by Elle Thorpe
I didn’t mention that I’d found my biological family.
I’d learned young, that anytime I brought up my birth parents, mom’s eyes glazed over, like a little part of her was dying, even though she tried to be supportive. My dad suddenly stared down at his cereal, intent on getting that very last cornflake out of the milk, chasing it around his bowl with his spoon. My younger brothers asked questions, and Mom tried her best to answer them, but it was never lost on me how much it hurt her to do so.
So I’d stopped asking and gone behind their backs to find the answers I needed.
Now I was here, on a plane to Georgia, because I was running away from the fact I’d been rejected all over again. I couldn’t even tell my family for fear of someone else hurting even half as much as I did right now. They’d get over the upset of me moving. That was minor in comparison to admitting they weren’t enough for me. There was FaceTime, and they’d come visit.
My parents had two biological sons. The farm should go to one of them. They’d see that, once I was out of the picture.
At least that’s what I’d told myself as my old man had held me tight at the airport and told me to come back soon.
It’s what I’d had to say over and over again in my head as tears had slid down my mother’s cheeks.
I was an ungrateful asshole. I wished I’d never opened the can of worms. But it was too late now.
I really hoped the little girl bundled up in her new mama’s arms didn’t turn out to be such a jerk. I hoped she had the sense to know what a good thing she had, and not be forever wondering who she was and where she came from. Or why she’d been given away like she didn’t matter.
I hoped she didn’t get to twenty-four, only to realize all these things and royally implode her life like I’d just done.
I stared out at the scenery. We’d taken off at some point and I hadn’t even noticed, but I was glad for it.
Each mile we traveled took me farther from the fact I’d just devastated the people who cared most about me.
Evidently, the only people who cared about me.
The airport in Atlanta was packed and full of families and friends reuniting with hugs and tears.
But Kai ‘Frost’ Hunt was not one for such displays of emotion. He leaned against a concrete pillar, his ever-present wide-brimmed hat dangling from his fingers. He’d earned the nickname Frost when he’d toured with the WBRA, because he rarely smiled and was always fully concentrated on his rides.
Nothing had changed in the decades since. The man saved all his smiles for his wife and three daughters.
Though I did get a nod, which was practically a hug in his book. He held a hand out, and I shook it, shouldering my backpack.
He eyed it warily. “That all you brought? Thought you were staying indefinitely.”
“I am.” I didn’t want to explain how I’d brought nothing more than the bare necessities with me. I hadn’t wanted any memories of home. I’d left everything behind in my cabin. It would all still be there whenever I managed to return to face my parents and explain why I’d so abruptly run off to join the circus. Or join a bull riding school, as the case was.
Kai raised a shoulder in indifference, and I was glad for his lack of patience with small talk. That would do me well. Because I didn’t want to talk at all. Small talk, big talk, nothin’.
I just wanted to get out in the dirt and whip some bull riders into shape. Maybe have a ride or two myself.
I knew Kai could appreciate that.
We walked through the airport side by side in silence, but it was companionable sort of quiet. It wasn’t until I’d thrown my backpack into Kai’s truck and pulled myself into the passenger seat that curiosity got the better of me. “How’s Summer?”
Kai sighed without looking in my direction. “You want the brutal honesty, or the canned response I give people who ain’t family?”
My heart gave an uneven thump. Here was another person who considered me family. A good, hardworking man, who had worldwide titles to his name and a successful business that he’d built from nothing. So why did I concentrate on the one set of parental figures who didn’t consider me worthy of being a worm in their garden, let alone a member of their family? They shouldn’t have mattered.
They did.
But also, fuck them. They didn’t get to control my life with their continual rejections. So I pushed all that aside and focused back on Kai. “Brutal honesty.”
“I barely recognize her. She’s not the same girl she was before…”
Before her accident.
I’d been there that night in Masonville. She’d gone down hard, her shout of pain drowning out the rest of the crowd. I’d jumped the damn barrier without even thinking about it and sprinted across the dirt. The bull fighters had gotten the bull’s attention by that point and moved him on, but there was nobody by Summer’s side as she lay screaming in the dirt, her arm bent up at the wrong angle, bones sticking through the skin.
I don’t even think she’d been aware of my presence, she was in so much pain.
That was the last time I’d gotten to see her. Her jackass boyfriend had finally caught up and pushed me aside. He’d been the one to hold her hand while she passed out. He’d been the one who got to ride in the ambulance with her. We’d all gone to the hospital and sat nervously in the waiting room while she was in surgery, and Austin had stared me down the entire time like the whole thing had been my fault.
She’d come through the surgery but had refused all visitors but him and her family. I’d hung around the ranch for a few more days, hoping she’d change her mind, but she hadn’t. And I’d been needed at home, so I’d made the slow drive back, feeling like shit.
It was only then that I’d let myself realize that the entire reason I’d been in Georgia was for her. She’d been my teenage crush. The one girl I could never get out of my head, even though she’d never looked at me as anything but a friend.
