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Yes. This was her home. The Trading Post was hers, because she was the one who had built it up from nothing. If it had really been left up to Nathan West, it would be nothing. It would be nothing but a hollow shell. She was the one who had given it life. She was the one who was entitled to it.
She would be damned if Gage got to come in and make her feel like it wasn’t hers. She would be damned if she would be chased off. She had made that decision early on. Even while she endured somewhat pitying stares from the townspeople, those who remembered the circumstances surrounding her accident, and the general indifference of men that had forced her to cultivate a shell that was so hard she didn’t think anyone could get through it now. Even if she wanted to let them.
Feeling fortified, she continued on down the driveway, feeling gradually less fortified the moment his house came into view.
She loved her house, and she was proud of it. It was rustic and cozy and entirely perfect for one woman who lived by herself. But his place... Well, it was something spectacular. She had rarely had occasion to see the house up close, even though it was visible across the lake from her back deck. She’d known that it was impressive, she just hadn’t realized quite how much.
It was one of those fancy, two-story cabins with logs that shone like honey and a green tin roof that pitched at sharp angles, following the expansive sprawl of the house itself. There were large windows at the front that reflected the scene around her, and herself, in their shining surfaces.
She looked determinedly at the door, and not at the reflection of herself. The reflection that looked very small and ineffective in the vast open surroundings.
She was not ineffective. She was a warrior.
She repeated that mentally with her every step up the front porch and to the door. Then, she knocked sharply, twice, before wrapping both hands back around her thermos. Clinging to it as though it might offer some source of power. Her own little caffeinated talisman.
She waited. And then, at a certain point, she decided that he was making her wait. That made her grit her teeth in frustration. As if all of this wasn’t irritating enough, the man was playing power games with her.
Too bad for him, that kind of thing didn’t work on her. She had lived through hell. Nothing scared her anymore. Least of all monsters under the bed, in the closet or in the spectacular log cabin.
Just when she was about to knock again, the door swung open and her heart, stomach and every other organ in her torso plummeted down toward her toes, leaving her hollowed out and breathless. He was...well, he was shirtless.
And while she considered herself impossible to intimidate, she was, apparently, easy enough to shock.
She swallowed hard, doing her very best not to stare at that broad expanse of bare chest. At the dark hair that covered his well-defined muscles, thinning out as it reached his incredibly cut abs.
He was wearing jeans that were disconcertingly low, revealing chiseled lines that acted as an arrow, directing the feminine gaze down to the rather prominent bulge at the apex of his well-muscled thighs.
She imagined that this moment, this moment that seemed horrifically extended, was actually over quickly. That she wasn’t really standing there gaping at his body for a recognizable or measurable portion of time. She imagined that in actuality things were just moving slow on a scale of relativity at the moment. At least, she hoped so, because if not, she had just made a complete and total ass of herself.
Still, she found herself looking at that perfect body again. All hard lines and gorgeous skin and...not one single scar.
Unlike her own skin. Which was a guide to every injury, every surgery...
How was it fair that he looked like this and she looked like she did?
She forced her gaze up to his face and found it no less disturbing. Monsters, she decided, should be hideous. They should not be lean, finely honed examples of masculine perfection complete with an utterly offensive yet compelling tattoo on an equally compelling forearm.
They should not have sharp, hot blue eyes and curved sensual lips that put a woman in the kind of mind that began to wonder about how they might feel beneath her own.
But it occurred to her then, that maybe that was what made a monster like him so terrifying. He wasn’t repellent. He was the embodiment of all of her nightmares, and she should hate looking at him. But she didn’t.
Yeah, she wasn’t easy to scare. But that was damn scary.
“You took all that time to answer the door and you couldn’t find a shirt?” she asked, keeping her tone as hard and arid as possible.
“I took the time to find pants.”
“Allow me to thank you formally. Are you... Heading out soon?”
“No,” he said, offering no explanation beyond that.
“I thought that I was handling your ranch stuff because you were busy.”
