This Place Called Home: Includes Bonus Story! (Forget-Me-Not Ranch)

by Sara Richardson

  “Oh my god!” She didn’t seem to hear him. “This would be a perfect image to put on some of the marketing materials for the nonprofit.” Mack spun to face him. “There’re even patches of Forget-Me-Nots all around them.”

  The woman paced, obviously caught up in some creative mojo he couldn’t understand. “We’ll talk about how the ranch is a place where animals receive love and strength and healing so they can thrive. Of course we’ll include pictures of all the animals too. But this image could make the perfect logo.”

  Whoa, this whole outing had completely backfired. He was supposed to be distracting her from the nonprofit project, not fueling her ideas.

  “Slow down. I’m not sure how two trees are going to convince people this a place for love and healing.” It sure hadn’t been for him. Agatha had provided the love, not the land. The land came with memories he’d rather not relive.

  Mack seemed to snap out of her zone. Her hands came to her hips and damn if her shoulders didn’t perk, drawing his gaze to her chest.

  Eyes up, cowboy.

  “What’s your favorite thing about the ranch?” the woman demanded, that intense gaze of hers raking him over.

  He didn’t have favorite things. Colors or food or songs. And he definitely didn’t keep track of favorite memories. It was hard to hold onto the good ones when the bad ones seemed more weighted. “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it.”

  Blatant exasperation leaked through Mack’s sigh. “But you must’ve loved growing up here. It must’ve been amazing.” She turned a slow circle, seeming to take in the scenery before facing him again. “Come on. You have to have some connection to the land. It would be impossible not to.”

  “I don’t have connections.” He didn’t need them. Not with the travel, the responsibilities. Nash headed back to the horse and straightened the blanket again. “We should keep going.” If they were riding, she wouldn’t be able to stare at him like she was trying to see through him.

  Mouth set in a determined frown, Mack walked over so he could boost her up. Nash pulled himself over the horse’s back and steered them onto the rocky trail.

  There. That should put a stop to the questions.

  “Do you want to know what my favorite memory is?” she asked, swaying with the horse’s gait.

  Not really. The less he knew about her, the better off he’d be.

  “It was a picnic with my parents in the mountains.”

  Nash remained silent. See? This was why he worked with bulls. They didn’t talk. They simply let him go about his work nice and quiet. There was no getting to know him, no sharing…

  “It was the only time we ever went on a picnic.” Mack was apparently misreading his silence as interest. “We were in Vail for one of my dad’s work conferences. Usually, my mom hated to be outdoors unless she was laying out by a pool, but that day, she actually agreed to hike up a mountain and have a picnic.”

  The woman made a noise. A happy sigh, maybe. It was hard to hear over the horse’s hooves clomping against the rocks.

  She peered back at him. “Do you want to know why that’s my favorite memory?”

  Based on the snark in her tone, she knew he wasn’t up for this conversation. “I bet you’re going to tell me.”

  Her bubbling laugh baited a smile. She did have a nice laugh. Soft and rippling instead of high pitched and annoying.

  “It’s my favorite memory because everything was so vivid. The sky glowing royal blue, the green grass in the meadow where we spread out our blanket, the mountains with those razor-sharp edges. It felt like we’d fallen down a rabbit hole into some magical world where the colors were brighter, the breeze was purer, and the sun was warmer.”

  She paused as though picturing it again. “It’s one of the only perfectly preserved memories I have, sealed into me with warmth and wonder I had never experienced before that moment. It felt like we were living life the way it was meant to be—everything vibrant and unbroken and protected.”

  Nash steered Fancy Pants around a hairpin turn in the switchback. Mack was good with words, he’d give her that.

  “You can’t tell me you never had one of the moments,” she pressed. “Everyone has them. Glimpses of wholeness and beauty that you can go back to when things fall apart.” There was a pleading in her words, like it made her sad to think he had no moments to fall back on.

