Chapter Four
Dana
A battery-charged floodlight lit the stoop where Otto rocked in his chair. Moths fluttered around it, casting chaotic shadows on the grass. Lady shifted restlessly in the trailer nearby. Dana had turned Tanoa loose in the pasture, although it had killed her to do so.
Now she was ready to talk business, but Otto was having none of it.
“Come back in the morning,” he said.
“Mr. Hart,” she began, only to have him interrupt her.
“Otto.”
She tried again, hoping to make him see reason. “Otto. I’ll be in Billings in the morning.” Her dad would be worried by now and there was no cell phone reception for her to call him and let him know everything was okay.
“Dana…” Levi murmured, adding a light touch to her arm to signal a warning. What was that for? Was she hurting her chances by arguing?
She looked more closely at Otto, trying to read him to see how she could turn this conversation around. Then Otto coughed. It shook his slight frame and bent him forward in his rocker. His hands trembled on the arms of his chair. He was sick. Alarmingly so. Pushing a business discussion on him when he was in this condition was out of the question.
“I have nowhere to stable Lady for the night. I’d planned to drive straight through,” she said to Levi.
“You can stable her at the Endeavour. You can set up your trailer there, too, if you like.”
She’d splurged and bought a second-hand trailer with living quarters combined, meaning she’d run out of arguments. They’d already negotiated the price—the terms of payment were the problem. If Otto didn’t agree to them, then there was no point in her making a second trip.
“A stable would be appreciated but I’ll find a motel,” she said, reluctant to take too much advantage of his generosity when she was already in his debt.
“It’s getting too late to be checking into a motel,” Levi said. “The Endeavour is a pretty big spread, and the owners are generous about putting up guests.”
She allowed herself to be persuaded because she wanted to spend the night in Grand even less than she wanted to find herself deeper in debt. She didn’t want to run into any of Tanner’s hometown fans. She really didn’t want to run into Tate or Ford, his sister and brother. The last time she’d seen Tate was at Christmas, when Tate had delivered Tanner’s final Christmas gift to her, and it had been so horribly awkward when Dana refused to accept it that she doubted if Tate was eager to see her again, either.
An engagement ring, Tanner… What were you thinking?
Plus she was tired, and it was a long drive to Billings, especially while hauling a trailer. Her priority was to reach an agreement on purchasing Tanoa. Having Levi on her side, since he knew Otto so well, wouldn’t hurt.
“That sounds great,” she replied. “Thank you.”
“Give me a few minutes to make sure everything is secure here for the night.” He loped off into the darkness.
She sat on the stoop near Otto’s feet. She considered asking how he was feeling, or if she could do anything for him, but since Levi hadn’t pestered him about his health, she left it alone, too.
“He’s a good man,” Otto said, out of the blue.
“He seems to be,” Dana agreed, cautious about where he was headed. Otto wasn’t matchmaking, was he?
“People used to overlook Levi because Tanner was so friendly and loud. Levi’s more of a thinker. He’s quiet. But the real difference between those two boys is the same as the one between Tanoa and that horse you ride now. They’re both good horses, but yours is one or two generations away from being a winner. Doesn’t make her less valuable, though. Not if she’s bred to the right stallion. Her babies will be worth something.”
Pain gathered, then blew in like a storm. She’d had a shot at childbearing, and the shot had gone wide of the mark, because she hadn’t wanted a baby, and it was as if the baby had known. That whole period in her life had been a nightmare she tried never to think about and didn’t intend to repeat.
“Are you suggesting that Levi’s children could be winners if he finds the right broodmare?” she said, once she could speak without her voice cracking. She could see why he’d think that. Levi, quiet and steady, was a prize winner. For the right woman, of course.
Otto set the rocker in motion with the toe of his dusty boot. “I’m just shooting the breeze.”
Levi reappeared, as if he had some sort of internal radar aligned with her need for rescue, because his timing was perfect.
“All’s good,” he reported. “Dana, why don’t you follow me, and we’ll get you settled in at the ranch?”
*
The Endeavour Ranch was impressive, even by Montana’s high standards. The driveway alone was at least a mile long, curving between an L-shaped mansion that overlooked the Tongue River, and a garage that looked more like a car dealership. Three barns, along with a smattering of cabins and bunkhouses and other outhouses, marked the driveway’s conclusion another half mile beyond the main house. Acre upon acre of pastureland stretched into the night.