“I am. But this morning I’m concerning myself with my own personal business, and that is all work that I can do in my home office.”
“Okay,” she said, feeling a little bit like she’d been punched in the head. “I can figure out all the stuff out here.” She waved her hand somewhat wildly, as if he needed the gesture to understand that she meant all of the tasks spread about across the property.
“Don’t be ridiculous, I’ll show you around. But I do need a shirt before I go outside.” He turned away from her slightly, then back. “Come in?”
“I’m good,” she said resolutely. She pressed her weight more firmly down toward the soles of her feet, completely determined to stay right where she was standing.
He said nothing. Instead, he turned away, closing the door behind him, leaving her standing there alone.
What exactly had she gotten herself into? Maybe she was crazy. Maybe Lane was right.
No. You’re reclaiming. It’s important. Essential.
Yes, it was. Protecting the part of the world that she had carved out for herself was the most important thing. Her home, her shop. And dammit all, her pride. She hated that she had accepted handouts from him without knowing it. She just needed to... Well, much like she needed to wipe her brain clean at the end of the day, she felt like she needed to wipe the slate too. Or she would never be free of it.
It would loom. And so would he. The monster she would never be able to vanquish.
She was here. She was vanquishing.
The door opened again, and this time, thankfully, he was wearing a tight black T-shirt and a black coat. “All right,” he said, “come this way.”
She followed him down the steps, down along a dirt road that led around back of the house. She wasn’t really sure if she was supposed to make conversation with him. Then, she decided she really shouldn’t care what she was supposed to do. There wasn’t a protocol for the situation. And it wasn’t on her to make him comfortable.
Of course, it would be nice if she could make herself comfortable, but that might be a step too ambitious.
“The horses are down this way,” he said, gesturing toward a stable that was clearly visible. “If you wouldn’t mind feeding them and taking care of the stalls, that would be helpful.”
“I’d like to come by in the evenings and ride too,” she said. “To make sure that they’re getting some exercise.”
“How often do you work your store?”
“Five days a week,” she said.
“And you want to come here every day and do some work?”
“I was working in the store seven days a week until recently. The fact that I get time off at all is kind of a strange new situation.”
“It seems like a lot.”
“Are you concerned for my well-being?” If he said yes, she was going to kill him.
“No,” he responded, hard and fast. “Just don’t want you to drop dead on my property.”
“Your concern is touching. With my last gasping breath I’ll send a text to one of my friends and have them drag me over the property line, would that help?”
“Yeah, if it makes you feel better.”
“I don’t know how to do this,” she said.
“You don’t know how to do ranch work? Because that presents a problem for our arrangement.”
“No, I don’t know how to talk to you like there isn’t something huge hanging between us. I don’t know how to talk to you like you’re a person.”
“You just do it, I guess.”
“Or,” she said, “I don’t. We could always pursue that avenue. One where I just get to work and you go do your work and we don’t have to try and communicate.”
“Works for me. How long are you planning on staying today?”
She shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t have to work today. So I figured I would feed them, clean them and take them out for a ride. So, I imagine I’ll be done around one or two.”
“Okay.”
Then, he turned and walked away from her, leaving her standing there in the middle of the muddy drive all by herself.
Well, that was what she wanted anyway. Now, she could get to work.
* * *
GAGE HUNG UP with his business manager and leaned back in his chair. It was strange to be in a house like this. Someplace permanent. He was accustomed to motels that catered as much to roaches as they did to their guests. He was also accustomed to doing a little bit more hard labor than this.
Letting Rebecca handle anything on his property went directly against his usual mode of operation. He needed physical labor to deal with his shit. Otherwise, he started to go stir-crazy. He had a good head for investments and money management, but it was boring as fuck.
It had also made him rich, so he supposed he couldn’t complain.