  “You have to have at least one of those moments. Living in a place like this?” The woman was clearly incapable of letting it go. Or maybe she simply didn’t want to believe he was as cold as he seemed.

  He hadn’t always been that way. And yes, if he let his mind jog back, there were moments. Before his mom left, before his dad’s broken heart had killed him.

  Mack peeked over her shoulder, eyes narrowed in a proposition. “If you tell me about one of those moments, I’ll encourage Agatha to look at some properties in town with you.”

  Nash pulled the horse to a stop. “Really?”

  “I’ll only encourage,” the woman clarified. “As a potential option. As long as we all stay open-minded about her holding onto the ranch too.”

  Hell, that was one tempting deal. All he needed was for his aunt to take a look at some properties, to be more open to the idea. “Okay. Fine.” He steered the horse off the trail and headed through the thicket of trees and scrub oak, letting Fancy Pants move faster.

  “Whoa.” Mack wobbled and her hands flailed before they reached back and grabbed his thighs.

  Whoa was right. If her hands moved any higher he’d need to inch more space between their bodies so she wouldn’t feel the full extent of his physical attraction to her.

  “You won’t fall off,” he assured her, hoping she’d quit touching him. “It’ll be a little bumpy but you wanted to know my favorite memory, so I’ll show you.” He wasn’t good with words. Never had been. Didn’t need to be in his line of work. He would have to let the spot speak for itself.

  New energy seemed to propel the horse beneath them, as if Fancy Pants knew exactly where they were going. Though Nash hadn’t been back to the lookout for twenty years, he suspected his aunt rode up here a lot. The lookout had the best view on the ranch.

  Skirting the trees and scrub oak the horse, huffed and pulled up a steep rocky slope, and then came to a stop on the shelf of land that overlooked the whole valley.

  Mack drew in a sharp breath of air, her shoulders pressing into his chest. Her head panned left and then right as she stared at the view spread out before them.

  Even Nash had to admit the vista seemed even grander than he remembered.

  “Two weeks before my mom left, we came up here for a picnic. Her and my dad and me.” He could’ve been reading the memory out of someone else’s life story.

  “For months I could tell she wasn’t happy. She had a restlessness about her. But she was happy that day.” And that had made him happy. Relieved, actually.

  As a kid he hadn’t known depression could fuel a withdrawal, he’d only known he was losing his mom piece by piece. First her laugh and then her smile and then the light in her eyes.

  The day they’d gone for the picnic, it seemed she’d come back to them. Like Mack had said, it felt like they’d stepped into a different world. A world where everything would be okay.

  Everything hadn’t been okay though. That was why there was no use dwelling on memories.

  “There. I told you,” he said quickly, brushing off the memory, ready to move past it, to move past emotions that simmered too close to the surface.

  He raised the reins, but Mack shifted abruptly, pulling up her right leg and turning halfway around to face him while she lost her balance in the process.

  “Easy.” Nash’s arms closed in around her, holding her steady as she sat sideways on the horse, both legs dangling together over Fancy Pants’s wide berth.

  A look of surprise widened her eyes and bowed her lips. She peeked up at him, chest visibly rising and falling with each jagged breath. “It would be n
ice if everything could stay the way it was in your favorite memory,” she half-whispered.

  “Yeah.” Now he got what she’d meant when she’d talked about her heart buckling. His was collapsing in on itself, but not out of fear. Oh, no. It was the desire, want, adrenaline coursing through him.

  That damn testosterone. It was such a force. He couldn’t ignore it, couldn’t ignore her. Instinct had already kicked in, silencing everything else. Nash tightened his arms around her and Mack seamlessly turned all the way around, pulling her leg up and then sliding it over the other side of the horse so they sat face-to-face.

  Her eyes drew his mouth to hers, pulling him in with some unseen force. Their lips touched in a flash of searing heat and Mack’s arms wrapped around his neck, bringing their bodies together. She went soft against him, all those tempting curves pressing in, waking every sexual craving he’d ignored.

