Chapter Fifteen – The Feels
Chapter Fifteen
Sadie
THE FEELS
Performed by Maren Morris
After Fallon and I had finished with the horses, I’d helped her clean out the chicken house and fill the cattle troughs, then I’d come back to the house to shower. I’d changed into a long pair of shorts that hid my scars and a tank top before finding Adam in the office.
I’d answered as many questions for him as I could about the ranch, gotten some answers for him from Ryder, and then asked what he’d found out about the jewels. He’d said he hadn’t had time to dig into anything more, which seemed off somehow. It felt strange that, at the moment they needed money the most, he’d put it off. But he’d promised he was going to spend the rest of the afternoon looking for anything he could find in the stacks of old paperwork.
When I’d asked where Lauren was at, he’d directed me to the old servant quarters at the back of the house beyond the kitchen. And when I’d found her hard at work once again, I’d offered to help. She’d shrugged and simply shown me how to fold the napkins she was ironing into roses that would be placed on each plate for the wedding on Saturday. We were never that fancy at Hatley Ranch. We used cloth, as it was more environmentally sound, but we just folded them into thirds and stuck them in wicker baskets on the tables. Down home. Picnic-like almost.
At first, I was quiet, concentrating on what I was doing, but once I got the hang of it, I tried to start up another conversation, asking her more questions about the upcoming wedding. But for the first time, Lauren seemed reluctant to talk to me, answering in one or two words. It took me several minutes to realize her shortness had nothing to do with not wanting to talk to me and much more to do with whatever she’d taken—tranquilizers, pain pills, something.
The woman I’d seen for the first two days, the one who’d been constantly on the go, full of energy and ideas and passion for the ranch, had disappeared. Now she seemed utterly defeated. Her motions were slow and methodical, almost as if she was having to concentrate extra hard on setting the iron down in all the right places.
I felt Rafe before I even realized he’d found us. The intensity of his look vibrated through me as he leaned up against the doorframe. His wet hair glimmered. The warm strands which had already been a shade lighter than his beard, had been spun with hundreds of bronze-and-gold highlights after just a single afternoon in the sun. He’d changed into another pair of jeans and a gray T-shirt that stretched tight across corded muscles, but his feet were clad only in socks. It felt strangely intimate to see him this way. At home. Relaxed.
No. Scratch that.
He wasn’t relaxed. He was full of wound-up energy. A cougar waiting to pounce.
He scanned me in the same way I’d scanned him, top to bottom and back. When our gaze finally met, his brow was raised, and I heard the unspoken question in my head, Am I going to show up at his cabin tonight or not? I rolled my eyes, and his lip twitched as if he found it amusing.
“Fallon says you want me to take her out on the boat,” Rafe said, turning away from me to Lauren with his half-smile still in place.
She didn’t even look up. “She was angry I wouldn’t let her go on her own, but I told her she’d have to earn our trust back after flying the Cessna by herself.”
Shock had the words gasping out of me. “She flew a plane all alone?”
Lauren grimaced at my question, and Rafe’s face turned into a scowl.
“It won’t happen again,” he snarled. “I locked the plane down in my hangar after she arrived in Vegas.”
No wonder he’d been pissed the night she’d shown up. No wonder he’d tossed me from the suite. It had been more than just him not wanting his daughter to see me. He’d been reeling from the discovery that she’d flown a plane there. A plane! Holy crap.
Lauren hadn’t stopped working once while we talked. She was like a robot. Iron one napkin, pass it off, iron a tablecloth, hang it on the rack so it wouldn’t get creased, move on to the next one.
“Thanks for taking her,” Lauren said, but it was listless. Tired.
He pulled himself straight and crossed over to us. He put his hand on Lauren’s, stilling the movement of the iron. “We’re all going. We’ll take the food and a cooler and spend some time relaxing before the sun goes down.”
She jerked away from him, stepping aside. “I’m tired. And I have a lot to do before I head to bed. I appreciate you taking her so she doesn’t stay cooped up in the house one more night.”
