Despite all her resolutions about starting a new life, Grace wanted to kick something, hit something. She wanted to scream and rage and ruin.
But not here. She glanced around, relieved that no one was watching her, because the violence must show on her face. She caught sight of Cole disappearing behind the barn, and Grace moved in that direction.
Her rushing breath seemed to take her over until it was all she could hear or feel. The air straining through her throat, her lungs fighting to make space for it. There wasn’t enough oxygen in this godforsaken place. The air was thin and meaningless. Despite her light-headedness, she walked on until she reached the barn.
When she turned the corner, she saw him standing next to his horse, his wide back facing her. His shirt was wet and tight against his muscles. His legs wrapped with dark leather chaps. He looked invincible.
Grace’s rage swelled up until she could feel it saturate her skin and then expand beyond it. She was cocooned in it now. Shielded from anything else.
“How long have you been fucking her?” she snarled.
His head rose and he glanced at her over his shoulder. He didn’t bother turning around. In fact, he turned back and pressed his forehead to the leather of the saddle. “Go away, Grace.”
“How long?” she repeated.
“It’s none of your business.”
“You bastard.”
“What the hell do you care?” he asked, his voice strained.
“I don’t care, Cole. I’ve never cared. But I don’t like being lied to. I refuse to be one of those stupid girls, you understand? You were the one trying to make it into something more. What if I’d taken you up on that? What if I’d believed all your bullshit?”
“You didn’t, so it doesn’t matter, right?”
“How long?” she yelled, hands curling into fists. “Tell me!”
He raised his head, but he didn’t look toward her. “Thirteen years, I guess.”
Thirteen years? For a moment, it made no sense. That didn’t even— “Oh,” she said dumbly, seeing it all now. Thirteen years. That was why this whole situation had been so volatile for him. Because Madeline was his lover, and Grace had caused all their paths to intersect, and then he’d been sleeping with Grace and answering to Madeline in a place he’d considered his own. And then trying to keep it all contained, trying to keep his lies straight.
“I see. So I guess I was the interloper here. I was the girl on the side this time.”
“No,” he murmured, dropping his head again. “It wasn’t like that.” She thought she heard a pained laugh. “It wasn’t like that at all.”
“No? You can’t even look at me.”
“Yeah, you’ve got that part right.”
“Damn it, Cole. Why would you do that?”
He sighed. “Why are you even asking? You made it clear we meant nothing. You didn’t even want us to mean anything.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“Can you just leave it alone?” he snapped, the words cracking as the lightning had earlier. “Please? I can’t do this right now. Just…leave it alone.”
Grace huffed out a shocked breath. “Oh. Sure. I’m so sorry I inconvenienced you.”
“Grace—”
“No, it’s fine. You’re right. None of it meant anything. Goodbye.”
She spun and walked away, swallowing compulsively against the boulder that had taken over her throat. Her cheeks burned. Her eyes stung. She needed to cry. She hadn’t cried in front of anyone in years, and now she needed to sob. She couldn’t do it. Not here. Not anywhere. Ever.
There wasn’t even a reason to cry, for godssake. After everything that had happened to her, everything her life had been, this was what made her want to break down? A brief affair with a near stranger?
God, it was laughable. But instead of a laugh, a sob snuck out. She inhaled sharply, trying to take it back. Trying to grab it before it dragged more sobs from her.
Oh, God. Oh, God.
She veered away from the groups of people gathered in the yard and headed blindly in the direction of the house. She didn’t know why. She’d chosen the path in panic, and now she didn’t know what to do. If she spun around and moved in the opposite direction, the movement might draw attention, and she couldn’t bear that. So Grace kept going toward the house, then skirted around the corner and rushed toward the backyard.
Once she was hidden from view, she pressed her back to the wall of the house and tipped her head up. She’d read somewhere that looking up could help stop tears. That trick had worked before, but it failed her now. These were more than tears. This felt like another person inside her, another her, trying to push out through her throat. Trying to get free of this mess she’d made of her life.
