15. Cassandra
CASSANDRA
“ W hy isn’t the damn horse moving!” I shouted from ten feet behind Christian and Libby.
Libby huffed, turning her giant head and glaring at me, annoyed that we had to stop yet again.
Christian’s smile flashed brighter than the midday sun. The snicker he tried to hide beneath his beard pissed me off.
“Why are you laughing at me?” I shouted.
His eyes just crinkled beneath the brim of his cowboy hat as he turned Libby and trotted back to me.
If horses had resting bitch face, his did and it was aimed at me.
“This horse is broken,” I said with a huff. Copping an attitude was better than admitting that I sucked at this and hated it. “Please take me back to the barn. I’ll walk next time.”
Christian sided up to me, facing the opposite direction like two cops sitting window-to-window in a parking lot. I jerked away when he reached out and touched my hand.
“Cass, you’re white-knuckling the reins.”
“I’m trying not to fall off!”
“You’re not gonna fall off, but you’re pulling on them so hard that Dottie here thinks she’s supposed to stop.”
“I don’t know why you thought I was capable of riding a horse all the way out here. We’re miles away and now I’m stuck on this animal for the foreseeable future.”
He chuckled again and pointed behind me. “I can still see the barn.”
I gritted my teeth for the millionth time, making my jaw ache.
I would have to see a dentist after this little sabbatical.
“Breathe, Princess,” he said as Libby shifted close enough for him to squeeze my knee. “You’re tense.”
“I’m always tense. That’s nothing new.”
What was new was the fact that I was wearing blue jeans and the boots Christian gave me.
At least I hadn’t chopped off my hair or given myself a bathroom sink dye job.
The ring I had worn for years was no longer on my finger. It was sitting on the nightstand in Christian’s house until I figured out what to do with it.
If jeans and boots were rock bottom, I’d say I was handling the end of my relationship pretty damn well.
Then again, compartmentalization was my bread and butter.
I’d deal with the feelings later.
Or never.
It was fine.
I stared down at Christian’s thumb as it stroked back and forth over my knee. It was thick and rough with callouses. I saw him wash his hands often, but it seemed as though his cuticles were permanently dirty from doing tasks around the ranch.
“Look.” His tongue darted out and wet his lip. “It’s none of my business how you deal with your shit. Just don’t blame the horse.”
The man was delusional if he thought I’d be able to ride this monster without falling off and cracking my head open.
Christian must have telepathically told Libby to turn so we were facing the same direction because she slowly shuffled around and lined up with Dottie—the horse who had the misfortune of carting me around today.
Dottie . It sounded like a lunch lady with a hair net. Not a thousand pound mammal.
“Relax the reins. You can hold ’em tight if it makes you feel better, just don’t yank on ’em.”
Reluctantly, I wiggled my fingers and loosened my grip.
“You can rest your hands on the front of the saddle if you want something to hold on to, but you don’t need it. You’re not gonna fall off.”
“Easy for you to say—fucking cocky cowboys,” I muttered under my breath as I gripped the horn at the front of the saddle.
Christian let out an easy laugh. “What’s the rule?”
I tapped a finger on my chin. “Rule number one: if you’re going to kill someone, make it look like an accident, cry at the funeral, admit nothing, and deny everything.”
“Jesus, you publicists are dark.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Griffith.”
He reached over and pressed his palm against the small of my back. “Posture like a princess. Sit nice and tall.”
“I am sitting tall,” I snapped. “I’m not exactly a waif.”
“You’re sitting like a gargoyle,” he countered, running his hand up the curve of my spine like a silent insult. “Shoulders back. Chest out. Back straight.”
I let out a dramatic huff and slowly fixed my posture. “Better?”
“Push your ass out. You’re caving in on yourself and sitting on your tailbone. It’s why you feel wobbly.”
Christian’s eyes on my ass made goosebumps flood my neck. I knew he didn’t mean it in any kind of way, but it had been a long time since a man looked at me without disdain.
He was warm and comforting. I was usually described as prickly, but I was beginning to understand why a cactus thrives in sunshine.
“There you go,” he said, giving me a tip of his chin. “That’s better.” Christian’s beard twitched around his mouth, and I knew he was trying not to smile. “You’re too formidable to cower. Don’t bow even if you want to.”
I flinched when Dottie shifted, itching to get going. “Is that your way of saying, ‘fake it ’til you make it?’”
He and Libby started off. Somehow Dottie knew to follow, and kept up with his slow pace. “Something like that.”
