The Rancher's Family Thanksgiving Read online

  “The same way most medical professionals do with their patients,” she countered, looking both hurt and distressed.

  “More or less,” Tyler admitted, enjoying the challenging nature of the conversation the way he always did, when they went toe-to-toe on a subject.

  Susie’s teeth raked her lusciously soft lower lip. “All this time I thought…” Her voice caught. Pride—and possibly the fear of revealing too much about herself—kept her from continuing.

  He caught her hand in his, as determined to uncover her secrets as she had been to wrest his from him. “You thought what?”

  Susie gulped. “That you weren’t interested in me in that way. That so far you weren’t interested in any woman to the point where you wanted a real relationship. But that’s not it at all, is it? It isn’t that you haven’t met The One For You. It’s that you won’t let yourself fall in love.”

  He loathed the accusation. “You’re one to talk!” he scoffed.

  Susie leaped to her feet. “I’ve had cancer!”

  Tyler caught her hand and drew her right back down. “Had being the operative word.”

  “I may not have a future.” Susie shifted position, so her knee was no longer resting against his thigh. “But, Tyler, you do. You could still have it all, if you’d let yourself.”

  He drew in a long, calming breath. “You don’t get it.”

  Susie looked furious. “I’m trying!”

  Tyler leaned forward and shoved both his hands through his hair. His clasped hands rested on the back of his neck. “I’m not like my mom or Travis, my adoptive dad. I’m like my birth father.”

  Twin spots of color appeared in her cheeks. “I thought he died when you were a kid.”

  “When I was eight,” Tyler confirmed. “But he and my mom were married when my brothers and I were born. He couldn’t handle triplets and he and my mom ended up getting divorced. Deep down, I’m just like him.”

  “How do you figure that?” Susie asked in a low, serious voice.

  Tyler exhaled, caring about Susie too much to lie to her. “The summer I turned sixteen I got a job taking care of horses at this dude ranch in Colorado.”

  Her shoulders tensed. “I vaguely recall that.”

  It had been, Tyler recalled, before they’d gotten close.

  “Everyone was envious of you. They thought it was such a cool job.”

  “I fell hard for the owner’s daughter. Andrea was sixteen, too, and we dated all summer.” Tyler forced himself to remember, disillusionment filling his heart. Tyler reached over and took Susie’s hand. “Shortly before I left, Andrea got really sick. She came down with a virus that attacked her heart.” He stood and began to pace. “She was hospitalized and put on the transplant list.” He clenched his teeth, embarrassed by what a heartless bastard he had been. “I couldn’t handle it.” Misery engulfed him now as it had then. “I completely bailed on Andrea and I didn’t look back. She died a month later without ever hearing from me again.”

  “Oh, Tyler.” Disappointment and sadness mingled in Susie’s gaze.

  He clenched his fists at his sides. “I realized then as much as I wanted to be like my adoptive dad, Travis, that in reality I was just like my real dad. When the going got tough, I got going.”

  “But when I got sick and all my friends deserted me, you stepped in, never once deserting me,” Susie argued.

  Not about to let Susie browbeat him into taking back his sentiments, Tyler said, “Because by then I had figured out the secret all the medical professionals use. To only let yourself care so much and never more. Enough to be compassionate and kind. Not enough to have your judgment threatened or to be so devastated if things don’t work out the way everyone hopes they will that you can’t go on.”

  Her expression changed. “So that’s what you did with me,” she concluded.

  “Right,” Tyler said.

  But even as he spoke he wondered if that was still true. He’d always been able to keep his guard up before. Lately, when he was with Susie, the self-protective barriers had a way of coming down. He wasn’t even aware of it. Suddenly, like now, he’d find himself confiding in her, talking about things he never discussed with anyone. If he weren’t careful, he’d find himself wanting to be more than friends with her.

  That’d be fine…as long as everything remained status quo. But if anything shifted, if things weren’t okay…what would happen if he bailed on Susie the way he had bailed on Andrea?

  Tyler knew he couldn’t risk it.

