’t picked up.

They walked along the rows in comfortable silence, and Kelly reveled in the scents of leaves and fertile dirt and ripening fruit. She’d visited so many other vineyards, in so many other places, but, strangely, this one seemed all new.

Maybe, she thought, it wasn’t the vineyard that made her want to put down roots right here in this rich soil and simply grow, like the plants all around her, to blossom in spring, flourish in the summer heat, bear fruit in the fall, stand leafless and vulnerable in the winter snow.

It was a crazy, whimsical idea, completely unlike her.

If this strange mood continued, she decided, she’d follow Dr. Draper’s advice and seek medical help.

In the meantime, though, she intended to savor the experience.

* * *

“STAY FOR SUPPER?” Mace asked when he and Kelly got back to the main house. This time, he’d taken the road instead of the cattle trail. Twilight was settling over the countryside by then, and the inside lights shone in that way that always made him feel a strange, soft mixture of joy and sorrow, as if he were homesick for a place he’d never really left.

He’d half expected Kelly to make a dash for her car the instant he’d parked the truck, but she didn’t move. Neither did he; he just sat behind the wheel, listening to the engine tick as it cooled, and waited.

“Why not?” she replied quietly.

Okay, so it wasn’t wild enthusiasm. But she’d agreed to stay, and that was enough.

For now.

“Let’s go inside, then,” he said. “Before Harry comes out and drags us to the table.”

“You’re sure I won’t be imposing?”

“Imposing? You heard my mother—Harry’s been cooking for hours.”

She smiled at him, opened her door before he could open it for her.

She looked down at her jeans and T-shirt, then up at the house, and seemed to withdraw slightly, as though reconsidering. “Please tell me your family doesn’t dress up for dinner,” she said.

Mace felt a brief ache behind his breastbone, but he smiled. “Are you serious? This is a ranch.”

Kelly eyed the house again. “Some ranch,” she remarked. “That house looks like something out of Gone with the Wind.”

“It’s home,” Mace said casually. “You expected the Ponderosa?”

She laughed softly. “Maybe I did,” she said. “It’s not exactly what you’d call rustic, this place. On the other hand, it seems to belong here.”

Mace nodded, resting one hand on the small of Kelly’s back, glad she didn’t pull away. The gesture was automatic, bred into him, like opening doors and pulling out chairs and taking off his hat in the presence of a lady.

“There’s a story,” he said as they mounted the steps to the porch.

Her face was eager in the glow of the outside light. “Tell me.”

“When my great-great-grandfather—I forget how many greats—settled this ranch and made himself a little money running cattle and mining, he went back East to find a wife. He found her in Savannah, living in what remained of her family’s old plantation house, after Sherman and his men left half the state of Georgia in ashes. She wasn’t in love with him, not at first, anyway, and he didn’t figure he had a chance with her, poor though she was, given that she was a true lady and he was a cowpoke from someplace west of nowhere. He proposed, thinking she’d refuse, and she hauled off and said yes. They got married and headed over here, by railroad, then stagecoach, then covered wagon. Legend has it she never complained, either along the way or once she got a look at the ranch and his cabin. By the end of that first winter, as the story goes, they were in love. They roughed it for a few years, started a family, and when he began to make real money, they drew up the plans together and gradually expanded this place, made it as much like the house she’d left behind as they could.”

Kelly’s eyes shone. “That is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”

Mace gave a reasonable facsimile of a courtly bow as he opened the door. “Welcome to the Mustang Creek version of Tara,” he said.

The inside of the Carson house, it turned out, was even more impressive than the outside. The furnishings were an eclectic blend of old and new, everything fitting together to make a home, gracious but somehow rustic, too.

Kelly heard laughter somewhere nearby as Mace showed her to a powder room off the massive kitchen, where she could wash up. When she’d finished, he was waiting for her, looking freshly scrubbed.

He offered her his arm and must have sensed that she was nervous, despite her effort to hide the fact. “Nobody bites,” he whispered.

Kelly had been in grand houses before, of course, attended elegant affairs, exchanged small talk with the rich and famous. This, like the vineyard, was different. Mainly, she supposed, because Mace Carson lived here.

He escorted her into a spacious dining room, into the boisterous heart of his family.

Much to Kelly’s relief, Mace had been telling the truth when he said the others wouldn’t be dressed up. Blythe had changed clothes since leaving the winery, but she’d chosen black jeans, a blue cotton blouse and sandals, and she looked elegant as well as casual.

