Once Upon a Time in Tarrula / To Wed a Rancher: Once Upon a Time in Tarrula / To Wed a Rancher. Jennie Adams
they’d all got out alive and accomplished what they had set out to do.
Stacie met his gaze and something in it warned her not to become too sentimental about all that. ‘I’ve lived an easy life in comparison. I have supportive parents and my sisters. Now I have my farmlet to gradually bring up to standard inside and out, and my Bow-wow-tique business to grow. I’d dabbled with it for a couple of years before I moved here. I’m glad I finally got serious about it.’
‘I think you’ve lived more than you realize, or are perhaps letting on.’ His low words were observant. ‘And I think I’d find it interesting to meet your family.’
Too observant; Stacie had been through pain and she didn’t want to carry all of that forward into what her life was now. She wanted to leave it behind her, and he’d just hit on the one topic Stacie didn’t want to explore—how she currently related to her family.
‘I want to live my own life, my own way.’ The words came on a burst of sound, and she turned her attention back to Troy to get away from the emotions they invoked. ‘With a career like yours, would you have planned to marry?’
The moment she asked the words, she shook her head. ‘Sorry. That’s not really my business.’
‘I was engaged to a woman who also had a career in the army.’ Troy’s words held a calm inflection that didn’t quite seem to reach his eyes.
Somewhere in their depths, Stacie saw turbulence: anger at fate, perhaps, for robbing him of his dreams, not only in terms of work, but personally as well?
Why had the engagement ended?
‘Linda couldn’t move forward with me. I’d have held her back.’ Troy spoke the words flatly. ‘If she hadn’t made that decision, I’d have made it for her.’
‘She agreed to this because you were injured?’ Shock made her words sharp; disapproval honed them even more. He didn’t need to confirm it. The truth was in his steady gaze. ‘That’s wrong.’
It hadn’t been love! This Linda should have been at his side, seeing him through!
A deep anger filled Stacie. Hadn’t Troy faced enough, without such a loss being added at a time when he must have been able to accept it least? Yet he was saying he’d have instigated the break up if his fiancée hadn’t!
‘I have no emotion for a second attempt at a relationship.’
His words made it clear that he believed that he had a lack of emotion deep down within himself. Stacie had looked into his eyes; she’d seen the hardness.
But he’d held her gently, kissed her softly as well as with passion.
Had she imagined those emotions in Troy because she wanted them to be there?
Just as you did with Andrew, Stacie? Except in his case those emotions weren’t truly there for you but could be found and handed to your sister.
‘I understand, Troy.’ In the end, she did. He wanted to be her neighbour and employer and that was all.
Whatever she felt about anything else, that was Troy’s expectation.
‘I wonder if the rain has eased at all?’ Stacie glanced towards the door. ‘We should maybe go.’
The getting-to-know you mission had certainly been accomplished. Whether the results felt particularly palatable just now or not was another thing. Well, they could be friends and colleagues, couldn’t they? That was what she’d felt would be sensible from the start. Stacie got to her feet and made the choice then and there to prove they could be exactly that.
It might take all the pride and determination she had, but she would make it happen.
After all she’d been through with Andrew, she wasn’t about to pine over Troy!
Troy escorted Stacie from the restaurant. He’d imparted more about himself than he’d planned to. Stacie had admitted to a broken relationship, and he’d drawn his conclusions about that: one of her sisters had stolen her man.
The hard knot in his chest must be disapproval of that sister. She’d treated Stacie badly.
Just as Linda treated you badly.
What was he thinking? Linda had done exactly what he’d expected of her.
He led Stacie through the rainy night to his four-wheel-drive. It was time to take her home and forget about swapping confidences, and too much examination of himself, when he was already quite clear just who he was!
CHAPTER SIX
‘FANG won’t like these high winds.’ Stacie glanced towards her darkened house. She took pride in the normalcy of her tone and delivery, just a colleague who happened also to be a neighbour, making an observation about the weather as Troy drove her back to her house. ‘He’s not all that keen on rain, and stormy weather makes him tense unless he’s inside the house with me. Hopefully it won’t be upsetting Houdini either. Don’t get out, Troy. There’s no point both of us getting wet.’
Troy got out anyway. He took her arm to help her to the house. The wind tried to pull them over. When they got under the porch he tipped his head to the side and listened. ‘That sounds like a sheet of tin flapping on your roof.’
It was hard to hear anything over the rain and he hadn’t bothered with an umbrella. It would have turned inside out in an instant, anyway.
Stacie had left her porch light on. She stepped back out into the open and looked up. Even in the dark and through the rain she could make out a large piece of roof-sheeting flapping crazily.
‘Come inside. We’d better see the damage,’ Troy suggested. ‘There’s going to be a mess.’
For ten seconds as she unlocked her front door and drew a breath to deal with what she might find on the other side, Stacie heard all the doubts. Had this been a good decision? Could she really make a go of things here without this place being just a money pit?
And then she threw her shoulders back. She hadn’t made the wrong decision. She’d made one that was what she’d wanted. She could make a wonderful home out of this farmlet, a great viable business of the Bow-wow-tique—and she would! ‘I guess the roofing contractor didn’t factor in weather like this when he said the rest of the work could wait.’
‘Nobody could have anticipated this. Hopefully the wind won’t have done too much—’ Troy broke off as Stacie turned lights on inside her house.
She took one look and excused herself to change into jeans and a sweater.
‘Well, technically,’ Stacie said, in an attempt to be judicious as she strode towards the rear door of her home past a large puddle of water in the hallway, ‘The wind hasn’t done all the damage. The rain it’s let through has done most of it. I’ve got a ladder out the back.’
I like a good challenge.
The thought whirled in Stacie’s head as she carried the ladder inside the back door. Fang was out there, of course, and barged into the house at the first opportunity, demanding at least some sympathy for the fact he’d been left to endure a wet, windy night while Stacie was out partying in town. Houdini was right on the larger dog’s heels.
‘I’ll take the ladder. You take care of the dogs.’ Troy glanced at both animals before he took the ladder from Stacie’s hands.
Stacie fed the dogs and she did it fast, with a quick pat for each. By that time Troy had climbed the ladder. ‘A torch would be helpful, Stace.’
Stacie already had it in her hand. She held it up and his hand closed around it, their fingers brushing lightly for a moment as he took it. It wasn’t only that which made Stacie’s heart skip a beat: Troy had called her Stace. It was just a shortening of the name; the guys at work did it all the time. But with Troy it felt different. Intimate …
‘How