Dana had misgivings about leaving Otto alone in his rocking chair on the stoop. He seemed so frail and the isolation so vast around him. She said so to Levi an hour later, as they were unloading Lady next to one of the Endeavour barns.
“He’s a grown man who has full use of his mental faculties,” Levi said, in response to her concerns. “There’s not much I can do for him if he doesn’t choose to allow it.” He rubbed Lady’s nose and Lady, the flirt, snuffled his neck.
“But he’s out there, all alone,” Dana said.
“I’m aware of that fact. So is he. He’s lived alone for so long he doesn’t know anything else.”
Nevertheless, it didn’t feel right.
A bat, a rare sighting these days due to the devastation of White-nose syndrome on the country’s bat population, swooped across the open barn door, scooping up bugs drawn to the light. Its shadow made its wings appear to span several feet rather than inches, which she might have found creepy if she hadn’t felt so sorry for it.
“How did you and Otto become so close?” she asked. Otto hadn’t struck her as a man who encouraged casual acquaintances, yet she’d found the two men sharing a beer together.
“He hired Tanner and me to ride his horses for cutting cattle when we were younger.”
Cutting cattle was an excellent way to prepare a horse for barrel racing. “You don’t ride for him anymore?”
“Tanner’s brother took over after I left for college and Tanner headed off to ride bulls. Turns out Ford is better at it than we were. Otto still lets me ride, but now it’s for pleasure. It’s like taking a Ferrari out for a spin, except it has four legs rather than wheels.”
One of those Ferraris was about to be hers. A tidal bore of excitement rippled under her skin, chased by a tsunami of worry. What if Otto said no to her proposal? What would she do then?
“You’ve never tried to buy one of his horses?” she asked.
“Oh, I’ve tried to buy that blood bay, Nova, off him, believe me. Multiple times. He keeps saying she’s spoken for. I will admit, I had a moment of fear when he said the horse you’d looked at was available. I thought he meant Nova.”
His eyes met hers across Lady’s back. His face, limned in gold by the light from above the barn door, held a smile so sweetly charming that her thoughts drifted in an entirely different direction from horses. Her interest in sex had always been healthy, and that sweet, sleepy smile and those calm, lazy eyes promised her things. Things she’d lived without for three years and didn’t want to live without any longer.
“Why choose Tanoa over Nova?” he asked, apparently unaware of the silent promises his smiling eyes and lips made and the direction her thoughts had taken. “The horses are equal.”
She stroked Lady’s neck, pouring love into her touch. “Tanoa feels right.” It was a hard concept to explain to most people, but Levi understood horses. “Competition is about friendship and trust as much as performance. We have to want to give each other our best.” The same, in fact, could be said about sex. In terms of friendship and trust, Levi was perfect.
He’d come to her rescue. Held her hair. Made sure she got home safe…
“What happens to Lady when she retires?” he asked.
“I’ll have to sell her if Otto won’t accept some sort of payment plan.” Her brain shied from the thought.
“You want Tanoa that much?”
“I do.”
She’d sacrificed a significant portion of her life to her career. Things she hadn’t known how much she’d value. She couldn’t stop now. Not when she was so close to success. While she’d always known that Lady wouldn’t be with her forever, she only wished she’d been able to get them both there while Lady was at the top of her game.
“She’s valuable, you know,” Levi said. “Especially if she’s bred to the right stud. She’s getting up there in age, but aside from the start of arthritis she’s in great health and she should have a few good years to breed left in her. If you do decide to sell her, an endorsement from Otto would carry a lot of weight in the right circles.”
“It’s not only about money. I won’t sell her to just anyone.” The thought of Lady’s only value being in a few years as a broodmare, and her not receiving the love and attention she deserved, wasn’t an option. Dana would keep her and find some other way to pay Otto before she’d allow that to happen.
Thoughtfulness lurked in Levi’s expressive eyes. “Well, that explains that, then.”
“Explains what?”
He passed her the lead and slammed the gate on the back end of the trailer so that the latch caught. “Nothing. Talking to myself.”
Dana, leading Lady, followed Levi. He greeted two teenaged boys and a third male, this one a man who looked to be little more than a teenager himself, although he gave off a far more mature vibe. They blocked the barn doorway. The two boys were arguing while the man watched them, intently but patiently, as if prepared to intercede if it came to blows.
