Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
PRESENT
I adjust Chispa’s saddle and the leather creaks under my touch, a comforting, familiar sound that usually helps clear my mind. Though right now, nothing can shake the image of Kat.
I only went in for some of those damn dog treats, but instead, I got blindsided. She appeared in that doorway, and the world tilted. The years between us dissolved like morning mist, and I’m that reckless twenty-one-year-old again, sitting under our tree, dreaming of our life together.
But then she spoke. Her voice was softer, almost hesitant, but the edge of defiance was still there.
“Santi.”
Just my name, but it carried the weight of a thousand unspoken words. We didn’t talk as we worked, but years of rumination played out while we moved hay bales, bedding, and took the delivery off the truck together along with her son.
She’s still breathtaking. Still a bit hardened, but not like someone jaded, more like a fighter, fist tightened with determination. The woman had grit then and she has it now. I didn’t fail to notice other things; she still has strong shoulders and curvy hips. They’re curvier, and she’s softer through the middle, and goddamn it, she’s even more beautiful than the day I left her. It annoys the hell out of me that logic can’t erase attraction.
She still has something that gets my body responding, and there’s nothing I can do about it. But I’m not a boy anymore. I’m a grown man and I’ve practiced the skill of restraint with women like it’s a dying art. I’ve chosen them wisely over the years. I’m no saint but I’m not into breaking hearts either.
The memory of me telling her to stay away yesterday plays like a broken record as I tighten Chispa’s girth. I give him a reassuring pat. Maybe it was a bit much to be so forward. I showed my colors there. But she knows what she did. I was nothing but a game for her, but I’m not playing anymore.
She seemed ready to be friendly, as if the years evaporated the weight of what we had, and my grudge sure as hell showed her it isn’t the case for me. Normally, I’d be so much cooler, but I never was able to control myself around that woman, and clearly, I still can’t .
Which is why it’s better we stay away from each other. I don’t want anyone picking up on anything, and there’s plenty of tension to taste in the air between us. I have no interest in explaining how I nearly got a record for her. I was young and dumb. Nobody around here needs to know about that.
I barely register Enzo calling my name as he enters his mare’s stall.
“You good?” he asks, leading his sleek bay mare, Estrella, out of her stall and tying her onto an O-ring. “You’re staring at that saddle like it insulted you.”
I force a laugh, though it comes out hollow. “Yeah, just thinking.”
“Thinking or brooding?” his sharp eyes narrow behind his glasses.
I hesitate. Enzo isn’t just my brother; he’s also one of the few people I trust inside and out. But even with him, dredging up the history I have with Kat feels like reopening an old wound that hasn’t healed properly. Plus, there’s the fact that I was ready to marry a woman my family didn’t even know about. I’m the wild child, but even they would be surprised by what happened back then.
There are plenty of details I’m not proud to talk about, and if you can’t tell the truth, it isn’t worth talking at all.
I check Chispa’s bridle one more time to avoid meeting Enzo’s gaze and change the subject. “Where the hell is Rio?”
Just then, Enzo’s double rushes in with a saddle in his hands. “Fucking conference calls. Sorry.”
Enzo deadpans, “You should make some more free time for yourself. That’s why we have managers.”
“Yeah, well, maybe if I got a genius fiancée to do half my work I could step down from the front, too.”
“She doesn’t do half my work. She makes my work easier.”
“Same difference.”
My twin brothers jointly own a tech company specializing in what I can only explain as spyware. It cracks through encrypted sites on the dark web. I don’t exactly understand what they do, mostly because I haven’t bothered, but they’re modern-day superheroes, though you wouldn’t know it by the way they still sometimes bicker like little boys.
Enzo doesn’t argue this time around, simply deciding to move on.
“I only have forty minutes in me this morning,” he says. “Ava and I are planning our trip to Bali, and if I don’t get a say in it, she’ll be booking us to sleep in hammocks on the beach. I’m too old for that shit.”
Rio teases, “That has nothing to do with age, hermano . You’re just delicate.”
“Says the man who wears silk boxers.”
Rio expertly gets a saddle on Fuego like the cowboy he is under those starched shirts. For as different as we are, we’re all the same. Just four boys from a dusty, poor ranch in New Mexico.
