I am, but I bite my tongue and try to hide it. “And he is?”
“I’m here to help get everything done.” He tips his hat my way and grins as if his baby face weren’t smeared with dirt and his jeans weren’t speckled with remnants of hay.
“Everything?” I repeat, looking at Will before turning back to Jack. “You didn’t have me approve—”
“He said you’d be mad,” Will interjects, making Jack fight a grin.
“He did, did he?” My hands are on my hips as I lift my eyebrows at Jack. He just smirks, his dimple showing, and crosses his arms over his chest.
“He did.” Will takes a few steps toward me as he stutters over what to say. “But I’m a hard worker, and he hired me on a temp basis. I’m new in town so I don’t know anything about anything and—”
“And Jack told you to say that?” I ask.
“No,” Sylvester says as he takes a step forward, always the peacekeeper. “I did.” He nods, slow and steady. “He’s a good kid, Tate. He needed some work. We needed some help so I told Jack about him.”
I meet all three pairs of eyes, feeling as if I just walked into a planned intervention and hate the feeling.
“Jack.” His name is a command as I nod at Will and Sylvester before walking away, expecting him to follow.
His footsteps fall behind me, and I wait until we’re out of earshot before I turn to face him.
“This isn’t a power play, Knox,” he says before I can get a word out.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” He leans his ass against the railing at his back and hooks the heel of one boot in the bottom rung. Willow walks around behind him, nudging his shoulder, and he absently puts a hand up to rub the underside of her neck as his eyes lock on mine. “This isn’t a power play. I’m not trying to assert my dominance or take your place or, god forbid, know what I’m doing.”
“That isn’t what I was thinking.”
He smiles with a soft shake of his head. “Yes, it was.” There is something in his eyes I can’t place, and it doesn’t make me uncomfortable, but it . . . it makes me feel as if he actually cares. “You’re sexy when you’re angry. You know that?”
“What did you say?” I ask, his words throwing me for a loop.
“You heard me.” His tongue darts out to wet his lips.
“Look, Sutton.” He lifts a lone brow, but I smirk. Two can play this game. “I married a man who tried to deflect me with his charm. I won’t fall for it again.”
That has the flirt melting away from his expression. “Watch it, Knox. I told you not to compare me to your husband.”
I snort. “How can I not? You hired a man without even asking me if it was okay and then try to flirt with me so I drop it.”
“Last I checked, I am the ranch manager.”
“And I’m the owner.”
We wage a battle of visual wills as the humidity thickens in the air around us. Sylvester laughs in the distance. There’s a clatter of something against a trough. Willow brays behind Jack.
But we just stand in the paddock with the world moving on around us while I try to remind myself that I’m learning to trust him.
“There’s nothing I’m going to do here that will harm this ranch.”
“Trust is hard for me,” I murmur. “Letting more people in to judge me, to gossip about me.” I bite the inside of my lip as he pushes off the rail and takes a step toward me. “It’s happened before.”
“And you fired them.” Jack angles his head to the side, his voice gentle, his features soft. Those chocolate-colored eyes of his try to understand, and where I expect to find judgment, I see compassion. “You have to start somewhere.”
I nod, not trusting my voice to break and betray how nervous the idea makes me.
“We’re coming into season. Will is helping me get everything up to speed, checking each of the mares and charting them for me as well as helping with all the day-to-day tasks. It’s a busy time, and we’re already behind the eight ball.”
“I know but—” I try to find the right words when I already know them but pride is getting in the way of letting me say them. “I can’t afford—”
“He’s interning,” Jack says. “He is studying at the junior college and needs some hours for hands-on experience. I told him if he does a good job, then maybe this can become something more. By then, we should have more of a steady income, foals on the way, and I can train him to take my place when I leave.”
When I leave.
It’s no surprise that Jack has a contract with an expiration date on it or a life to return to . . . but, somehow, he’s become an everyday normal in the short time he’s been here.
“Thank you.” I hate the sudden vulnerability I feel, and my temper riots to combat it. “You still should have cleared it with me.”
He chews the inside of his cheek, his stare his only response.
“Jack?” Will calls from somewhere in the stables. “When you get a minute, can I ask you a few questions?”
“Be right there,” Jack says over his shoulder. “He’s a good kid, Knox. Not everyone’s out to fuck you over . . . especially not me.”
I nod because the want to trust, the want to believe, the need to be able to do both feel so foreign after being so guarded for so damn long.
Jack begins to walk past me but stops so that my shoulder and arm are against the front of his chest. When he leans closer to me, the mint on his breath hits my nose. “I use charm to deflect your temper. Subdue it,” he murmurs. “Not to deflect the truth. I won’t lie to you, and I sure as hell won’t screw you over.” He takes a step back and tips his hat, grin slowly sliding back onto those lips of his. “Well, not unless you want me to.”
And just like that, Jack Sutton wins me back over in a way no one ever has, by calming my temper and by soothing the insecurities planted by the hand of someone else.
17
TATE
“Fiona?” I stare at her standing on the verandah as if she owns the place, and my feet falter.
I don’t have anyone visit for months, and in one day, I have Jack and Sylvester bring the new kid Will in and now Fiona has shown up.
“I know I did not do that hair of yours so it could be thrown up in a pony like that and forgotten about.” She puts her hands on her hips in contempt, but her bright pink lips curl into a smile. “Come take a break for a few minutes and keep me company.”
I know I should get to work since my ride already ate up two hours of my productivity, but I know there is no way I’m going to forgo visiting with her.
Before my boots finish clomping on the stairs, she has her arms around me and a shrill laugh is filling my ears.
“Look at you. You have color in your cheeks for the first time in forever.” She steps back and moves her sunglasses off her nose so she can look closer at me. “Hmmm.”
“Hmmm?” I laugh. “That’s all you’re going to say to me?”
“For now, yes.”
“Take a seat . . .” My voice trails off when I notice the porch chairs have been suspiciously turned from their normal position looking at the scenery to be facing the stables. “Fi?”