“Sorry,” he said. The ham sandwich, with his mouth-sized bites taken out of it, seemed so vulnerable. Interrupting this man at his lunch seemed akin to finding him with his shoes off.
How, she wondered, marveling at her own sad thoughts, had she become so isolated? How was it possible that thinking about a man’s feet seemed like an imposition?
He glanced down at his lunch box and then at the yogurt in her hands. “I’ll get out of your way,” he said.
“No, stay. Please. I can …”
Go inside. Hit myself over the head. Die a painful death
. “Make do.” He still stood as if questioning whether she was sincere, or if he wanted to spend any more time with her.
“This is my favorite spot for lunch,” she said, awkwardly trying to play nice.
“It’s nice,” he said. “The view is peaceful.”
“That’s what we’re counting on,” she said. “For the spa.”
He nodded, then glanced down at his sandwich as if just realizing it was there. “Do you have plans for the barn?” He pointed to the roof of the barn past the greenhouse.
“Not really.”
“Perfect spot for a yoga studio.”
She blinked, stunned at his perception. They hadn’t thought of the outer buildings, choosing to focus on the house, but the barn would be an ideal studio.
“Some windows along one wall. Re-covered pine floors.”
“Are you a closet spa-goer?”
“Men can’t like yoga?”
“I just didn’t think someone like—” Oh dear. She stopped herself.
“A guy like me would like yoga?” His flat eyes accused her of being a snob, and he was so right she could only nod. Owning up to her own failures wasn’t something she excelled at, but she tried to rise above her instincts.
He tossed his sandwich back in the crumpled bag on the step. “I need to get back to work.”
She also wasn’t very good at apologies. Instead, she took a bite of yogurt, stepping out of the way when he walked by her.
“Oh,” he paused, right at the door, so close she could smell him. Wood and sweat, something tangy. An orange from his lunch. Her body melted at the scent. “Thomas, the electrician?”
“What about him?” she asked.
“He’s got a mouth, and a wicked streak I haven’t been able to beat out of him.”
“You beat all your electricians?” she asked.
“Only the one who’s my kid.”
The yogurt got trapped in her throat and she coughed delicately until she could breathe again.
“Did he do anything out of line?” he asked.
His son?
The thought was a panicked bird in her chest, bashing itself against windows, unable to find an exit.
Gavin’s son knows I want Gavin
.
“No,” she whispered. “He was fine.”
He turned to leave. All lean strength, all muscular control, and she, suddenly loose-limbed and desperate to try to make some kind of connection, stopped him.
“Do you really do yoga?”
For a very long moment he watched her as if deciding whether to waste any more time with a woman who always
seemed to insult him. She stood there and tried to look … nice.
His grin was sly, turning his attraction into something that was in total and full ownership of itself, something she couldn’t just push away with the weak power of her snobbery, of her icy insecurity.
“No.”
She smiled, really smiled, laugh lines be damned, and all those weak and tired locks she kept on her kindness and compassion, her warmth and generosity, fell to pieces.
“My ex did,” he said, “and I spent a lot of money on her being able to do it in places far less beautiful than this ranch.”
She nodded, processing his words. The ex part. And the part about a lot of money.
“Please,” she said, gesturing to the steps he’d just vacated. “Finish your lunch. I’m sorry I was …”
He crooked a wicked eyebrow, his smile pure devilment.
“Unpleasant,” she said instead of the word in his head, even though his word was a more apt description. “Please, sit.”
“Only if you’ll join me.”
She took a deep breath and nodded, wondering why it took so much bravery to just sit down with the man. To just let go of the worst of herself, the old suit of armor that chafed.
“I’d be delighted.”
No fucking way
.
That was Eli’s rationale for driving up to the ranch on Monday morning and parking his truck under the poplars just like he had for twenty years.
For a man who wanted nothing to do with the woman
who’d left him twenty-seven years ago, sitting twenty feet from where she worked was insane. He knew that.
But there was no fucking way he could sit at his home, while Amy was up here doing God knows what.