Rafe slowly took in her dazed expression and slow movements. He started to say something and then stopped, looking at me.
“You got a swimsuit?” he asked me.
I did, only because I hadn’t thought I’d make it to the final round of the dart tournament, and I’d planned on spending some of my downtime at the pool. But now I wasn’t sure I wanted to wear it. Not here. Not with Rafe’s eyes on me. In Las Vegas, I wouldn’t have cared who saw me in my bikini. I didn’t know them and wouldn’t see them again, and it was highly unlikely anyone would have asked me about my scars. But Rafe wouldn’t miss them, and he’d remember I hadn’t really answered him on Sunday night when he'd asked about them.
But I also realized Rafe was only asking me about my swimsuit as a polite way of getting me to leave so he could talk to Lauren in private. I finished the napkin I was folding, placed it on the pile, and then rose.
“I’ll go change.”
I stepped out of the room, but my feet stalled as I heard his voice, low and dark, asking, “What did you take? You said you were stopping.”
“It was just a painkiller. I stepped off the tractor wrong after parking it and tweaked my back.”
“Damn it, Lauren. It wasn’t just an ibuprofen, was it? You can barely stand. You shouldn’t be ironing. You’ll burn yourself or the whole fucking house down.”
“Stop swearing at me.”
“Is this what it’s been like since Spence died? You working yourself to the bone and barely breathing when you’re not? Who’s been looking after Fallon? Who’s been making sure she’s okay?”
“Not you!” she hissed back. “Don’t you dare judge me when you could hardly wait to leave after the funeral. You haven’t bothered to show up for over a decade. Not once since your dad died have you come to see how we were doing.”
“ We …” It was a snarl. “I was supposed to care how any of you were? You made your choice, Lauren. You chose Spencer.”
“Oh, please. Like you didn’t know I’d always choose him. We both got what we wanted out of it. We got Spencer’s attention. He came running just like we knew he would.”
“That might have been what you wanted, Lauren, but it wasn’t what I wanted.”
She scoffed.
I heard him move toward the door, and I set my feet in motion, not wanting to be caught spying. But I still heard his response.
“I truly thought I was in love with you. I didn’t realize I was just a card in your hand until it was too late.”
I didn’t hear her response, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to. It made me feel sorry all over again for them when neither of them would want my sympathy. Rafe wasn’t a man to tolerate pity. And Lauren was proud, even though she was a pogo stick of emotions, bouncing between determined and dejected.
I did my best to forget the entire conversation as I ran upstairs and put my bikini on under my shorts and tank. I’d just come back down and reached the bottom step as the doorbell rang. Fallon screamed out she would get it, running in from the sitting room with cash in hand. I watched with a smile as she talked and flirted with the cute, teenage delivery guy until Rafe stalked past me to the door.
“Thanks for bringing it,” he told the kid, grabbing the pizza boxes from him. “You can go now.”
He shut the door in the kid’s stunned face, and Fallon glowered. “Dad!”
“He’s too old for you.”
“He’ll only be a junior.”
“And you’re fourteen and not dating. We’ve had this discussion.”
She huffed, crossing her arms over her chest. The bikini top she had on with a pair of cutoff jean shorts left a lot of skin bared, and Rafe’s face was a sea of disapproval.
“What the hell are you wearing?” he demanded.
She rolled her eyes. “A swimsuit.”
“No.”
She ignored him, twirling away and saying, “We’ve got the cooler packed in the back of the Jeep. Uncle Adam isn’t coming. I’m assuming you couldn’t convince Mom either, so it’s just the four of us.”
“Did you drive the Jeep?” he asked.
“Yes. Right up to the back door so Maisey and I could load it.” His jaw clenched. “I’ll drive the boat too. Spence always let me. We’re leaving in five minutes.”
She sounded nothing like the tortured teen I’d cleaned stalls with. This Fallon was completely grown-up and put together. The expression on Rafe’s face said he didn’t like it one little bit.
