Bloom (Serenity Ranch #1)
Prologue
PROLOGUE
Brown eyes. Big smile. Sundress blowing in the wind.
Fuck.
He tried to take my keys again.
Well, more accurately, he tried to take my whole damn truck.
I need it , he’d slurred, and my gut told me it wasn’t for a leisurely drive. Not when his license was suspended a month ago.
I don’t know what he needs the money for. I don’t want to know. Nor do I want to know why he’s suddenly stopped dipping into what was supposed to be my college fund like he usually does whenever he finds himself strapped for cash. Suspecting he’s already burned through it is bad enough; I think the confirmation would break my heart.
Bright side; it's not like I needed it. College was never in the plan for me. Not his plan, anyway. Too poor for tuition, too dumb for a scholarship.
His words, not mine.
I really didn’t want to fight with him, I never do, but I couldn’t let him sell my truck to settle yet another debt. Years of working every shift I could get my hands on, saving everything I earned—and losing a good chunk of my dignity when I wore a low-cut shirt and hoped the sleazy guy from the dealership was a boob man—got me that truck. My safehouse on wheels. My sole escape route. Mine .
There’s a bruise the size of Texas on my hip as a consequence of saying no, but that’s okay. He didn’t mean to body-check me into the kitchen table. He was just drunk and off-balance and unaware of his own strength.
His words, though, were no accident. They were on purpose. They always are.
Shut the fuck up, Caroline.
Use your brain for once, Caroline.
Don't come home, Caroline.
Bright side; he didn’t take my truck.
Bright side; I’ll be out of there soon.
Bright side; hip bruises are easy to hide. And it doesn’t hurt that much. Except for when I stoop to check my reflection in the wing mirror and the mottled purple skin aches in protest, but that’s okay. I’ll just remain vertical today.
Quickly fixing my hair, mussed from a particularly windy drive, I wipe my expression clean of any of the lingering ugliness this afternoon’s encounter left. It’s my problem, not anyone else’s.
Especially anyone with the last name Jackson.
A mild spring breeze tugs at the hem of my dress as I start down the dusty strip of dirt serving as a driveway. I fiddle with the pretty floral material, nervous in the same way I always am when on Serenity Ranch. Cautious might be a better word for it—like I half expect to be chased off the property at any moment.
That’s not likely, not anymore, but being unwanted is a hard thing to un-feel, to forget. Especially being unwanted here by the people scattered around the grassy yard that muddied many a dress, destroyed many a shoe, left grass stains on many a limb, for most of my teenage years.
Bright side—Serenity Ranch is definitely a bright side. A little cloudy sometimes, sure, but I can always see that silver lining, even if I have to squint.
Spotting Lux Jackson, on the other hand, requires zero concentrated effort. Not because the owner—in every way but technically—of Serenity is eye-catchingly beautiful in a way a younger me was pitifully envious of, but because that swollen belly of hers really draws the eye.
God, I love that bump. It’s the only reason I’m welcome here four years after a shockingly boring yet incredibly messy break-up. If not for the bump, Lux taking a tumble in my store a couple of months ago would’ve been no big deal. There would’ve been no ambulance ride to the hospital, no thirty minutes of silent panic with a woman I was pretty certain hated me to her very core yet clutched my hand hard enough to leave little half-moon imprints of her nails. There would’ve been no excuse for me to turn up at Serenity with the flowers she never got a chance to buy as a guise—and a peace offering—to make sure the all clear she got was really all clear. There would be no Lux welcoming me onto the property she single-handedly turned into a flourishing business—and a home too.
As she waves me over from the front porch of her family’s home, she alerts the man at her side to my presence. Like usual, I falter at the sight of Oscar Jackson. Like usual, Lux’s older brother's mere presence lodges an anxious knot behind my ribcage, born of awkward embarrassment and wrapped with thorny vines of insecurity. Like usual, I don’t let my gaze linger on my ex-boyfriend for too long—not because it hurts to look at him or anything, but because it makes me… I don’t know. Sad, I guess. Not the heartbroken, pining kind though. Just sad.
The moment Jackson’s—I can’t remember the last time anyone called him Oscar—gaze lands on me, mine swiftly averts itself. It lands on the unfamiliar truck parked in front of the huge red barn a stone’s throw from the house, and the two people lingering beside it. The youngest Jackson sibling, I recognize easily, if only because no one gesticulates quite as enthusiastically as Eliza.
The other, I don’t think I know. No, I know I don’t know him. A man that big and imposing, who only gets bigger and more imposing the more my feet eat up the distance between us, I surely would remember. I definitely would’ve heard about him at the very least; small doesn’t quite encapsulate the size of Haven Ridge, and a newcomer always makes an impression. Especially this kind of newcomer.
The closer I get, the more I’m able to make out his solid, strong features, and an odd, unnerving feeling creeps up my spine. Attraction , I barely recognize it as, something I haven’t felt in a while, and it makes my stomach flutter nervously, a flustered blush creeping up my neck.
Pathetic , I chastise myself internally as I tuck the loose strands of my braided hair behind my ears, cranking out a smile as I approach the newest addition to the ranch. When I call out a greeting, Eliza’s head snaps my way. Expression tight enough to make me sigh, she offers a small wave.
The new guy, on the other hand, offers no such thing. Leaning against a truck that looks almost as old as mine, he squints at the paddock where the ranch’s rescue horses roam, either oblivious to my arrival or unbothered by it.
Unbeknownst to him, I am excellent at being ignored. Truly skilled at it, really, and even better at pretending it doesn’t bother me. Plus, while he pretends I don’t exist and Eliza continues chattering like I never interrupted, I get the chance to ogle freely.
There’s something inexplicably rough about the mysterious man, from the tips of scuffed boots to the rugged cut of his facial features. Scruff covers the lower half of his face, obscuring a softly defined jaw. Brown, long-ish hair curls away from his face, pushed back like he spends a lot of time running his fingers through it. When he does just that, I get a good look at a muscled bicep the size of my freaking head, and a glimpse of the ink peeking out from beneath the tight cuff of his t-shirt. Insatiable curiosity—and the unfortunately inherited genetic inability to never know when to stop—has me daring a step closer, head tilted in an effort to get a better look.
A gruffly cleared throat interrupts my perusal.
My gaze snaps upwards to find stern hazel eyes that lean a little more towards the brown end of the spectrum. Blood rushing to my cheeks, my smile twitches into place as I pretend I wasn’t just caught checking him out red-handed. “You’re the new ranch hand, right?”
A grunt is the only response I get. An affirmative grunt, I think, to the educated guess I made based on the sheer width of the thick thighs straining against worn denim. What else is he gonna be? Lux’s new nanny? I don’t think so. That body was made for tossing hay bales, not for cradling children.
“I'm Caroline.” I hold out my hand for him to shake, purposely wiggling my fingers because then maybe it won’t be so obvious that I’m trembling just a little. “Line.”
He doesn't take my hand. He doesn’t look at my hand. He doesn’t look at me at all, really. Those pretty eyes land on me for barely a second before flitting away again, frowning into the distance.
Way too many seconds pass before I let my offered greeting drop. Even though nauseating embarrassment creeps up my throat, I still try again. “I—”
He doesn’t even pretend to not hear me. With a dismissive huff, he wrenches his truck door open, folds that enormous body inside, and ignites a croaky engine to drown out my third useless attempt at conversation.
Okay.
Maybe sometimes, I should take my dad’s advice and shut the hell up.