Czytaj książkę: «The Cowboy Who Got Away»

Chapter One

“This is a disaster,” the bride-to-be wailed. “I don’t understand how you can be so calm when it’s all your fault, Juliette.”

Juliette Lowell bit the insides of her cheeks and resisted the urge to help Tabatha Jones, the bridezilla du jour, put her current crisis into perspective. Around the world, people less privileged faced life-and-death crises. The realization that the hand-dyed lavender pumps were two shades lighter than the bridesmaids’ dresses was certainly a disappointment, but it was not a disaster of meltdown proportions as the bride was making it out to be.

“You have to fix this.” Tabatha’s voice rose three octaves, pushing a tear out onto her cheekbone. It left a trail in her foundation as it meandered down her sullen face. “This is absolutely unacceptable. The wedding is a month away and I need to know how you are going to make this right.”

Standing in the middle of the Campbell Wedding Barn, the venue for the ceremony, Tabatha’s breath was quick and shallow as she glared at Juliette.

She seemed dangerously close to hyperventilating.

“Take a deep breath, Tabatha,” Juliette said. The minute the words left her lips, she knew they were a mistake.

“Don’t tell me how to breathe,” she said through gritted teeth. “Just fix this.”

All Juliette could do was shrug. Probably a good choice since every word she uttered seemed to be digging her deeper into trouble.

When Tabatha had noticed the discrepancy in color, she’d called Juliette, who’d suggested they meet at the wedding venue to view the shoes and dresses in the same light in which they’d be worn during the ceremony.

“Tabatha, they really don’t look bad,” Juliette said, holding a silk pump next to a dress in a ray of sunshine streaming through one of the barn’s generous skylights. “Besides, the dresses are long and people aren’t going to be looking at your bridesmaids’ feet. They will be looking at their beautiful faces. No one will notice that the color isn’t exactly the same.”

Tabatha growled. She actually growled. A guttural sound in the back of her throat that started low, then exploded in a noise that sounded like a bark. For a split second, Juliette feared she might lunge at her.

Tabatha’s mother must have had the same worry because she put an arm around her daughter, but Tabatha brushed her off and pointed at Juliette. “The bridesmaids’ shoes were custom-made in Italy.”

“I know,” Juliette said. “I told you that due to variations in dye lots and the different material of the shoes and dresses that the color might not be an exact match.”

The woman had been so smitten by the thought of buying her bridesmaids bespoke shoes that she obviously hadn’t heard a word that Juliette had said.

Or she had selective memory.

Juliette held up the shoe again, turning it every which way in the light. “It’s close—”

“It’s not close enough,” Tabatha hissed. “All I care about is how you’re going to fix this in time for the wedding. Fix it.”

Tabatha thrust the lavender shoe at Juliette and walked out of the barn.

“Oh, Tabatha. Honey...” Her mother cast an apologetic glance at Juliette and trotted along after her daughter.

Good grief.

As Juliette stood there trying to digest what had just happened, another realization hit her hard. All her life she’d been a people pleaser. In the past, she would’ve chased after the client, falling all over herself trying to make the bride-to-be happy, promising her miracles she would’ve worked magic to deliver, but today, she just didn’t have it in her.

She wanted Tabatha to have the wedding of her dreams, but the woman was out of control. She’d crossed the line. Juliette had told her about the possibility of color variations, but Tabatha had ignored her.

“I warned you,” Juliette muttered under her breath as she slid the dress back into the garment bag and draped it over her arm. Before she placed the pumps back in their box, she held one up again and tried to look at the color with an objective eye. They were pretty. Well, as pretty as purple silk pumps could be.

Even so, her job was to make sure the bride was happy. She’d call her friend Nora at Sassy Feet Shoe Repair and see if she could help.

Juliette sighed. “It’s a purple shoe. I don’t know what more you want, Tabatha. The way you’re acting, you’d think they sent you something chartreuse.”

“Does Tabatha have something against chartreuse shoes?”

The familiar deep, masculine voice wound its way around her spine and settled at the very base of her solar plexus, making her breath catch and her heart do an all-too-familiar two-step. She knew it was Jude Campbell before she turned around and saw him standing in the wedding barn’s doorway.

Her initial split-second reaction was It’s you. You’re back. She wanted to hug him and lose herself in the sanctuary of his strong arms, in the familiar feel and smell of him. But in the next blink, the intoxicating madness fell into the chasm that had been created by everything that had happened when they broke up and the ensuing years that they’d been apart since then.

