Stacia blows out a hard breath and it moves the long side sweep of bangs that touch her chin. “What did he do now?”
I laugh. “I can see why you’d ask that. He’s a bit of a firecracker.” I pull out the business card I tucked in my back pocket when I got dressed this morning. “I’m Dakota Wright. I work for a development company looking to buy some property on the edge of town.”
A guarded look creeps into her eyes, but I’m expecting it. In some places, people get excited at the idea of development, even call it progress. In other places, development represents change, and that’s a bad thing.
“I’ve been put in charge of coming up with how the land can be used. And I’m not interested in coming into Sierra Grande and acting like I know what should be built based on what it looks like you all are missing.” Waylon’s Starbucks comment comes to mind. “I’d like to hear from people who live here about what they’d like to see added to their town. Hopefully, my interests and the town’s interests align.”
I don’t want to over-promise and under-deliver, so I add that last part for insurance. I can’t agree to build a one-room schoolhouse that teaches underwater basket weaving, even if it’s voted on unanimously by the entire town of Sierra Grande.
Stacia glances at the woman whose nails she’s doing. They have a short conversation with their eyes. When she looks back to me, her gaze is a little less guarded. “This is Ashley,” she motions toward the woman with her head. “She’s hosting a book club tonight. It would probably be a good place for you to come and get some ideas.”
My hands clap together in my enthusiasm. Maybe it’s not very professional, but I’m genuinely excited to add something beneficial to this town. “Yes, perfect. Thank you.”
I take out my phone and type in Ashley’s address, then tell them both that I’ll be there at seven.
With a wave at Stacia, I go back through the door and over to the coffee shop to find Jericho and Wes. Maybe Jericho has entranced him already with her spiked heels and tight skirt. Honestly, it might be better for me if she has. I can’t afford to let down my guard with him. I need to have a professional relationship with Wes, not a personal one.
The sight that greets me in the coffee shop causes a tickle of laughter in my throat, but I cover it up with a cough. Jericho sits with her legs crossed at the ankles, elbows bent and perched on the table, and she’s leaning forward. A hundred bucks says her stance is making her blouse fall open just enough, and it’s by design. Wes leans back against his chair, one booted foot crossed over his other leg in a figure four. There’s a cup of coffee in front of him, probably black because I can’t imagine him ordering something with milk or syrup.
I walk toward them, doing my damnedest to ignore the flutter of relief in my stomach. Jericho and Wes could excuse themselves for some alone time in the bathroom, for all I care.
Right?
Yes, totally. I wouldn’t care at all.
“Hi,” I chirp, dragging over a chair from the empty table beside theirs.
Jericho straightens her body and her shirt. “How did that go?”
“It went well. I got an invite to a book club meeting tonight. Hopefully it will give me enough ideas to roll with.”
“Look at you, making friends all over this place.” He sounds sarcastic, and maybe even a smidge jealous.
“What can I say, I’m a friendly gal.”
“I’m aware.” Wes’s gaze drills into me. Those two words are like the tip of an iceberg, the tiny amount that shows above the water's surface. When it comes to me, Wes is aware of so much more. Not just my body, either, though he became intimately acquainted with that, too. No, in the darkest hours of that night, I told Wes how I’d been wanting to go home, how I’d hurt my parents by leaving. That’s when he opened the door into his heart just a crack and showed me the pain that lives inside him.
Pain I can see is still residing in his eyes, though his face doesn’t look haunted, the way it did that day when I spotted him sitting by himself. That was back when everything was fresh and new, the wound not yet scabbed over. Maybe now, all he has left are scars.
And I know a thing or two about scars on a heart.
I rip my gaze away from his. “You two all set? I need to get my car, Wes. I have work to do before tonight.”
Wes and Jericho stand, and when we get out front into the sunshine, Jericho tells me she’ll let me know if our bid gets chosen among the others. She says it in this annoying way, like Wright Design + Build doesn’t have a shot in hell. I know she’s fielding other buyers, and I wonder who they are and what they’re offering.
“When are you meeting the other buyers?” I ask Wes when we’re in his truck.
He glances at me. “Next week. Nobody flew out here so quickly to see us the way you and your dad did.”
“I’m the only one-night stand popping up from the woodwork to buy your property?” I can’t help the jab. I’m feeling prickly after Jericho insinuated she doesn’t think I’ll win the bid.
Wes gives me a hard look. It’s the first time either of us has openly said what happened. “No,” he murmurs, his tone incongruent to the expression on his face.
My eyebrows lift. “No? I’m not the only one? There are more?” A stab of jealousy slices through me.
“I wouldn’t call you a one-night stand.” He says it like he’s angry.
My arms fold in front of my chest. “What else would you call it?”
He looks like he’s about to say something, but then he shuts down, as if someone somewhere flipped a switch. The truck shifts into drive and he takes us out of town, and as we pass the point where the scrubby bushes kiss the pines, it hits me.
Wes is a cowboy prince, tucked away up here in his log and stone castle. What is it he’s hiding from?
9
Wes
She’s only a few feet away, sitting in the passenger seat of my truck, but she may as well have a force field around her. Untouchable. Unreachable.
And yet, against every cell in my brain issuing caution, I want to reach out. Hold her. Touch her. Kiss her the way I did that evening in the lake, with an urgency that propelled us to seek a bedroom.
We’re winding our way around the mountain, and pretty soon we’ll be back at the homestead, and I’m dying to say something. I can feel the hurt and fury coming off her in waves, two emotions she has every right to feel.
I need to make her feel better, I can’t stand knowing she’s sitting over there hurt because of my inability to handle my shit. I take a deep breath and start.
“You wore a short jean skirt. Your legs were tanned and looked like they could’ve been carved from sandstone. You danced with your friends and laughed. You were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and it hit me that you were the reason I re-upped each time my four years were over. So people like you could keep living, keep fucking up, keep being human.” My stomach turns over as I talk, the sensation of releasing these thoughts so foreign it feels like they should belong to someone else. “You weren’t just a one-night stand, Dakota.”
You were so much more, and you terrified me. I can’t bring myself to say it out loud. She’s smart enough to put it all together, to take what I said and fill in the cracks with the words I cannot say.