“Hey, guys,” Levi said easily, interrupting the argument to introduce her to them. “This is Dana Barrett. And this sweetheart is Lady.” He rubbed Lady’s poll, getting an appreciative bump from her muzzle in return. “Dana, these two goofballs are Owen and Paisley. They live here as part of a group program the ranch runs. The poor guy stuck supervising them is Colin, one of the counselors.”
Owen was short, stocky, and sandy-haired, with a grin permanently carved into his face that foreshadowed all sorts of trouble the world would forgive him for because he was so fun and friendly and cute. No problem figuring out why he was in a group home. Boys like Owen didn’t think about consequences.
Paisley was another story. Slender where Owen was stocky, but also fair, he had a more guarded, feline appearance to him. Trouble no doubt followed him too, but it would be a great deal more calculated and far less forgivable. Dana wasn’t sure she cared for the way he looked at her, even though he couldn’t be more than sixteen. He wasn’t creepy, exactly—more like too sexually aware for his years.
Honestly, neither boy inspired trust.
“It’s nice to meet you,” she said to them.
“You’re the barrel racer,” Paisley said. His chin jutted upward and out. His unblinking stare was equally disturbing. If he was striving for macho, his approach could use work. Future serial killer, however, he’d nailed.
“I am.” Dana offered him the friendly-but-distant smile she reserved for her more persistent fans—the one that said she appreciated them, and while she wished she had more time to talk, she had to be elsewhere.
“Smooth,” Owen said to Paisley with overdone admiration. He picked at a fingernail with his thumb. “Considering I heard that thirteen-year-olds are more your type.”
“Shut the hell up,” Paisley growled. His fingers curled and uncurled, as if they had a mind of their own and hadn’t quite made it up.
“Excuse us. Horse coming through,” Levi said, stepping between the two boys to get to the barn’s entrance, the action driving them apart.
Dana followed with Lady, widening the gap, with the added advantage of allowing the boys’ counselor, Colin, to move in behind her. She heard his quiet voice, although couldn’t make out the words, as she entered the barn. LED lights flared to life along the length of the steel roof, chasing away scary shadows and regrouping scattered nerves.
The inside of the enormous horse barn was clean and unoccupied. She’d heard that one of the Endeavour’s owners raised Tennessee Walkers, but according to Levi, his horses were pastured outside, so Lady would have the barn to herself for the night.
“Sorry about that,” Levi said.
Male aggression was nothing new in her world. She dismissed it with an airy flick of her hand. “You and Colin handled it well.”
Levi unlatched a stall lined with a thick bedding of clean shavings. Dana coaxed Lady inside while he grabbed a bale of alfalfa hay, broke it apart, and dumped thick flakes of the hay into a feed trough. She found an empty bucket next to the stall and filled it with water from a tap partway down the barn aisle.
“Here, let me get that for you.” Levi reached past her to scoop up the bucket’s wire bail from her hand. Her shoulder bumped against his chest. The bucket was full, and water sloshed over its rim, narrowly missing the toe of her boot, leaving dark, wet patches spreading outward on the smooth concrete floor.
“Whoops.” Dana zigged to the right.
Levi swung left. More water splashed. He set the bucket down.
“Would you care to dance?” he gravely inquired, laughter filling his eyes.
He lifted her off her feet. His thumbs pressed into the flesh beneath her breasts. Strong fingers caged her ribs. A small gasp of surprise flew out of her lungs, and she seized hold of his shoulders. Her heart did a quivering mambo.
Yes. Yes, she would care to dance. Among other things.
Because sexual awareness was far more compelling when exchanged with a mature, handsome man than a sixteen-year-old boy—or a boy of any age, for that matter—and her curiosity as to what he’d be like in bed flared again. It curled around her breasts and slithered into her stomach, sinking low in her belly and caressing the insides of her thighs. Familiar scents of horse and leather, mingled with warm, well-laundered cotton, hit her like a drug and she breathed deeply.
He set her firmly to one side and out of his way. The pads of his thumbs scored the soft undersides of her breasts. The soles of her boots connected with concrete. Her knees shook beneath the abrupt return of her weight, pitching her forward into the solid wall of his chest.
She tipped her head back to examine his face. Common sense lost out to longing. Her palms slid from his shoulders, then hung in the air, undecided, before her fingertips arrowed upward to sweep the width of his cheeks.