He’d tried to talk himself out of this ridiculous idea all morning long, but it was as if someone else was driving his body. The eight-year-old she had left behind was calling the shots and he was just the bag of bones moving shit around.
Victoria could take care of herself, he’d learned that firsthand, and if she didn’t want to listen to his warnings about Amy, then that was on her head.
She’d fired him, after all.
And then hired his mom behind his back. And then lied about it.
He didn’t owe her anything.
But somehow he couldn’t stop thinking of the way she’d wrapped her arms around him, even when she knew he was furious with her. Then she’d told him everything was going to be okay and did her damndest for ten minutes to make sure it was. He remembered with a pain in his side that just wouldn’t go away the way her hands had shaken as she pulled up her pants, the way her tears had sat, unfalling, in her eyes.
He couldn’t forget that just a few days ago, he’d liked her. More than he’d liked another person in a long, long time.
All of this had run him out of the house this morning, because he couldn’t stand by and let Amy walk out on one more thing. Even a spa he didn’t care about.
So, if Victoria wasn’t going to protect herself against Amy, he’d have to do it for her. He would sit there every morning and make sure Amy finished the job.
He knew Victoria took Jacob to school each morning, so while she was gone, while she couldn’t come and
shoo him away like a stray dog, he would sit here and make his presence known.
Let his mother know that even though she had Victoria fooled, he was on to her. And she wasn’t going to walk away this time.
He got out of the truck, well aware that his mother was standing on the front porch staring at him, slack-jawed, as he took out the lawn chair from his truck bed and kicked it open in the shade of the trees.
Making himself at home, he cracked his cooler and took out a bottle of water and his breakfast—a grape jelly and creamy peanut butter sandwich. His lunch sandwich had strawberry jam and chunky peanut butter. A major distinction.
Amy glanced around, no doubt to see if anyone else was going to come down here and tell him to get lost. When no one came charging out of the house with a shotgun, she slowly, as if waiting for the ground to open under her feet, walked down the steps toward him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, stepping into the shade. She wore a pair of men’s work overalls and he tried to remember what she’d worn when he was little, but he couldn’t. He’d been too young to notice.
“Watching you.” He talked through a bite of sandwich.
Lines showed up between her eyes, suggesting she was angry or confused. Those he remembered. She used to walk around like that for days, never smiling, always looking like she was never sure how she got to be where she was. He remembered every single knock-knock joke he’d told her to try to make those lines go away, every single chore he’d completed without being asked. All so she might smile at him instead of frown.
“Why?”
“I’m going to make sure you don’t walk away from Tori.”
“I’m not walking away. I signed contracts—”
“Just like you promised Victoria you were going to tell me that you were back here?”
Just like you promised me you’d always be around? That you’d always love me? Always take care of me?
She had the good grace to look sick at his words.
“Your promises don’t mean much to me. You’re a liar and a quitter.” God, the words felt so good and there were a hundred more locked away, things he wanted to say to her, terrible things he wanted to call her, and he had to swallow them all back down. “I won’t see you hurt her, Amy.”
“You sound like your father.”
He smirked and took a bite of sandwich.
At an impasse, she glanced over her shoulder at the house that was starting to change shape.
“You don’t want to see this ranch in ruins?” she asked.
He crossed and uncrossed his legs, uncomfortable with the reminder of what his intentions had been before he’d been fired, of how he’d treated Victoria.
“No.”
“I want to burn it to the ground.”
He surged to his feet and she lifted her hand, as if that could stop him from picking her up and stuffing her in her truck. “I said that I want to, not that I will. This land, and wanting it back, has ruined a lot of Turnbulls. It nearly ruined me.”
“Well, good thing you got out when you did.” His sarcasm was a sword he swung as hard as he could, but she just stared at him, unbloodied. “And you’re not a Turnbull,” he added, just to be mean.
“I tried, Eli. For years I tried to convince your father to leave. But he wouldn’t—”
“This land was his life.”
