"All right, Dad," Mia said with an exaggerated elbow to Gideon's gut, edging him back and out of the conversation. "I'm not a teenager, and I'll be back when I feel like it."
Gideon frowned, but Mia didn't wait for him to say anything else. She slipped her hand into Ethan's and tugged him toward the door.
The shock of having her soft, slender fingers wrapped in his rendered him speechless.
"I'm really sorry," she said again. "Alessandra says Gideon's been overreacting ever since someone targeted her... She nearly died."
She had?
When they reached his truck, the two security guys moved off. Instead of going around to the passenger side, like he expected, she yanked open the driver's side door and climbed inside, sliding across the bench seat.
He followed her in.
She took a breath, looking out the window. "There was also a bomb, back in Glorvaird. I was in a limo, and the bomb exploded pretty close to where we were driving past. Shattered my window."
She glanced back at him, tried for a smile, but he saw the shadows in her eyes. "Things have been quiet ever since."
"That must've been scary," he said slowly. "I guess I can understand why Gideon's so protective."
Her smile turned a little wry. "Good. Because we'll have an escort."
He cranked the engine and then followed her gaze to the black sedan that was edging out from beside the ranch house. So her security would come with them.
How frightening must it have been to live through that? He could deal with the security if it kept Mia safe.
She seemed to breathe easier as they turned out of the ranch drive and onto the two-lane highway that would take them back to town.
He hid a wince as she looked around the interior of his truck. She didn't wrinkle her nose or make any outward sign that riding in the older vehicle bothered her, but he figured she was good at hiding her emotions.
Once again, he reminded himself there wasn't any use in pretending to be something he wasn't.
But it didn't stop him from wishing, just a little, that he could've been someone different. Someone who deserved to be on a date with a princess.
* * *
Mia walked next to Ethan, trying not to feel out of place. Trying not to be conspicuous with the two hulking bodyguards following a pace behind them. She hadn't realized her designer jeans and jacket would be so out of place. Everyone else wore what looked like faded work jeans and sweatshirts, though Ethan had texted her that a team sweatshirt wasn't necessary.
She'd meant to talk to Gideon and Alessandra about the level of security. Most days she vacillated between feeling the goon guards were overkill and feeling edgy, like someone could be watching her. But she certainly hadn't meant to lose her temper in front of Ethan.
Something was going on with Gideon and Alessandra. She didn't know what, whether it was something in their relationship or something else, but there had been more than one time that they'd broken off their conversation when she'd entered the room.
She hated feeling like they were keeping secrets from her. But maybe she was being overly sensitive. Maybe it wasn't about her at all.
The crowd entering the outdoor football stadium was a mix of families with moms and dads with kids and teenagers in pairs and threesomes. It was noisy and chaotic, and she loved the energy.
It was also completely different from the last date she'd been on. She and Richard had been at a quiet, private table in an expensive restaurant back home. And look how that had turned out.
She slipped her hand into Ethan's for the second time, partly to keep from getting separated from him in the crowd, but partly to see the slow blush that climbed into his cheeks. He carried a folded fleece blanket in his other arm.
He paid the admission charge, and they continued, swept along with the crowd toward a set of metal bleachers. Her detail followed right behind.
Several people greeted Ethan, one the veterinarian Mia recognized, who was walking beside a teenage girl. Mia noticed the woman's eyebrows go up toward her hairline.
They found a space on the bleachers, and Goon One and Goon Two settled in two rows behind them. She looked around eagerly, taking in the players on the field—lots of them— the bright lights, and the crowd.
"You'll have to explain what's going on to me," she said. "I don't know the rules."
They let go of each other's hands to get settled, and he stuck the blanket between his feet.
"Right now they're just warming up."
Her eyes caught on the cheerleading squad, already pumping up the crowd from below. Several rows of bleachers near the front were filled with uniformed band members, each holding different instruments.
"This is so fun. Thank you for bringing me."
He looked at her askance. "You're serious?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
He rubbed both hands over his thighs. "This is a high school football game," he said as if she'd somehow missed that fact. "You probably attend events like Wimbledon and the Olympics and—"
"Water polo?" She leaned one elbow on her knee and rested her cheek on her fist. She raised her brows at him. "So I can't be interested in a high school sport?"
He had the good grace to look embarrassed. But then seemed to recover. "What was your last date?"
She wrinkled her nose. "It was a dinner date. And it wasn't a particularly good one."
He didn't ask for more details.
So she went back to the original topic. "Or maybe you think I was looking for any reason to get out from under my sister and Gideon's noses for a few hours?"
He slanted a glance at her, his mouth tight, though not quite a frown. "Were you?"
"Only a little." She nudged his boot with the toe of her shoe. "Is it really so farfetched that I might want to spend time with you?"
He murmured something under his breath and rubbed the back of his neck, expression chagrined.
"What?" she pressed.
He shook his head.
"What was your last date?"
"I haven't dated much. At all." That color was rising in his face again, and she tried not to let it distract her.