Mace introduced her to his eldest brother, Slater, a successful documentary filmmaker, and his wife, Grace, who managed the resort where Kelly was staying. Then she met Drake, another brother, and his wife, Luce. Both couples had young children, already in bed.

Finally, she met Harry, a tall, angular woman with kind gray eyes. She was the only woman in the room wearing a dress; Grace and Luce, like their mother-in-law, sported jeans and blouses. Luce was barefoot.

“Now that you’re all here,” Harry said with all the authority of a judge calling a courtroom to order, “sit yourselves down so I can get supper on the table.”

“I’m starving,” Kelly confided, once she was seated at the long dining table, next to Mace. “I’ll probably eat way too much.”

“Just make sure Stefano doesn’t get wind of it,” Mace said.

The meal was beyond delicious—chicken, breaded and fried to golden crispness, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans boiled with bacon and onions, just-baked biscuits and soft butter. Mace’s own wines added to the taste extravaganza and, for dessert, there were three kinds of pie.

The talk around that big table was lively, and there was a lot of laughter. Mace’s brothers were handsome, like him, and although there was a family resemblance, both Slater and Drake were distinct individuals with very different opinions, which they expressed without hesitation.

Mace stated up front that Kelly was in town for a series of meetings about a joint marketing effort, but his brothers clearly believed there was more to the story. And his mother happily agreed to join them for one of those meetings.

It didn’t take Kelly long to realize that, although they minded their manners that evening, Blythe Carson’s sons were a rowdy bunch and generally made a sport of ribbing each other. She knew that as soon as she wasn’t around to overhear, Mace would be in for some razzing about the woman who came to dinner.

She also knew he’d be able to hold his own with no trouble at all.

Grace and Luce, both beautiful women, made Kelly feel completely comfortable, asking intelligent questions about her end of the wine business, her impressions of Mustang Creek, whether she was comfortable at the resort.

Kelly thoroughly enjoyed the evening, the company and the food, and she was grateful that no one asked about the accident, or how she was feeling. While she appreciated all the kindness and concern she’d been shown since then, she didn’t want to be remembered, once she returned to LA, as the woman who went off the road.

She wasn’t embarrassed by the incident; anyone could run into trouble on a rain-slick road. It was just that should she come to anyone’s mind after she’d gone, she hoped it would be because she had been a nice person, a good businesswoman, someone they’d enjoyed being around.

After dessert and coffee, she and Grace and Luce tried to help clear the table, but Harry was having none of that. Kelly thanked everyone for a lovely time and said she’d call it a night.

Mace walked her to her car.

The night sky was blanketed with stars from horizon to horizon, and their brilliance made Kelly’s throat catch. Love LA though she did, between the smog and the ambient light, she’d forgotten what it was like to look up and see the universe on display, wild and fiery and incomprehensibly ancient.

“It’s so beautiful here,” she whispered, awed.

When she met his gaze, she saw that Mace was looking at her, not at the sky. “That it is,” he said, his voice almost gruff.

Kelly wanted him to kiss her again.

And not to kiss her again.

Everything was moving too fast and, at the same time, not nearly fast enough. She felt breathless, wonderfully confused, hopeful and scared.

“I guess if I offer to drive you back to the resort,” Mace said quietly, with a hint of a smile in his eyes, “you’ll say no.”

“I will, absolutely,” she confirmed. “I’ll need my car in the morning and, furthermore, I’m fully capable of getting myself there safely—despite my reputation for reckless driving.”

Mace grinned. “Well,” he said, “there is that.”

Kelly laughed and gave him a playful shove in the chest. “Anyway, I need my rest. I plan to get up early, get some work done.”

“Such as?”

“Such as proving to a certain winemaker that my company can triple his business,” Kelly said on a light note. “That’s what a partnership with us can do.”

Mace’s frown was nearly imperceptible, but it still worried her a little. In fact, she might have panicked if it hadn’t been for the gleam in his eyes. “Suppose this winemaker is happy with his business the way it is?”

Kelly couldn’t allow herself to think how much was riding on this one deal, and she regretted tipping her hand a moment before. “If he’s willing to hear me out,” she said carefully, “I believe I can convince him.”

Mace tilted his head back, studied the stars, and his gaze was steady when he looked at her face again. “Fair enough,” he said. “He’ll listen. No promises beyond that, though.”