  Couldn’t risk not being there for Susie however she needed him, whenever she really needed him.

  He would not desert her the way he had Andrea.

  “The point is, Suze, you deserve better than me,” Tyler said, beginning to pace the length of the room once again.

  “I’ll tell you what I deserve,” Susie said fiercely, leaping to her feet.

  “And what’s that?” Tyler demanded, impatient now to leave, before he revealed anything else about himself he didn’t want her to know.

  “Just wait and see,” she murmured back, looking deep into his eyes.

  And then her next move shocked the hell out of him.

  Chapter Six

  Live each day to the fullest.

  All this time, Susie thought she had needed Tyler. She had never realized how much he needed her. Not just to celebrate a monumental event in his life when he was otherwise unattached and they’d had too many margaritas to be thinking straight, or when he was reeling with grief at the loss of a dear friend. Those moments had been important, but rare. This was different. Tyler had confided in her in a way he had confided in no one else.

  The life that had seemed so limited in so many ways now exploded with possibilities and chief among them, Susie admitted to herself, was Tyler McCabe.

  No longer just buddies who turned to each other in time of trouble or “comfort” or “celebratory” lovers, they were on the way to being everyday friends. And maybe, Susie thought, as she moved closer yet, wrapped her arms around Tyler’s neck and brought her lips to his, so much more.

  The last thing Tyler had expected when he’d brought Susie home tonight, was to be kissing her again. He sure hadn’t expected her to get him to open up and then take the initiative. But now that they were in each other’s arms again, now that her lips were moving beneath his, he found himself succumbing to the desire he had promised, for both their sakes, he would never resurrect again. The blood thundered through him, and he reveled in the soft surrender of her body against his. Yet he knew what he had to do.

  With a groan of frustration, Tyler sifted his hands through her hair, tore his lips from hers. “Susie…”

  She kissed his jaw, the skin behind his ear. “No talking.”

  Hands on her shoulders, he set her apart from him. As he stood looking at her, he could see the vulnerability in her amber eyes. Her lower lip, soft and pink and bare, was trembling slightly. Forcing himself not to think about kissing her again, Tyler said stoically, “We need to talk about this.”

  Twin spots of color brightened Susie’s high cheekbones. Sensing what he was going to say but looking no less determined, she reached for the button on his shirt. “Then I’ll just have to find ways to shut you up.”

  Knowing she needed to realize he had no intention of misleading her, he guided her back to the sofa, sat down and took her hands in his. “I’m serious.”

  Her eyes darkened with passion. “So am I.” She slid over onto his lap and wrapped both her arms around his neck. “We’ve done enough talking, Tyler. Too much, really. Right now, I just want to feel.”

  Tyler directed his gaze away from the soft, inviting curves of her breasts. “This wasn’t in the plan.”

  Susie swallowed, and continued looking at him as if she didn’t know quite how to handle that pronouncement—or him. “I live moment to moment.” She bit her lip. “I thought you knew that.”

  Wishing he hadn’t been brought up to be inherently gallant, especially where ladie
s were concerned, Tyler studied the disarray of her blond hair, wanting to run his hands through its softness. Trying not to think how delectably sexy she was in or out of bed, he looked her straight in the eye and announced, “Making love with me is not what you need.”

  She lifted her chin, challenging him to try and chastise her for daring to live her life to the fullest in whatever cockeyed way she chose. “Suppose you let me be the judge of that,” she said softly, smiling with a seductiveness that darn near broke his spirit.

  Because, like it or not, he knew what he had to do. “No,” he told her firmly, ignoring the flash of hurt and vulnerability in her expression. “I’m sorry, Suze. Much as I want to, I can’t let us do this again.”

  SUSIE STARED AT HIM IN disbelief. She was sitting on his lap. She could feel the strength and heat of his arousal. And yet… “You’re turning me down?”

  Ever so gently, Tyler shifted her off of him and onto the sofa. He regarded her with steadfast care. “With a great deal of regret, yes, I am.”

