5. Carson James
5
CARSON JAMES
S weat beaded on the back of my neck. I gritted my teeth as I pinched the wire between the teeth of the pliers and twisted it together. I usually didn’t mind the monotony of repairing breaks in the fence. It gave me time to think. To be alone and at peace with myself.
I loved the quiet.
But the quiet had turned to acid, eating away at me today. I regretted sending the rest of the ranch hands to take care of tasks at the front of the property, per Cassandra’s request.
A few guys were checking the cattle and monitoring the herd movement as we gently guided them from pasture to pasture, but there was no one close enough to carry on a conversation with. Radio chatter was restricted to business only. I was left with the whispers of wind that carried thoughts of her to me, no matter how far I went to escape them.
Trying to get away from those thoughts was how I found myself on the back line of the property, fixing a fence.
A diesel engine growled over the horizon. I squinted into the afternoon sun to try and make out who was coming to bitch me out about last night.
I didn’t want to be at that fucking dinner in the first place. I had better things to do than wear stiff clothes, eat at a fancy table, and listen to a bunch of suits who didn’t know a damn thing about ranching.
Then she popped up like a goddamn premonition.
Just like that, my dream girl turned into a walking, talking nightmare.
I should have fucking known.
Good things don’t happen to Griffiths.
Like I had conjured it, Nate’s truck crested the horizon and rumbled through the field. Anny glared from the spot where she was grazing, and let out a sharp huff.
“You’re out quite a ways,” he hollered as he hopped out and slammed the door.
Anny grunted out a response, so I didn’t have to.
Nate trudged through the soft soil. With each step, he left depressions behind.
Anny bristled at his presence. When he edged a little too close for comfort, she snapped at him.
It wasn’t a surprise. If the human wasn’t Brooke or me, she’d go on offense.
“Jesus, fuck—” He leaped away, eyeing my horse as he gave her a wide berth and kept walking. “Was she an asshole before you named her Anarchy or did the personality grow to match the name?”
I snorted. “Always been like that. What are you doing out here?”
Nate had retired from the military years ago and traveled with his wife, Becks, supporting her career.
Nate and I had never been close, but he was one of the only people I’d rant about work with since he didn’t work for the ranch. That was the extent of our relationship.
Christian was technically my boss, which knocked him out of the running for my complaints. When Ray was traveling the rodeo circuit, I’d call him up. But he had enough on his plate these days. He didn’t need me to add to it.
Nate chuckled as he shoved the sleeves of his Henley up his forearms, revealing deep scar tissue, and grabbed a pair of work gloves out of the bed of his truck. “Asked around. Heard you were out here fixing the fence. Wanna talk about last night?”
“Not particularly.”
“Too bad.” He grabbed a coil of wire and started on the next section. “I drove all the way out here.”
I gritted my teeth as I pinched two ends with the pliers and gave them a sharp twist. “Already got bitched out by Chris.”
“Who is she?” Nate said, skirting the comment.
Flashes of Lennon’s head tipping back against that brick wall danced in my vision. The way her fight made the yielding that much sweeter. The way she clung to me, curling in when she came.
“An ex?” Nate guessed when I didn’t offer anything up.
A person had to date to have exes. The ranch had always been my love.
Nate paused and leaned on the fence post. “Carson. Be straight with me.”
I hated it when he used that tone. It made him sound like our father.
Sixteen years sat between Nate and me. I had just turned two when he went off to West Point.
I guess it was the age difference, but Nate and I never felt like brothers.
When I was seventeen, our parents pulled me out of school early, sat me down, and told me that he had been injured in an attack overseas.
They were both crying. Christian was on the phone with God-knows-who, managing the situation. Ray was on his way down from Colorado to be with the family. Gretchen, my late sister-in-law, had finally gotten Nate’s first wife, Vanessa, to calm down.
And there I was, sitting on the couch, feeling absolutely nothing.
I was sad, sure. I was worried like any normal person would be. But I didn’t feel the gut-wrenching ache of pain for a loved one that everyone else did.
Nate had been there for the occasional birthday or graduation when the military allowed him to be. I didn’t fault him for not being around. But I also chose not to feel bad for feeling the same level of affection toward him that I felt for the random relatives we saw once a year at family reunions.
To his credit, he had put in more effort over the years he had been back on the ranch, but time lost was a chasm that couldn’t be refilled.
