Chapter 4
Chapter Four
PRESENT
Fucking hell. I tie up one tough situation and waltz into another.
I should have taken the rest of the night off. But instead, I came up to the shared family offices here at the ranch after my time with Owen to check on the contracts for the purchase of a new training facility I bought a few towns over.
My recent hire, Brandon, a trainer who has dealt with some of the world’s finest champions, was a stroke of luck for Monarch Hills. It’s been thirteen years since I bought this scrubby patch and transformed it into what’s a respectable operation. It’s solid, and maybe even more than I thought it could be, but I never thought it would be big enough to attract talent like Bran’s.
Fortunately for me, Brandon happens to be from a nearby coastal town and decided he was getting too old to be far from family. After shooting the breeze over a video call with him in Dubai a while back, Brandon decided Monarch Hills was a good place to settle. One thing turned into the next, and with him on board, investing in a new training facility felt like a well-backed enterprise.
Company growth is strong right now, much thanks to Bran. Monarch Hills has been thriving these past years. Hell, I’m more successful than I ever thought I’d be.
Why then, can seeing her name on my screen have me right back to feeling like a boy from the wrong side of the tracks?
One who doesn’t belong.
One who would never become anything.
That taste of doubt is back on my tongue, all because of one woman’s name.
Kat.
I read the email on my screen again, half thinking this might be a dream.
FROM: [email protected]
Hey, boss… do you know this lady? She sent an email to the contact address.
Let me know if you need me to politely decline for you.
Best,
Kelly
FWD :
ATTN: Santiago Mendez
Hello,
I am an old acquaintance of Mr. Mendez’s and am enquiring as to whether there are any jobs available at Monarch Hills? I am urgently seeking work and hoping to find a position that allows my son to come along temporarily as I do not have childcare, as for the time being, he is not in school.
I know this is an unusual request.
I would very much appreciate you forwarding this message to Mr. Mendez as he is aware of my horsemanship skills and whether there is any use for them at your ranch.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Kind regards,
Katinka Petras
(555) 466-6378
Acquaintance?
Kat and I were a hell of a lot more than acquaintances.
I rub my eyes hard, willing the email not to be there when I open them again.
It’s still very much there. My heart pounds with disbelief as I read the message on my screen for a third time. The word leaves my lips like a kettle letting go of slow steam. “Shit.”
Ava, my brother’s feisty, redheaded fiancée, turns around at the nearby desk where she’s working. “Santi. What’s up with you?”
I run my fingers through my hair and tug at it like I’m pulling the edge of a stress ball. I can’t talk to Ava about this, but without saying anything, I’m going to look as unraveled as I feel. I did just cuss out loud after all.
“Well… ”
It’s all I can muster because I’m still trying to make heads or tails of this email myself.
I am urgently seeking work.
My mind races to a million years ago. I’m no longer in this office but under that tree, feeling the smooth body of a woman I thought I’d marry. I was so fucking wrong.
Katinka Castellanos. Petras now. I nearly ruined my life for this woman.
Why does she need a job? Kat’s from one of the wealthiest families in all of California; why would she reach out to me? I guess this means she’s not asking Daddy for help, and her shiny, pedigree husband must not be in the picture either. She would be mighty desperate to come crawling to me.
I’ve been working on remembering to forget Kat for years but have never quite succeeded.
I gaze back at the email then swiftly pull up another window to search for her. Rarely has the name Petras turned up anything but her husband, Nicholas, and this time is no different.
The third search item tells me a lot. He’s dead.
A widow at thirty-one. It was hard for me to wish her marriage was a happy one after all that happened. The spite in me prevented that; I’m a mere mortal and a scorned man. But still… this isn’t the natural order of things. He couldn’t have been more than forty-odd, and the kid is without a father now. I’m not that spiteful.
Damn it… sympathy softens me. There’s no way in hell I want her near me. Because of her, I nearly tipped my family upside down at the worst time in our lives. She’s not working with me… But that doesn’t mean I want her not working anywhere .
If not for Kat, then at least for her kid. I wonder how old he is. Does he have her blue eyes? No. Don’t go there.
I dig my thumbs into my eye sockets. Fucking hell. If I’m going to help her it means she’ll be in Echo Valley.
I don’t realize Ava is still staring at me, and I’m not even sure for how long I let an ellipse hang in the air between us.
“Maybe I can help?” she says, bringing me back to our discussion and hopeful I’ll give her the gossip. Ava sure does like to help. She’s a little on the nosy side, but I like that about her.