  “Why?” She didn’t know whether to kiss him or send him out the door.

  “Because I’m not what you need,” Tyler explained.

  Temper exploded deep inside her. Ever since her illness she had hated it when her life veered out of control. It had never felt more so, than just now. “Not what I need or not what you want me to need?” She glared at him, forcing him to make the distinction.

  He put up both hands in the age-old gesture of surrender. “Come on, Suze. Don’t take this personally.”

  “Don’t take it personally?” Susie picked up the bowl of grapes and marched toward her kitchen. She put the uneaten bounty back in the fridge and closed the door with as much bang as she could get out of the padded edges. She whirled back to face Tyler, her fists balled at her sides. “How in tarnation am I supposed to do that?”

  “Friends don’t make love.”

  Susie tried to act with a coolness she couldn’t begin to feel. She leaned against the counter, facing him, and folded her arms in front of her. “That depends on the friends, don’t you think?”

  Tyler’s bedroom eyes met and held hers again. “Sex complicates things.”

  Aware they were headed into territory much more intimate than if they had just made love and not bothered to dissect their motives and emotions, Susie replied, “It hasn’t before.”

  Tyler settled opposite her. “Sure about that?”

  Silence fell between them, unsettling, unbridgeable. Tyler’s voice deepened compassionately, and he continued in a calm deliberate voice, “Or do you think it was a coincidence that, in the past, when we made love, we could barely look each other in the eye?”

  She picked up a dish towel and pleated it between her fingers. Leave it to him to point out the downside. “Of course it was awkward.”

  He paused as if to reharness his emotions. “I’m tired of our relationship being awkward,” he continued, jaw set.

  Susie dropped the towel, not ready to give in just yet. “So let’s end the weirdness,” she suggested casually. “Let’s agree we have a great physical chemistry and just act on it whenever the mood strikes.”

  Tyler tilted his head, as if actually considering it. “Make booty calls for each other,” he rephrased.

  “Yes.”

  Briefly, guilt flashed in his hazel eyes. “Your parents…”

  “Have no say in this.”

  Tyler frowned and came closer. “Maybe not, but they want something much better for you, Suze. And so do I.”

  Restless, Susie opened up the dishwasher. She took out the clean dishes and began putting them away. Tyler was standing right beside her. The masculine scent of his skin and hair inundated her senses, making her want him all the more. Frustration boiled over inside her. Aware he was watching her, waiting for her response, she stopped what she was doing, as abruptly as she had started it, and turned her glance up to his. “You just told me you’re never going to marry.” She paused and wet her lips. “Did you mean it?”

  Looking every bit as conflicted as she felt, he set his jaw and nodded. “Yes, I meant it. I am not and never will be husband material.”

  Susie caught him by the shirtfront and hauled him against her, taking charge of her feelings and the situation once again. “Well, I’m not wife material,” she countered, just as seriously. Resolutely, she searched his eyes. “Does that mean I have to go through my whole life with the nonexistent sex life of a nun?”

  He emitted a long lust-filled sigh, and gently ran his hands from her shoulders, down her arms, to her hands, eliciting tingles wherever he touched. “You still have two more guys to meet,” he reminded her with obvious reluctance. “Maybe one of them will be the one.”

  Susie scoffed and said around the tightness of her throat, “Doubtful.”

  He squeezed their joined hands before disengaging them altogether. “You still have to give it a try.” Gently, he touched her face, cupping her cheek with the flat of his palm. Painfully honest, his eyes touched hers. “Maybe in five or ten years if you still haven’t met someone…”

  Her emotions in turmoil, Susie walked away from him once again. “Now you’re beginning to sound like my sister Amy and your brother Teddy, and their longstanding promise to have a child together if neither of them were married when they turned thirty.”

  He followed her to the opposite counter. “That was a joke. You know that.”

  “Maybe.” Susie knelt to put a casserole dish in the cupboard, next to the kitchen sink. “And maybe not.” Susie stood and went back to the dishwasher for the silverware caddy. “Amy’s birthday is coming up soon. She’s a little bummed about the prospect of being thirty and single.”