“No promises,” Kelly agreed.

A silence fell, brief and oddly comfortable, given the directness of Mace’s statement. But then, would she want him to be anything but direct? He clearly didn’t play games, and that was refreshing.

Mace spoke first. “I don’t think you’ve mentioned how long you’ll be in Mustang Creek,” he said cautiously.

Kelly didn’t hesitate. “As long as it takes,” she said. “I can always change my flight back to LA, and the rental car deal is open-ended.”

That made him smile, a bit wickedly. “Well, now,” he answered, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “That might inspire some foot-dragging. On the winemaker’s part, I mean.”

Kelly laughed, filled with a strange, vibrant joy that she was standing under that canopy of gleaming stars, facing this man, within touching distance. “Good night, Mr. Carson,” she told him.

He opened the rental car’s door for her, bowed ever so slightly. “Good night,” he replied.

She didn’t want the moment to end, but prudence won out. If she stayed too long, she knew, the charge of anticipation between them might spark a blaze she couldn’t extinguish.

Wouldn’t even want to extinguish.

“Can you fit in a meeting tomorrow?” she asked.

“I can work it into my schedule,” Mace responded. “As long as it’s on horseback.”

Kelly swallowed. “Horseback?”

“That winemaker you were talking about convincing?” Mace said. “He’s three parts cowboy.”

A sweet, scary thrill raced through Kelly’s bloodstream at those words, and she bent her head, rummaging through her purse for the car keys—and a minute to collect herself, let the pink in her cheeks subside a little. “Then it’s settled,” she said when she managed to look at him again. He was still holding the car door, and starlight sparkled in his hair. “What time?”

“Whatever works for you.” It was an easy drawl, a gentle challenge.

“Afternoon,” Kelly decided. “I have some things to do in the morning.” Like buying a pair of boots and doing some stretches, so she wouldn’t have sore thighs when the ride was over.

“One o’clock?” Mace asked.

“One o’clock,” Kelly agreed.

He closed the door, then stepped back, lifting a hand in farewell as she started the engine and shifted into Drive. She made a three-point turn and headed down the long driveway.

She drove carefully through the deep and quiet country night, alert but oddly jumbled inside, too, full of contradictory emotions and wild thoughts.

She was crazy, thinking the things she was thinking.

She’d never felt so sane as she did right now.

She was falling in love.

She was determined not to fall in love.

She’d worked hard to build a life in LA, and she cherished her independence.

She was, as hard as it was to admit, lonely.

No matter what, she needed to make some changes; she knew that much, anyway.

What changes?

That was the question.

* * *

DINA CALLED THE next morning, while Kelly was finishing a light breakfast in the resort’s bistro, her laptop on the table beside her—usually a no-no, like watching TV during a meal. She answered with a cheerful, “Hello, Boss Lady.”

Dina cleared her throat. There was something tentative, even reluctant, in the sound. “So,” she began, after a deep and audible breath. “How’s everything? Any more near-disasters?”

Kelly might have been alarmed by what she heard—or sensed—in Dina’s voice, but that morning, with the glorious panorama of the Wyoming countryside beckoning from just beyond the restaurant windows, she was simply happy.

She smiled as Grace Carson waved, passing by the doorway. Waved back. “No more disasters, near or otherwise,” she replied. “As for the business aspect, Mace and I will be getting together again this afternoon.” No need to mention that the meeting room would be the wide-open spaces, and the chairs would be saddles. For some reason, she wanted that tidbit of information to belong to her and no one else. “I think we’re making progress.”

“Okay,” Dina said, drawing the word out.

Kelly tapped a few keys on the laptop, then closed it with a snap. “Dina, what’s going on?” she asked. “I can tell something’s up. What is it?”

Dina heaved a sigh. If Kelly’s job was high-pressure, Dina’s was doubly so. She had a board of directors to report to, dozens of employees to oversee, numbers to crunch.

Strangely, Kelly was briefly transported back to the peaceful vineyard where she’d walked with Mace and once again found herself wanting to be a part of the vines and the earth that nurtured them.

Dina’s reply brought her back with a mild jolt. “I’ve been offered a new job, Kelly,” she said. “In London.”

“Oh,” Kelly said, absorbing the news, struggling to grasp the implications. Obviously, from Dina’s tone and mood, there were some. “Are you taking it?”

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