* * *

After dinner, JV insisted on helping Rebecca clean up, then she went out on the back porch to enjoy the cool evening air. Austin is warmer, and she thought it was early yet for it to be this cool, but temperatures in the mountains are always cooler than at the lower elevations. She stood, watching the last glimmer of the sunset thought the trees, hugging herself against the chill in the air. 

"Why are you really here?" Steve's voice behind her startled her. 

She tried to hide how badly he'd scared her as she turned to look at him. "I told you why I'm here." 

"I'm supposed to believe that you've been waiting for me to return to podunk Texas for the last ten years. Now, suddenly, you're tired of waiting and came looking for me." He scoffed, "I don't think so, there has to be more to it." 

"I don't know what to tell you." She looked away, turning back to the trees, not willing to tell him more, not yet.

He looked at her for a long minute, "How about the truth?"

"I've yet to say anything that's not true, to you, or your Khan or Karhyn."

"I don't believe you." 

"Fine, don't believe me. I can't make you see the truth,” she turned away, back to the trees.

"You really expect me to believe that you've been sitting, waiting for me to come back, for ten years?"

"No, not sitting and waiting. I tried to get on with my life, I went to college, graduated, got a job, more than one actually, and I built my business. I tried to forget. I almost succeeded. I'd half convinced myself I'd imagined the feeling." With the last sentence, her voice turned soft, distant. 

"Are you blaming me?" He sounded angry and JV wondered if maybe he blamed himself.

She was quiet for a moment, when she spoke again her voice was still soft, but no longer distant. "I did blame you, for a long time. I was angry and I wanted to hate you for leaving me like that. As time went by and I got older, I realized that at seventeen a ten-year age difference is a big deal. I was twenty-one when I realized I wasn't the same person I’d been at seventeen. I was still angry then." She looked at him again. "Over time, I came to realize that not only was it illegal, which I knew at the time, but didn't care about, but it was wrong as well. It took me even longer to realize you left as much for me as for you." 

She took a deep breath and let it out in a rush before continuing, "I'm embarrassed to admit it took me longer than it should have to understand that. I tried to build a life there, to find someone to settle down and build a life with. There was something missing, though. I couldn't get past that, no matter how hard I tried."

Steve stood there watching her. He looked at her face in the fading light as he tried to figure out what she wasn't telling him. He could tell there was something she was holding back, something big, but at the same time, he couldn't sense any lies. "What did your parents have to say about you coming out here after me?"

She looked at him a moment before looking away again, back toward the setting sun. "Nothing, they don't know I'm here." 

"Oh?" he seized the opening. "Afraid they wouldn't approve?"

She spun around. "Not at all. I have no doubt they would encourage me to do what makes me happy, but they would worry, and call, and drive me nuts."

"So where do they think you are?" his voice changed, softened some until he was talking to her as a friend, not some kind of suspect.

She shrugged. "On vacation, then headed to L.A. for an on-site job."

"Do you do that often?"

"Do what?" she glanced at him, confused.

"On-site jobs."

"Not often but, once in a while a big job comes up and they want me to go see things in person so I can set up the kind of site they need, with the feel they want."

"How about lying to your parents? Do you do that often?" He challenged her but his voice was still friendly. 

"Not often, and I probably didn't have to this time. I haven't lived in Tenaha for the last nine years, not since I left to go to school. I just didn't want the added distraction of them calling and worrying about me while I tried to focus on something."

"Something?" 

"You." She looked at him again, wondering what he would say next.

"Ah," he was silent for a moment as he moved toward her from the other end of the porch that ran the length of the cabin and around the side. "You know you're wasting your time, don't you?"

"I know you're stubborn and you're trying to convince me you don't feel it." She countered, not backing down. 

"What makes you think I feel anything?" 

"One," she flipped a finger into the air as she counted, "if you felt nothing, you wouldn't have left all those years ago." 

"I've already admitted that's why I left, but that was then. I 'm talking about now."

"Two," she continued as if he hadn't spoken. "If you really felt nothing, you wouldn't be trying so hard to get rid of me. You'd let me stay and find out on my own. Three, that wasn't the kiss of a man who feels nothing. That was the kiss of a man so hungry he couldn't stop himself without at least a taste." She turned on her heel and went back into the house, without giving him a chance to respond.