Happy beginnings and wedded bliss giving way to the stress to succeed and financial strain. Late night lovemaking dissipating into cold sheets beside me as he worked in the bunkhouse so as not to wake me up.

  Sweet nothings replaced by harsh words, and excuses made to explain away the changes in him or between us. Justifications that he was simply trying to make this work. That he was under so much pressure to succeed since our budget was tight and money was running thin.

  Thunder rumbles overhead and startles me from my thoughts. It’s only then that I realize there are tears staining my cheeks. It’s only then that I realize how much hurt and pain and guilt I’ve kept pent up.

  But it’s the letter.

  The goddamn letter that I don’t even have to have in front of me to know every word written in it.

  TATUM,

  By the time you get this, I’ll be gone.

  I’m sorry. You deserve better than a letter telling you I can’t do this anymore. You deserve better than a husband who can’t seem to make things work. You deserve the man you thought I was but couldn’t seem to be.

  My leaving has nothing to do with me not loving you. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s that I’ve let you down. All my promises have fallen flat. Everything I told you we’d make of this life, I’ve ruined or lied about so much that I don’t have the courage to face you and explain the what or why. To apologize that I wasn’t enough. To tell you we’re in over our heads and it’s all my fault. To tell you that, no matter how much I love you, I can’t fix the mistakes I’ve made.

  I’m sorry I wasn’t enough. Then again, I’ve never been enough for you. I thought I could be, but I was wrong.

  I thought I could hide all of this from you, but I can’t. I thought I could protect you from knowing . . . but I failed.

  I’m leaving so you can have a chance at a better life.

  Next time, you’ll do better than me.

  Next time, you’ll find someone who keeps his promises.

  Next time, you won’t give up everything you love for someone else.

  Next time, he’ll give you what you deserve.

  Next time, you’ll be able to find someone who deserves the love you give.

  Next time . . .

  I’m sorry. Know that you were who kept me hanging on. It was your love I took for granted. I just can’t go on like this.

  -Fletch

  RUBY SENSES SOMETHING is wrong because she slows as the sobs wrack my body. As I hunch over the saddle horn and wrap my arms around her neck, I let myself feel all the hate and regret and guilt.

  I’m so sick of caring.

  So sick of worrying.

  Next time.

  The phrase haunts and heals me.

  Rusty swore Fletcher’s car crash was an accident. Distracted driving, he called it. But that letter told me it was suicide. That note was telling me goodbye.

  How do you hate someone because of the clusterfuck they left you with when they hated themselves enough they took their own life?

  How do you hate them when you still love them? And then, how in the hell do you rationalize that when every part of you is fighting day-in, day-out to wade through and survive and overcome a life in ruins?

  Ruby’s feet dance beneath me. Her innate nature to comfort displaced and uncertain as I sob, letting out the loneliness and frustration and shame that have been trying to eat me whole.

  The thunder rumbles again. The gray clouds stacking one on top of the other look like how my emotions feel inside me. Violent in nature, unexpected in their power, and yet, I’ve been here long enough to know we won’t get any rain today.

  There will be no release.

  Not from the clouds in the sky anyway.

  As I stare up at them with the tears drying on my cheeks and the hitches in my chest subsiding, I realize how right Jack was about so many things. I did let my dreams die for Fletcher’s. I let his become mine, and I need to find my own again. I need to take control and get them back.

  I’ve tried my hardest to keep the ranch afloat, to keep it out of foreclosure, and to slowly claw my way out of debt, but I also stopped living in the process. My life became about saving all of this and becoming consumed by anger instead of carving out pieces to enjoy for myself.

  And one of those pieces I want to carve out is Jack.

  I want to sleep with him.

  My laughter bubbles up again, and I know I should be worried that I’m crying one minute and laughing the next, but I’m not. Jack Sutton was also right when he said that I didn’t want it to be a mistake.

  I just want it to be whatever it is.

  However it happens.

  Cue the panic.