The amusement in his eyes shifted to something far more intense and her fingertips staggered. Common sense raised a yellow flag, forcing her brain to engage. This was Levi. Levi. Her head spun in a thousand directions.
He dropped his eyes and his hands and got back to business as if nothing had just passed between them. He reached for the discarded bucket. “There’s grain in one of those bins if you want to give some to Lady.”
Keeping busy with a task she could manage without thinking until her head pulled itself together was an excellent idea right now.
Levi slung the bucket onto its eyehook in Lady’s stall. Dana added a few scoops of grain to the feed bucket that hung in the opposite corner. Lady made herself at home, more interested in the bucket and the bedding than the humans, so they left her alone.
Levi flicked the lights off on their way out, plunging the barn into darkness behind them, and he drew the doors closed. Outside, in the barnyard, the boys and their counselor were nowhere to be seen, leaving Levi and Dana surrounded by nothing but buildings and pastures and night. They were alone, too.
“We can hook up your trailer to the water supply or you can sleep in one of the guest cabins. Your choice,” Levi said.
“Cabin.”
That way, her trailer would be ready to go at first light. All she’d have to do was load Lady. There was the matter of the group home, as well. The boys were young offenders. She’d feel a great deal more comfortable with a solid door to lock behind her when she went to bed.
Except she wasn’t ready for sleep, and the trailer walls were too thin.
It was almost as if he was reading her mind. Pieces of it, at least. “Those two bunkhouses down that path belong to the group home,” he said, pointing. “There’s no need to worry, in case you have any concerns. The ranch has surveillance cameras installed, and the boys are closely monitored by the counselors. They’re here because they show potential, not because they aren’t problems. They have to be in their own bunkhouses by ten and then it’s lights-out at midnight. Morning chores start in shifts at six a.m. The ranch hands oversee those. The boys are never alone. Ryan’s orders.”
She gathered her courage. There was no time like the present to find out if they’d just had a moment. If there was a connection, no matter how slight.
“Where do you sleep?” she asked, her crazy heart pounding.
She wasn’t interested in a commitment. She simply missed a man’s touch—of being with one—and Levi was the first in a very long time to remind her of why. It would be for one night, and no one ever needed to know.
She didn’t need to spend the whole night in his bunkhouse. Just a few hours.
He rubbed the back of his neck. Blond eyebrows rose, synchronized with an uptick of his lips. A flush of dull red crept out of his collar, proving his thoughts hadn’t followed the same line as hers and she’d misread him. She wished she could take back the question, but she could have sworn the attraction between them was mutual.
It only took a few seconds for the charming smile to reappear. “I share a bunkhouse with three of the hands. It makes sleepovers awkward,” he said.
She flushed hot, then cold. She’d been rejected. All she could do now was save face and try to act as if propositioning men was an everyday occurrence for her. “I imagine it would.”
His smile gathered steam, then lost its upward momentum, before finally crashing and burning a few heartbeats later. He didn’t pretend to misunderstand, which made the awkwardness worse.
“If things were different, I’d like nothing more,” he said. “But Tanner and I were friends, and I can’t forget that. Tate and Ford are my friends too, and they took his death hard. Tate in particular.”
So much for saving face. Pointing out that they need never know—that she was only interested in the physical act, and only this once—was unlikely to make any difference. And she wouldn’t beg. She wasn’t that desperate. She clenched her jaws so tight that her temples throbbed from the pressure. When would she no longer be associated with Tanner? When was she going to be allowed to extricate her life from his?
“Tate did take it hard,” she allowed. “As far as she’s concerned, he walked on water.”
“Not water, exactly. She knows better than that. But she was his twin, they were close, and you changed the dynamics between them. She was jealous of you. She’ll get past it.”
Maybe. Maybe not. There was so much more to it than that. If Dana had taken up time that Tate thought should have been hers, it was only because Tanner had been jealous and clingy and needy with Dana. Demanding. Careless.
She blamed him for the fallout of his carelessness, which hadn’t been careless at all. He’d planned it, and she was still so angry with him.
Maybe this sudden, renewed interest in sex was her brain’s way of telling her it was time to get past all the pent-up anger and move on with her life. To put him behind her for good.
But sleeping with his best friend or anyone even remotely connected to him was clearly not going to work. Not for Levi and not for her. She’d have to find another solution to the loneliness that gripped her late at night.