He heard a knock on the door downstairs and he abandoned his desk, taking the steps two at a time as he headed to the front entry. He half expected it to be Rebecca, so when he opened it and saw his sister Madison standing there, the shock hit him like a bucket of cold water over his head.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Hello to you too, jackass,” she said, pushing past him and walking straight inside. “Nice place,” she said, looking around. “Colton didn’t mention that. I imagine his general rage and anger at you prevented him from saying anything nice at all.”
“He’s mad at me, huh?”
She snorted. “Do bears poop in the woods?”
“I assume.”
“Then assume he’s pretty mad.”
“Everyone else?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest and rocking back on his heels.
“Sierra is young. She’s also much nicer than I am. Colton is... Well, he’s as decent as cornfields and apple pie. Mom is as emotionally compromised as she ever was, and I think she’s...shocked. Yes, she’s surprised you came back.”
So Colton had decided to fill her in, Gage assumed. But she wasn’t asking to see him. He couldn’t blame her.
He was as surprised as anyone that he’d come back. But when he’d gotten that phone call, he’d known there was no other choice. Because he already knew there was no end to the running.
He’d been doing it for long enough that if there was an end, he would have found it. So he’d decided that maybe the only way to fix it...the only way to end that gnawing, desperate ache in him, was to go back.
So here he was.
“And you?” he asked. “How do you feel about me being back?”
“I’m reserving judgment.” She took another step, looking around the room, her eyes sharp, the same blue as his own. He remembered Madison as a little girl, and he could see nothing of the little girl in her now. “I didn’t exactly make it to this point unscathed. And believe me, there was a point in time when I really wanted to run away. Sadly, I couldn’t, because you already had. You realize, it puts a lot of pressure on the remaining children to stay put when someone else has already scampered off.”
“I imagine,” he said. He also imagined that whatever Madison had been through, it wasn’t exactly his situation.
“But, even saying that, I get it. I get why you left. I don’t know what happened, but I understand that sometimes things are just too hard. That this place—this place where everybody knows you—is just oppressive sometimes. I was seventeen, and I got involved with my dressage trainer. When I say involved, I mean I was having a relationship with his penis.”
Those words, so flippant and hard, had been chosen carefully, he could tell. To distance her, to distance him.
“Sure,” he said, keeping his voice as neutral as hers. “Those kinds of relationships make the world go round.”
“Indeed they do. And, when you’re a woman, they can make things stop altogether. He was married. Which, I knew, but of course I bought into that tried-and-true line about how he was going to get divorced, and she didn’t love him and she didn’t understand him like I did.” She laughed, but the sound didn’t contain any humor. “The only reason it’s even remotely forgivable is that I was so young I didn’t realize what a cliché it was. Anyway, I came out of it with a big scarlet letter, and he ended up doing just fine. In fact, he even stayed married. So, I was clearly the villain.”
“How old was he?”
“He was almost forty,” she said. “It’s entirely likely I have daddy issues.”
“That fucker is lucky I wasn’t here,” he said, meaning that down to his soul.
“But you weren’t. Anyway, the point is I have my own stuff, and my own reasons for doing the things that I do. That means that I’m probably your best bet as an ally in this family.”
“You said Sierra was nicer than you.”
“She is. And she’ll forgive you. Trust me. She’ll probably even hug you. But she’s not going to understand you. I have a feeling you and I were created out of the same end of the gene pool.” She looked at him, her expression expectant. And he wondered if she was waiting for him to pour out his heart. To confess all. To say exactly what he’d been up to for the past seventeen years, and what had sent him running in the first place.
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. Not today.
“How is Dad?” he asked.
“The same. Still in the hospital.”
“I’ve been going over the finances.” He watched her expression closely, and it remained smooth, impassive.
“We’re broke.”
“You aren’t,” he said. “Your business is doing very well. In fact, most everything that centers directly around the ranch, around what you and Sierra do, works very well. It’s just that overall the family is in a lot of debt. And if I want to save the ranch, I have to manage all of that as best I can.”