When I took the final step into the entry, his gaze shifted to me, taking me in from head to toe in that way that sent warmth spiraling through my chest into my stomach. I returned the slow look he’d given me, lingering over the pair of navy swim trunks he’d replaced his jeans with and the tan, muscular legs they revealed.
He had sneakers on his feet and a beach towel hung over one shoulder, and if I’d thought he’d appeared relaxed and casual before, this took it to another level, as if I was getting an intimate look into a Rafe very few people got to see. And just like seeing him in his cowboy boots this morning, I wanted more of it. More peeks behind the curtain he kept drawn tight around him.
He was the one to break our stare, waving a hand toward the hallway and saying, “I have a feeling she’d actually leave without us.”
A soft laugh escaped me. “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want you to tag along at all.”
I’d expected him to laugh in response, but instead, my comment seemed to strike at him, and we were quiet as we headed out the back.
Fallon had parked a battered Jeep from the seventies almost right up against the door. It had no top, just a black roll bar in a dented gray frame and black vinyl seats, worn and cracked from exposure and time. A cooler was shoved into the tiny space behind the back seat, and Fallon was behind the wheel. The friend who’d shown up for the trick riding lessons sat up front with her.
Rafe opened the driver’s door and simply stared at his daughter. Several long seconds passed before Fallon threw her hands up. “Fine! You drive.”
She unbuckled her seat belt and climbed into the back where her friend joined her, leaving the front passenger seat for me.
I’d barely climbed in when Rafe shoved the Jeep into gear and headed down the road, setting off a cloud of dust behind us. He may not have been there for years, but you never would have known it from the speed and confidence with which he drove.
The sun had shifted west but would still batter the earth for a few more hours before it fell completely. It meant the heat of the day was clinging to the air as it whipped, heavy and warm, around me as we drove past the freshly baled alfalfa fields and untended pastures of wildflowers. As we crested a small rise, the lake was revealed, the white light of late afternoon sparkling and dancing off vivid blue waters.
We parked in a tiny gravel lot next to a grove of oak trees leading down to a pebbled beach where a wooden dock, stained and well maintained, sat next to a boat ramp. Four speedboats were tied to it, built for entertainment, screaming of skiing adventures and lazy days rather than fishing. County laws prohibited motorboats on the lake back home, and it was so small it really wouldn’t have been good for skiing anyway, but this one stretched so far I couldn’t see the end of it.
As Rafe climbed out of the Jeep, his brows were furrowed. “Who the hell do all these boats belong to?”
“Uncle Adam leases out dock space during the summer. This way, people don’t have to drive all the way to the county park on the other side.”
“And they have access to our property?” he snapped.
Fallon shrugged. “Just the gate code. Sometimes the owners rent out the old homestead for summer barbecues.”
Rafe yanked the cooler from the back while the girls and I grabbed the food and our bags. We made our way down the dock to a dark blue and white speedboat that wasn’t new but had obviously been well-maintained.
As we clambered in, Rafe untied it from the dock, threw the rope inside, and jumped in with an ease that spoke of years of doing it, just as his driving had. Fallon was already at the helm, and she didn’t wait this time for her dad to dislodge her. Instead, she started the engine and tossed a defiant glance over her shoulder at him before setting off.
Every fiber in his being said he didn’t like it, but Rafe took a seat at the back next to me. Fallon increased the pressure on the throttle, driving with an expertise that was almost as good as her father’s had been in the car. It was loud where we sat by the motor, making talk impossible as we sped over the water, so I just let myself enjoy the ride.
The air was thick with the smells of summer, reminding me of inner tubes and jumping off the old dock in the center of the lake back home with my friends. Warm and beautiful memories I’d been lucky to create and sometimes missed with the responsibilities that had landed on me now with the bar being in my full control. Sometimes I felt two decades older than Fallon, when really only nine years separated us.
When Fallon finally stopped the boat at least a mile from shore, it felt like we were the only souls on the pristine waters.
“This is…” I shook my head. “It’s really beautiful.”