  The worry that I’ve forgotten how to do it.

  Damn insecurities.

  “Don’t think, Tate. Just do.”

  So, I close my eyes, hold tight to the reins, kick Ruby’s flank, and push her to gallop so that we fly back toward the ranch as I try to let it all go.

  As I try to figure out how to find myself again.

  As I figure out how to learn to live again.

  And maybe dream a little too.

  “DID YOU HAVE A NICE RIDE?” Jack’s voice startles me, and my heels dig into Ruby’s flank, causing her to rear up on her hind legs.

  A strangled cry falls from my lips, and I grip the saddle horn to stay on her as Jack rushes forward and grabs the reins I wasn’t holding.

  “Easy girl,” he croons. “Easy there.” He continues until Ruby calms some, her anxious hooves stop moving, and she takes the apple he somehow had on him.

  “It’s the thunder. It spooks her. It . . .” I fall silent as his eyes meet mine from over the top of her ears. There’s amusement in them. Restrained desire.

  “That’s twice now,” he says, referring to Willow and her plastic bag incident, and steps beside us so he can run a hand down Ruby’s neck to her shoulder. “Next time you take off, you should probably tell someone.” His fingertips hit the curve of my knee and skim the top of it.

  “I know how to ride, Jack. I’m more than capable.” A nervous chuckle falls from my lips because all I can focus on are those fingers of his and how I want them on me.

  “No one said you weren’t. You have to stop jumping on the defensive anytime someone tells you something, Knox.”

  “And I told you my name isn’t . . .”

  “As of right now, it is.” His comment is simple, but his gaze, which travels the length of me as I stand in my stirrup to dismount, says a thousand unspoken words.

  The slow curve of his smile is a seduction in and of itself.

  The thunder cracks just above us, and Ruby rears up before I can get ahold of the horn, and I’m launched off her and right into Jack’s arms.

  If it weren’t so scary and startling, I probably would have laughed at the romance-novel-worthy set-up Ruby just gave me.

  But I don’t.

  Because our bodies are pressed together, our breaths are labored, and time feels as if it moves in slow motion.

  Seconds feel like minutes as we stare at each other; the impending kiss something I can all but already feel.

  “Third time is definitely a charm,” he murmurs, the heat of his breath hitting my lips.

  “Looks like you got yourself thrown from a horse there, Tatum,” Sylvester’s voice comes out of nowhere, and I shove back from Jack. My eighty-one-year-old helper smiles crookedly as he moves toward us.

  My jittery hands move as if to pat myself down and make sure I’m okay.

  But I know there’s only one thing right now that’s going to fix the nerves, and that is the man whose warmth still lingers on my skin. The man whose knowing smirk is angled my way.

  “Yes. It’s the thunder. You know Ruby,” I blather.

  “Aye. She’s a fickle girl,” he says, stepping right into the space between Jack and me as if he didn’t just see how closely we’d been pressed together. He runs a hand up and down her nose as we both watch, letting the sexual tension ease.

  Pat down over, I roll my shoulders and wince.

  “The rain bugging your shoulder?” Sylvester asks.

  “What’s wrong with your shoulder?” Jack asks, eyes narrowing.

  “Nothing.” I brush it off and turn to get ahold of Ruby’s reins.

  “She was in an accident a few years back. Driving right out there if you can believe it,” he says and points to the front of the ranch. “She had just made the turn at the end of the road and was about two hundred feet or so from turning into the ranch. Some drunk yahoo almost hit her head-on. She swerved. Crashed,” Sylvester relays.

  “It’s nothing big.” I shrug, hating any kind of attention when it comes to the accident or the rumors it caused. According to Fiona and her gossip, everyone in town was convinced that I’d crashed on purpose because I wanted attention and Fletcher wasn’t giving me enough. Hell, they are probably still convinced of it.

  “Nothing big? Fifty miles an hour into a ditch is more than nothing big. Broke her shoulder in a few places when the car rolled. Pins and everything in there,” he drones on when all I want to do is end this conversation.