“Actually, Tabatha dislikes lavender shoes. Or these lavender shoes, at least.”

“Was that Tabatha I saw kicking up gravel as she peeled out of the parking lot?”

“Oh, she peeled out, did she? Nice. I hope she waited for her mother to get in the car and close the door before she sped off.”

Jude nodded and flashed that effortless, brilliant smile that reached all the way to his brown eyes, making them crinkle at the corners. He looked exactly the same, from the top of his curly honey-brown hair to the broad, muscled shoulders all the way down to the toes of his weathered cowboy boots. Juliette’s mouth went dry and all the reasons she should keep her walls firmly in place threatened to fly out the window, but she knew better.

She prided herself on only making new mistakes.

Jude Campbell, with his hypnotizing smile and those arms and broad shoulders, would not be a new mistake.

“Why are you here, Jude?”

He shifted his weight from one foot to another. “What’s the matter, Juju? Aren’t you glad to see me?”

“You’re not allowed to call me that anymore.”

Hearing him call her by the nickname he’d had for her all those years ago made something warm and forbidden blossom in her stomach.

Damn him. How was it that after all these years, after everything he’d done, he still had this effect on her? How could she still feel something for him after what he’d done to her? To them.

“You seemed like you were happy to see me when I was home for Ethan and Chelsea’s wedding. What happened?”

Reality happened. Real life happened. Three months ago, he’d waltzed back into town for one night—for his brother’s wedding to Juliette’s best friend. He’d been the best man to her maid of honor. There had been a built-in safety in that short visit. Because of the wedding, almost every minute of her time had been consumed by helping Chelsea, or otherwise claimed by the schedule of events. There hadn’t been enough time to let down her guard. But if she was honest with herself, in that short twenty-four hours the ice cap that had formed over her heart had started thawing.

He’d left so soon after the wedding there’d been no need to think about the feelings he’d stirred up in her. It wasn’t denial; it was self-preservation. It had been ten years since he’d been back to Celebration. For all she knew, it would be another ten before he passed through again.

“You were home?” she said, emphasizing the operative word. “You breezed through so fast, I wasn’t even sure if it was really you. Are you home longer this time, Jude?”

He cocked a brow. “Would you be happy if I said yes?”

Juliette didn’t answer. She busied herself wrapping the purple shoe in the tissue paper it came in and putting it back into its box.

“I am home longer this time than last.”

Damn if her gaze didn’t find its way back to him. His eyes seemed to hold a mixture of bemusement and disappointment.

He wasn’t that tall—just under six feet, which was still big for a bull rider. But he had those broad shoulders and that lean, muscled body to compensate for it. He also had those lethal, dark brown eyes and that lopsided smile that had always disarmed her.

Even after everything that had happened, her former eighteen-year-old self whispered that she wouldn’t mind a bit if he kissed her hello, but the twenty-eight-year-old she was now, the one who knew better, overruled that foolishness with a simple blink of her eyes.

This was the effect Jude Campbell had on every healthy, red-blooded woman he encountered.

And that’s what she needed to remember.

“I’d heard through the grapevine that you weren’t coming back for the ten-year reunion,” she said.

“My plans have changed. Is it too late to change my RSVP?”

Juliette shrugged. “You’ll have to call Marilyn Harding. She’s chairing the reunion committee.”

Juliette silently cursed Tabatha again. If not for the ridiculously demanding woman, she wouldn’t have been at the Campbell Wedding Barn at the precise moment Jude had chosen to make his entrance. Juliette was a wedding planner, but Jude’s sister, Lucy, owned and operated the venue. She had inherited the property after her parents had died several years ago and had turned the old ramshackle barn into one of the South’s premier wedding barns.

Since Juliette sent so much business Lucy’s way, she’d given Juliette a key to the place so that she could come and go as she needed. No sense in both of them being at the mercy of the gaggle of bridezillas who contracted Juliette to create the wedding of their dreams.

Lately, it seemed like every single bride she worked with turned into a bridezilla.

Juliette took a deep breath as she pondered the possibility that if every one of her brides seemed like a bridezilla, maybe they weren’t the problem; maybe she was the one who’d gone off the rails. Or something like that. Maybe she was mixing her metaphors. She was so burned-out lately, it was a wonder she could even think. It didn’t help that Jude was standing right there in front of her.

“I thought the homecoming queen would’ve been in the middle of organizing the ten-year reunion,” he said.