  Tyler watched as Susie dropped forks into the drawer. “I still think we need to give this ‘just friends all the time’ thing a try,” he insisted.

  Susie sighed and shot him one last persuasive glance. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” she said.

  Tyler looked into her eyes and this time it wasn’t hard for her to read his thoughts. Tyler did know what he was missing. He even regretted the loss. That didn’t, however, change his mind.

  “THE THING IS, I FEEL like such a fool,” Emmaline confided several days later when Susie went over with a truckload of plants.

  Susie’s landscaping crew had been over earlier to plow up the portion of the yard where the flowers and shrubs were to go.

  “I should have known that things weren’t going to work out the way I wanted,” Emmaline continued, dropping bulbs in the wells Susie was fashioning.

  “I know what you mean,” Susie commiserated. Her life wasn’t turning out the way she wanted, either.

  Tyler hadn’t called her.

  She hadn’t called him.

  Susie didn’t see the awkwardness that had sprung up between them once again going away anytime soon.

  “You think you know someone…” Susie guessed where the conversation was leading.

  Emmaline nodded. “…you think that person is your friend…”

  “…and then find out you’re not on the same page after all,” Susie concluded sadly.

  “How do you deal?” Emmaline asked, throwing up her thin arms. “I mean, you seem so together and everything.”

  It’s all a farce.

  Susie covered a bulb and smoothed the dirt with a trowel. Emmaline copied her movements with another bulb.

  “I guess what you have to remember,” Susie said eventually, doing her best to be a role model as well as a confidante and fellow survivor and friend to the ill teenager, “is that everybody has problems. It isn’t a matter of whether you have any or not. It’s just what specific problems you have, versus what specific problems someone else has.”

  Emmaline rested her face on her upraised knee, admiring the blooming chrysanthemums they had already planted. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  Finished with the bulbs, Susie began digging a spot for the ornamental grasses that would provide the border for the flowe
r beds. “Yes, having cancer bites, but so does losing your job.”

  Emmaline grinned ruefully. “Or your hair.”

  “Speaking of which.” Susie smoothed the dirt with her trowel and sat back on her heels. “I know you’re not all that fond of the wig you were wearing—or maybe I should say, not wearing—in the hospital.”

  Emmaline put a hand up to her head, which was covered with a wool knit cap that while cute, only served to emphasize her baldness underneath. Susie knew how self-conscious she’d felt when undergoing chemotherapy. Bad enough she’d lost her eyebrows and eyelashes. She’d had to endure all the pitying stares from strangers who could tell at a glance she had cancer.

  Emmaline made a face. “You noticed how dorky it is.”

  Susie saw no reason to pretend there wasn’t a problem, when as far as Emmaline was concerned, there clearly was. “You could get your wig cut. I mean I had mine adjusted by a professional stylist a couple of times. It made all the difference in the way I looked and felt about it.”

  “It’s still going to look fake because it’s a synthetic.”

  Human hair wigs ran into the thousands, Susie knew. “You could wear the ones I wore when I was sick.”

  “You still have them?”

  Susie removed several dwarf juniper bushes from their black pots and set them on the ground, next to where she intended to plant them. “Actually, I’ve got two of them.” Both were extremely expensive and made of human hair. “My uncle, Beau Chamberlain, owns a movie studio and he was able to get them for me.”

  “And you never got rid of them?”

  Susie shrugged. “It seemed like it would be tempting fate to get rid of them.”

  Emmaline rolled her eyes. “I know all about that. I’m afraid to make plans past the next few weeks.”

  “Anyway, I brought them with me, just in case you wanted to give them a try,” Susie said. “They’re in a box in my truck.”

  “Awesome.”

  “I should caution you, though. They’re short, curly and blond—not long and red.”

  Emmaline grinned. “Even more rockin’. I always wanted to be a blonde, and now that I don’t have any eyelashes or eyebrows, no one will know I’m not!”