She unlocked the door, and let herself in. There was a large four-poster bed at the center of the room, done with plush bedding. There was a window seat, which she had spent a lot of time in last time. And a desk in the corner. She set her things down, and opened up her bag. She found her writing notebook, well-worn, but not used recently, and set it on the desk. Then she took her pen out, and...
She pulled out a little neon cactus key chain. It didn’t light up anymore—the batteries were dead, and she hadn’t been able to bring herself to replace the batteries, because that would be admitting that it mattered to her.
She ran her fingers over it, staring. And then she set it down next to the notebook.
This was the situation she was in. So she might as well embrace it. Might as well live in it.
What else could she do?
Chapter 4
He waited an hour, and then he went into the kitchen and dug around for one of those preprepared meals. There were strict instructions on how to reheat the steak without overcooking it, and how to plate the meal and all of that. He ignored a good portion of them, because he didn’t care about whether or not it looked fancy. But for some reason, he did feel compelled to serve her something that tasted good. Hell, if he was too petty, she’d write a song called “Overcooked Steak” and he’d never hear the end of it.
He stopped for a second, and simply stood there. Tansey was here.
Tansey Martin. The only woman who had ever gotten under his skin.
The woman he had told himself he was outraged at for the last two years.
Outraged because she reminded him of all of the things in himself he hated.
And she was still beautiful.
Hell, it was no mystery why he’d gotten involved with her.
Remember when you didn’t think she was your type?
Yeah. He remembered it vividly. He also remembered the first time he had tried to hook up after he and Tansey had parted ways. And hadn’t been able to muster up even the tiniest bit of interest in the beauty queen he was chatting up. He had ended up going home alone. As he had every night since then.
Two years. It was a hell of a dry spell.
But he was too filled up with demons to want sex. That was the problem.
What you need is an exorcism.
He tried not to think about her, or how beautiful she was, or the fact that they were alone here, and it was pretty much prime time for the sort of exorcism that he was thinking of.
No way. Never again. Not her.
He already knew how that ended.
But you can only ever have relationships that end. So why not?
The carrots finished reheating and he put them on the plate, not caring at all how they were arranged, and then he covered the plate with a big domed lid, and started up the stairs.
He knocked on the door, and a few moments later, she opened it.
Her hair was wet, and she was wearing a white plush bathrobe. It covered everything. From the base of her throat down to her ankles. It was huge on her. But he was so very aware of the fact that she had just been in the shower. He could remember showering with her.
His hands moving over her slick curves... “Dinner,” he bit out.
“Oh. I didn’t realize it was room service,” she said.
“Yeah. This is a fancy ass establishment, Tansey. I figured you knew that. Since you’re the resident expert on the place.”
He walked in, and looked around, then he saw that the desk had space. But he stopped when he got over there, because her notebook was sitting there, and beside it...
Beside it was the cactus.
Before
He didn’t know what possessed him to buy a little neon cactus, didn’t know what possessed him to stick it in the cab of her truck before they departed for the next stop. But he did.
And when she came to find him when they got to Sedona, with the little light hanging from her finger, and a strange expression on her face, he felt something expand inside of him. “What’s that?”
“A reminder,” he said. “A talisman. Stay prickly. And remember to put a wall up when you get on that horse. Don’t think about anything but the ride.”
“What does a cactus have to do with a wall, Ace?”
“Because we were in the Cactus when we talked about it,” he said.
“Okay. Your symbolism sucks. But I’ll hang on to it.”
He watched her ride that night; she won. He went to find her after, and gave her a high five. “It was the cactus,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “It was not the cactus.”
“It was the damn cactus. You can’t prove that it wasn’t.”