  “Shoulder’s fine, Syl.” I offer him a tight smile and go to open my mouth when Sylvester continues.

  “Had some bad cuts. That’s what them scars on her chin and neck are from,” he continues.

  “Those are fine too. You can barely see them,” I say, desperate to get the attention off me.

  “Was the other driver hurt? The drunk?”

  “Just like a drunk driver to escape unscathed.” Sylvester snorts. “Never even veered off the road. The asshole spun out and kept going. They had a BOLO out for a dark, four-door sedan, but nothing came of it.”

  “Probably some kid. Got the shit scared out of him and straightened up,” I murmur, but the terror of that night is still as fresh in my mind as the night it happened. The bright headlights swerving toward me. The jerk of my steering wheel as the edges of the pavement grabbed my wheels and pulled my car over. The crunch of metal. The hiss of pain. The smell of destruction.

  Jack watches me though. “You let me know if you need help lifting stuff.”

  I wave him off. “I’ve been doing all the heavy lifting around here for some time now. I think I can handle it just fine.”

  Jack doesn’t look convinced.

  “Mr. Sutton?” I don’t recognize the voice, but before I can ask who the heck is on my ranch, Jack glances over his shoulder.

  “Yeah?” he says as a man who looks to be in his late teens, early twenties walks out from the stables.

  “Who’s that?” I ask immediately.

  “That’s Will,” Jack answers, and I swear by the look on his face as he studies my reaction, he’s waiting for me to be on the defensive again.

  I am, but I bite my tongue and try to hide it. “And he is?”

  “I’m here to help get everything done.” He tips his hat my way and grins as if his baby face weren’t smeared with dirt and his jeans weren’t speckled with remnants of hay.

  “Everything?” I repeat, looking at Will before turning back to Jack. “You didn’t have me approve—”

  “He said you’d be mad,” Will interjects, making Jack fight a grin.

  “He did, did he?” My hands are on my hips as I lift my eyebrows at Jack. He just smirks, his dimple showing, and crosses his arms over his chest.

  “He did.” Will takes a few steps toward me as he stutters over what to say. “But I’m a hard worker, and he hired me on a temp basis. I’m new in town so I don’t know anything about anything and—”

  “And Jack told you to say that?” I ask.

  “No,” Sylvester says as he takes a step forward, always the peacekeeper. “I did.” He nods, slow and steady. “He’s a good kid, Tate. He needed some work. We needed some help so I told Jack about him.”

  I meet all three pairs of eyes, feeling as if I just walked into a planned intervention and hate the feeling.

  “Jack.” His name is a command as I nod at Will and Sylvester before walking away, expecting him to follow.

  His footsteps fall behind me, and I wait until we’re out of earshot before I turn to face him.

  “This isn’t a power play, Knox,” he says before I can get a word out.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me.” He leans his ass against the railing at his back and hooks the heel of one boot in the bottom rung. Willow walks around behind him, nudging his shoulder, and he absently puts a hand up to rub the underside of her neck as his eyes lock on mine. “This isn’t a power play. I’m not trying to assert my dominance or take your place or, god forbid, know what I’m doing.”

  “That isn’t what I was thinking.”

  He smiles with a soft shake of his head. “Yes, it was.” There is something in his eyes I can’t place, and it doesn’t make me uncomfortable, but it . . . it makes me feel as if he actually cares. “You’re sexy when you’re angry. You know that?”

  “What did you say?” I ask, his words throwing me for a loop.

  “You heard me.” His tongue darts out to wet his lips.

  “Look, Sutton.” He lifts a lone brow, but I smirk. Two can play this game. “I married a man who tried to deflect me with his charm. I won’t fall for it again.”

  That has the flirt melting away from his expression. “Watch it, Knox. I told you not to compare me to your husband.”

  I snort. “How can I not? You hired a man without even asking me if it was okay and then try to flirt with me so I drop it.”