  Mack made it impossible to ignore what he wanted.

  He kissed her lips, and the heat, the softness of her skin, the tenderness or her touch, brought a swell of hunger. For once he couldn’t control it, couldn’t trample it with logic or rationality because she tasted too good and it had been too long since his body had ached like this.

  Mack kissed him back, dragging her teeth over his bottom lip with a seductive moan that seemed to echo through him.

  He urged her closer, making sure to keep his arms strong around her so they wouldn’t go toppling off of the horse into the dirt.

  Mack straddled him, wrapping her legs around his waist, tightening and arching against him until he was damn near breathless.

  Chapter 9

  No, no, no. She had to stop this.

  Nash dipped his lips down to her neck, brushing her hair aside so he could kiss that tender spot beneath her jaw. At the moment, she couldn’t draw in enough air for a full breath, let alone words.

  The man had this strength about him—this sturdiness and surety. His lips were firm against her skin but somehow softly seductive at the same time.

  Nash’s ragged breaths grazed her neck, alternating with his warm mouth, heightening a rush of longing that swept her away from every protest.

  She wasn’t sure what had pulled her in—the quick flash of sadness in his eyes when he’d talked about his memory, the gruffness in his voice when he’d tried to change the subject, or the way he’d caught her when she’d nearly tumbled off the horse, but now she couldn’t seem to pull away from him.

  Passion simmered, a rising tide between them, but somewhere in the depths of it, a hesitation started to surface.

  She didn’t do this. She didn’t make out with men who didn’t like her on the back of a horse only a day after dumping her fiancé.

  Grasping at clarity, she pressed her palms into the solid wall of Nash’s chest. But his lips were down to her collarbone now, dipping below the neckline of her shirt.

  In response, her arms went weak. This made no sense. How he was holding her, how he was kissing her, how her body was responding with more passion than she’d known she was capable of…

  The horse stuttered forward suddenly, stomping its hooves and raising its head. Nash paused his lips against her neck at the disruption, and then he too raised his head.

  They both sat there, face to face, staring and breathing until Nash looked over her shoulder. “She hears something,” he uttered in a gravelly tone.

  For a second she didn’t know who he was talking about, but then Mack noticed the horse had gone unnaturally still.

  Mack swallowed, her lips full and swollen, her face still tingling with warmth. She tried to listen over the roar of blood in her ears.

  Hooves beat the ground somewhere nearby. Fancy Pants turned and shuffled, and Nash secured his arms around her tighter. “Who is—”

  Big Ben and Agatha cantered into the clearing and came to an abrupt stop.

  Busted. The warm tingle on Mack’s cheeks escalated into a blush, and she couldn’t force herself to turn and look at the woman. Here she was practically sitting on Nash’s lap on the back of a horse…

  “There you are,” Agatha said cheerfully. She urged the horse closer, that smile of hers growing bigger and brighter with each step. “I had lunch all ready but I couldn’t find you, so I thought I’d ride up and let you know.”

  She didn’t ask about their questionable position. She likely didn’t have to. It had to be obvious what was going on.

  “Lunch. Right.” Nash’s jaw had tensed. He barely glanced at Mack. “We were just about to come back.”

  “Well I never thought I’d find you all the way up here.” Agatha leaned forward to pat Big Ben. “I wouldn’t have if this lug didn’t have such good sense. He always knows where to find Fancy Pants.”

  Mack cleared her throat, aware that she still had yet to speak. “Nash was just…showing me the view.”

  Good lord, all the wavering in her voice. She sounded like a little kid who’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

  “This is the best view on the property,” Agatha declared. She winked. “Ans such a romantic spot.”

  Nash noticeably shifted away from Mack, though he kept his arms secured around her.

  “Anyway, we don’t want lunch to get cold.” He urged Mack to start turning around, securing his hands on her hips while she maneuvered her legs.

  “Oh, it won’t get cold.” His aunt waved him off. “It’s a pasta salad with cold cuts. In fact, I can go back and put it all in the refrigerator so you can finish your ride. I wouldn’t want to rush you.”