Enzo doesn’t have to prove his mettle. Like the rest of us, he paid his dues sleeping out on freezing-cold nights when the cattle were out to pasture and my dad couldn’t afford enough hands that winter. It toughened us all up, so I don’t begrudge Enzo his comforts, nor Ava her wanderlust. That girl went through enough shit for a lifetime.
A few creature comforts and working in the city don’t change who we are or how proud I am of it. I’m proud of the man I am now as much as then.
Even though I wasn’t enough for Paul Castellanos .
I wasn’t enough for Kat.
I told her I’d do everything in my power to take care of her for the rest of her life but?—
Shit. Here I am, getting sucked into the past again.
I mount Chispa and walk him to the edge of the barn. The rhythmic sway of the horse’s gait grounds me but just makes me wonder if she came to Monarch Hills, would my old boy Hector remember her, too? Would he remember the way she’d run her fingers down either side of his spine, or her apples? He went wild for her green apples. So did I. I worked hard to give up on Kat but I never gave up on those Granny Smiths.
They still remind me of her but I’m as addicted to them as I am to my grudge.
I wait for my brothers to join me when my phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out.
Callum.
I answer. “Everything all right?”
It’s not like Echo Valley’s Chief of Police ever calls me for casual conversation.
Callum’s voice comes through, tight with urgency. “You’re the one who recommended Kat to Julia, right?”
My grip tightens on the reins. “Yes.”
“Her place in Mission was broken into yesterday. Nothing of value was stolen, but the place was ransacked…”
My chest tightens. “Are they okay?”
“She and the kid weren’t home, thank God. I asked Julia to take them in last night and to stay for a while…”
The way Callum drops his sentence has my heart racing.
“What is it?”
“Our team finished dusting the place last night and found a note, and even though Kat tried to reassure me her father is, as she put it, controlling but harmless , it put my hairs up.”
Fuck. Is Paul still in charge of everything in Kat’s life? Interfering. Manipulative…
“What did the note say?” I bite out.
“It said traitors will be punished . When I questioned Kat about it last night at Julia’s, she was shaken seeing it. She said it wasn’t his writing but that it had to be her father somehow because he’s been trying to get her to move back home. She said not to worry but… I’ll tell you; her body language said it all. What do you know about her dad?”
I don’t want to lie. Thankfully, Callum carries on before I figure out what to say.
“I know from past cases in Boston that family members aren’t always the most reliable when it comes to providing incriminating details, so I can’t rely on Kat to press charges, but I want to keep an eye on this situation. Just because someone is family doesn’t mean they can’t harm. Shit. Too often they’re just the people to worry about.”
I know more about Paul Castellanos than I care to admit. More than I can admit without letting my past unravel.
I try the diplomatic route. “You can find out plenty with a Google search. He’s a property mogul. Pacific Dreams Developments. Do you want me to ask Rio and Zo if they can have someone search with their tools at GhostEye? I’m with them now.”
It would give me great satisfaction to put Paul Castellanos in a boiling cauldron.
“No. If we can’t move the investigation along as normal, I’ll buzz them, but it’s premature now. But do you think he’d resort to this kind of intimidation? Should I be worried about this guy? And what about being a traitor? What could that mean?”
I actually have no clue, but it’s all making me freeze to my goddamn core. Kat needs money all of a sudden? Her father is after her? I know what the man is capable of. I know how much he needs control and how much she didn’t used to want to give it. I know he’ll stoop to low places to have her in his clutches.
More than that, what the hell am I going to add to this discussion without dredging up my secrets?
To my rescue for a second time, someone interrupts Callum on the other end of the call, and he speaks to an officer and then comes back on the line.
“Listen, I gotta run. Just… she can probably use a friend right now, and I want to keep an eye on her and the kid. It seemed like the right thing to do giving you a heads-up, seeing as you two were friends. Chat later.”
The line goes dead.
Enzo rides Estrella up next to me. “What’s going on?”
“Can’t ride this morning.” I lead Chispa back into the barn where I find Rio now on Fuego.
Rio’s brows pinch. “You okay?”
“Go on without me.”
We’re tight, and my brothers sense I won’t be saying anymore but head to the trails, reluctantly waiting until the very last minute unless I change my mind and want to talk.
My chest tightens with a mix of emotions I can’t untangle. I don’t owe Kat anything, but the thought of her and Theo being in danger stirs something deep within me. I’ll deal with my feelings about her later. Right now, she needs help, and I’m not the kind of man to turn my back on that—not then, and not now.