“I’ve been busting my ass nonstop for a year to try to make this work. I know I hired you to help, but it seems you spend more time questioning me than anything.”
“Maybe if you’d answer the questions, I’d stop asking them.”
“What’s the question this time?” She asks, but I doubt she’ll answer the one I’m going to ask.
“What’s your end game?”
“My end game?” she asks, that fire of hers faltering momentarily.
“Yeah, your end game. What is it you hope to get out of this? Make the ranch successful and sell it off? Make it profitable and live out your days here with a new husband and the two point five kids? Walk away in a month without a glance backward? What?”
Confusion flickers across her face followed by determination, but she doesn’t respond.
“You ever run a breeding ranch before? Have you ever even been to one before Fletcher bought this one?” I ask, switching gears.
“What’s your point?” Her hands are on her hips, and her lip is curled up in anger.
“How’d you learn to do all of this?” I point to the pasture beyond the stable and to the feed scoop in her hand. “If you never learned how to do all this, then how do you plan on succeeding?”
“He taught me a few things. Others I picked up from watching the hands we had. Some from research on the internet. I’m doing the best that I can.”
“How do you know you’re doing it right?” I push.
There it is . . . the look I knew she’d give me.
Insecurity, nice to fucking meet you. I’ve been waiting for you to show, waiting for her to acknowledge that you’re why she’s continually sabotaging my success.
So I push harder.
“Just how do you know you’re doing it right? Is it Fletcher’s fault you weren’t more prepared? Will it be his fault if this ranch fails? Will it, in part, be his achievement if it doesn’t?”
“I’ve got work to do.” She glares at me.
“It was Fletcher’s dream, wasn’t it?” I ask, ignoring her comment.
“This conversation has nothing to do with him.”
“Doesn’t it?” I chuckle and push her buttons again. “He brought you here and then screwed you over. No one would blame you for walking away. No one would blame you if the ranch failed. Hell, sell off the horses and give them a better life on some other ranch and you can move on.”
She growls out in frustration, and when I smile at her response, I swear to god she balls up her hands to punch me.
At least that would be more cathartic than screaming under water.
Does she not see what I see?
“You gave up your dream to chase his, didn’t you?” I take a step closer, and the fisting of her hands doesn’t relent. “Photography, right? You gave up all that creativity you thrived on to live this lifestyle. I bet that wasn’t part of the bargain when you moved here. I bet that wasn’t something you thought would happen.”
“Him dying wasn’t part of the bargain either, but it happened,” she says with a chill to her voice. “And you don’t get to waltz into my life and act as if you know what’s best for me and for my horses.”
There you are, Tate. Good to see you again.
“You invited me in, though, didn’t you?” My smile is mocking.
“Let’s get something straight.” She jabs her finger in my direction. “I don’t have to explain to you that this sure as hell was his dream, not mine. Not in the least. But after every single thing I’ve been through, maybe I want to prove to myself—to my parents, who wrote me off; to the judgmental cows in town, who do nothing but talk shit; to my dead husband, who screwed me over—that I’m nothing like they think I am. That I can succeed. That I can make this place what he never could. Then maybe, just maybe, everything I lost in the process might have been worth it.”
Our eyes hold and question and challenge before she turns back to the grain in front of her. But all she does is grip the edge of the counter and breathe in the truth she just allowed herself to voice.
My voice is soft when I speak to her back. “Don’t look now, Knox, or you might stop questioning yourself and realize you’ve kept this place afloat. You. Not Fletcher. Not the people in town. Not your parents. You. So, the next time someone asks you to defend what you’re doing, stand behind it. Don’t let them tell you you’re wrong, even if you’re secretly questioning if you are. You own this place now. You’ve been running it. You fucking defend it.” I take another step closer and give a quick shake of my head she can’t see. “You want to fight? You want to go scream in the deep end of your pool? Be my fucking guest. But remember who you are. Remember that this is your dream now and you’re going to fight like hell for it.” I take a step back. “I’ve got work to do.”
12
TATE
Discord still rides like a tidal wave through me as I stalk my ass down to the bunkhouse. It has been this way all afternoon, ever since Jack told me to keep standing my ground.
For the first time in forever, I swear to God something other than despair fills me. I’m not quite sure what it is, but I’ll take it.
If giving Jack Sutton what he wants will help prolong this feeling, then I’ll do just that, I’ll give him everything I have. I’ll kill him with kindness in the form of breeding schedules and bloodline histories on our horses.
“Jack!” I shout as I approach the bunkhouse, a box full of enough binders and spreadsheets that his eyes will cross after studying them heavy in my arms. “Jack!” I kick the front of his door before setting the box down on the porch.
“Yeah?” he calls from somewhere on the side of the house.
And right as I turn the corner to go tell him what I’ve left for him, I run smack dab into him. Since he had been jogging toward me when we collided, he knocks me backward with his momentum.
I land on my back with a thud.
And he lands right on top of me.
Every long, lean, hard, shirtless inch of him.
The strangled cry that comes from my mouth has so much more to do with the assault on my senses than the shock of our collision.
“Well, shit.” He laughs in that easy manner of his that tugs on the latent desire in me I want to ignore as it vibrates through his chest into mine.
“Oh. Sorry. I mean—”
Then a split second after he pushes off me and before I can sit up, he squats beside me, eyes intense. “I guess that’s as good of an apology as any,” he says with that lopsided, boyish smile of his.
“Apology?”
“Relax, Knox.” He clasps my hand in his to help pull me up. “I was teasing you.”
“Yes. Of course. I, uh . . .” I forget what I was going to say because he’s standing there shirtless and I want to look but don’t want to admit that I want to look . . . “Yeah. That.”
“That?” He chuckles as he runs a hand through his hair, each and every one of his muscles, which I’m not supposed to be noticing, are suddenly impossible not to look at. “What’s that?”
I clear my throat and point to the box on his porch he can’t see, his shirtless torso distracting me more than I’d like to admit. “That’s it. The box, I mean. It’s what you asked for.”