“Well, you know where I grew up, the next town over was Newgulf. It was built for the oil and sulfur workers. And me and a few of those guys I’ve known since I was a kid—you’ve met ’em, you know: Bob Blanchard, Ken Scott, Oscar Tanning, those old guys—we would work for Newgulf in the summers, washing and painting the houses. We had this big water truck with a hose, sort of like a junior fire hose. They didn’t really have the pressure washers then, like they do now. So we’d spray the house to get off most of the dirt and algae and any loose paint, then come in with brushes and scrub with some kinda . . . Oh, God only knows what that stuff was, probably the reason so many of us are ending up with cancer now. Then once the house was dry, we’d come back and put on the primer, then two coats of the fresh color. White or gray or blue, those were the choices. And the trim was all white. It always felt so good to finish one up because you’d really made a difference you could see.” He made a semicircle in the air with his hand, as if he were cleaning the window of his mind’s eye. “And then you were done. I sometimes miss that. Feeling like I knew exactly how much I’d accomplished because the whole result was right there in front of me.”
“And you can check it off the list.”
“Mm-hmm.” He sketched a check mark with one finger, then lowered his hand to the seat again and pushed the swing into gentle motion with both feet. “Welp. Your sister has been sending me a lot of links.”
“Okay . . .”
“To manufacturers’ organizations. She also bought me a subscription to Textile World magazine.”
“Oh my God. Alex.”
Her dad chuckled. “When she gets the ball, she runs with it. But I’ll hand it to her, it’s interesting reading. I just . . .” He looked down at his shirt for a second, plucking at the fabric and shaking his head. “I had no idea what you were actually doing. And I didn’t know anything about that school of yours except how much it cost me. It’s not just some art camp, it’s the big dog, huh?”
She felt like she was in an alternate universe. Her dad paying this much attention to her, having an actual conversation with her? Complimenting her choice of college? “For design overall it’s . . . second, I think? Second in the U.S., at least. MIT is the top, and I thought about accepting. But Rhode Island is closer to New York, and there were some teachers there I wanted to study with, so I went with RISD.” Would things have turned out differently if she’d chosen MIT? Looking back, she realized that at least her father would’ve known she was at a real university.
At the moment, he was staring at her as if he’d never seen her before. “You . . . were accepted to MIT?”
“Yeah. But RISD was really my top choice all along.”
He shook his head again and rubbed a hand over his face. “It was worth the money either way, I guess. But—” He held up his hands again, as if he already knew the argument because he’d heard it before; Victoria hadn’t given her mother and Alex nearly enough credit. They’d obviously been schooling Tom Woodcock. “But it shouldn’t have been about that. It should have been about respecting your choices, and you, the way I did for Alex. Even if I didn’t understand you like I did her. She said not to bring that up, so I won’t push, but I. . . I don’t know. I still wish you’d finished.”
Victoria closed her eyes against the wave of unaccustomed emotions threatening to swamp her. “I will someday.”
“Dammit. None of that’s why I was supposed to be here, Peanut.”
“It’s not?” She opened her eyes to find his trained back on the sandwich. He looked supremely uneasy. The dammit hadn’t been directed at her, she gathered, but at himself.
“No. Alex said you’d talk about all that when you’re ready. And I want to respect that. I’m doing my best. But she did tell us what happened to you at that place you were working. Before you drove back to Dallas. I came here because I needed to see with my own two eyes that you were all right, and to let you know that whatever you need to handle that—lawyers, therapy, anything—your mother and I want to help you with it. And I hope you’ll take our help. I would pay any amount of money right now to put that little shit in jail for laying a hand on you. Or at least sue the bastard into the dirt.” His jaw tightened, his lips growing pale from tension. That face, she knew. She’d just never seen him look that angry on her behalf before. At anyone else, or at himself. “If I’m the one who made you feel like you had to go and—” He cut himself off again with a shake of his head. “Whatever part I played in landing you there, I’m so sorry. You know I love you more than the world.”
