Reclaiming the Cowboy. Kathleen O'Brien

if he never found out, he’d be so angry and bitter inside he’d rot like a wormy apple.

      On the other hand, he wasn’t sure getting an explanation would make much difference. He might be doomed to sour from the inside out, no matter what.

      He kicked the oyster-shell driveway beneath the bench and glared at the mansion, as if it were to blame. As if it had swallowed his Bonnie whole and was refusing to spit her out again.

      But then he saw the big carved front door opening. He was on his feet in a flash. Even if it was just the stuffy butler coming out to warn him the police were on their way, anything was better than sitting here stewing.

      A woman emerged. At first, in the shadows of the portico, she was barely visible. White shirt, long pants... Not the maid, then...

      When the sunset caught her hair, he knew. Bonnie. His heart did that reflexive thing it always did, and his thighs flooded hot, thrumming with the urge to run toward her.

      But he shoved his hands into his pockets and forced himself to wait. Not Bonnie, really. Not anymore. Annabelle.

      She walked slowly. Carefully, as if she balanced an egg on her head. Her pace was measured, ceremonial, like a princess pacing down the wedding aisle. Or a queen walking to the guillotine.

      Maybe she was buying time so that she could get her story straight.

      Or maybe she was waiting for him to close the distance first.

      He dug his heels a little deeper into the powdery shells of the driveway. Not going to happen.

      “Hi,” she said as she reached him. Her voice sounded rusty, as if she didn’t use it anymore. Her eyes raked his face, clearly searching for clues to his mood.

      He didn’t respond. “Hi” seemed laughable, and everything else he could think of felt as if it came from some entirely inappropriate script. From a melodrama where people yelled things like “How could you?” or some slapstick comedy where the dumb cowboy went all “Shucks, ma’am” around the elegant lady.

      Or, even worse, from that pathetic script where someone gushed, “You had me at hi.”

      He set his jaw and refused to let any of that spill out. Let her do the talking. She was the one who had the explaining to do. She was the one with the secrets.

      She cleared her throat and tried again. “How did you find me?”

      He raised his shoulder. “Fingerprints.”

      “Fingerprints?” Her eyes widened, and he realized they did look a bit strange, now that they were set against the fantasy rose-gold of her real hair. The size of them, and the color... Nothing in the natural world should be that mesmerizing mix of blues, as if robins’ eggs and sapphires and summer skies had magically melted together.

      “Fingerprints,” she repeated, her voice dropping slightly, as if she were disappointed in him. “Of course. The water glass.”

      He could have defended himself. He could have explained that Rowena had been the one to supply the fingerprints, not him. Technically, that was true. But it would have been a lie in its heart, if not in its facts.

      He hadn’t come all this way just to have another useless conversation laced with lies. So he simply stared at her, calmly defiant.

      “I see.” She clearly had taken the measure of his anger, and she now knew he hadn’t come in peace. “All right, then maybe the more pertinent question is...why did you find me?”

      He laughed harshly. “Come on.”

      “I mean it.” She raised her chin. “You said you never wanted to see me again.”

      “No, I didn’t. I said I was tired of thumping my head on the sidewalk while you used me like a yo-yo. I said I wasn’t interested in being your quickie next time you snuck into town.”

      Her pale cheeks flamed red. To tell the truth, he felt a little flushed, too. He hadn’t intended to sound quite so nasty.

      “But I never said I didn’t want answers, Bonnie. Because I damn sure do. And what’s more, I deserve them. I think you owe me that much, after—”

      After what? After she’d broken his heart? He swallowed those words and gave her another hard, unblinking stare instead.

      She was breathing fast. Her lips were parted a fraction of an inch, and he noticed suddenly she had a smudge of dirt right where a movie star might put a beauty mark. He glanced down, realizing she held a trowel in her left hand, its gleaming silver tip speckled with mud, too.

      So at least that part hadn’t been a sham—she really did love gardening. Back at Bell River, she’d always wanted to be outdoors, always wanted to be rooting around in the dirt. Once, before they’d fled from Silverdell, they’d planted a white fir sapling on the abandoned Putman property, partway up Sterling Peak. They didn’t have the right—the property was in some kind of divorce dispute and couldn’t be sold or occupied—but they’d liked to hike out there and dream of owning it someday.

      He’d talked about the house they’d build, complete with his ridiculous inventions. She’d laid out the fantasy gardens, describing them so clearly he might as well have been looking at a painting.

      He’d swallowed the dream whole, fool that he was. He was surprised he hadn’t choked to death on it. She’d just been playing a game, playing house, as if she’d love to be the queen of the simple log lodge he was happily designing. Ha. All the while, she’d been keeping the secret of—he glanced at Greenwood, its marble arches slightly pink-gold in the sunset—the secret of this.

      “I guess we should sit down,” she said. “If you really want to hear the whole story, it’s going to take a while.”

      She didn’t seem to have any intention of inviting him into the mansion, so he dropped onto the garden bench where he’d been waiting the past half hour. He leaned against the scrolled iron back and waited some more.

      She sat, too, and stared down at the trowel, which she’d rested in her lap, for several seconds. Then she looked up, met his gaze and shook her head slightly.

      “I’ve thought about telling you all this so many times you’d think I’d have a speech ready. But it’s complicated. The whole thing is so weird, so convoluted...”

      “And I’m just a simple cowboy who couldn’t possibly understand?”

      Her eyes narrowed, and he saw her fingers close tightly around the trowel. “That’s cheap, Mitch. You’re not simple, and you’re not even really a cowboy. And I’m not a snob. You can be angry, but you can’t pretend we’re strangers. I won’t let you act as if all those months we spent together weren’t real. I won’t let you pretend we weren’t real.”

      “We?” He shrugged, tapping his hand against the bench’s cool wrought iron armrest. “Who exactly is we? Do you mean me and Bonnie O’Mara? Problem is, I don’t see Bonnie here—not a shred of her. So you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t quite know what’s real and what isn’t.”

      She flushed again—and he, who knew every nuance of her face, knew that shade of mottled red meant anger. Her flush of embarrassment was seashell-pink, and the flush of sexual desire was...

      He tightened his jaw, trying to force those memories away. Forget all that—this look was pure anger. Well, fine. He might not be turning red, but he was mad, too. They were both mad as hell. Desire was a thing of the past.

      She took a long breath, as if to steady her voice before she spoke. “Look, Mitch, if you want to tell me off, you should go ahead and do it. You have every right, and I won’t stop you. But if you want to know the truth, you need to let me talk.”

      He nodded tightly. “Go ahead. I won’t interrupt again.”

      She looked skeptical, but after a cautious second she started