Second Chance At The Ranch. Maxine Morrey

      Nick glanced down at their hands, before turning towards the dancefloor. Their path was crowded as he led the way, holding tightly to her hand, clearing the way for her with his broad shoulders. His eyes were on the way ahead, but his mind was still reeling from the smile Hero had given him.

      For the past couple of weeks, they’d done nothing but rub each other up the wrong way, with a large proportion of their conversations edged with sarcasm and spikes. In company, they had silently but mutually agreed to concentrate on being polite for the sake of their respective siblings. Nick struggled with the constant control she kept about herself. There was none of the spontaneity of her sister, none of the laughter and fun Juliet seemed to naturally inspire. He’d even begun to doubt that the woman even had real emotions – something about her seemed so false, so brittle. Pete and his parents had taken to her like she was a wounded bird, but all Nick saw was self-importance and privilege.

      But the smile she had just given him had blown all his beliefs about her to bits. For the first time since he’d known her, he saw what the others had been privy to all along.

      They reached the dancefloor and squeezed into a space as Nick raised their joined hands and wrapped his other arm around her narrow waist. The crowd of people on the floor meant that Hero was pressed close to him. He could smell her perfume, feel her fragile build beneath his hands as well as her now uneven breaths. Looking down into her face, he saw that striking green gaze dart around as it desperately tried, and failed, to find something familiar to focus on. She felt his own gaze on her and looked up, his eyes holding hers as his arm tightened a little closer around her.

      ‘Just breathe,’ he said, softly. He kept his eyes on her until her erratic breaths steadied. Feeling his arms strong and steady around her, Hero closed her eyes and felt the world slide away. With just one movement, and with the last person she ever expected, Hero no longer felt alone.

      Too near the speakers for any real conversation to take place, Hero was glad. She was tired of keeping her mask in place with Nick, but something about him had unnerved her from the beginning. He hadn’t tried to bow down to her every whim like most men she knew. He made her laugh, although she did her best to hide it. The many conversations she had sat in on proved that he was an intelligent, well-informed man. She’d desperately wanted to take part in them but, despite Pete and Juliet giving her plenty of openings, she kept her participation limited, afraid to make herself look stupid in front of this man who already caused such a torrent of emotions within her. But it seemed that the less she said, the more it irritated Nick. And as much as she had tried to deny it, his reaction upset her. She’d spent the last fortnight convincing herself that he was arrogant and of no consequence. But the truth was that he excited her. She’d never felt like this about anyone. And that fact alone both thrilled and frightened her.

      As Hero and Nick moved to the music, she felt the strong hand on her back. Many of the men she knew were muscular, but they were false muscles, born from spending hours in the gym, admiring themselves in huge floor-to-ceiling mirrors as they pumped iron. Nick’s body was strong from hard work and hard play. She felt the slight roughness of his skin against her hand as it held her own. It felt good. Something about those men with their soft, smooth, overly manicured hands had always made her feel slightly queasy. She turned her head slightly against his chest to look at the hand holding hers. The nails were short and had been scrubbed clean. Hero smiled to herself at the effort this must have taken, knowing Nick had spent most of yesterday under the bonnet of the old ute they used to drive out into the fields.

      ‘They are clean.’ Nick leant in close to her ear when he’d worked out what Hero was studying, a smile in his voice.

      She looked up, embarrassment showing on her face at being caught. But then she felt it, deep within herself, like a revelation she wasn’t even aware she was waiting for. There it was, shining clear in her mind as bright as any neon sign. There was no need to be embarrassed anymore. Not here. Not with Nick. She didn’t need to be afraid anymore. She didn’t need to be anything but herself. As this realisation dawned within her, she turned and smiled at him again, for once not holding back. For once not smiling on someone else’s cue.

      Looking up at him, Hero smiled, wide and beautiful. The power of it made Nick catch his breath. This. This was what she was hiding from the world. The question was why? The smile hit Nick square in the face and didn’t stop until it got to his toes, detouring several times on the way down. He pulled her closer, the surroundings too noisy for him to hear. Bending his head towards her, she repeated herself close to his ear, so close that he could feel her warm breath on his skin as she spoke.

      ‘You have nice hands.’

      The simple, almost childlike compliment only added to the feelings racing around his body. His head spun with it all. How the hell did she survive in that cold, shallow world she lived in? Nick saw now what she did her best to hide from the world at large – the shy, insecure young woman who fooled people into thinking that she was in control, completely sure of herself, and everyone around her. But now he knew differently. This girl wasn’t in control at all. She was barely treading water, just trying not to drown.

      Nick squeezed her hand a little in a gesture of reply and saw the corners of a smile play upon her mouth. He looked up for a moment and caught the eye of his elder brother who was standing with his new bride, talking to some relatives who had flown in from Sydney for the wedding. He nodded at them and grinned. Nick gave him a brief smile in return. As his gaze left his family, it landed on Susannah. Susannah was also watching them, but she wasn’t smiling. Her eyes were on Hero, and there was something far colder in her expression.

      Nick turned back to his partner and steered them away from the main crush, as well as Susannah’s glare.

      ‘Don’t take this the wrong way.’ He smiled as he pulled away a little in order to look into those hypnotic eyes. ‘Do you want to go outside and get a bit of air?’

      He felt her body relax a little in his arms as he said it. That was more than enough answer for him. In a reverse of their earlier journey, Nick once again led the way through the thrumming dancefloor and out into the cool, quiet night.

       Chapter 5

      Once outside, they found a bench a little away from the doors, and the smoking area, and sat down. Nick still held Hero’s hand and, surprising herself, she didn’t pull away. Didn’t want to pull away.

      ‘Not something you’ve ever fancied then, all this?’ Hero nodded in the direction of the reception room they had just left. ‘By the amount of six-foot-under looks I’ve been receiving, I get the impression that you’re not short of offers.’

      Nick shrugged his eyebrows. ‘Nope. Not really sure it’s for me.’

      Hero turned a little, kicking off her shoes as she did so, and tucked her legs up in front of her. Resting her chin on her knees, she pulled a face at his reply. ‘The good-looking man with a fear of commitment – isn’t that rather a cliché?’

      Nick caught the twinkle in those mesmerising, cat-like eyes of hers. He tilted his head at her.

      ‘Was that a compliment? The “good-looking” part I mean?’

      Hero just smiled.

      ‘And who said I had a fear of commitment? Or is that a little projection on your part?’

      Hero ignored the second question, focusing on the first. ‘Don’t you?’

      ‘No.’

      She echoed his head tilt. ‘So how come you’re not happily ensconced somewhere with a clan of little Nicholases running around?’

      ‘Perhaps I’m just enough of a good bloke not to want to show up my big brother by getting there first.’

      ‘Well, that’s very considerate of you, if it’s the case.’

      ‘I thought so.’

      ‘But