Fallon beamed at me, and even Rafe smiled.
While we ate, I asked the girls about the horses and what the training they did looked like. They were animated, talking about their coach and how she taught at the Western riding school but that she’d been a famous trick rider herself back in the day. She coached the girls privately because the school was more about rodeo riding than trick riding.
Fallon’s face held the same excitement and confidence she’d had when showing me some of her act this morning. Her friend was quieter but seemed to smile more. Her soft brown hair and pale eyes were a contrast to Fallon’s blond vivaciousness.
Rafe was silent while I chatted with the girls, his brows slightly furrowed as he listened.
When the teens had eaten more pizza than I could ever imagine putting away, they headed for the swim platform at the back, stripping out of their shorts and then flinging some pool noodles in a variety of bright colors into the lake.
“No comment about eating and swimming?” Fallon tossed out at her dad as she prepared to dive in.
“You get a cramp and start to drown, holler out, and I’ll save you.” He said it sardonically, as if he knew it wouldn’t happen.
She dove off the back in a graceful move, and her friend followed suit. They grabbed the colorful toys and swam farther away from the boat before wrapping legs and arms around the noodles so they could float on their backs with their faces up to the sky.
I stacked the pizza boxes and the container Rafe’s sandwich had come in, bundling the trash.
I knew he was watching me again, the burn on my neck only one of the many reasons, and when I turned back around, it was to find him lounging with his legs spread wide and his arms along the back of the seat.
“What?” I asked.
“You always like this?”
“Like what?”
“Stepping in to help. Doing more than any guest would ever do.”
“I like to keep busy. Sitting still is hard for me.”
He stood, reached behind him, and pulled off his T-shirt, throwing it on the seat with a careless ease. The sun was behind him, ringing him in a white halo that shadowed his face and made him seem more comic-book mirage than real. His stomach rippled with muscled grooves that drew my eyes downward to the delightful V just below his waist, but it was the jagged scar that ran up at an angle from his swim trunks and ended just below his heart that stole my breath.
He was scarred. Marked. Just like me.
He moved so his shadow swung over me, causing the halo that had surrounded him to blink away. I was finally able to read his expression and found it guarded, lids heavy. He’d locked away his emotions once more, leaving only a broody assessment behind.
I wanted to ask about the scar. I wanted to know what had happened and when and how he’d recovered from it. But I knew if I did, I’d be required to give him the same information back. And I didn’t want to talk about the shooting. How we’d almost lost my niece, Mila, and how I’d almost not lived. How I hadn’t protected her or me from being taken at gunpoint, but she’d been smart enough to hide once she’d been able to run away from our captor.
I swallowed hard, trying to slow my pulse, trying to inhale enough air so I didn’t pass out.
“You’re not going to ask?” His voice was low and guttural and held a hint of disbelief.
I shook my head.
“Because you don’t want me to do the same.”
It shouldn’t have shocked me that he’d read my hesitation when he’d been good at reading me all along, but it still did. When I still didn’t respond, he lifted a brow and turned away, stepping toward the swim platform. He glanced back over his shoulder. “Coming?”
I pulled off my tank top, and he watched every move, gaze lingering on my breasts barely contained in the bikini top. I’d never quite gotten my body back after my recovery, and I’d accepted it would never be what it had been, even with the workouts Gia had put me through. I wasn’t embarrassed by it, but I also wasn’t as ready to flaunt it as I used to be. The way Rafe’s eyes heated, the way they took in every inch of my exposed skin, made me want to shed it all, bare myself and see what he would do with the entire offering.
“I’m just going to sit here and enjoy the view,” I said, turning to look for the water bottle I’d been drinking from.
“I don’t think so,” he said. His tone had dropped another level. Darker. Sexier.
I turned back to him, raising a brow. “Excuse me?”
“Let’s go, Tennessee. Time for you to cool off.”
I laughed. “I’m not hot.”
