“Try going in the house instead,” Chance growled.
“Yup.” She could hear the grin in Lonnie’s voice. “I’ll do just that. Head right to my room too. See you both in the morning.”
Chuckling, he walked away, the shadows swallowing him up as he headed through the kitchen doorway.
“Our secret is out,” Chance said, looking back at her, his eyebrows waggling.
She smiled. “I wasn’t keeping it secret. Were you?”
“No reason to.”
Yes, she thought. There probably was no reason to keep it from anyone if it wasn’t serious.
Chapter 16
“Do you like being alone?” Libby asked as they lay in bed after another round of lovemaking. Chance just could not get enough of her, and that scared him along with the question she was asking.
Truth was, he didn’t like to be alone. It was why he traveled with Lonnie and gave the man a key to his house. Hell, he’d even contemplated getting a dog and taking it on the road with him, but he figured it wouldn’t be fair to the dog—but it would relieve the loneliness that swamped him at the oddest moments, the knowledge that no one in the world cared a fig about him.
Oh, there were rodeo fans who asked for an autograph and wanted to pose with you for a picture. But that connection was fleeting and based on your accomplishments, not who you were deep inside. No one knew who he was deep inside. Libby had come closer than anyone once and decided not to stay around. He’d changed some since then, but he was basically that same scared kid who wondered if he’d live another day and if anyone would care if he didn’t.
But he no longer carried anger inside him at the hand he’d been dealt—money had a way of easing that. He no longer cared what others thought of him. Again, money helped to cure that. But deep, deep inside he still wondered what was so lacking in him that no one could love him. Really love him. Not the infatuation that Libby professed then and now, an infatuation that seemed to have more to do with rebelling against her father than with him.
Did he like being alone? Hell no.
“It has its benefits.” Like no one asking that question.
“Guess you get to do whatever you want, whenever you want.” She shifted in the bed and laid her head on his shoulder, her silky hair sliding across his skin. “No one to answer to.”
“That’s one of them.”
“I hate being alone. I think it has to do with losing my mother. Having people around reassures me that I’m not going to lose anyone. Like when there’s a big snow forecasted, I’m on pins and needles until Doug and my dad are home, and then I could care less if it snowed and snowed, as long as they are there, safe with me.”
“Losing your mom was tough, I know.” Of course, he’d never had a mother to lose because he didn’t count the woman who birthed him and then stayed drunk most of her waking hours. A woman he had to take care of more than she ever took care of him.
“Do you wonder about your mother?” She nestled her body closer to his, but no amount of warmth would relieve the coldness he felt at that question.
“No.” Especially after she’d tried to contact him once he’d acquired some money on the rodeo circuit. Made him regret not changing his name.
“I didn’t realize that my mother and your mother went to school together.”
He had. Their mothers were the same age and grew up in their hometown. Of course it was likely they had known each other. But Libby wouldn’t have known how old his mother was because he had never told her. “How did you figure that out?”
“My daddy told me. He knows her. I think he may know where she is.”
Chance’s heart rate sped up. He sat up, shifting Libby away from his body. “Well, he can just keep that knowledge to himself. She tried to contact me once. No doubt needing some money. I’m not interested in renewing acquaintance with a woman who walked out on her ten-year-old son and left him to a man who had no right to be called a father.”
“Chance, I—”
Chance could feel the old anger swelling in his belly. “I’m going to get some air.”
*
Libby set the plate of griddle cakes down in front of the two men—who were yammering away about rodeo stats, good rides, and whom they had to beat—and Billy, who had stopped in to chat with his favorite rodeo riders.
She’d never seen Chance so animated as when he was talking rodeo. This was what he loved. Not a person—a sport. Maybe because the sport had been truer to him than any person had.