She pressed her shaking hands to her mouth to hold it back. Her breath rushed past her fingers as she stared up at the roiling sky. Why couldn’t it rain now? Why couldn’t the sky open up and bury her in water?
This was terrible, whatever it was. She didn’t want this. Why did it hurt so much?
“Miss?”
Grace jerked away from the wall and dropped her hands.
“You okay?” Easy asked from the back step of his house.
“I’m good,” she croaked, as if a person in good shape would be hiding behind a house with her hands pressed to her mouth to hold back sobs.
“You look real pale, Miss…Grace, is it?”
“Yes,” she said on a breath. “Just a little professional drama, Mr. Easy. That’s all. I’m fine.”
“Come on in for some lemonade.”
“No, thank you. Really.” The pressure was easing, thank God. She could almost speak normally.
“A beer, then.”
The fact that she could fake a smile surprised her. “No. I’m fine.”
“You want me to get Cole?”
“What?” she gasped. “No!”
“Sorry. I saw you with him last night.”
For a moment, she flashed back to what she’d done with Cole the night before, then realized Easy was talking about the saloon.
“Oh. No, don’t get him. I’m fine.”
“If you and Cole—”
“Did you know Rayleen is my aunt?” she interrupted, desperate to change the subject.
His chin drew in. “What?”
“Rayleen is my great-aunt.”
“Well. No, I didn’t know that. I didn’t think she had any family to speak of.”
“Oh, she seems like she might’ve sprung from the depths of Hades, but she has a family. Her sister—my grandmother—she lives in Florida.”
“Huh.” He rocked back on his heels.
“Anyway. She’s sweeter than she seems. Just thought you should know that.” Actually, she had no evidence that Rayleen was sweet at all, but she’d needed to say something. Grace’s feet moved backward. “I’d better get back. Thanks.”
She’d controlled the tears, anyway. She hadn’t broken down. She was going to walk away from this the same person she’d been when she’d arrived.
Somehow, the thought didn’t comfort her as much as she’d hoped.
* * *
IT TOOK NEARLY twenty minutes of slow breathing before Cole could walk. Twenty minutes of trying to convince himself to take that first step.
His leg had simply given out when he’d dismounted, folding up with one last blast of pain. He’d caught himself on the pommel, and he was damn grateful for that, since Grace had come around the corner not thirty seconds later.
What did she want from him? Was she just stone-cold crazy? He was in too much pain to puzzle out a woman whose soul must look like a maze. If she had a soul. She probably didn’t.
The tension of dealing with her and her anger hadn’t helped his leg, but after a time, he’d been able to relax enough to stretch his muscles, then rub some of the ache away.
Cole kept his left hand on the pommel when he finally dared to take a few steps. His leg held him this time, despite its stiffness. Or ma
ybe because of it. He stretched his back and led the mare toward the gate of the small corral. He moved slowly until he was sure he could put his weight on the leg. It hurt. But it held.
He tied off the mare to wait until he had the strength to look after her, then walked very carefully toward the big house. When he got to the porch steps, he stopped for a long moment, staring at the three steps before he took them.
“Easy?” he called when he stepped inside.
“Yep.”
Cole followed his voice to the kitchen, where Easy stood at the back door, a cup of coffee cradled in his hand.
“I need to know if you have a plan for this place that doesn’t involve me.”
Easy immediately looked impatient, his face creasing in a frown. “I already told you I wasn’t thinking of selling to anyone else.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean, have you considered what you’ll do if I can’t ride again?”
Easy’s frown immediately smoothed into shock, his pale eyes going wide for a moment before he remembered to hide his dismay. “Cole, why don’t we leave this discussion until you hear what the doctor has to say? There’s every chance—”
“I rode today.”
“What? Why?” Easy’s eyes fell to the chaps Cole still wore.