"Which is it?" she asked. "Much? Or at all?"
He kept his gaze on the field. A whistle blew, and he let out a small exhale. "That's the referee's whistle. They're starting."
She turned to face the field, aware of the man at her elbow. How could someone like Ethan not have dated? He was handsome, young. She didn't know anything about dairy farming, but it seemed as if he had a strong work ethic.
On the field, players from each team lined up, bent low and forward. One player jogged back and forth behind the line.
The crowd didn't go completely silent, but it seemed to hold its breath. She could hear one of the players, standing behind the line, shouting. She couldn't make out the words.
And then both lines seemed to break at the same moment and rush toward each other. The guy from behind the line somehow had a brown ball in hand and, before she could even register everything that was happening on the field, he threw it to the ground in an empty spot.
The crowd groaned.
"Was that bad?" She glanced at Ethan. His blush had tamed somewhat, but he still kept his eyes on the field, not on her.
"Incomplete pass," Ethan said. "They'll have four downs—it's like four attempts—to get the ball ten or more yards down the field. If they don't make the yards they need, the other team gets the ball."
"Hmm." She watched as the teams lined up again. The sequence started out the same, with both teams rushing at each other, but this time when she expected the guy behind the line to have the ball, it had disappeared.
The crowd cheered, and Ethan pointed to a young man sprinting down the field just before he was smashed by another, larger player.
She leaned close, her shoulder bumping Ethan's. "Much?" she whispered. "Or at all?"
He shot her a resigned look, one that read, are you happy now? "At all."
"Why not?"
*
* *
Mia's frank question had Ethan stumped. He was getting a little more used to her directness and had—thankfully—stopped blushing so much.
Had he given up on dating too easily? He'd always believed he was too busy, that any girl he was attracted to would reject him because of his financial and family situation.
"I've had custody of my brothers since I was nineteen," he said. "Since my stepmother died."
"Oh. I didn't realize." She bumped his shoulder again, this time a gesture of solidarity. Not that he'd minded the flirtatious way she'd done it before. "That must've been hard for you, taking on all that responsibility at such a young age."
He looked back to the field, where the home team had fumbled the ball and the visitors were setting up offense. Carol had pushed him to run the dairy, to take care of the family like Dad would've wanted, often manipulating him with guilt and tears.
"It wasn't that bad," he said. There had been moments—sometimes very few and far between—where he'd felt close to his stepbrothers. Like the time when the boys had been twelve and thirteen, and the three of them had snuck away for a morning of fishing in the creek.
Those moments had grown much more rare in the last few years. Now...this might be the last time he watched them play, if they couldn't get their grades up. It was a sobering thought.
When he looked back to Mia, she was considering him with what almost looked like admiration.
He averted his eyes. Surely he was imagining that. Seeing what he wanted to see.
"They're going to try a big pass," he said, nodding to the field, hoping to divert her attention.
"How can you tell?"
Okay, he wasn't imagining that she'd edged slightly closer. Where there'd been a couple of inches between their legs, now her jean-clad thigh rested next to his.
"Uhh... See the formation? The way the players are lined up?" He glanced at her, but she just looked more confused. "When they're lined up like that, it usually means they're going to try a long pass."
Maybe she'd moved closer because she was cold. With the sun going down, the breeze was starting to get chilly. That's why he'd brought the blanket.
"Do you come to all your stepbrothers' games?"
He shook his head, trying to clear the fuzz that came from being so close to her. "Just the home games. And I don't always stay until the end. The ladies—the cows—have to be milked twice a day. The first time early in the morning, so it makes for a short night."
"How early?"
"I'm usually in the barn by four."
Her mouth fell open. "But that's still the middle of the night."
"It's technically morning."
She shook her head emphatically. "That's...torture!"
He couldn't help smiling at her emphatic words. "It isn't so bad. You get used to it, after a while." He'd been doing it for so long he couldn't remember anything else.
"Well, I hope your brothers appreciate what you're sacrificing for them."
She'd meant it as a joke, meant the lost sleep he'd never get back. He knew she did, and yet, the words penetrated the careful wall he'd built. He always tried not to think about his brothers and the many ways they'd taken advantage.
What about living your life? The principal's words from earlier in the week echoed in his subconscious and reared their heads at inopportune times. Like now. Did he even have a right to think like that?
"Wow, look at that frown. I'm sorry I brought it up." Mia leaned into him again, her concerned expression drawing him from his funk.
"It's okay." He shrugged, tried to shrug it away, like he usually did. Lately, it was harder to lock those thoughts away where they belonged.
"I guess everybody has difficult family."
He grabbed on to the subject change with both hands. "You too?"
The easy smile faded, and he instantly missed it. She glanced around them, as if just registering the crowd on all sides.
And he realized she was probably worried that what she told him could be overheard and might be spilled to social media or tabloid magazines.
He might tire of the small town grapevine, but he couldn't imagine feeling under a microscope all the time.