Juliette frowned and hitched up the garment bag onto her arm. “So, you think the homecoming queen should plan the party, and the homecoming king should just be able to show up? And until today you weren’t even sure if you could make it. Can you please explain the logic in that?”

Jude was silent for a moment and it took everything in Juliette’s power not to fill the stillness, until finally, he spoke.

“Was there ever any logic when it came to you and me, Juju?”

Juliette’s stomach clenched.

“If you are here to see Lucy, she’s not in right now. You might want to give her a call on her cell phone. There’s not an event tonight, so she and Zane were taking the day off.”

“I’ve already talked to my sister. I stopped by because I saw your car out there.”

She tried to ignore the satisfaction his confession brought her and almost asked him how he knew it was her car, but stopped short. He’d seen it when he was home for the wedding. Jude had taken a break from the professional bull riding circuit to come home for the wedding of his older brother, Ethan, to Chelsea Ashford Alden. Of course, that’s when he’d seen it. The wedding had been the first time that she’d seen Jude in the nearly ten years since the two of them had broken up before she’d gone to college and he’d gone off to try out his skills on the PBR circuit.

He was fresh off a world championship win. A hometown hero. Of course he’d want to come home and bask in the glory.

“How long are you home?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Two or three weeks? A month? Depends.”

All kinds of questions filled her head. It was the beginning of October. The PBR circuit usually ran through the end of the month. She wanted to ask him about work, but a sixth sense warned her that might be shaky territory. Really, it was none of her business. If he was still in the running for this year’s championship, he wouldn’t be hanging around Celebration right now. It stood to reason that she was better off not asking.

“Where are you staying?” she asked instead.

“At the cabin on the lower forty of my folks’ property—my property,” he corrected.

Jude and his siblings had inherited the ninety acres that had been in the Campbell family for three generations. They’d subdivided the property into three equitable shares. Ethan and Lucy each had working businesses on their respective properties.

“It’s been a long time since you’ve been out there,” Juliette said. “Are you comfortable there? Does the place even have electricity?”

“I have no idea. I’ll be fine,” he said. “If it’s too bad, I can always crash at Lucy’s.”

“I wasn’t offering you a place to stay,” she said. She meant to be funny, but it came out sounding defensive.

“No? Too bad, because I just realized that Zane is probably crashing at my sister’s. Ethan and Chelsea are newlyweds. You were my last hope to save me from being a third wheel.”

He winked at her and she wasn’t altogether convinced that he was kidding.

“Yeah, well, I have two words for you—Celebration Inn. I’m sure they have a vacancy. But wait. Have you not even been to the cabin yet? Otherwise you’d know if the electricity was turned on.”

“Just rolled into town and saw your car.”

He smiled at her, holding her gaze for a few beats too long as she realized that he’d stopped to see her first, before his family, before getting settled in.

“It’s good to see you, Juju.” He shifted from one foot to another. “If you’re free, want to go grab a beer?”

Yes.

She shook her head. “It’s eleven thirty, Jude. And don’t tell me it’s five o’clock somewhere. If I drink now, I won’t get anything done today.”

He nodded. “Fair enough. How about a cup of coffee then?”

* * *

Whoever said you can’t go home again didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, Jude thought as he opened the door to the Redbird Diner for Juliette. The place hadn’t changed a bit. Same red vinyl booths and light gray Formica tables. The bar that separated the grill from the dining room was done in the same red-and-gray color scheme it had always sported. Large framed posters of the food offerings—burgers, fried chicken, tuna melts, French fries, sodas and shakes, coffee and pie—lined the walls, and on top of each table, small jukeboxes waited for diners to choose their own music at the same bargain price they’d charged for as far back as he could remember—a nickel a song.

An old Johnny Cash standard filled the diner, which was uncharacteristically empty except for them and a busboy he didn’t recognize cleaning a table.

The homey smell of the food made his stomach rumble. He realized it had been a while since he’d eaten. He’d been so eager to get back to Celebration, he hadn’t bothered to stop and eat.

The sameness of it all warmed him in a way he hadn’t expected. It must have been at least nine years since he’d been here. There’d been no time to stop in at the diner when he’d come back for Ethan and Chelsea’s wedding.

The last time he’d been home before that had been for his mom’s funeral.

His dad had died from injuries in a drunk driving accident ten months before his mom had passed. His dad had been the careless drunk. The wreck had left his mom in a wheelchair and she’d never fully recovered.

