The Long Way Home by Kathleen O'Brien

Author:Kathleen O'Brien
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Western
ISBN: 9781940296951
Publisher: Tule Publishing Inc
Published: 2014-10-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

‡

For a second, when she woke, she had no idea where she was. She was comfortable, warm, stretched out on something soft, her nostrils filled with a faintly masculine, tweedy scent. A warm light beat against her closed lids, and she knew it was day.

But which day? And where?

Then, as her mind cleared, it came flooding back. Marietta. Homecoming. Joe.

Their beloved Swayback, cleaned and tamed and turned into his bachelor quarters. Opening her eyes, she rose on one elbow, his cushy sofa yielding under her weight. She pushed her hair back from her face with her other hand.

“Joe?”

The apartment was silent. She threw back a soft blue blanket he must have spread over her during the night, swung her feet to the floor, and stood.

“Joe?”

Still no answer. One sweep of the open-plan room showed her he wasn’t there. She went into the kitchen. With half a dozen windows letting in the bright morning sunlight, it was charming. And sparkling clean. Except for a mug in the sink, and a few papers on the counter, everything was tidy, the obviously new appliances as spotless as if he’d never used them.

But he’d left a note for her on the refrigerator door.

Seeing to horses. Back by 8.

—J

She opened the jaws of the small navy blue plastic clip that held the paper and pulled it down. She ran her fingers over the jagged black letters. His handwriting was so familiar. That thick, slanted slash of his J… she’d always thought there was something almost unbearably sexy about it.

She’d received a thousand notes from him through the years…not impersonal like this one, but wonderful, hot, fevered things. He would put them in her locker, wedge them through her car window, slip them in her purse as they passed in the hall between classes. He’d leave them here, in Swayback, under an old paint can, in case he had to miss a meeting they’d arranged.

Always short, to the point, yet rich with the sound of his voice. Immediate and intense. Never flowery, of course—he was a cowboy, not a poet. But they’d made her heart flutter just the same.

I love you.

You’re sexy as hell, Abby Foster.

Swayback Friday after school? Ditch cheerleading practice.

Come this afternoon. I need you bad, Abs.

But those notes were all gone now, most of them wadded up and tossed as soon as they were read. There had been so many—and she’d believed there would always be more. The remaining few had been left behind when she married, and then discarded with the other “junk” when the ranch was sold, no doubt.

She folded this one carefully and put it in her jeans pocket.

She found the small bathroom, used it, and then washed her hands and face in the sink. She put some of his toothpaste on her finger and did her best without a toothbrush. She returned to the great room and retrieved her purse, where at least she had a hairbrush and some gum.

She’d just pulled herself together when she heard his footsteps on the back porch.

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