Read She’s Gone Country for Free Online Page B

brother Brick’s best friend.
    I stare at him, drinking him in, drinking him as if he’s water and I’m dying of thirst.
    He hasn’t changed, not much. He still has the same thick head of hair that’s neither blond nor brown, but a little of both. He’s well over six feet and still fills a doorway with those shoulders that are a little too broad and legs that are a little too muscular and long. He’s wearing the tight, faded Wranglers cowboys prefer and a short-sleeved T-shirt that hugs his chest. And even if I didn’t know him, I’d think it’s a really nice chest.
    The glass door finally shuts behind him, and as the little fan on the corner cabinet coughs and whirs, Dane takes a step, heading for the long counter. That’s when I see his cane and notice his limp.
    Dane limps now. The champion bull rider got hurt.
    I know I’m staring, but I can’t help it. I have to look, have to watch him, as he takes a seat at the coffee shop counter and slowly stretches his right leg out and then rests his cane against his denim-clad thigh.
    My gaze travels from his thigh and then up, over his chest, to his mile-wide shoulders, and finally to his face.
    Sweet Jesus, he’s good-looking. Even better looking at forty-something than twenty-something. He’s all man now. There’s no boy left in that face.
    “Ma’am?” the waitress at my elbow repeats.
    Startled, I jerk my head around, look up at her. She’s holding a plastic pitcher. “More tea, ma’am?”
    I hear what she’s saying, but I’m so shocked that it requires an effort to respond. “Uh, yes, please. Thank you.”
    She fills my huge plastic tumbler and then moves on. I steal another glance at Dane, who’s ordering the barbecue beef brisket dinner plate.
    Oh wow. Dane. Here. Dane. After all these years, and it’s been a long time since I last saw him. Eighteen years. I’d just graduated from Stanford, and he’d just won his second national bull-riding championship. He was also newly engaged to Shellie Ann, a girl I went to high school with. It made me so mad. I felt physically sick from jealousy, love, and longing. So sick I couldn’t even be in the same room with him, and he was at our house, in our kitchen.
    Brick said I acted like a bitch that day, but Brick didn’t understand. I loved Dane. I’d loved him for years, and I’d hoped that once I finished school, once I was twenty-one and finally old enough to be with him, we’d be together. Instead, he proposed to a pretty girl from my high school class whose only accomplishment in life was being crowned homecoming queen.
    Appetite gone, I reach into my purse for cash to pay the bill and escape before he sees me. It’s being a chicken, I know, but I don’t want to talk to him. My feelings are still too strong—and not in a good way. Seeing him again just makes me mad.
    He knew how I felt.
    He knew I adored him.
    He knew I wanted him.
    But maybe that’s how it is with first loves. Maybe it’s natural to carry a torch. And let’s face it, I didn’t fall for him just a little bit. I fell hard. So hard that my folks sent me to California to boarding school just to keep me away from him.
    In hindsight, no sixteen-year-old girl belongs on the professional rodeo circuit, and as a parent, I can say it was the right thing for them to do. But at the time, it broke my heart. I loved him. God, I loved him. I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone like that since, not even John. And looking at Dane now, feeling what I’m feeling, I know I didn’t make up those emotions.
    I might have been a teenager, but it was love. Crazy love. The kind of love that breaks you open and makes you someone else.
    Someone harder.
    Someone stronger.
    It’s then that Dane turns his head and looks straight at me.
    It crosses my mind that he doesn’t recognize me, and I don’t know if I’m more relieved or disappointed, but I’m the one to look away first. I drop my gaze to my half-eaten sandwich even as heat rushes through