  “Last I checked, I am the ranch manager.”

  “And I’m the owner.”

  We wage a battle of visual wills as the humidity thickens in the air around us. Sylvester laughs in the distance. There’s a clatter of something against a trough. Willow brays behind Jack.

  But we just stand in the paddock with the world moving on around us while I try to remind myself that I’m learning to trust him.

  “There’s nothing I’m going to do here that will harm this ranch.”

  “Trust is hard for me,” I murmur. “Letting more people in to judge me, to gossip about me.” I bite the inside of my lip as he pushes off the rail and takes a step toward me. “It’s happened before.”

  “And you fired them.” Jack angles his head to the side, his voice gentle, his features soft. Those chocolate-colored eyes of his try to understand, and where I expect to find judgment, I see compassion. “You have to start somewhere.”

  I nod, not trusting my voice to break and betray how nervous the idea makes me.

  “We’re coming into season. Will is helping me get everything up to speed, checking each of the mares and charting them for me as well as helping with all the day-to-day tasks. It’s a busy time, and we’re already behind the eight ball.”

  “I know but—” I try to find the right words when I already know them but pride is getting in the way of letting me say them. “I can’t afford—”

  “He’s interning,” Jack says. “He is studying at the junior college and needs some hours for hands-on experience. I told him if he does a good job, then maybe this can become something more. By then, we should have more of a steady income, foals on the way, and I can train him to take my place when I leave.”

  When I leave.

  It’s no surprise that Jack has a contract with an expiration date on it or a life to return to . . . but, somehow, he’s become an everyday normal in the short time he’s been here.

  “Thank you.” I hate the sudden vulnerability I feel, and my temper riots to combat it. “You still should have cleared it with me.”

  He chews the inside of his cheek, his stare his only response.

  “Jack?” Will calls from somewhere in the stables. “When you get a minute, can I ask you a few questions?”

  “Be right there,” Jack says over his shoulder. “He’s a good kid, Knox. Not everyone’s out to fuck you over . . . especially not me.”

  I nod because the want to trust, the want to believe, the need to be able to do both feel so foreign after being so guarded for so damn long.

  Jack begins to walk past me but stops so that my shoulder and arm are against the front of his chest. When he leans closer to me, the mint on his breath hits my nose. “I use charm to deflect your temper. Subdue it,” he murmurs. “Not to deflect the truth. I won’t lie to you, and I sure as hell won’t screw you over.” He takes a step back and tips his hat, grin slowly sliding back onto those lips of his. “Well, not unless you want me to.”

  And just like that, Jack Sutton wins me back over in a way no one ever has, by calming my temper and by soothing the insecurities planted by the hand of someone else.

  17

  TATE

  “Fiona?” I stare at her standing on the verandah as if she owns the place, and my feet falter.

  I don’t have anyone visit for months, and in one day, I have Jack and Sylvester bring the new kid Will in and now Fiona has shown up.

  “I know I did not do that hair of yours so it could be thrown up in a pony like that and forgotten about.” She puts her hands on her hips in contempt, but her bright pink lips curl into a smile. “Come take a break for a few minutes and keep me company.”

  I know I should get to work since my ride already ate up two hours of my productivity, but I know there is no way I’m going to forgo visiting with her.

  Before my boots finish clomping on the stairs, she has her arms around me and a shrill laugh is filling my ears.

  “Look at you. You have color in your cheeks for the first time in forever.” She steps back and moves her sunglasses off her nose so she can look closer at me. “Hmmm.”

  “Hmmm?” I laugh. “That’s all you’re going to say to me?”

  “For now, yes.”

  “Take a seat . . .” My voice trails off when I notice the porch chairs have been suspiciously turned from their normal position looking at the scenery to be facing the stables. “Fi?”

  Her coy smile tells me where her thoughts are. “Here,” she says as she opens a cooler and pulls a bottle of white wine from it. It’s already opened, which would explain the glass already half drank sitting on the table.