“Right,” she said. “But I don’t understand why you have to do it. I don’t understand why not Colton, or me. Not Sierra, because she’s about to produce progeny. But the rest of us. Why aren’t we doing it?”
“Because I’m done running. This is my responsibility, and I’m going to see it done.”
She swallowed hard, nodding slowly. “And after that?”
“Well, then I start running again.”
“That particular brand of denial is probably good for your quads, anyway,” Madison said.
“Well, that’s good to know.” He cleared his throat, a strange uncomfortable sensation filtering through his chest. “I’ll walk you out.”
Madison’s pale eyebrows shot upward. “Wow. Direct. I suppose I had better let you get back to all that brooding you seem to be so fond of doing.”
“Do you have anything else to say?”
“I always have something else to say, Gage. It’s best not to leave that door open.” Then, Maddy turned and walked out of the house. He followed after her, standing on the porch and watching her as she walked toward her sporty little car.
“No truck?”
“Do I look like I would drive a truck?” she asked.
“Colton and Sierra do, don’t they?” He recalled that from the hospital when he’d been there visiting his Dad.
“One of these things is not like the others. But I thought that maybe we might be.” She squinted. “I’m not entirely convinced we aren’t.” Then, she got into her car and backed out of the driveway. He watched her until she was gone.
Having his family around was...strange. It did weird things to his mind and his body. Leaving him feeling stretched and brittle.
There was always a vague sense of something pressing at the back of his mind. A part of himself that he had left behind in Copper Ridge. It was inescapable. It had proven to be so in all his years of wandering. It was one reason he was back now. One reason he was so determined to settle everything once and for all.
But this... This was different. Now, his family was real, not just a vague impression of a thing left behind. His siblings were right in front of him, the adults they had grown into and not the children they’d been when he’d gone.
And some jackass had taken advantage of Madison.
That made his chest feel tight, the sensation spreading up to his throat. He hated that. Hated the thought of her feeling alone. Feeling broken because someone had treated her carelessly.
Yeah, he’d always had that sense that part of him was still here in Copper Ridge, but in his head, those parts of him were young and innocent, and still under the protection of his parents. For all their father was flawed, he took care of his children, even if it was only to prevent scandal from spreading.
At least, he took care of his legitimate children.
Even when they didn’t deserve it.
He gritted his teeth, curling his fingers into a fist and slamming the side of it against the support post on the porch.
It didn’t take much to remind him exactly why he had spent so long avoiding this place. It was easy to be a martyr in isolation. To self-flagellate without the consequences of your abandonment staring right at you.
Hell, there was nothing he could do about it now. What was done was done. All he could do now was fix it, and then get the hell out of Dodge.
He looked toward the barn, toward where Rebecca Bear was currently working to pay off debt that in his mind she didn’t have. She didn’t owe him anything. But she was stubborn, and she had pride. He had taken enough from her. He wasn’t going to take that too.
He had left a hell of a mess in this town. He wasn’t sure it was possible to clean it up.
But, if he died trying, at least it wouldn’t be his problem anymore.
CHAPTER FIVE
SHE HURT EVERYWHERE. There was nothing like a day of manual labor to remind her that she had once shattered her kneecap. And broken her femur. And that doing too much seemed to tighten her muscles up around the bone and make everyplace that had ever been fractured ache.
She had never hated Gage West more than she did in this moment. Actually, that was a lie, she had hated Gage West plenty of times over the years. Too many to list.
But, she could clearly picture him while she hated him now. She hobbled over to the bar, leaning against it, trying to get as much weight as she could off of her leg.
“Beer me, Ace,” she said, pressing her hand to her forehead.
The bar was crowded. It was Sunday night, and no one was looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. So, instead of getting a good night’s sleep, they were obviously out playing darts and riding on the mechanical bull that Ace had installed about a year ago.
Recently, Ace had opened a more upscale place, but he could still often be found here at everyone’s favorite dive. The fact that he wasn’t here some of the time was strange though. Copper Ridge was a constant. A small, slow-moving community that didn’t often see change. But the last few years had brought quite a bit of it. Tourism was beginning to become a major industry, and while she was definitely grateful for that, it was also changing her beloved landscape.