He moved so fast I wasn’t prepared for it, snaking out an arm, hauling me to him, and then plunging us both over the side instead of the back. The water hit me like a bucket of ice. Cold and hard and staggering. Freezing my limbs. He never let me go, kicking upward until we broke the surface. I gasped for air and shoved hard against his chest, but his arm only banded tighter around me.
“I can’t believe you did that,” I sputtered.
The smile that took over his face caused my heart to stop again. It was wide and full, crinkling his eyes and showing off perfectly straight, white teeth and that sexy dimple.
“Loosen up, Sadie. Have some fun.”
I snorted. “You’re the one who doesn’t know how to have fun. You’re the one who stopped us when we were line dancing in your bar.”
I struggled against his hold, but he just held on, fingertips digging into the flesh at my waist. “It’s a piano bar. Not exactly the place for it. And I didn’t like those two guys falling all over you.”
“You were jealous?” Surprise rang through my voice. He pushed at the frown that creased my brows with a wet finger, sliding it along my forehead and down my cheek. His gaze landed on my lips, wet from the lake, and I found myself longing to taste him again. To have the contrast of the icy water and the heat of them against mine. I glanced in the direction of the teens, but they were hidden from us on the other side of the boat.
“You’ve had me in knots from the moment you walked into The Marquis Club,” he acknowledged. I watched as his lips lowered, drifting close to my mouth before detouring to my ear where his breath coasted along the shell. “I’m going to enjoy working each of those knots out with you.”
Every ounce of fight went out of me as I stared at him, dumbfounded by all his words. He let go and pushed me under the water again. When I resurfaced, he’d taken off, using his long arms to cut through the water, heading around the back of the boat toward his daughter.
It took me several long moments to gather myself together, and then I swam for the boat and the ladder at the back. My thin cotton shorts were clinging to me as I pulled myself up. I dragged them off and laid them out to dry before sitting and hanging my feet in the water, ignoring the white scars that marred my leg. Instead, I watched as Rafe tossed Fallon in the air, stole the noodles from the girls, and then swam away. The teens raced after him, trying to reclaim the pilfered toys as he batted them away with ease.
It was childlike horseplay that had Fallon and Maisey laughing and sputtering every time he dunked them. Rafe’s deep laugh echoed over theirs, booming across the water. He was nothing like the domineering, growly man who’d sat across from me at the piano bar, and every time I saw another side of him, it landed another barb in my heart that would be impossible to remove when I left. It had already left me aching for all those things I’d just recently realized I wanted. A partner. Someone to cherish and who would cherish me back.
It didn’t seem possible I could have any of it with Rafe.
But I could have this moment. A few purely joyful hours I might be able to follow up with a few delightfully sinful ones. So, I slid back into the water and started toward them as quietly as I could, trying to keep behind Rafe as the girls attempted and failed to sink him again. Neither of them gave me away as I approached with a finger to my lips. When I was close enough, the three of us launched ourselves at him, pushing and shoving until he finally went down.
He came up sputtering in false indignation, that wide grin stretched across his face, and we tried to push him back under. When he started tickling the teens, they released him immediately, swimming out of reach of those dangerous fingers. I was on my own this time as I tried to shove him down, and he simply caught my wrist and yanked me closer to him. His heated gaze found mine, and he lowered his voice so only I could hear, saying, “Payback is a bitch, Tennessee. I know just how to make you beg.”
I believed him, and I didn’t care.
I splashed water in his face with my free hand, pulled my knees in, and used my feet to kick off those muscular thighs. He gave chase, and the girls defended me with noodles and random attacks.
We spent a glorious hour playing in the water as the sun sank and the wind picked up.
We were all shivering, nearly frozen from the inside out, by the time we finally gave up and headed for the boat, but we had tired, delirious smiles on our faces. Our laughter echoed across the lake, winging along the wind. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this light. This happy. It was as if the wee folk I’d been thinking about since arriving here had filled the sky with their flutes and entranced us all. Except, I didn’t feel like I was under a spell. I felt more like myself than I had in three years.