Jude had been there to bury his mother, but he hadn’t bothered to come for his old man’s funeral.

He had no idea why he was letting the old drunk haunt him now. They hadn’t gotten along. During their last bad blowup, he’d punched Jude in the face and had sent him packing. Jude hadn’t pressed charges because his mother had begged him not to. It was the first time the old man had ever turned violent. That was the only reason Jude hadn’t taken it to the sheriff. But even though he hadn’t involved the law, he had left town, not giving them a chance to talk it out or make amends.

Jude hadn’t kidded himself. He’d deserved his father’s anger. He just hadn’t expected the black eye.

There was nothing he could do about it now. So, he blinked away the thought and put his hand on the small of Juliette’s back as they walked to the booth in the back corner and seated themselves in the very same place they had spent many hours when they were in high school. Being here with her felt like stepping back in time. The diner was virtually unchanged and Juliette looked almost exactly the same as she had all those years ago—only better, if that was possible. His gaze swept over her face, taking her in. Her olive skin had the same healthy tanned glow. Her long dark silky hair hung loose around her shoulders, tempting him to reach out and touch it. And he could still get lost in those sky blue eyes that were intently watching him watch her. Yeah, definitely better. She was even more beautiful now than she used to be back then. It was a more seasoned beauty—a confidence that suggested she was comfortable in her own skin.

Time had definitely been good to her.

He smiled at the thought.

“What?” she asked, picking up the menu but not opening it.

He shook his head, dismissing her question.

“From my vantage point,” she said, “that looked like a whole lot more than nothing.”

This was definitely the same Juliette—the one who never let him get away with anything.

“I was just thinking,” he said, “it’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, too.” She sounded a little shy.

He rubbed his nail over a piece of worn duct tape that appeared to be covering a rip in the booth’s red vinyl seat. The sensation grounded him, bringing him back to something that was hard and real and a little rough around the edges after standing the test of time. He identified with that. There was something both comforting and disquieting about finding himself in this diorama of the past.

How had they let so much time go by without speaking? The quick answer was that they were both stubborn. They’d both had their fragile teenage pride hurt. They’d gone off on different life paths and blinked and here they were again—all these years later. Jude was tempted to ask her to tell him everything—everything he’d missed, everything she’d grown to be. He had no idea if she was even dating anyone. For all he knew, she might be head over heels for someone else—she might not have even given him a second thought during the time that they’d been apart.

When they’d reconnected at Ethan and Chelsea’s wedding, he’d stayed in Celebration less than twenty-four hours. It was all he could spare from the circuit—but even with the limited interaction, it was enough time to realize that he and Juliette still had chemistry. Even after all these years.

That revelation was one of the driving forces behind his decision to come home after the concussion and back injury that had knocked him out of the running for the professional bull riding finals. He was doing better, but sometimes he woke up with blinding headaches and his body hurt like he was one hundred years old. Still, he wasn’t going to tell her that. He was too young to complain about his aches and pains that no one wanted to hear about, anyway.

“So, tell me everything,” Juliette said. Those blue eyes of hers sparkled and made his mind go temporarily blank.

“Everything?” he asked. “That’s a tall order.”

“Everything. Just start from the beginning.”

The beginning? As in when he’d proposed and she’d turned him down? Or did she want him to skip ahead to the part where he’d gotten engaged to somebody else and Juliette had vowed to never speak to him again. She’d done a pretty good job of keeping that promise, until he’d seen her at the wedding.

And now here they were. At least they were talking. He toyed with the corner of the plastic laminated menu. “Everything is a lot of ground to cover. We could be here for a while.”

He hadn’t realized what a loaded statement that was until he saw her brow arch ever so slightly and the faint smile that turned up the outer corners of that gorgeous mouth. What he would give to know what was going on in her mind at that moment.

He mustered his best smile. “Judging by the look on your face, you don’t have plans this afternoon?”

“That remains to be seen,” Juliette quipped. “Start talking and we’ll see.”

Her sassy mouth was one of the things he’d loved best about her. Well, that and about a million other things that were coming back to him one by one.

Funny, over the past ten years he’d attracted a certain type of woman who had been happy to let him call the shots and set the pace. Juliette had always held her own with him and he’d forgotten how damn attractive that was. He was just about to ask her if she was seeing anyone when she spoke first.

“How about starting with why you’re home, and at the beginning of October. The season isn’t over. Shouldn’t you be off at some competition showing a bull who is boss?”