Just a year ago Ace had been single, and flirting with everything that moved. Now, he was married and about to be a father. Not that it bothered her. She had never been interested in Ace that way. It was just... Watching other people, people like him who had never even seemed interested in such a thing moving on with their lives and finding a companion made her feel hollow. Unsatisfied in a way she rarely was.
The fact he had married a West made her feel even weirder. Because the Wests made her feel weird in general. It was like they were infiltrating everything.
Not that she held anything that had happened to her against Sierra, Ace’s wife. Sierra was at least five years younger than Rebecca and wouldn’t remember anything about the accident, much less have any culpability in the events surrounding it.
Still. It was the whole thing.
“You feeling okay, Rebecca?” Ace asked, setting her preferred brew down in front of her. She hadn’t even had to specify what she wanted. He knew.
“Just worked too hard,” she said.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever talked to anybody who suffered from that affliction before,” he said, winking.
“What can I say?” she responded. “I’m a glutton for punishment.” As she said it, she had to wonder if it was true. She nodded once, picking up the beer and lifting it to her lips as she turned away from the bar and headed toward the table where Lane and Alison were already sitting.
“Is Cassie coming?” she asked, sitting down at the table slowly, her muscles screaming at her.
“No,” Alison said. “Something about date night.”
“As if that sexy mechanic she’s married to is better company than we are,” Lane said, grabbing hold of the toothpick in her drink and lifting it to her lips, plucking one of the impaled cherries from it and eating it.
“That’s a fancy drink,” Rebecca said, looking down at her beer. “What’s the occasion?”
“Wanting to feel fancy.”
Rebecca doubted a cosmopolitan with an entire handful of cherries could make her feel fancy after today. “Well, I guess that’s fair enough.”
“You’re limping,” Alison said, her expression concerned. “Are you okay?”
She was annoyed that they’d noticed. “I’m fine.”
“Except this is probably related to the work you were doing today?” Lane asked.
“Maybe.” She looked resolutely at her drink and not at Lane.
“What did he have you do? Were you riding the horses or bench-pressing them?”
Rebecca scowled. “There was just more lifting than I anticipated.”
“What’s happening?” Alison asked.
Rebecca shook her head, and Lane shot her a sharp look, then spoke anyway. “Rebecca is working for the guy who caused her accident.”
“You’re what?” Alison asked.
Rebecca reached across the table and grabbed hold of the remaining cherry on Lane’s toothpick, then took the unnaturally red fruit and popped it into her mouth.
“Hey!” Lane groused. “Cherry-stealing bitch.”
“Loudmouth.”
“What is going on?” Alison asked, clearly unamused by all of the antics.
“Exactly what I said,” Lane said. “Rebecca has decided to work for the guy who caused her accident, and clearly she has put herself under physical duress doing it.”
“Why?” Alison asked. “Rebecca, do you need money? If you need money, you can ask us. I would much rather give you some. Or, put you to work mixing frosting.”
“I don’t need money,” she said, feeling like a cat that had been backed up against the wall. “There’s a specific thing that I have to work out. And it requires working for him.”
“Could you possibly be more cagey?” Lane asked.
“If I tried,” Rebecca said, her tone deadpan, “I suppose I could be.”
“I just don’t get it.”
“It’s complicated. I owe him money.”
“How do you owe him money?”
“It’s complicated!” A prickling sensation assaulted the back of Rebecca’s neck, and she looked up just in time to see Gage walking through the door of the bar. “Oh, great,” she muttered.
“What?” Alison asked.
“Nothing,” Rebecca responded. She stood up, taking a long drink of the last of her beer. “I need another drink.”
She made her way back over to the bar, too late remembering that everything hurt and walking across the space was an assault. “More beer,” she said to Ace, setting the glass on the countertop.