Her rejection was just another in a long list of them.
And none of it mattered now. This time, I was here for me.
Kai’s truck trundled over the grate and past the huge sign declaring this property to be Hunts’ Bull Riding School. I’d driven through these gates many a time over the years growing up, but never with the knowledge that this property was now my home.
Unless I fucked it up and got myself fired.
But that wasn’t going to happen. I might not be able to work on my family’s ranch right now, but I knew nothing else. Ranch life was the only one I was qualified for, but more than that, it was the only one I wanted. I wasn’t cut out for anything else.
Typical of Kai, he bypassed the main house and drove straight out to the back, parking by the training rings.
“It was only a three-hour trip. You’re good to start now, right?”
Too bad if I wasn’t. Kai wasn’t the sort of guy you said no to.
But he was right. I was ready to work. The more work the better. I wanted to bury myself in so much work it would take me weeks or maybe even months to dig myself out. And maybe by then, I wouldn’t feel like I’d just lost a piece of me.
I pushed open my door and breathed in the fresh country air. It settled deep in my lungs, calming my nerves.
“Dominic!”
I closed my eyes for the tiniest of moments as Summer’s shout sank deep inside me, worming its way back to the place it had left off.
Which was suspiciously close to my heart.
Shit.
I plastered on a smile and strode across the dirt to meet her.
God, she was as beautiful as I remembered. Her hair was a little longer, flowing down her back from beneath her hat. She smiled widely at me, pearly white teeth sparkling from behind her full pink lips.
Lips I’d dreamed of kissing on more than one occasion.
I eyed the sling hanging from around her neck. It had been a year since she’d been injured, and she was still bandaged up?
To my surprise, she stepped straight
in and put her good arm around me, her cheek pressing to my chest.
“It’s so good to see you. I meant to call.” She pulled away and gestured to her arm. “I’ve been busy.”
“Yeah, of course,” I said lamely. I didn’t really think I’d crossed her mind at all in the time since I’d seen her last, but her hug right now had been genuine, and I couldn’t blame her. She’d gone through a lot.
I was just grateful to be here now, and back in her presence.
She grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the small set of bleacher-style seats, chipped and faded by the relentless Georgia sun and years of exposure. “Come say hi to Austin. You remember him?”
“Uh, yeah. Your boyfriend, right?”
A stupid part of me held my breath and hoped she’d correct me.
But she just nodded.
They were still together, then. Of course they were. He’d been talking of moving to the city the last time I’d been here. Obviously, that was who she was moving with.
I’d been prepared for this. What I wasn’t prepared for was the intense anger that engulfed me when I looked Austin’s way.
Austin hadn’t changed a bit. If Summer hadn’t been standing right next to me with her arm all banged up, I would have assumed no time had passed since the last time the three of us had been together.
Austin’s gaze slid from my face, down my arm and to Summer’s fingers wrapped around mine.
As if she’d only just realized we were still holding hands, she dropped mine like it was hot.
Austin didn’t even bother saying hello. His annoyance rolled off him in waves, and he turned to Summer, like I wasn’t even there. “What’s he doing here?”
Summer’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t be so rude.”
He moved to Summer’s side possessively, stepping between us like I was something she need protection from.
Irritation rolled up my spine.
Summer stepped away, frustration flashing in her eyes. “He’s allowed to surprise visit anytime he wants.”
It almost made me grin. Austin still didn’t know her. He never had. He’d never made the effort to read her signs. Not like I did. I’d always been hyperaware of her, ever since we’d come out here with my family when I was eighteen and I’d first set eyes on her all grown-up.
But then her words sank in. Surprise? Visit? “Didn’t your dad tell you I was coming?”
Kai cleared his throat from behind me, and I shot a glance over my shoulder.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, pink flushing the pale white of his cheeks. “Uh, about that…” He reluctantly swiveled to face Summer as if he was suddenly a little frightened of her. “Dominic isn’t here to visit. He’s staying.”
Her eyes widened, as did her grin. “Seriously? You’re moving here?”
Her excitement zipped through me, my heart rate speeding up. She was excited about me being here? Fuck. I suddenly realized what an idiot I’d been. When she hadn’t wanted to see anyone after her accident, I’d taken it personally. I’d let Austin telling me to leave get in my head, and I now I felt like a fool.
I grinned. “Yeah, well, somebody has to fill your shoes when you’re gone.”
Kai groaned.
I shot him a look of confusion, but he had his gaze trained on his eldest daughter. “Summer—”
She held up a hand, her gaze flashing first at her father, but then it darkened, landing on me.
She might be a foot shorter than I was, but never had an expression withered me on the spot the way Summer’s did. I was entirely surprised to find that I didn’t immediately catch fire and turn to ash.
“You’re here to take my job?”
“Uh.” The truth was, yes. I was here to replace her. But she was leaving. So why did that even bother her so much?
I had no time to ask.
Summer was too busy glaring at her father. “You brought him here to take my place without even telling me?”