  “Nope. We’re good.” He leaned into Mack, reaching around her until he found the reins. “Ready?” he asked gruffly.

  She wasn’t ready. She hadn’t been ready for anything that had just happened, but somehow she managed a nod and they were off, leading the way back to the trail.

  They moved faster than they had on the way up. The horse’s swift trot jostled Mack, and Nash secured one arm around her waist as they rode.

  She tried to fight the fluttering sensation his touch brought in her heart, but it seemed Nash had already taken over certain parts of her.

  Trees whizzed past along with flashes of sky and grass and wildflowers.

  Nash said nothing as they rode down the trail, and she couldn’t think of anything to say either.

  He regretted the kiss— she could feel it in his silence, in his stiff movements—and she wanted to regret it too.

  When they broke through the trees, Agatha whizzed past them, crouching like a jockey over Big Ben’s neck and laughing with delight. “Oh, I don’t get to ride enough!” she exclaimed.

  Mack watched the old woman gallop down the hill in front of them. She couldn’t picture Agatha living in a patio home in town.

  They made it to the stables—still locked in a bubble of silence—and Nash quickly dismounted before helping Mack down.

  Agatha darted around, putting away the saddle and blankets while Nash took care of the halters and reins.

  “Why don’t you two brush down the horses real quick and I’ll make our tea?” Without waiting for a response, Agatha left the two of them alone, drowning in a pool of awkwardness.

  As if grateful for a task, Nash took a brush off a shelf and started with Big Ben, maneuvering around the horse’s other side so Mack couldn’t see him.

  “Can I help?” she called, still standing awkwardly where she’d dismounted.

  “No.” Nash walked around the front of Big Ben. “You can go inside. I’ll be there soon.” He obviously didn’t want her anywhere near him when not twenty minutes ago he couldn’t seem to take his hands off her.

  Mack walked closer, her stomach a tangle of nerves. “We should talk about what just happened.”

  “We don’t have to.” The man refused to look at her. “It shouldn’t have happened. You’re engaged. I shouldn’t have kissed you.”

  “I’m not engaged.” Though she’d apologized in her letters to Evan, she had indeed made sure he knew she couldn’t get back together with h
im.

  Even so, she shouldn’t have kissed Nash back, but… “It did happen.” And it wasn’t just a kiss. It was…more. “Please.”

  She cupped her hand around his forearm so he’d stop brushing the horse and look at her. “I don’t want things to be weird.”

  Not when she had been feeling so at peace here. Not when she wanted to stay and help Agatha. And maybe help Nash in the process.

  “Things won’t be weird.” He gazed down at her, his eyes blank and cold.

  “Because it definitely won’t happen again.”

  “It smells funny in here.”

  Agatha wrinkled up her nose at her nephew to make sure her disgust for the house came through loud and clear. “What do you want to bet something’s dead in the walls?”

  “It’s. A. Brand. New. House.”

  That was Nash’s I’m trying hard to be patient voice. She’d heard it many times over the years, and it never failed to make her grin.

  Despite all he’d been through—all they’d been through—she’d raised him to be a gentleman, and he was…even in his frustration.

  She didn’t blame him for his exasperation. To be fair, the realtor had taken her, Nash, and Mack to look at over ten houses at various locations around town, and Agatha had made sure to show him exactly how much she hated every one of them.

  Heck, she wouldn’t even be looking if it weren’t for Mack’s insistence that she be open-minded in case their plans and dreams for the nonprofit didn’t work out.

  Agatha slid a glance to the other side of the room where Mack was lingering by the large picture windows as though desperately trying to stay in the shadows.

  The woman had hardly spoken a word all day. Mack and Nash were constantly going out of their way to avoid even looking at each other.

  Oh, what a mess this was. It had been a week since she’d caught them smooching on the back of the horse and she’d like to bet they hadn’t come within five feet of each other ever since.