Free Sunset at Keyhole Canyon: A Mustang Ridge Novella by Jesse Hayworth Page B

convinced it shouldn’t be.
    “Ben?” Dean’s hail came from out in the hallway amid the pounding feet.
    “On my way,” he called back, and shoved to his feet. But as he headed back to work, there was little of the usual excitement. He was confident he could help the patients, but far less sure he could help himself. Not this time. Not with Nina.
    The surgery—his part of it, anyway—was intense, but didn’t take all that long, and the wall clock put it just shy of nine p.m. as he stripped off his gloves and gown, and emerged back into the muted hustle of his home turf. But where before the familiar space would have settled him, reminding him that he was exactly where he was supposed to be, doing what he was meant to do, now he sorely wished he was at Chester’s Barbecue with Nina. Or, better yet, back at the ranch, where things had been so much easier than they were out here in real life.
    But that was the point, wasn’t it? Vacation romances were one thing. Real relationships were another. Nina had known that all along. He could only hope she was willing to let him prove he knew it now, and was committed to doing the work. He wanted to believe she would give him that chance, that she would be willing to try. In the end, though, he just didn’t know, which put a leaden fist in his gut.
    Stopping at the first landline he came across, and not caring that he was out in the open, with busy figures in scrubs and lab coats eddying around him, he dialed an outside line and punched in her number, muttering under his breath, “Come on, baby, pick up. Please, pick up.”
    But it went straight to voice mail, like she had already put him on “Ignore.”
    Hating the clutch in his chest, the crushing disappointment that she might have already given up on him, on them, he headed for his office. It wasn’t too late, he told himself, not for tonight and not for them. He wouldn’t let it be. He’d go over to her place and talk to her, he decided as he pushed through the door into his office. And if she didn’t want to talk to him, then—
    He stopped dead in his office doorway, heart lurching at the scent of barbecue and the sight of Nina stretched out on the daybed, reading, with a Stetson and takeout arranged on the coffee table beside her.
    •   •   •
     
    Any last little doubts Nina might’ve had vanished the second he stepped through the door. An exquisite expression—of relief, delight, excitement—flooded his handsome face, mirroring everything she felt inside.
    Her heart gave a nervous flutter-flutter, just like it had when they had talked on the phone during the week, only a hundred times stronger. She wanted to jump up and run to him, hold him, touch him, do all the things she had missed doing since they left Mustang Ridge. Instead, suddenly shy, she set her book aside and stood, twining her fingers together. “Hey, there.”
    “Nina,” he said, voice rough with emotion. “You came.”
    “Yes. I, ah . . . I got some food for us. Barbecue. Figured you could use it after such a long day.”
    “Dinner’s nice, but what I really needed was you. And now you’re here.” He reached for her.
    And suddenly it was easy to go to him. She gave a little laugh, broke free, and lunged for him. He caught her, swept her up and held her against him as he whirled around. For a second she was back on the ranch, square dancing to Ty’s lively fiddle playing while she teetered on the edge of something huge and important. Then Ben held her away from him, grinning down at her, and she was very aware of their surroundings.
    There was no open sky, no huge mountains or patient mustangs waiting for the signal to ride out. In their place were cool blue walls, diplomas and books, in a décor that would’ve been cold and perfunctory if it hadn’t been for the framed photos of him with Cheryl and their parents. And, on his screen saver, the picture Traci had taken of the two of them on horseback, leaning in for a kiss