“Funny, but when he married me, he said
I
was his life. And he chose this land over me.”
“Well, maybe if you hadn’t been so mean to him! Maybe if you’d been nice. Or happy.”
He knew how unfair he was being. How cruel. Hell, he knew how his father could destroy niceness, how he could pull apart happiness until only strings remained.
But she’d left him to that and she didn’t deserve his consideration.
Red splotches, matching the carrot of her hair, climbed up her neck, across her chest, obliterating freckles, burning them into nothing. Her mouth opened and shut as if she was trying to put some words together, but he just glared at her, stalwart in his bias.
“I came here thinking that you were reaching out to me.”
He laughed. Right at her. Into her face. Because she had to know he would never reach out to her. But she absorbed his laughter like his injustices, like his hate, as if she were a sponge. And all he had to throw at her was water.
“And when I found out that you weren’t, I wanted to pull this house apart with my bare hands. I was furious that I’d come back here only to be hurt all over again.”
“You?”
he cried.
“Do you think it was easy leaving you?”
“Yeah. I do. Because you did it.”
“Eli—”
He sat, picked up his sandwich, mashing it in his hands.
“I didn’t come here to fight,” he said and took a bite. He didn’t taste it, didn’t want it, but he had to do something to keep himself from asking the questions he thought he’d outgrown. “I just want you to know that I am watching you.”
“And I’m not leaving,” she said, her eyes drinking him in, the way he remembered her doing, standing at his bedroom door, saying good night. “I want to see something
happy on this land. Something that makes people feel good.”
“Right—”
“Believe what you want, but this land has hurt enough people. I’m here for healing.”
She turned, walking out from under the shade into the sunlight, with her head held high, her shoulders back, as if she were in the right.
“Bullshit!” he yelled.
But she didn’t turn; she just kept walking right back to the house.
chapter
17
“Do you think
Lucky will be happy to see me?” Jacob asked, bouncing in the passenger seat.
“Seat belt, Jacob.”
“Mom, Eli’s ranch is right there.” He pointed out the front window of the squat house in the distance, black against the crimson sunset.
“I don’t care. Wear your seat belt.”
She could practically hear Jacob rolling his eyes as he pulled the belt over his shoulder.
“I do think Lucky will be happy to see you,” she said, and Jacob all but glowed in the twilight. She should have done this a while ago. He’d been heartbroken when Eli had bought that horse.
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask her son if he thought Eli would be happy to see her. Not that he would have an answer, and she knew better than to ask. But she felt as though she was wandering into unchartered waters with only her son to protect her, and he was distracted by a deaf horse.
Celeste had told her that Eli had been coming to the house every morning for a week. He’d sit there, eating a sandwich and glowering, yelling things at the crew. And then he’d leave before Victoria returned from dropping Jacob off at school.
Today, one of the young electricians had almost started
a fight with him until Amy and Gavin had pulled the kid away.
It was time to face the lion in its den. Enough of being scared of him, scared of her own lack of control.
She was here to call Eli off, and she’d brought Jacob so that she’d keep her clothes on.
The truck was barely in park before Jacob was out the door and hurtling across the dry grass toward the house. But the house was dark and she turned just as Eli stepped out of the barn, wiping his hands on a towel slung over his shoulder.
His hat shaded his eyes from the last of the daylight, but not so his mouth, and the magic light that glowed all over his lips was like a neon sign saying “Kiss Here.”
She reached for the buttons on her cardigan, unhappy to find only the cold metal zipper of the sweatshirt she’d borrowed from Ruby. All of her old clothes—her armor—were getting too small. It wasn’t just her boobs growing anymore. Gaining weight was great, but she could use a little cashmere right about now to remind her to keep her hands to herself.
One glance at him and she wanted him. Wanted those lips on hers. That mouth on her body. And as she watched, his lips curved, surrounded by a day’s growth of beard, as if he knew exactly what her wicked mind was thinking.
Seven days since she’d last seen him, and it was like he’d just peeled her off the barn wall a second ago.