One thing was easy enough to address. She led with that. “It’s okay, Daddy. I’m fine. Really. I was shaken up and I’m still angry, but I don’t think I need therapy or anything to deal with it.” The other parts . . . Well, she wasn’t ready yet to talk to her dad about what he had or hadn’t made her feel. And as for the legal stuff—ugh. It made her head ache and her eyes burn to even think about it. Alex had been sending her links, too. To employment laws, to various government sites, to law firms, to articles and what-to-do-if checklists. She had called a state agency, answered some questions, and filled out a form about the incident, but nothing much seemed to have happened since then. If anything did happen . . .
“I filed a complaint already,” she told him. “After that I don’t know what they’ll do next. I doubt he’d go to jail in any case, even if I had gone straight to the police after it happened. And I don’t want to sue him. He has a wife and kids. I just want . . . I just . . .” Shit. Her lip had started to wibble, and the inside of her nose was prickling. A tear slipped down her cheek and then the dam burst. She managed to choke out, “I just w-want it to not have happened,” before she put her face in her hands and let the tears come.
Fucking hell. Not the way she’d pictured the big, triumphant showdown with Dad.
“Aw, Peanut. If I could buy a time machine and do that for you, I sure would.”
A moment later a familiar smell, a familiar touch, an awkward pat—and then a hug. Her father enveloped her with comfort and she soaked it up, crying out the fears and frustrations of the past few months into his neatly pressed golf shirt.
* * *
When Ethan walked up the trail from the parking lot to the main house, his mind was firmly on his house. Not on the contract in his hand, not on finding a lawyer to look it over—hey, Vic’s sister might be able to—but only on finishing the wiring so he could finally put up the interior walls and get the place finished. Although first he wanted to find out who owned the Jaguar in the parking lot. Or maybe before any of that, he’d get in a ride; Sackett had been pastured all weekend and was probably rambunctious. An hour or two on the high trail would settle him right down.
Ethan’s focus was for shit. And what little of it he had flew clear out of his mind when he came off the trailhead and spotted a familiar head of honey-kissed locks, leaning on the shoulder of some tall, white-haired old dude. Victoria, sitting on the porch swing with . . .
It couldn’t be.
But who else could it be? What other old guy would have his arm around Victoria’s shoulders as they sat on the gently moving swing, enjoying the breeze while she shirked her job?
At least this cleared up the mystery of the Jaguar.
Ethan was still a few yards from the porch steps when Victoria turned and spotted him. Gave him a big, watery smile while wiping what looked like the last of a bunch of tears from her eyes. So . . . maybe not enjoying the breeze all that much. Guilt nudged at him for judging her too quickly.
“Hey, Ethan.” She used the swing’s momentum to lift her and stood up, brushing her face one more time. “Daddy, this is Ethan Hill. He’s one of the owners—the vet I told you about? Ethan, this is my dad. Thomas Woodcock.”
“Tom,” her dad immediately offered, putting on a businessman’s professional smile as he rose beside Victoria and offered his hand.
Ethan nodded back. “Howdy.” He shook Tom’s hand automatically, hoping the guy didn’t notice his still va
guely pink fingertips and nails and quashing his desire to glare at the man whose unkind words had sent Victoria into a life-altering downward spiral. Victoria seemed to have made up with him; she put a hand on her dad’s arm as they shook, smiling at him.
Then, if there was any lingering doubt, Victoria made it clear that they’d buried the hatchet. She patted her father’s arm, looking downright wistful. “Are you sure you won’t stay for dinner? You could spend the night if you need to. It’s such a long time to spend in the car for one day.”
Her dad raised his eyebrows at her, clearly amused. And then tapped her nose with his finger. “Says the young lady who drove from Rhode Island to Dallas in three days.”
Victoria grinned. “You got me there.”
“I appreciate the offer, Peanut, but I have to be back at the office tomorrow.”
“Okay, I guess.” She grabbed up a grocery bag from the swing, handing it to her father. “I can get the coffee cup back this weekend. Oh, and it’s the kind that keeps the coffee really hot, so be careful when you first open the drinking part.”
