Run To You

me?”
    Stella wasn’t making sense. “Who?”
    “Sadie.”
    “Sadie?” He moved to stand in front of her and looked deep into her blue eyes. They were still wide and a little out of focus. “This is about Sadie?”
    She nodded and took another deep breath.
    “Why wouldn’t she like you?”
    “I annoy people sometimes,” she said on a big exhale. “I annoyed you.”
    “That’s just because I wanted to touch your butt and couldn’t.”
    “Seriously?” She licked her red lips and took a drink. “Are you just saying that to be nice?”
    “No, I’m not just trying to be nice. And yes, you have a seriously nice butt.” He gave her a reassuring smile and said, “Tell me about Texas.”
    A white minivan drove past on the exit while vehicles on the interstate filled the air with tire noise. She raised her free hand to her bare throat and confessed, “I’m afraid to go to Texas, and I didn’t tell you because you’re not afraid of anything.”
    She was wrong. He was looking at his biggest fear. Into the blue eyes and pretty face of a temptation so strong he’d given in rather than fight it. He’d broken the rules with her. Behaved less than honorably. “You’re one of the strongest women I know.” He’d never broken his own rules, at least not three at the same time.
    “I’m not.” Her hand slid down her tan throat to just above her heart and Beau’s gaze followed. “What if I get there and Sadie can see I’m not good enough?”
    His gaze flew to hers. “Not good enough? She doesn’t even know you.”
    She closed her eyes tight and clenched her hand over her heart. “That came out wrong. I mean . . . I mean . . .” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “Our father didn’t like me. He never wanted to have anything to do with me. What if I meet her and she’s like him? What if she’s like Clive? What if she takes one look at me and doesn’t want to know me?”
    “She wants to see you.” He cupped her cheeks in his palms. “She sent me to find you. Remember?”
    She swallowed hard. “One time my father came to New Mexico. I thought he wanted to see me. I thought . . . I don’t know. That he cared about me. He brought me porcelain horses and cowboy boots. I think I was ten or eleven. I don’t know. He stayed for about an hour and I was so happy. So—happy.” Her voice broke but she didn’t cry. “I thought he finally cared about me.” She shook her head. “That’s so pathetic. Worse, I even remember what he was wearing. I remember how tall he looked when he walked out the door, and I remember that I waved but he didn’t look back. Watching him leave broke my heart. I didn’t know it would be the last time I ever saw him.”
    Beau had no idea what to say. He had no idea what to do to take the pain out of Stella’s eyes. Anger worked its way up his spine. He felt like a kid again when he’d find his mother crying in her bed or on the floor in the closet. He felt helpless.
    “Then I found out he didn’t come that day to see me because he cared or even liked me. He came because he was at a horse auction in the area and he felt obliged to stop by. He just happened to be in Las Cruces and felt an obligation to check in with my mother. Just a meaningless obligation, like the trust fund.”
    Beau knew how to survive in the desert or at the North Pole. He knew what to do if he was stranded in the middle of the ocean or pinned down by insurgents. With Stella, he was totally out of his element and had been since the night he’d walked into Ricky’s and seen her in little leather shorts and Amy Winehouse wig.
    “What if Sadie just feels an obligation like Clive? What if she walks back out of my life just as easily as her father?”
    Beau slid his hands through her hair to the back of her head and tilted her pretty face up to him. He’d broken his rules with her. Since the day she’d run to him with her backpack and duffel, the lines had blurred. The mission got fuzzy. “I won’t let that happen.”
    “How?”
    He didn’t know, and instead of answering, he lowered his mouth and kissed her. On the side of the interstate in northeast Louisiana. Where rules and honor got fuzzy and nothing made sense. Nothing but her red lips pressed to his.

Chapter Eleven
    S tella stood in the dirt driveway of a white clapboard house and stared at the big double doors with an H burned into the wood like it had been branded. Dogs barked somewhere in the distance, and the bright setting