He threw up his hands in frustration. “This is why I didn’t tell you! Because I knew how you’d react. Summer, what the hell am I supposed to do when you’re gone? You’re moving to the city. You can’t run the ranch from a shoebox apartment in a high-rise.”
“Not yet, I’m not! We haven’t set an official moving date.”
“Right, and frankly, I hope you never do. But it’s all Austin talks about. So I have to assume that you really are going—”
“Oh, we’re going,” Austin piped up. “No need to worry about that.”
Kai glared at him.
I suddenly realized where Summer got hers from. She was the spitting image of her father when he was angry.
Kai kept going like Austin hadn’t even spoken. “I can’t have my business falling to pieces when you leave. I need someone to come in now, so you can teach them the ropes and smoothly hand over your position. When Dom called and asked about it—”
“You what?” Summer yelled at me.
“Whoa. I—”
But Summer wasn’t having any of it. “You can’t just walk in here and steal my job right out from under my nose, Dom! I thought we were friends!”
“We are!” I protested, even though we weren’t really. At least not lately. We hadn’t spoken since her injury. She’d wanted to be left alone, so I had. And evidently, once she’d felt better, she hadn’t thought to call me.
Her fiery gaze bounced between me and her old man.
“Summer,” Kai tried again, softer this time. “This is just business.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Just business? Oh really? And here I was, thinking we were family.”
She stormed off before Kai or I could get another word in, with Austin trailing after her, wrapping his arm around her shoulders possessively.
Kai scrubbed a hand through his short hair then put his hat back on. “Well, that went better than expected.”
My eyes practically bulged out of my head. “Better than expected?”
“Well, neither of us got kicked in the balls. So that’s something.”
4
SUMMER
“Unbelievable!” I yelled, slamming my way into the main house, with Austin trailing me. “Seriously, what is wrong with the two of them?”
I glared at Austin like he should know. But he just flopped down on the couch and picked up the TV remote. I watched him for a moment, gobsmacked he didn’t have a word to say about what had just happened. Where was the attentive boyfriend from just a minute ago?
My mother came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel, and frowned at me. “Want to tell me exactly what’s going in here?”
“Did you know?” I demanded. “That Dad hired Dominic West to take my position? Of all people!”
She frowned. “He mentioned something to me this morning before he left to go to the airport. I think it all happened very quickly. But what’s wrong with that? You’re leaving. You can’t expect your father to shoulder everything by himself. He did that for years until you were old enough to take a full-time job here, and it nearly sent him to an early grave. We’re trying to ease him out of the business, not lump him right back into the middle of it. You know that.”
I cringed. I remembered exactly how hard Dad had worked before we’d hired Hallie as lead hand, and I’d taken on a lot of the training responsibilities. Not to mention the paperwork and business accounting. It was bad enough I’d spent a year shirking my responsibilities when I was training for the pros. Which had turned out to be a massive waste of everyone’s time anyway. Ever since my injury, I’d doubled down here at the ranch, making sure the place ran like clockwork.
I knew Dad would need help when I left, but this felt like a shove out the door. And he expected me to just happily train Dominic to take my spot? How the hell was I supposed to do that? He’d never worked here a day in his life. He had no idea how the place ran, or even what all the bulls’ names were. “Why Dominic? Why not Hallie? Or Nate?”
Hallie had worked on the ranch for years, and her boyfriend,
Nate, had come home from the WBRA tour last year. They’d both be more than qualified to run this place.
Mom looked at me like I’d grown another head. “Hallie’s an amazing lead hand, but she doesn’t know how to ride. That’s not something you can learn just by watching on the sidelines, otherwise I could have picked up that job years ago. God knows I’ve watched you and your father ride enough bulls to last an eternity.
“And Nate doesn’t want the job. Your father asked him months ago, when your physical therapy was complete and you and Austin started talking about moving to the city again. He and Hallie are weeks away from opening the B&B, so he’s got his hands full there. There’s going to be more work than ever once that’s a huge success and Hallie leaves to run it.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I really don’t think it’s Dominic that’s causing this sort of reaction from you.”
Her gaze flickered to Austin, her frown deepening.
I clammed up. I was a grown woman, and Austin was my partner. We’d been together since our senior prom, five years ago. I knew that some people in my life didn’t exactly approve of him. Hallie and my parents being the main objectors. But I loved him. He’d stood by me when I’d had my accident and delayed his own plans so I could complete my therapy at my home. We had history. Memories. Those things counted for something in my book.
I glanced over at him. He was handsome, with his medium-brown hair and blue eyes. He was smart and witty. I liked his ambition. It was one of the things that had drawn me to him in the first place. He had big dreams and was determined to make them happen.
The problem was that his dreams were to become a top-notch accountant, at a big firm in the city. He was limited here, filling his time with keeping the books for local farms and the diner. Not exactly the big multi-million-dollar businesses he dreamed of working with. Those just didn’t exist out here, in a town with a population barely big enough to record.