We rode silently for a few minutes, heading out to one of the empty pastures I wanted to see.
I had been keeping my revitalization plans close to the vest until I had everything in order. If he said no to adding a single revenue stream, he was going to throw a fit about adding a handful of them.
Land was one thing I would need, and the one thing he probably wouldn’t give up.
I was a fan of ripping the metaphorical Band-Aid off, but I was trying to make this as painless as possible.
“It’ll clear, you know,” Christian said out of nowhere.
“What will?”
He slowed up and looked over at me. “The dust storm.”
I stared at the chestnut hairs of Dottie’s mane. “What are you talking about?”
“All the shit that gets stirred up and clouds your mind. Eventually it’ll settle. You’ll be able to breathe easier.” He looked ahead. “Doesn’t make it better in the moment. Dust storms happen. It’s okay to close your eyes and stumble through.”
It was a nice little mantra I was certain he had coined when he was going through the loss of his wife.
But I didn’t need niceties.
I lifted my chin, pushed my shoulders back, straightened my spine, and loosened my hips. “I’ll be fine.”
And maybe one day, I would believe it.
Christian took me out to the west side of the ranch to show me the land.
CJ and the ranch hands had rotated pastures, moving the herd south a few days ago, making this the perfect place to stake my claim for the development projects I had up my sleeve.
He waited patiently while I stared to the left for a while, then the right, imagining buildings springing up from the earth.
Christian would probably hate it.
But maybe we could do something natural—a log and stone exterior. Something with a view so the expanse of the ranch could be appreciated.
When I finally spoke up again, I nearly startled Christian.
“Which direction does the sun set?”
He pointed in front of me at the sprawling land that stretched as far as the eye could see. “The front gate is east. It’s opposite where we are. Sun rises over there, and sets over that horizon.”
“Perfect,” I whispered. With the plan solidified in my mind, I had a mountain of work ahead of me.
“Ready to head back?”
“You can go if you have to get back to work.”
Christian chuckled. “If I leave you, I’m afraid I might still find you out here in the morning.” He winked. “But I like your confidence.”
Taking his cues, Libby happily obliged. Her tail swished in front of me as we turned and headed back for the east side of the ranch.
“You gonna tell me what you’ve been working on?” he called to me.
I smirked. “When it’s ready.”
“Am I gonna ride out here and find you breaking ground on something that’s gonna piss me off?”
That made me laugh. “I think it’s physically impossible for you to get pissed off. I’ve never heard you raise your voice.”
His chuckle was more of a growl. “Few things are worth raising my voice over.”
Dottie picked up her pace, matching Libby so Christian and I were riding side by side. “Your daughters are lucky.”
His beard twitched again. “Thanks, Cass. Means a lot.” After a moment of silence, he asked, “Do you want kids?”
I cackled, tossing my head back and letting my hair spill down my spine. “Absolutely not. I do not have a single maternal bone in my body. Tripp didn’t want kids either, so that was great. At least now that he’s out of the picture, it’s not like I’m losing out on something.”
“So is this it?”
“Is what it?”
“This. Your job. Your life the way it is. You living the dream?”
“Something like that.”
“What’s the bigger dream, then?” When I didn’t answer, he looked over at me, studying me from beneath the brim of his hat.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” he countered, looking away.
“Don’t do that thing where you stare at me until I crack. I hate that.”
Christian laughed. “I’m not trying to make you crack.”
I rolled my eyes. “Really.”
“You fascinate me.”
I let out a weighted breath, steeling myself for the impending heckling. “I want to be important.”
But Christian didn’t laugh. “What do you mean?”
The slow rock of my hips with each of Dottie’s strides was soothing and hypnotic. There were no sounds except the soft grunts of the horses.
I wasn’t religious, but this felt like church.
“I want to be the person that people go to when there’s a problem. I want to be the one who gets the calls in the middle of the night to fix something that’s going wrong. I want to be the one that holds everything together. I want to be irreplaceable.”
Christian’s brows were furrowed as he mulled on it. They softened after a while, but he still didn’t make a comment about what I had said.
His silence was starting to irritate me.
He might be calm, cool, and collected, but I wasn’t.
Vulnerability made me uneasy. Tripp didn’t honor tenderness; he saw it as weakness.
The notion struck me like lightning.
I had never admitted the desires behind my career goals to Tripp. Deep down, I knew it was because I was afraid of him cutting them down.
“You’re looking like a natural,” Christian said, snapping me out of the stunned stupor.
I blinked the haze away. “What?”