“Jeremy was stuck out at the spring pasture with Madeline Beckingham during that storm. We weren’t sure what had happened, and I was the only one around to go find them.”
“You should’ve told me! It’s my ranch and you’re my hand. I could’ve called in—”
“It doesn’t matter, Easy. The point is I rode. And it wasn’t… I don’t think…”
“Cole,” Easy said, his voice rough with emotion.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to ride again. And I know you’ve been trying to tell me that, but I didn’t want to hear it.”
“Now, listen,” Easy said, “you don’t know anything. And I talked to Farrah after that dinner she made for us a month ago. She couldn’t tell me any details about you, of course, but she said there were other surgeries. If that crack doesn’t heal right, they can put plates in, just like in your leg.”
“They might be able to, yes. But that’d be almost another year of healing, plus rehabilitation. And there’d be no guarantees. And no assurances it wouldn’t put so much strain on the bone it’d cause more problems in the future. I already heard all this. I just wasn’t listening. I wanted it to not be true so badly that I—”
“We don’t need to discuss it now. Jesus, we’ve waited this long. Let’s see what they say.”
“No, I need to know you’ll be all right, whatever the outcome.”
“Me?” Easy practically shouted. His neck turned red, then his ears, but Cole saw the way his eyes glinted. “You’re worried about me? Jesus Christ, boy.”
“I know you don’t want to sell this place to just anyone. You’ve worked too hard to—”
“I am not discussing this with you,” he ground out.
“This is all you wanted to discuss before!”
“If you can’t ride… If that happens… Well, we’ll figure it out. I hardly ride at all myself anymore. There’s no reason you can’t—”
“Easy,” Cole said quietly. Easy immediately closed his mouth, his gaze falling to his hands, clasped tight around the coffee mug. “I can’t stay here. Not if I can’t ride. I can’t spend fifty years watching men ride out to do the things I can’t do. When I’m seventy, sure. I’ll have earned my place on the porch. But not like this.”
“Damn it, Cole,” Easy whispered.
“Isn’t this what you’ve been trying to get me to see?”
He blinked rapidly, then cleared his throat. “That doesn’t mean I like it.”
“I don’t like it either. But I’ve got to think about it. Away from here maybe. Because when I’m here, all I can see is this place, this land, what I’ve wanted to be my whole life. My father and…”
“Your father was wrong. This isn’t the only life for you.”
“I guess I’d better hope it isn’t.”
“That woman, for instance. She might be another life.”
His head snapped up. “What?” Easy didn’t know. Did he? About Madeline and their history and…
“That purple-haired girl.”
“What?” Cole repeated stupidly.
“Grace. I found her hiding in the backyard a few minutes ago, awfully upset.”
“Grace? Hiding? You must have that wrong.”
“Did you do something mean to that little girl?”
“Mean? Me? You’ve got it all wrong, Easy. That little girl has the heart of a damn mongoose.”
“She didn’t look very ferocious when I saw her.”
“That’s because she’d just used it all up tearing a piece out of my hide.”
Easy eyed him with disapproval.
“I’m serious!”
“A woman doesn’t like to be picked up at a bar and used like a two-bit whore. You’re grown enough to know that.”
Apparently he was more grown than Easy, because Easy was being naive. Cole was the one who’d been used. “Forget about Grace,” he muttered. He took off his hat to rub the ache from his forehead, then shoved it back on. “She’s got nothing to do with my future.”
“All right,” Easy said. “If you say so.”
“I’ll help clean up after these folks tonight, but tomorrow…”
“Take the time you need. But your father was wrong. This isn’t what makes you a man. This place or this work.”
“No, he was right. Everything he said to me that night… He was right.”
“He was wrong,” Easy growled. “He didn’t mean it.”
“You must be kidding. He meant it enough to push me out of the house. To shove me through the door and tell me not to bother coming back because I wasn’t his son anymore.”