"It's okay," he said quickly. "You can tell me later." Or not at all. He'd already experienced so much on this date, he couldn't expect a second one.
She looked slightly relieved. "I'll owe you a favor."
"Do you speak French?" he joked.
"Mais oui."
4
Gideon ran through the Excel spreadsheet once more. He'd been scrolling up and down the screen, staring at columns of numbers for hours, and his head was pounding.
He was trained for combat, could speak six languages, and could build a bomb. But he was no accountant.
Leaning back from where he'd been hunched over the laptop keyboard at the dining room table, he realized evening was falling. He'd been so focused on the computer that he'd missed the entire afternoon.
But after two days of meticulously combing through bank statements and the monthly accounting ledgers, he'd finally found the discrepancy.
Three months ago, while he and Alessandra had been in Glorvaird, there'd been a ten-thousand-dollar withdrawal from the bank. Since then, multiple transactions for expenses had been adjusted, increasing the expense amounts by different amounts, from a hundred dollars to several hundred at a time.
If the adjustments had been a one-time error, or maybe had occurred twice, he could've chalked it up to a mistake. But the mysterious bank withdrawal and the adjustments to numerous expenditures meant someone was trying to cover their tracks. Someone had stolen from the Triple H.
They'd almost gotten away with it too, since the difference between the bank balance and the transaction register was almost non-existent now. If he hadn't noticed it last week, he could've missed it entirely. That might've opened the door for the thief to steal more from his family.
Had the person done it simply because Gideon had been distracted by his new relationship with Alessandra? Because he was traveling part-time with his fiancée?
He didn't want to consider it, but other than his brother and sister, Nate was the only person on the ranch who had access to the bank account. As the foreman, he had to be able to make purchases to run the Triple H. Gideon hated to think that a man he trusted so deeply would do something like this.
But there was also the fact that something had happened between his sister and a hand named Trey. When Gideon and Alessandra had declared their love for each other and decided to make a go of things, it had seemed as if Trey and Carrie had been beginning a relationship. Sometime while Gideon and Alessandra had been in Glorvaird, Trey and Carrie had cooled things off. Gideon didn't know why, and neither the ranch hand nor Carrie was talking. Was there any chance Trey had either conned his sister out of the money or had somehow used her to facilitate the transaction?
With Gideon's brother Matt overseas, that left hands Dan, Brian and Chase as the other suspects. Could any of them have pulled this off?
Until this point, everyone on the Triple H had felt like family. Been trusted as such.
Gideon rubbed his forehead, but it didn't ease the pounding behind his eyes.
"Gideon?" Alessandra said his name, and he looked up, blinking.
She came up behind him, and he blanked the screen, more out of habit than wanting to keep it from her. Her arms came around his shoulders, her cheek pressed into his. "Isn't it about time for a break?"
He nodded, enjoying the rasp of his beard against her cheek, but he couldn't shake the disappointment and anger that weighted him down.
She bussed his cheek with a kiss. "Find something?"
She must've felt him tense up, because she put a few inches between them, no longer teasing and flirty, though she still held on to his shoulders. "You did," she whispered.
"Part of it. I'm waiting on the bank to provide photocopies of the transaction. The manager thought he could pull digital copies of the surveillance c
ameras, too. I won't know for sure which one of the guys it was until then."
She fell silent. Emotion radiated off of her, and when she spoke, her voice was quiet but brimming with hurt. "One of the guys? I can't believe any of the cowboys would do that to you."
He was almost one hundred percent sure it was Nate. Nate was the only one with bank access, though the other hands could access the ranch's computer at any time.
He knew Alessandra had found peace and solace here when she'd been on the run from the assassins who'd tried to kill her. The cowboys had been a big part of that. And he felt just the same about the guys. They'd been together a long time. Dan had come to them most recently, and he'd been on the payroll for five years. It wasn't a pleasant feeling to think that someone you counted as family had stabbed you in the back.
He rubbed his fists into his eye sockets but didn't quite dislodge her hands from his shoulders. "Are we making a mistake here?"
She went perfectly still, and he regretted the words as soon as he'd said them. But just because he regretted them didn't mean the thought hadn't been rolling around his head since he'd first discovered there might be a theft.
She let go of him and took several steps away from his chair. She wrapped her arms around her middle in a pose that reminded him of when he'd rejected their relationship—when he'd thought they'd be better off going their separate ways.
This time, the diamond engagement ring sparkled from her left hand.
"What, exactly, do you mean by that?" Her voice was low and even, but he could hear the undertone of hurt.
He stood up, bad knee cracking as he straightened to his full height.
How could he explain this in a way that wouldn't hurt her more? "When someone commits a crime, there's usually this conflagration of three things." He used his index finger to draw a triangle in the air in front of himself. "Need," he ticked off the first side of the triangle. "Rationalization." Ticked the second. "And opportunity." He glanced at her, but it was clear from her puzzled expression that she didn't see where he was going with this. "Me being gone for months at a time opened a door. Whoever did this took advantage."
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