The Cowboy's Homecoming. Brenda Minton

light brown hair and eyes the color of caramel toffee. She knew his smile, that it turned the left side of his mouth more than the right and always flashed white teeth. He walked with a swagger, his jeans hanging low on his hips and his T-shirt stretched tight across the shoulders of a man.

      He was no longer a boy. He was lethal and dangerous. He had plans to destroy something that she wanted to protect.

      “Why would you do this?” She hated that her voice shook. She despised that she wanted to run out the back door. The closer he got, the harder it was to breathe, to stand her ground.

      She wanted to pound her fists against him and beg him to stop, to leave town and forget this church and whatever he had against the people of Dawson. Instead she stood, frozen, unable to do any of those things. Weak. She hated being weak. And afraid.

      “Why would I do what? Tease you?” Jeremy Hightree stopped at the second pew from the front of the church, the one where she’d sat with her mother so many years ago. He leaned against it, hip against the side of the wooden bench.

      He had always teased her, she wanted to remind him. He would sit behind her and pull ribbons from her hair. He’d once dropped a plastic spider in her lap during Sunday school.

      And he had picked a ragged bouquet of wildflowers the day of her mother’s funeral and pushed them into Beth’s hands as she walked out the doors of the church with her brother Jason and her father. His brown eyes had been rimmed with red from crying and she had wanted to hug him because her mother had always hugged him.

      Her mother had defended him. He was the son of her best friend from grade school. Other people had called him a dirty mess. Her mom had called him a little prince.

      Beth’s feelings had fallen somewhere in between.

      She stepped down off the stage, closer to him. One thing was for certain, he wasn’t the dirty little boy anymore. He was a man who had traveled. He had won two world championships; one in bull riding and another in team roping. Little girls had posters of him in their bedrooms and little boys wanted to be him when they grew up.

      He’d built a business from nothing.

      So why this? Why now? It took a few minutes to gather her thoughts, to know how to respond to him. She needed the right words, the right emotions.

      “Why the church, Jeremy? You could buy any piece of land you wanted. You could leave the church and never think about it.”

      One shoulder lifted in indifference. Instead his gaze shot away from her and his jaw clenched. He was anything but indifferent.

      “Let’s talk about something other than this church. Funny how people have neglected it for years and now everyone wants to talk about it. It was a public auction, Beth. Anyone could have bought it. I was the only one who showed up to bid.”

      “I know. I guess we all thought someone else would take care of it.” She hated admitting that to him and then begging him to let go of his plans.

      He moved a few steps closer and Beth stood her ground. She didn’t back away. She wouldn’t let him get to her. And he could. She shivered and remembered. The memory was soft, sweet, jagged with emotion.

      It was the briefest moment, the briefest memory. Yet she’d never forgotten. They had as much history as this church. They’d grown up together. They’d shared a childhood.

      “I’m sorry how things turned out with Chance.” His voice changed, got a little rougher, a little less velvet than before.

      “You couldn’t have known.” No one would have guessed the abuse Chance was capable of. But it was over. The divorce had been finalized fifteen months ago.

      Jeremy must have known something. He had tried to warn her what Chance was like. The day she left town, he’d seen her waiting at the park and he’d tried to tell her. But she had been desperate to escape.

      “Beth?” His voice pulled her from the memories, from the darkness, back to the present and the problem at hand.

      “I don’t want to talk about Chance.”

      “I understand. And I don’t want to talk about the church. It isn’t personal, you know. It’s a business decision.”

      “Is it really? It seems personal to me.”

      He crossed his arms over a muscular chest. “Maybe it is a little personal. I’m tired of this memory and I’m tired of this church standing like a beacon on this hill.”

      “That’s a little drastic, don’t you think? This church hasn’t been a beacon in a dozen years.”

      One shoulder lifted again. “I don’t know, maybe. But it’s my story, not yours.”

      “This church meant so much to…” She wasn’t going to beg him. She breathed deep, willing herself not to cry.

      “It meant a lot to your mother.”

      His tone had changed again. The rough edges were gone. She looked up as he stood straight again and took a few steps in her direction. His steps were slow, calculated.

      Had she really thought she could talk him out of this? A shared moment gave her no claim over him. Memories didn’t give her a right to assume he would listen. His story in this church mattered to him, not the memory of a kiss they shared a dozen years ago.

      “Yes, it did mean a lot to her.” But Beth had only been inside the building a handful of times since her mother’s funeral. Eighteen years. After her mother’s death her father had caught her here once and dragged her home.

      Jeremy watched her. His smile faded a little. His eyes narrowed as he stared hard. His Native American heritage was evident in the smooth planes of his face, tanned a deep brown from working outside. But almost everyone in Dawson shared that heritage, that ancestry. Redheads, blonds, brunettes; hair color and eye color didn’t dictate a lack of Native American ancestry. The people of Dawson were proud of that heritage, proud of their strength and resilience.

      They were known for bouncing back, for not letting the past get them down.

      The past was tied to everything, though. It was the shadow of pain in Jeremy Hightree’s eyes. It held her own heart captive. It was the fear that clawed at her chest and woke her up in the middle of the night.

      “I’m not sure what to tell you, Beth. Your mom meant a lot to me. But this church is…”

      “What? Tell me what this church ever did to you?” She pinned him with a stare, hoping to make him squirm. Instead his expression softened, as if he understood her pain, and was hiding his own behind anger.

      She remembered the boy with the bouquet, the one she’d wanted to hug. She couldn’t allow herself to compare him to that boy. “Tell me, Jeremy, what will revenge do for you?”

      Well, now, the kitten had grown some claws. She stood in front of him, pint-size with dark eyes that flashed fear and fire simultaneously. Her dark brown hair hung in pigtails. She picked that moment to lick lips that trembled. He smiled and for a few minutes he didn’t quite know what to say to her, because he was picturing her as a cornered kitten, shaking in her boots but ready to swipe at him. He had a lot of questions for her. He had questions about her life, about Chance Martin, about Dawson.

      Instead of asking questions he shook his head and considered walking away. She’d mentioned revenge. He really didn’t like that word.

      And when she’d said it, his decision didn’t feel as good as it had even an hour earlier when he’d stood outside picturing this hill without this church, without the memories that had been chasing him down, biting at his heels.

      “It isn’t just about revenge.” He shrugged and smiled at Bethlehem Bradshaw. He’d always been a fan of her full name, not the shortened version. The full name had meant something to her mother. And her mother had meant a lot to him. She’d done more for him than people would ever know.

      That loyalty struck a raw nerve