“He was scared, Cole. He was terrified he was losing you for good, and he lashed out.”
Cole shook his head. “I broke his heart. That’s what killed him. He was fine. Never been sick a day in his life. And then—”
“He broke his own damned heart, acting a stubborn fool!”
“You’re wrong. But it doesn’t matter. If I can’t make him proud being a cowboy, I’ll have to think of another way.”
“We’ll figure it out, Cole.”
He would, because he had no choice. He’d figure it out. But not here. This place was him and his dad and Easy all pushed into one small space. He’d been thrown off by the endless sky and the lonely trails, but he could see now what Easy had tried to say. He’d boxed himself in here, like a kid building a fort.
He needed to get away. To think. Maybe California wasn’t the place for that. Or maybe he needed to face it. Get it out of his system. Leave it behind on his terms.
But more than anything, he just needed not to be here.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
IT WAS OVER. MADELINE Beckingham and all her people had left. Eve’s studio was back to normal. And Grace had nothing to do. Nothing. For days.
She’d finished Cole’s books, but she couldn’t make herself knock on his door to give them back. And she couldn’t leave them on his doorstep. It’d look like she was tossing his stuff on the floor in a huff.
So she read them again and told herself she wasn’t done with them yet. She read and went for walks and tried her best to avoid any chance of seeing Cole.
On Sunday, when her phone rang and showed Scott’s number, she blocked him. She’d purchased a money order on Friday and put it in the mail. Maybe he’d received it already. Maybe he was calling to tell her it wasn’t enough.
Maybe he could kiss her ass.
They all could. The next time she needed to scratch an itch, she’d use a vibrator. Well, once she had the money to buy one, anyway. Until then, she’d freehand it. Not her preferred method, but desperate times and all that.
But she wasn’t desperate, she told herself. She was good. She was fine. Things were looking
up. Eve had heard from her friend in Vancouver, and he’d said to have Grace stop by his office whenever she made it to town. But even better, she had steady work for at least another week with Eve, who needed help getting her office back in order after the insanity of the week before.
Things were good. In fact, tonight she was hanging out with friends. People who liked her. So why did her chest ache like fire when she forgot to keep her guard up? Why did she want Cole so much?
Just admitting it made her angry. She wanted to slap him. Scratch him. Push him until he took her down to the floor and made her feel pleasure instead of this awful pain.
Grace put down the book she wasn’t reading and curled up into a ball on her mattress. She crooked her arm over her eyes to block out the afternoon light and breathed as slowly as she could.
It didn’t hurt. There was no reason it should. So it didn’t. She wouldn’t let it.
But why had he asked for so much from her? Why had he wanted more? His hands sliding over her back as if she were fragile. His mouth against the ink on her skin, asking what it meant.
That bastard.
None of that mattered. Because he touched her more truthfully than that sometimes. He touched her rough and cruel. That was what he’d really meant, she told herself. That was real. Nothing else.
Her phone rang again. This time it was an unfamiliar number.
“Hey, girl,” a woman said. “It’s Jenny. Are you ready for the makeover party?”
“I’m ready! But ‘makeover’? Does that mean more than makeup?”
“Well, I keep buying hair dye and not using it, so I’m hoping you’ll help me pick a color. You must be good with color even if it’s hair, right?”
“I’m not bad.” Regular trips to the salon were expensive. She’d done her own hair color for years.
“Thank God. I need help. So I was thinking six, if that’s not too early for you.”
“Perfect. Should I bring anything?”
“Nope. I’m making lasagna, and Eve’s bringing wine, so I think we’re covered. Just bring makeup and your amazing skills.”
“Sure,” Grace agreed, but she was stopping for a cake anyway. She didn’t make new girlfriends often, and she wanted to do everything right.
Grace felt horribly nervous when she jumped into the shower to get ready. She was confident with men. She knew how to handle herself, she knew what they wanted. But women? Well, assuming they were straight, Grace was never sure what they were looking for.
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