Oh, that.

“One of the reasons I’m home is because someone’s interested in buying my land,” he said. “I’ve had an offer on it.”

She leaned forward. “You’re thinking about selling your part of the Campbell ranch?”

He nodded, but before he could say anything else, Dottie Wilde, who had worked at the Redbird Diner for as far back as Jude could remember, walked up with her order pad and a broad smile plastered across her face.

“Well, if it isn’t Jude Campbell, as I live and breathe. Honey, is that really you?”

He flashed his best smile and winked. “Yes, ma’am, Mrs. Wilde. It’s me.”

She leaned in and gave him a hug.

“When did you get home, honey?”

“About an hour ago.”

She put her hand on her heart. “Oh, my stars, I am honored to be your first stop back in the old neighborhood.”

His gaze snagged Juliette’s. “If I’m completely honest, the Redbird is my second stop.”

Mrs. Wilde turned her smile on Juliette. “Well, silly me. Of course you’d go see your girl first. It just warms my heart to see you kids together again. Just like old times. Makes me feel young again.”

He looked at Juliette, who wasn’t looking at him. She had politely smiled at Dottie and then had taken a keen interest in the menu, reminding him that even though they were talking and she had agreed to have coffee with him, even though that undeniable chemistry still pulsed between them, a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon still separated them.

He looked back at Dottie, who was making a show of brushing away happy tears, but she shook off her reverie and beamed at them.

“Look at me,” she said. “Aren’t I a sight? I’m a bundle of emotions today. What’ll you have? It’s all on the house. Anything you want. It’s not every day we have a professional bull riding celebrity wander in here. You’re our very own hometown hero and that calls for a celebration.”

They ordered coffee and a piece of blueberry pie to share. The Redbird Diner had always had good pie.

After Dottie left to round up the food, Juliette said, “Well, Cowboy, aren’t you something. I guess it pays to be a hometown hero. In all the years I’ve been coming here, I’ve never gotten free food from Dottie Wilde.”

He shrugged. “Her offer is nice. But totally unexpected. I’ll leave her a big tip.”

All this hometown hero talk made him uncomfortable.

He’d won the PBR world championship last year. But this current season, he’d done nothing but struggle and battle one injury after another. Last year, before he’d won the big prize, all his hard work had paid off and his plans had come to fruition. Everything had snapped into place. Since then, it seemed as if every force was working against him. At twenty-eight, he was one of the senior members of the circuit. He’d worked damn hard to get there, but this year, it seemed like his reflexes weren’t as quick to respond; sometimes his instincts seemed to lag behind. Talk had been that his head just wasn’t in the game. The truth was his body just didn’t seem to bounce back the way it had leading up to his win.

Because of all the setbacks, he was out of the running for the big money this season. He’d come back to Celebration to sort it all out. To figure out if he was up for one more good run or if he should quit before he suffered permanent damage like the doctors had warned.

His agent insisted that the doctors had to be overly cautious to avoid liability. He kept reminding Jude that a lot of guys got right back on the bulls after getting hurt. When Jude had hesitated, he reminded him that because of his age and injuries the clock on his career was ticking and he needed to make hay while the sun was shining. The subtext to that, of course, was that the sun hadn’t been smiling down on him much this year.

The chime on the door sounded and three girls who looked like they were high school age entered the diner and settled in the booth next to the one he and Juliette occupied. One of them was in Jude’s line of sight and she smiled at him. He smiled back, just being polite.

“You’re not really going to sell your property, are you?” Juliette asked, a frown knitting her brows.

When their parents had died, he, Ethan and their sister, Lucy, had each inherited equally valued parcels of land. Ethan’s was smaller, but had the stables from which he ran his horse-breeding business. Several decades ago, his family’s ranch had been one of the most successful in the area, but they’d run into financial hardship when alcoholism had gotten the best of Donovan Campbell. For a while it appeared that Ethan might fall down the same slippery slope after his parents’ deaths and the end of his first marriage, but after some soul searching and sheer determination, he’d pulled himself up from rock bottom and had set the Triple C Ranch back on the road to profitability.

Lucy had the parcel where their grandparents’ old house and barn stood. She’d spent a lot of time there as a child, so it seemed only right that that portion of the property would be hers. She’d moved into the house and had worked hard to turn her dream into a reality when she’d transformed the old abandoned barn into the Campbell Wedding Barn, one of the South’s premier boutique venues.