Still, if I told her about Kat for real, she’d use her investigation and hacking skills to decode my past in less than ten minutes. I like Ava, and I trust her, but I never want anyone to find out what I did just to have Kat. Or for Ava to know Kat humiliated me despite my willingness to risk it all… But I would never be enough for the rich college girl. And even with all this success, I’ve never been able to fully get over being born into the wrong class.
I never told anyone about Kat. The multitude of ways in which shame and humiliation showed up after all that went down had me in constant agony over my miscalculations. I’m still not proud of what I did so I keep that thing between us my heavy, lonesome secret. She was a siren. A black widow who lured me into her web.
The woman was fucking engaged, for Christ’s sake.
I laugh in an attempt to find myself again, but nothing about this is funny. “I wish you could help.”
“Try me,” she presses, probably sensing this is juicy.
She has a damn good sniffer, just like my brother, Enzo.
If I don’t give her something, she might figure it out on her own because Ava doesn’t drink or smoke. Curiosity is the sweet girl’s vice.
“I got an email.” I stretch my neck to one side, then the other, trying to get a good crack and release some of this tension. “From an old acquaintance.”
“And…” she urges me to carry on.
“She needs a job.”
Instantly, Ava’s ears perk up at the word she. Everyone in my family wants to see me settled down. Hell, Ava has only been around for a few months, and she’s been on the dating sites for me. For some reason, despite my complete inability to commit, they all have it in their heads I’d be happier with someone. I’m fine on my own. Have been for years.
Now that they know I’ve applied to be a foster, they’ve taken that as an additional cue I should be a family man and have doubled down on their interest in my love life. So, if there’s a she in the picture, everyone comes snooping.
I power down my laptop. I need to get out of here and escape the interrogation.
Ava leans her elbows on the table, perching her chin on a fist. “Will you be giving said acquaintance a job?”
“I always try to help people out where I can.” I used to think this was one of my redeeming qualities, but I’m not so sure anymore. Clearly, in this case, it’s a weakness.
I remind myself I’m helping out for the kid. Not Kat. “She’s a single mom,” I add to reassure both Ava and myself this is about benevolence and nothing else.
I close my laptop, stand, and throw my Carhartt jacket on. “Gotta run.”
Ava’s gaze tracks me. Despite my best efforts, she didn’t think anything about the way I was acting was normal if she’s watching me like this.
It’s not normal. Nothing about what happened between me and Kat was normal .
I brush past Enzo in the doorway and give him a nod because it’s all I can muster.
Blowing down the stairs, I head somewhere I can think. I need to be alone. I’m going to help Kat, now, I need a solution.
My boots click on the pavement path leading to the area of the ranch where the family homes are. I envisioned this place many, many years ago. The first person I ever admitted this dream of a family ranch to was Kat. With every stride, I contemplate what she’d think of me actually making something of myself. What she’d say knowing I made my dreams a reality.
And what would her father think? The way he looked at me that day, the last day I ever dealt with the Castellanos family… I could just tell he thought I was a nobody.
Pounding up my porch stairs two by two, I throw open my front door, and Mila greets me immediately.
She’s a Belgian Malinois, albeit one with giantism or something because she is enormous. I got her not long after my last pup passed. When Duke died, I was in a very reckless phase of my life, all seemed lost after Kat, and I worried I’d never find the light in me again.
At a visit back home in Starlight Canyon, a dog breeder my dad knew brought over the hugest puppy you’ve ever seen. Mila was bred to herd cattle, but things just weren’t clicking. The breeder asked if my dad knew anyone who would adopt her. Maybe due to her size, maybe that she lacked focus and was clumsy, she just wasn’t fit for purpose.
But she was fit for my purpose. I needed to find my smile again; she helped me do just that. Her given name, Milagros , means miracle because it represents what we were to each other. She found me, and I found her, at exactly the right time. It was either Milagros or Serendipity and the latter was too uppity for my taste.
I scratch behind her ear. “Hey, girl.”
She follows me to the fridge. I snatch out a beer and twist off the lid. The first swig cools my dry mouth, but I know it will take a hell of a lot more of these to simmer down completely.
I snatch Mila’s ball and my latest whittling project off my kitchen counter and head out onto my back porch, immediately throwing the ball out into the garden so Mila can run around. I popped her in here when Owen arrived this afternoon, so she’s been cooped up for about four hours. I don’t like leaving her in here, but if I don’t give her a lot of attention in a day, sometimes she gets up to no good and finds a nice flowerbed to dig up. Or worse, takes to the muck heaps.
I chuck the ball into the distance, and she dashes out enthusiastically. She could probably use a friend, but with the foster application out there, I’m taking it one kid at a time.
