“You gonna tear that old barn down anytime soon?” Case asked after he’d shoveled in most of his chili.
They leaned back in the oversize chairs that Erik had bought from a woodcrafter in Gillette, their boot heels propped on the wood rail in front of them. “Sometime this summer, maybe.” The barn was the only structure still standing from when Erik had bought the property four years earlier.
He could have helped Matt run the Double-C. The Clay family ranch was the largest one in the state. But Erik had wanted something to call his own. “Gotten sort of used to looking at it.” That, or he was starting to get lazy. He always had plenty of other things around the ranch to keep him busy, anyway. Chores never stopped in his business. And now his heifers were starting to calve. Another month, and there’d be more calves to deal with. Plus, he wanted to get started on the addition to his house.
The work went on and on. But it was the life he’d chosen. And the life he loved.
Casey yawned and slouched down in the chair another few inches. “So what’re you gonna do about the window?”
Erik grimaced. “Haven’t decided.”
“Jessica’d make you another one.”
“She thought I was getting ready to propose,” Erik reminded. He still could hardly wrap his head around it. They hadn’t even been serious. At least, that was what he’d thought. “Last month, after the whole window incident, she told me to eat glass and die.” The window had been a heartfelt gift intended to pave the way for their future. She’d said a whole lot more when Erik had had to tell her how he felt—or didn’t feel—but what still made Erik feel bad were the tears in her eyes when she’d said it. He didn’t make a habit of hurting women like that, and he wished he could undo those few months of seeing her altogether. She hadn’t been a nutcase. She’d been a perfectly nice woman. But that hadn’t meant he’d been even remotely thinking marriage, now or way the hell off in the future.
And she’d flatly refused to take back the window. He hadn’t wanted it. So he’d contacted the church.
“Women think about marriage all the time, I hear.”
He blinked away the image of Isabella Lockhart that kept swimming into his head. He’d told Jess he wasn’t looking for a wife. He wasn’t all that interested in looking for a girlfriend, either.
And hookin’ up for a night or two with a woman raising an angry kid like that Murphy of hers just didn’t seem right. No matter how pretty she was.
He looked over when his cousin yawned again. “Keeping you up here?”
“Been up late all week working on a project.”
His cousin worked for Erik’s dad, Tristan, out at Cee-Vid. The company designed and manufactured computer games, and had made Erik’s dad a millionaire several times over. But Erik had grown up knowing the business was still a cover for what his dad really was. An intelligence expert. And even though Erik and Case never discussed it, he figured his cousin’s “projects” more likely involved Erik’s dad’s true calling than the computer games.
“Be glad Jessica lives over in Gillette,” Case had continued. “You won’t run into her unless you make the effort.” He pulled his boots off the rail and sat up. “Pretty as your face is, I’m headin’ home.”
“Wash that bowl,” Erik said. “I’m pretty but I’m not doing your dishes.”
Case grinned and headed inside the house. A few minutes later, Erik heard the slap of the kitchen screen door followed by the rumble of his cousin’s ancient pickup.
Erik waved as Case drove past, and then looked out over his land. The sun was still a big, burning ball of red hanging in the thin clouds on the horizon. Snow could easily fall this time of year, but the fields in front of him were starting to green, and his horses were grazing in the pasture. All in all, it should’ve been a completely pleasant evening.
If he hadn’t had to look forward to that hellion coming the next morning.
He hunched forward and thumped his boots down onto the wooden porch. Isabella would have to drive the kid out to his place. It wasn’t as if Weaver had any sort of bus service. He’d given her directions to the ranch that day at Ruby’s. Warned her that the road had a few rough patches along the way.
Personally, he liked the rough patches. They kept the occasional salesperson who thought they might head out his way from getting too enthusiastic about the trip. If someone drove out to the Rocking-C, it meant he really wanted to get there.
Isabella Lockhart, he knew, was from New York City. She hadn’t been a dancer—Lucy had told him that—but she’d been in charge of costumes, or some such, at the dance company where Lucy had been the star dancer. When he’d been over at Lucy and Beck’s place for supper a few weeks earlier, Lucy had been all excited about her friend moving to Weaver. Erik hadn’t given her chatter much mind, mostly because he’d been more interested in the blueprints that Beck had drawn up for him for the great room Erik was adding to his ranch house. Now that he’d encountered the newcomer, he wished he’d paid his cousin more attention.
Calling her about it wasn’t gonna happen, though. She might consider his curiosity more personal in nature than he intended. And after the mess with Jessica, he didn’t need anyone making more of a man’s simple curiosity than there was.
If Isabella really wanted to make things right, as she’d said, she’d have to make the trip, rough road or not.
He couldn’t help wondering if she’d have the fortitude to stick it out long enough to save her boy’s hide, or if she’d decide along the way that life back in New York was more preferable and hightail it right back out of town. She wouldn’t be the first person who did. Just because he’d never wanted anything else didn’t mean he failed to understand that life in Weaver wasn’t everyone’s cup of joe.
Still, aside from the boy, the next several months were looking a tad more interesting than they might otherwise have been.
If she stuck it out.
“You gotta be kidding me,” Murphy muttered, peering through the dusty windshield at the two-story house that finally appeared as they reached the top of a rise in the road.
Road was a generous term, considering it wasn’t much more than two tracks in the dirt with a shorn strip of wild grass growing down the middle.
Her would-be stepson continued complaining. “This is crazy out here, Iz. Like The Hills Have Eyes or something.”
“You’re too young for R-rated movies. Especially horror stories like that one.”
Murphy sat back in his seat and gave her a superior look. “I watched ’em all the time when Dad took me to the firehouse.”
And had nightmares because of it, she thought but kept it to herself. “You heard Lucy as well as I did when we saw her yesterday. Mr. Clay’s place is a working cattle ranch. You’ll be outside, in the fresh air, exactly where you like to be.”
“Yeah. Hanging with my friends, not with Bessie the cow.” He made a face. “I hate it here.”
“And I hated seeing you sitting in that jail cell after you broke half the third-floor windows of Mr. Goldstein’s brownstone back home.” She shot him a look, only to quickly turn her attention back out the windshield when the steering wheel nearly jerked out of her hands. “We’re here only as long as the court allows it, Murph. Don’t forget that.”
“What’s the difference between one foster home and another?” His shrug was uncaring, but Isabella heard the pain beneath his bravado.
At least, she hoped she heard it. It was the only way she could look past her own sorrow, knowing he didn’t care that he was with her or not.
In the eight months since he’d been provisionally