Tom turned toward Ethan, shrugging. “Sounds just like her mother.” Then, back to Victoria: “We should check your bank app thing—”
“PayPal, Daddy.”
“—PayPal, one more time before I go. I want to make sure the money made it there okay. I never quite believe we can do all this from our phones. Back in my day this would’ve been a job for Western Union or traveler’s checks, something like that.”
She rolled her eyes—but in a joking way—and pulled out her cell phone. A few taps confirmed that yes, the deposit had made it into her account.
Ethan tried to join in the smiles-all-around mood, but his cheeks were already starting to ache from the effort. She was walking back her stance on refusing her parents’ money? What the actual fuck, Peanut? He felt like he’d wandered into an alternate universe. He felt like he was intruding. He felt like he didn’t know what to feel.
So he made an excuse to escape. “I need to head to the pasture and get Sackett down. It was nice to meet you, sir.” Lies, all lies, and why the hell did I call him sir?
“You too, Son.” Tom gave him a congenial nod.
Victoria smiled at Ethan but seemed distracted, more concerned about seeing her dad off. “I’ll see you later, Ethan.”
He made a noncommittal noise, tipped his hat, and spun on his heel, forcing himself to walk calmly toward the barn instead of stomping or kicking things the way he wanted to. He was angry and he wasn’t even sure why. It was a good thing, right, that she was making peace with her parents? Maybe her dad wasn’t a piece of shit after all. Maybe he’d apologized. Taking money to finish her degree was the sensible thing to do. Who wouldn’t be better off without a paid-for college degree? She could angle for even better jobs after she had one. And she could probably still find a sweet internship or maybe even a job in the meantime. In Dallas, from the sound of it, if she was planning to go back there by the weekend. Or maybe back on the East Coast, if her parents were going to subsidize her housing again.
His gut ached. When he passed the threshold of the door to the horse barn, he paused on his way through to the pasture gate and slumped down on a bench, dropping his elbows to his knees and his forehead to his hands. He’d folded up Doc’s contract and stuck it in his back pocket, and it poked his ass cheek uncomfortably as he leaned forward.
What’s more, Victoria had introduced Ethan as “one of the owners.” Yep, that was him. Just another one of her employers. Which made sense, because the last thing she probably needed was to explain their relationship to her dad. Especially since they didn’t really have a relationship, and it was just a short-term thing, and they both knew that going in. Nothing special to see here, folks, move along. But still . . .
“Fuck.” What the hell was wrong with him?
One thing was for sure, he wasn’t going to go on any calming horseback rides at the moment. One whiff of his mood right now and Sackett would be all over the place, taking advantage, and a miserable time would be had by all. Ethan gave his head a final press for good measure, trying to keep all the disorganized thoughts and feelings contained, then slapped his thighs and stood up to head in the direction of his house.
The walk up the hillside did him some good, gave his head time to clear a little. But the moment he opened his door and stepped inside the tiny house, and was greeted by the sight of rumpled blankets and the smell of sex and Victoria, he groaned at his own stupidity. This was probably the worst place to work his way through his feelings.
The thick wad of paper was still digging into his muscle, so he pulled it out of his pocket and rolled the contract the other way to smooth the pages out.
Rolling with the flow . . . sure, Victoria had done that. But Ethan had been kidding himself if he thought she’d done it with no safety net. Daddy had always been there with the money if she really needed it, hadn’t he? For all Ethan knew, she’d had this outcome in mind all along—manipulating her parents, specifically her dad, into a display of affection and support. That didn’t seem like her, but neither did her acceptance of money from her dad, or her hugging the guy and warning him not to burn his mouth on the hot coffee.
Ethan was certainly infatuated, but how well did he even know this woman? Or rather, this girl, practically speaking, in terms of where she was in her life. Barely an adult, only out of college because she’d dropped out that semester. So really, what did he know?
