Promise Me Forever - Maggie Dallen Page 0,1

ranch might belong to her family, but the stables were where he belonged. She couldn’t stay here forever and he wouldn’t want her to. She deserved to go off to college and to chase after all those dreams she’d been telling him about.

No one deserved it more.

“There’s nothing to say,” he said.

He heard her boots crunching on the dirt and straw that covered the ground. She stopped just behind him. “Then don’t say anything.”

Her voice was pleading and his heart was breaking. He should never have let it go this far. He’d always known she’d leave. This had always been a dead-end relationship. He kept his back to her, not quite ready to face her. “Don’t say anything?” He tried to force a teasing tone and failed. “This from the girl who’s always telling me I don’t talk enough.”

He’d half expected her to come back with a quip. Alice always gave as good as she got. When she didn’t speak, he finally turned.

Then he wished he hadn’t. The look in her eyes…oh mercy, he couldn’t see that look and not want to pull her into his arms. Even cast in shadows, he could see the hurt in her expression; she looked so miserable it broke his heart all over again.

But then she took a step closer and into the light. He groaned at the sight of tears ready to spill over. “Alice, please don’t—”

Her kiss stunned him completely. He froze even as his body caught on fire in response to her sweet but passionate kiss. She stilled, too, and they were standing there with her lips pressed to his for a heartbeat too long.

Finally, he pulled away, spinning around to collect his wits.

“James, I—”

“Don’t,” he interrupted. He hadn’t meant to sound so harsh but his tight grip on control and willpower was being tested like it had never been before. Her kiss made him want more. So much more. It was a brief taste of what could have been.

Of what would never be.

Not just because she was too young. In many ways she was more mature than most thirty-year-olds he knew. Besides, she’d grow up, too. That tended to happen over time. Soon enough it would be perfectly acceptable for them to date. By the town’s standards, at least.

Her brothers? Not so much.

The thought of Dax and their eldest brother, Cole, brought him back to his senses, and just in time. The Decklands had brought him into their home when he was little more than a kid himself. Before he’d passed away, their father had given him a part-time job and a roof over his head while he finished up school after his own father abandoned him.

His mother hadn’t been in the picture for as long as he could remember.

After high school, they’d kept him on. By that point, he was practically one of the family.

Practically.

Close enough to enjoy their friendships and warmth, but still an outsider.

He finally turned back to face a stricken Alice.

Definitely not good enough for their little sister. Not that they would openly say so, but it was understood. Well, he understood it, at least, even if she didn’t.

But she would. One day she would.

She blinked up at him now, those big blue eyes of hers filled with such youthful optimism, such hope and such love. Those eyes belied everything he’d just told himself about her maturity. She was still a young girl, who’d never seen anything of the world. She’d hardly left this ranch. Neither had he, but then, he didn’t hope to.

But she did. She had dreams and ambitions and all those other luxuries that someone with a strong family to support them was allowed.

“We can’t do this, Alice.” He tried to keep his voice even, his tone gentle, but that didn’t stop her from flinching as though he’d struck her.

She stumbled back a step. “But I thought—”

“We’re friends, Al. Just friends.” He used her childhood nickname, more as a reminder to himself than anything else. Because she was too tempting by far with those big, soulful eyes, and that heart that she wore on her sleeve.

She blinked rapidly and a tear slipped over the edge. His heart clenched in response. He didn’t want to hurt her. He’d never wanted to hurt her. But it would hurt her more if he clung to her and held her back. It would be brutally painful a year or two from now when she realized the inevitable truth—that she could do better than him. That she deserved