“That’s right.” She nodded. “I assume you’ve been here since I left.”
“Besides the occasional vacation, this is it for me.” I’d work here, live here and, God willing, die here too.
“Ever get married?” I asked, for no other reason than I wanted to know.
Maybe most women would take offense to the blunt question, but not Gemma. She faced me and leaned a hip against the counter. “No. You?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Not presently.” I took a sip of my beer, drinking in the liquid and her gorgeous hazel eyes. “I don’t have time for a girlfriend.”
“Because you’re so busy with work.”
“Yeah. As the assistant manager,” I muttered.
She threw her head back and laughed, the musical sound stirring something in my chest. Making the urge to stand even stronger.
Gemma set her wine aside to snap some pasta in half and put them in a pot of boiling water. Then she crossed the room, floating with an easy grace, to curl up in the chair beside the couch. “What’s happening with the ranch these days?”
“Same old. We’re always wishing for rain and good cattle prices. The resort has grown these past few years—Kat gets a lot of credit for that—which adds a level of complexity. More staff, more guests, more problems. But we’re getting into a good groove. Mostly, my headaches come from men with the last name Greer.”
“Jake and JR.”
“Yeah.” It wasn’t something I’d confided to anyone but Cash in so many words. But talking with Gemma, despite how she frustrated and baited me, was surprisingly easy. She listened. She wouldn’t play mediator like my family members and try to fix the problem.
Sometimes, all I really wanted was a person who listened.
“They don’t want to let go,” I said. “And I wish I could say I didn’t understand, but when a place is your whole life, when you’ve given it everything year after year, I get it. It’s just . . .”
“It’s your turn.”
“I want to build upon their legacy. I want to take the ranch and the resort a step further and be able to give that to the next generation. It’s hard when they don’t want to let go. When no one bothers to ask your opinion and when you make a decision, it’s under a microscope.”
“Makes sense. When I sold my company, the new owners asked me if I’d stay on for a year and act as interim CEO. But I knew I’d hate it. I wasn’t going to answer to someone else’s rules when I’d been making them for so long.”
“So what would you do if you were me?”
She ran a finger around the rim of her glass. “I don’t think you want my answer.”
No, I was pretty sure I did. “Tell me.”
“If this was my home, if this was my family, I’d thank my lucky stars that I had a grandfather and a father who were still trying to give what they have to offer because they’d rather die than see me fail.”
“Well, fuck.”
Gemma laughed. “I told you that you didn’t want my answer.”
“No, you’re right.” I sighed. “You’re completely right and I hate it.” Because I wasn’t going to fail. And if I did, they’d be there to pick me up.
“I can empathize where you’re coming from,” she said. “And in your shoes, I’d feel the same. But you’re talking to someone whose mother thought the next generation was there to service her boyfriends when they’d grown bored with her.”
The beer bottle nearly slipped from my fingers. “What?”
“I don’t know why I said that.” Gemma flew out of the chair and returned to the kitchen.
She left me speechless while she ran.
But this time, Boston wasn’t an option. And in a cabin of this size, there just wasn’t far for her to go.
Was this her coping mechanism? She shut down and shut people out. She shoved them away. Was that why she’d left eleven years ago? Because I’d made her feel? Because here, she’d have a family who wouldn’t have let her brush the past under a rug. Had she been hiding in her work ever since?
I set my bottle aside and walked to the kitchen as she furiously stirred the simmering sauce. “Gemma.”
“Please forget I said that.”
I crowded in close and tucked that lock of hair behind her ear. “Can’t do that, darlin’.”
She set the spoon down and looked at me with pleading eyes. “I don’t like to talk about my mother or that part of my life. I spent years in therapy, and on my last session, I swore I didn’t need to talk about it again. I really don’t know why that slipped out.”
“We don’t have to talk about it.” My hand fit perfectly around the nape of her neck. “But I’m here if you change your mind.”
“Thanks.” The tension eased from her shoulders as I skimmed my thumb over the skin beneath her ear.
I’d only meant to touch her for a second. To show her I was here and nothing more. But there was no such thing as a touch when it came to this woman. A zing raced beneath my skin. Electricity crackled between us and that pull, the gravity that surrounded her, sucked me right in. My hand trailed down her spine and her lips were so close that all I had to do was take them.
Gemma shivered, leaning in to my touch, as her gaze dropped to my mouth. Her tongue darted out and wet her bottom lip.
Then the pot of noodles boiled over. The hiss of the water hitting the burner broke us apart.
I dropped my hand and took a step back as Gemma fumbled for the dial to shut off the gas.
“This is probably about ready,” she said.
“I’ll set the table.” And take a minute to get my head on straight.
Christ, I should have stayed on the couch.
The plates weren’t in the same cupboard where Grandma had always kept them, and the silverware was in a different drawer. Admitting that Gemma’s layout of the kitchen was more functional would only confirm out loud that she was fitting in, making this place her home, so I kept it to myself.
I heaped a pile of noodles onto my plate and smothered them in sauce and dug in. “This is great.”
“It’s actually your mother’s recipe.”
“Sauce from a jar with some embellishments? She tried to teach me but I never get the embellishments right and end up with just sauce from the jar.”
Gemma smiled, twirling a string of noodles around her fork. “When I was here before, your mom was covering for the cook one day. There was this nasty cold running around, so there weren’t many of us to feed. Londyn, Katherine and I were healthy—I always thought the junkyard gave us immune systems of steel—so we went to the kitchen to help her.”
I leaned back in my chair, taking her in as she spoke because she captivated that kind of attention.
You set your silverware down for a woman like Gemma Lane.
“She taught us how to make her spaghetti,” she said. “It was the first time anyone had ever taught me to cook.”
“It’s delicious. As good as hers. Do you cook often?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I worked. And it’s sort of depressing to cook for one person every night.”