He didn’t know enough to look at her as a role model, that was for damn sure. But he’d been very close to doing just that—to telling himself he was following her great example by turning down the contract and accepting whatever fate threw at him next.
Ethan didn’t believe in fate. And Victoria had abandoned her principled stance, apparently, as soon as Daddy had shown up with an apology and an open checkbook.
He looked down at the contract, the packet of pages that represented what he’d been working almost his whole life to achieve. And he was planning to throw all that work away to make rope and go to kink conventions? To be second banana at a dude ranch that probably wouldn’t even be a going business concern if it weren’t for the secret BDSM sideline? Jesus Christ, what had he been thinking?
Cold feet. That’s what it had been. He’d had cold feet, like a bridegroom the night before the wedding. He was making a huge decision, and it was scary to make that kind of commitment. Perfectly understandable. But that same guy usually still went through with the ceremony and often ended up happily married for life, right?
In Ethan’s toolbox, in the top tray under some loose nuts and a hex wrench, he found a pen. Not giving himself time to reconsider, he attacked the document with it, holding the pages against an exposed stud, stabbing his initials into the stamped boxes at the foot of each page, scraping his signature on the lines where indicated. When he was through, the paper looked slightly beaten up, but it was all done and signed. The cover page had fallen off somewhere, but he figured it didn’t really matter. It was just about the only page he hadn’t needed to write on.
He’d need to get an envelope and stamps from the main house if he wanted to mail the contract. It seemed like less trouble—and more of a declaration—to deliver it back to Doc in person. He could do it right now, in fact. And if he walked to his truck the long way around, he wouldn’t have to risk running into Victoria and her dad again on the way. He folded the packet, stuffed it into his pocket again, and headed back down the hill, aiming straight for the parking lot.
Ethan knew who he was and what he wanted. He’d never relied much on anyone for help. He’d set his course and stuck to it and succeeded. So he’d let a beautiful rope bunny distract him near the end, let doubt creep in for a brief time—all that was nothing, a mere hiccup, not some new truth or grand personal insight he had to adapt to if he wanted to be happy.
He had signed the contract. He would deliver it to Doc. He would start living the life he’d always dreamed of. And some Giddyup w
eekend he’d find the kinkster of his dreams, too. It would all work out, just as he’d always planned.
Everything was going to be great.
Chapter 17
Victoria could have sworn she’d seen Ethan heading up the hill toward his house as she started off the porch to walk her dad to his car. She’d been no more than ten minutes in saying good-bye, then following Ethan up the trail, so she was surprised when she didn’t meet him on his way back down or find him at the house.
The door was unlocked, as usual, and she went inside without thinking twice about it. Then she wondered why she felt so confident she had the right. Possibly because it wasn’t quite a house yet. The pipes and wiring were mostly done, all the interior framing was complete except for the stuff where the cabinetry would go, and if Ethan had wanted to, he could have already started sleeping up in his loft . . . but the space was a skeleton still, and felt more like a workshop than a home.
It also felt strangely empty with neither Ethan nor Roxie there. Roxie was spending the day in the big dog run behind the main house, and Victoria was surprised to find she missed the click of the Border collie’s claws, the low sweep of her wagging tail. The dog liked to circle, then settle with an audible sigh, between Victoria and Ethan on the tumble of blankets . . . once they’d stopped moving around and making noises, at least. That contented sigh seemed such a constant already, and Victoria wasn’t sure why, any more than she knew why she kept turning toward Ethan like a flower to the sun.
She wished she could ask him to come with her to Dallas the following weekend. Her dad had given her more than enough for a first-class ticket—You might need a little running money—so she could easily afford two coach seats. But it might be a tense, awkward few days, the wrong sort of time to bring a new element into an already volatile mix. And he’d seemed upset earlier, when she’d introduced him to her father; his tight posture and closed-off face had reminded her of the way he’d acted the day she’d arrived at Hilltop. What was that all about? She definitely didn’t want to find out in the middle of a fraught weekend when she was trying to clear the air with her parents.
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