Nate and I would shoot the breeze. I’d complain about whatever dumb shit my new hires had gotten into. He’d tell me about all the places he and Becks had been traveling to. And that was that.
There was a reason he didn’t know if I had exes.
I never told him. I never felt the need to. That wasn’t the kind of thing a person told a stranger.
My knees sang as I knelt to fasten the bottom strip of wire. “Doesn’t matter who she is.”
He chuckled. “It sure didn’t seem that way when she had you riled up just by stepping in the room. I need to ask Cass if she has the security tapes. That’s some good entertainment.”
I almost let “she’s nobody” slip from my mouth, but it would have been a dirty lie. She was someone I hadn’t stopped thinking about.
“Didn’t know who she was. Met her at a bar.”
“And the fact that you both work on the same ranch didn’t come up in conversation?”
“Didn’t exactly swap life stories.”
I would have if we had made it to that second drink ...
“So, she’s some girl you met at a bar. Big deal. Did she slash your tires or something? Because that’s about the only thing I can think of that would?—”
“It’ll come to you.”
He paused. “You hooked up with her?”
Since I wasn’t about to offer the details of me fucking her against the hallway wall of a crowded bar, I just grunted.
Nate rested against the fence post. “I’m failing to see the problem here. So, you got some action. Not like workplace romances are forbidden around here.”
Yeah, my brothers and their wives were proof of that.
“Not a romance. Not interested. Not with her.”
“That’s a lot of nots. You sure you’re ready to eat three helpings of crow when the inevitable happens?”
I shot him a glare that had him raising his hands in surrender.
“Take it from me,” Nate said with a grin. “There’s a thin line between love and hate.”
“That thin line is my last nerve. And you, Christian, and that whole fucking lodge are dancing all over it. You wanna watch security camera footage of dinner last night? We wouldn’t have to have fucking security cameras if there wasn’t a goddamn hotel and restaurant on our land. Sketchy shit didn’t start happening around here until that fucking revitalization project started.”
“Hey,” he said in a warning tone. “Cassandra worked hard on that.”
“I never said she didn’t.”
Nate paused. “Have you talked to anyone about that break-in that happened the summer Brooke started working for Ray? When the lodge almost burned to the ground?”
I scoffed. “What a pity that would have been.”
He didn’t bristle at my sarcasm. “You almost got shot.”
I imagined that was the tone he used with new soldiers when he was in the Army. But I wasn’t new, and I wasn’t under his command.
I clenched my jaw, but he knew he had struck a chord. I kept my eyes trained on my hands.
“Trust me,” he said, resting his hands on his hips so I could see the battle scars that warped his arms. “I know how that can fuck with your head.”
“But I didn’t,” I snapped. “And it just proves my point. We don’t need this shit around here. It’s nothing but trouble.”
“Without the revitalization developments, you’d be out of a job.”
That one stung, but I didn’t let it show. “No one knows for sure that the ranch would have gone under. We were doing fine.”
“The numbers didn’t lie. I saw the books myself. We were fine until the next drought. Until the next disease outbreak. Until the next market shift or barn needed replacing or piece of equipment broke.” He pulled his gloves off with his teeth. “You agreed to it, so you gotta get over it. The lodge and the restaurant and all of it...It’s here to stay. The sooner you get on board, the sooner you won’t be so fucking miserable all the time.”
“You can go,” I snapped. “You’re not on the payroll anyway.”
Nate’s demeanor shifted. “I might not be on the payroll, but I live here too. My wife and child live here. So yeah, I have a vested interest just like you do.”
I pitched the pliers at the fence post. They hit the wood with a dull, unsatisfying clunk. “Everyone on this goddamn ranch is a fucking sell-out.”
“And you think being an asshole makes you the one true Griffith?” he asked with a caustic laugh. “Evolve or die. That’s the way it’s always been, even before you were conceived.”
I packed up my supplies and called Anny over. “Is this where you tell me to make nice with people ruining our land?”
Nate tossed his shit into the bed of his truck and slammed the tailgate. “Don’t shoot yourself in the foot trying to pull the trigger on someone else. Sometimes you just have to let it go. She’s here to do a job, and so are you. There’s hundreds of acres between y’all. I think that’s plenty of space.”
It wasn’t. Because as long as Lennon Maddox was on my ranch, she was in my head.
And I fucking hated it.