Nora caught her breath, momentarily disoriented. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”
“There are too many horses for the land provided. But that’s because the government is opening up all their grazing lands for fracking, for cattle, for minerals. So the mustangs have been crammed into a smaller space than can sustain them, and of course the native plants suffer. All the plants do. If we’d give them back their range, you wouldn’t see these kinds of impacts.”
“Well, sadly, I’m not able to give back their land. And, frankly, there won’t be too many native plants left if we keep the horses at the current population.”
“But the horses aren’t the real problem.”
She glared at him. “Todd, I know all this. But the fact is, at this time, the DRM has a certain amount of land allotted for the horses. And the native plants on that land are being destroyed. My job is to go in and study the damage. Once my study is finished, the department will use the data to figure out how many horses can be allowed to roam free.”
“And you didn’t feel bad signing on to this study knowing it’s based on a false premise? Because they’ve already taken away the horses’ normal rangeland?”
She bristled. “I was hired to do a study on their current range, and I’m doing that study.”
His voice was tinged with bitterness. “You never could get out of that scientific side of your head, could you? It’s all data and facts with you.”
“It’s not just that,” she protested.
“Well, what is it? The money?”
Nora’s stomach did a sticky, nauseating flip. “You didn’t just say that.” At least her rising outrage steadied her voice. “Some things never change.”
“What are you talking about?” Todd looked genuinely confused.
Was it really possible that he was this dense? “You have no right to judge me.”
“I’m not judging. I just think you’re working for the wrong side on this issue.”
The words were spinning like a tornado in her head, there were so many she wanted to throw at him. “How’s your family, Todd?” she spat out.
His eyes went wide. “What does my family have to do with anything?”
“Because they’re wealthy. You’re wealthy. And you sit there, safe in the lap of your moneyed family, and you judge people like me. People who need to have a regular job.”
“I’m not—”
She cut him off, spewing words that she’d wanted to say years ago. Back then she hadn’t had the courage. “Has it ever occurred to you that some of us need steady work to make a living? Or that jobs for a plant biologist aren’t easy to find? We don’t all have enough money in our trust funds to run off and work for free in the rain forest.”
Nora stood up, feeling shaky and sick. She shouldn’t have come here, shouldn’t have thought she’d have the self-control to keep the past in the past.
Understanding dawned in Todd’s eyes. But she didn’t want to hear his reasons why she was wrong. Or to feel the weight of his judgment for one more second. “I need to go. I’ve got to work early. To get some more of that money I’m in it for. Thanks for the drink.”
“Nora, hang on.” He stood up, too, leaned a little across the table with his hand out, palm open, as if pleading for her to stay.
“No.” She took a deep breath and forced herself to look right at him and end this conversation for good. “Look. It’s a strange coincidence that we ran into each other like we did, and that we’re in the same town. But that doesn’t mean we have to be friends. Let’s just agree to be polite and we’ll both be fine. I won’t be in Benson forever anyway.”
“But...”
“I’ll see you around, Todd.” There was all that old anguish in her—burning deep and low—that she didn’t want to feel and, most of all, didn’t want him to see.
Nora pushed through the double doors of the bar and into the summer night, inhaling the cool air with relief. She jumped into her Jeep and gunned the engine out of the parking lot, not stopping until she was outside town, until the streetlights were gone and the lights of Benson had faded and she could see every star, horizon to horizon.
She parked her car and stepped out, feeling the dry soil compress beneath her, letting the sensation ground her. Leaning against the driver’s-side door, she looked up at the glittering sky.
How was it possible that Todd had the power to make her crazy after all these years? She was a rational person. She always had been—except when it came to him.
He said he’d changed, but he was still the clueless rich kid who’d never had to struggle to put a roof over his head.
Nora took a deep breath of the clean air and let it out slowly. She just wanted all of her feelings about him to be gone. To live her life without the burden of her old, dusty love for him. Because, despite his ignorance, despite their differences, he still haunted her.
She kept the memories at bay during the daytime—she’d had years of practice at that. But at night he came to her in dreams so vivid that she woke in the morning genuinely shocked to open her eyes and find him not there.
And now he was here, as opinionated and idealistic and idiotic as ever. The guy she’d dreamed of, who’d never dreamed of her. And somehow she would have to figure out how to keep going forward and living her life, knowing Todd wasn’t just in her dreams anymore. He was in the machine shop in town, and at a ranch down the road. He was here in her hometown, judging her and finding her lacking.
Dreams were easy. They faded in the daylight. Reality was a lot more difficult.
TODD TURNED IN to the driveway of Marker Ranch, half wondering if Nora would be at the other end with a shotgun, ready to run him off her land. He probably deserved it after his lame comment about money last night.
He slowed his truck at the sight of the potholes in the dirt road that led slightly downhill. The road was in desperate need of work, and he wondered if he could get someone in here to grade it for Nora and Wade. Though they probably wouldn’t let him. Nora would tell him to take his rich-boy charity and shove it.
Not that he was rich these days.
He hit the brakes and eased his truck over a large bump in the road. He glanced at the broken fences lining the drive and the weed-choked pastures that on second glance seemed to be filled with...cars? He stopped his truck and looked around. All through the fields were the skeletons of rusted-out cars, trucks and a few tractors. Marker Ranch resembled a junkyard more than a cattle ranch.
He let out a low whistle. This place was beyond run-down. It was a crime to see land this poorly treated.
But apparently trashing things had been the Hoffman way of life. He’d done a little sleuthing at his shop this morning. It hadn’t been hard to get his customers to talk about Nora’s family. The Hoffmans were the stuff of local legend. A mother who’d left when Nora and Wade were still young, marrying their father’s best friend and fleeing to Europe with him to escape sentencing for fraud charges. A father who’d chosen a life of crime and swindled most of his neighbors at one time or another. People said he was hiding down in Mexico with the sons he’d dragged into his criminal ways.
And now Nora and Wade had come back to town to face all that history.
Todd felt heavy with the knowledge. He should have asked Nora more questions back in college, should have tried harder to win her trust and know her better. He’d had no idea how she’d grown up or what she’d