Mila brings the slimy ball back to me, and I send it out again into the cluster of trees at the far end of my garden. She finds it but picks up on the scent of something and decides to have a sniff around rather than play fetch.
I put my boots up on the railing and smooth my whittling knife into a curve of the latest chess piece I’m doing for my nephew, Nino. I never thought it would be this much work when I embarked on carving a Harry Potter set for Christmas. Still, he’ll love it, and now that the kid is going to be spoiled rotten by his wealthy NHL daddy, I like the idea of giving him something money can’t buy.
Money.
The root of all evil. I know I have it now but I won’t let it corrupt me. I won’t let it make me lie, and cheat people, or ever think I’m better than someone who doesn’t have it.
As always, all this thinking about money and status and less than and more than leads me right back to Kat.
How am I going to help and keep her away from me at the same time?
Mila comes back with the ball, and she puts the slobbery thing on my lap. “Tell me, dog, why am I such a sucker?”
I lift the ball as if to throw it, and her eyes light up. She flinches, perched and ready.
I throw it again into the distance, but something else catches her eye around the other side of the house, and she rushes off.
She comes back with Julia, wild white strands escaping her bun, waving at me.
“Yoo-hoo. I was just visiting your dad and thought I’d pop in with some treats for the pup.” She lifts a paper bag in the air. “You know I like your picky dog to sample the goods before I order too much of anything for the shop.”
Julia, a close family friend who has been everything to me and my brothers since moving to California, is always welcome. When Rio and Enzo were trying to start a tech company, she offered a workspace in exchange for labor. She let me buy supplies at wholesale cost through the tack shop she owns and hooked me up with her discounts for fencing and outbuildings. Her last kid had just gone off to college when we arrived, and her husband was sick. I suppose we had a lot to offer each other.
Though I’m still feeling off and not much like talking, I straighten my spine and find my manners just as I would have with my own mom.
“Of course, Jules. Just give her one, though. I haven’t given her supper yet.”
Julia reaches into the bag, and Mila, well-behaved when it comes to food, sits before even being asked.
Julia laughs. “You’re always the perfect little pup.”
Tell that to the groundskeeper when he has to fill in one of her holes.
Mila sniffs the offering carefully. I’ve never met a dog who would leave behind treats, but she does, and there’s never any rhyme or reason either. Eventually, Mila decides this particular treat is edible and wolfs it down in one go.
Julia gives me a thumbs-up. “Mila approved. Maybe these can be our next bestsellers at the shop.”
The shop. Julia owns Heritage Tack and Feed… Which has me thinking…
I put my project down on the table, stand, grip the railing, and lean over to see if Julia can be part of helping me with this Kat dilemma.
“I don’t suppose I can ask you a favor.”
She laughs while staring at Mila who is begging for another treat. “Always for you, Santi.”
“I…” take off my hat, scratch my head, and put it back on, “…have this lady…” lady , “and she’s looking for a job. But she has a kid who needs to come to work with her. I think she’s pretty hard up for something.”
“Okay…” Julia eyes me. “What kind of skills does she have?”
“I don’t think she’ll be picky. She just needs a job that allows her son to go to work with her.” Not that I know any of the details, but if she comes begging, as the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers.
“You know this person? How?”
She has now wandered to the spot just below me, Mila at her heels. Julia peers up, all cocked eyebrows and that white bun of hers that means business. She’s able to see every expression I make. I can’t hide under my brim.
I go in for the kill. “She’s a single mom, Jules.”
Julia’s shoulders soften. The kid did it for me, too.
“Okay. I’ll find something.” Julia bends down to pat Mila on the head. “I need to run, but keep me posted.”
I wink. “You’re a saint.”
She bats her hand in the air like I’m silly. “Stop trying to butter me up. I said yes.” She stands on her tiptoes and hands me the paper bag. “Is she pretty?”
If she is even a sliver as pretty as she used to be, I’ll have to do everything in my power to pretend she’s not.
“Julia. Someone I used to know asked for a favor… simple as.”
“All right then. Can’t fault an old lady for trying.”
I take the paper bag. “Thanks for the treats.”
Julia turns, raising her hand in the air by way of goodbye.
I mostly solved this problem. It’s unlikely I’ll have to run into Kat. I do go to Heritage quite a lot. Julia lives next door to her shop, so I’m often nearby, but it should be easy enough to send stable hands in and avoid the store for a while.
But while I watch my dear friend walk away, I do wonder. Will Julia pry? Will Kat tell her we were… once… something?
I shake my head.
Kat wanted me in the past.
And that’s where I intend to stay.