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“There you go.”
    “You think I haven’t talked about it because I knew it wouldn’t make me feel better?” New idea, but she rejected it instantly.
    “Don’t you think?” he drawled. “Did the boots make you feel better?”
    “For about five minutes.”
    “So?”
    “Maybe there just hasn’t been the right person to tell.”
    He raised his eyebrows and quirked that mouth again. “Try me.”
    Oh, seriously? “You think I should tell you? You. About the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
    “Why not?” he shrugged, as if he didn’t really believe anything very bad could have happened to her at all. “See if it works. Maybe you’ll prove your point.”
    Jeesh, he could make her angry! “Given that it’s you we’re talking about as my listening ear, Jamie MacCreadie, I think it’s way more likely I’ll prove yours.”
    “Now, that’s not nice.” But he didn’t seem too bothered.
    “We’re never nice to each other,” she said, and if she was honest, she knew she was deliberately trying to provoke him, now.
    He looked at her the way he’d looked at her last night when he’d offered to marry her, and she suddenly began to question everything about the reasons why they were never nice to each other.
    Maybe it wasn’t...?
    Maybe instead it was...?
    The look lasted a long time and left her hot all over. She looked down and broke the contact, blinking as if she had something caught in her eye. They needed to get back. They more than needed to get back.
    They needed to go back in time , to before Chet had dumped her at the wedding five days ago, because she was so extremely comfortable with herself and Jamie not liking each other. She was a lot, lot less comfortable with any other possibility.
    She retreated into the old script and tried to believe it. Jamie was a yob. Good Australian word, that one. He couldn’t talk to women, and he drank too much, and it didn’t matter a damn how well he filled out a pair of jeans. Or that he was good with horses. And kind to friends. Or how blue his eyes were. Or how delicious his mouth. Or -
    Okay, enough.
    He stood up right at the same time as Tegan did.
    “Should go and - ”
    “Have to see if - ”
    So once again, they walked together.
     

 
     
    CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    Chet was a mess. A serious mess.
    Tegan stopped in at his and Jamie’s trailer to tell him hi, and that they’d missed him at breakfast, and when Jamie opened the door leading from the horse bay and they both saw him, face haggard, eyes even more bloodshot and red-rimmed than they’d been last night, they both knew at once that something was horribly wrong.
    Jamie swore. “What’s up? What the hell has happened, Chet?”
    “I gotta talk to someone. It’s time. It’s overdue.”
    “Is it your folks? Is someone hurt? Hell, dead?”
    “Nothing like that.” He shook his head and closed his eyes, dark stubble on his jaw emphasizing his unkempt state. He was dressed, but barely. Jeans unfastened at the waist, plaid shirt open to show a white undershirt that he must have used to dry something... probably his face... because it was half-transparent in places from splashed water, or tears, and it wasn’t tucked in. “Come in. I need to talk to you. I’ve been awake all night. I’m breaking apart.”
    “Chet. Oh, Chet,” Tegan said uselessly. She came forward and pushed past Jamie because he didn’t seem to have a clue what to do - other than shutting the door from the horse bay behind them so that no one could see in.
    She engulfed Chet in the biggest hug she had, and he hugged her back until she couldn’t breathe. He was crying into her shirt, big, wracking, silent sobs that shook him from deep in his stomach all the way up to his shoulders. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay.” Although she had no idea if it really was.
    He pulled back and clawed himself onto a narrow shelf of control. “I know. I know it is. I think it’s going to be. I’ve made a decision.