35. Ranger
Chapter 35
Ranger
I woke to the smell of smoke and the bright rays of the morning sun streaming through the pine tree branches. Sarah moved in my arms, but her eyes remained closed, her breathing steady.
I didn’t move, not wanting to disrupt her sleep. Fuck, she was beautiful. The sun caught strands of her hair, giving light to the subtle hues of amber and gold throughout her dark tresses. Dark eyelashes fanned out, making tiny shadows on her cheeks and I loved the way her nose was curved and came to a little ball at the end. And her lips. God, I hoped I got to kiss those lips for the rest of my life.
Last night had been the single best night of my life, connecting with her in that way. Sharing our newfound love for one another. I hadn’t felt this happy since before I lost my dad to the war and my mother disappeared. Even then, those years of joy couldn’t compare to what I was feeling for Sarah.
I knew she didn’t set out to do it, but she’d mended my heart. Stitching over the years of sorrow, fear, and pain. Replacing all of it with a love so profound I could hardly breathe when I was near her.
Her eyelids fluttered open. “Morning, sugar.” I nestled the side of her neck with my nose before I kissed her jaw.
“Mmm,” she hummed, pressing her back further into my chest. “Good morning.” Her lips parted with a smile as she took me in.
“How’d you sleep?”
“Like a log,” she chuckled.
“Me too.” I pressed a kiss to her temple. “Are you ready to head back for some breakfast?”
“Actually, that would be wonderful. I’m starving.”
“Okay. Let’s get packed up.”
It didn’t take us long to wrap up the blankets and pillows into the bag that I tied behind Hank’s saddle. He’d eaten through all the pellet food I’d packed for him last night, even though it was a solid three meals worth. The big pig had a tendency to eat through anything extra I gave him, never willing to save it for later.
Sarah was near the edge of the cliff looking down at her phone as I tied the final strap together. “Everything okay?” I called out to her. She spiraled a strand of hair around her fingers, turning around to face me.
A solemn look from her had my stomach nearly plummeting to the ground. Something was wrong. I kept my breath steady when she started walking toward me.
“I got a text from my dad,” she said, her voice smaller than normal.
“Are you upset about that?” She’d only really talked about her mother or her parents as a pair. I wasn’t sure what her relationship was like with her father.
“Not upset,”—she looked up at me—“just confused. I don’t think my dad has ever sent me a text message since I’ve been on my own. We usually only talk when we see one another in person, which hasn’t been very often over the past few years.”
How a parent could go that long without initiating contact with their child was beyond me. Then again, my mother left Callie Rose and me. One day she was holed up in her room and the next, she was gone.
“What did he say?”
She slid her phone back into her coat pocket and sighed. “He asked me to come to Sunday dinner tonight. And to bring you.”
My brows rose. “That’s a surprise given how your mom reacted the other day.”
Sarah blew a raspberry. “Yeah, I know. He said that my mother is sorry for how she reacted and wants to make amends. ”
I inhaled deeply. It seemed like our little retreat this weekend was going to have an interesting close if Sarah chose for us to have dinner with her parents tonight. Part of me didn’t want to leave this mountainside knowing what might await us. But I would follow her wherever she wanted to go.
“What are you thinking, sugar?”
Her lips drew into a straight line, eyes more serious than I’d ever seen them. “I don’t know if I want to see her after what she said about you, Ranger. It’s one thing for her to torment me, I’m used to it. But I won’t accept them saying anything negative about you.”
I took her into my arms, letting her sweet scent mixed with campfire fill my nostrils. “You don’t need to protect me. I can handle anything they throw my way.”
Her voice broke, “But I can’t. I won’t stand for them coming after the man I love. They’ve already spent years telling me I wasn’t good enough. That my choices would lead me down the wrong path. I don’t think I can handle them saying anymore to me.”
I stroked her hair in long soothing passes. It killed me to hear how much her parents had impacted her over the years. How much she suffered at their hands. I just wanted to make it all better for her.
“Is there any chance that they might be trying to form a truce? That they might apologize?”
She was quiet for a few moments. “I’m not sure. It is strange that my father was the one to text me.”
I let her mull over her thoughts, holding her close. When she pulled away, the hard look in her eyes had softened. “If you had a chance to talk to your mother again, to hear her out, would you?”
Her question hit me. I’d never thought about it before. When my mother left, I felt nothing but anger and overwhelming dread. I put all my focus into supporting Callie Rose that I never gave myself the chance to wonder about our mother.
Thinking about it now… “If I had one last chance to talk to her I would take it. Even if she didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear, I would know, without a doubt, that I could move forward. I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering if things could be different.”
I studied the small yellow flecks amongst the dark brown in Sarah’s eyes as they grew distant. She was thinking hard about what she wanted to do.
“Would you be okay to go with me?” she finally asked.
I cupped her cheek. “I’d go to the end of the world with you.”
Her smile warmed my heart. “Okay, cowboy. Then I guess we’re doing it.”
Sarah
Ranger extended the bouquet of flowers toward my mother when she opened the front door to my childhood home. “It’s nice to see you again, Mrs. Williams.”
Her smile was tight as she took the flowers, the brown paper crinkled in her hands. “Thank you.” Not much of a response, but it was better than her throwing a fit like she had in my work kitchen.
I looped my arm through his as we followed her into the house. I’d spent eighteen years of my life here, but I suddenly felt self-conscious with Ranger by my side. Everything in my parents’ home was immaculate and bought from the most prestigious designers. Only the best of the best was bought for this house, but now that I’d had a taste of life beyond these walls, everything felt obscene. Cold. There were no shoes by the front door. Not a speck of dust on the furniture. It wasn’t lived in. It was merely meant to show the status of who my parents were and just how much money they had.
“Hi, dad,” I said as we rounded the corner to their formal dining room. He was sitting at the head of the table with an espresso cup in his hand. “This is Ranger Adams.”
My father rose from his seat and buttoned his dinner jacket. Almost thirty years of my life and I’d never seen him at our dinner table without a suit on. I groaned internally. I could only imagine what Ranger might be thinking right now.
“Pleasure to meet you, sir.” Ranger shook my father’s extended hand.
“You as well.” My father assessed Ranger, looking him up and down like he was trying to make sense of the black long sleeve shirt he wore tucked into blue jeans. But he didn’t say anything as we took our seats.
The wait staff made their rounds, pouring everyone a glass of red wine to pair with the roast beef we were having. At least if everything went to shit, I knew we’d leave with full stomachs from a decadent meal that tasted like heaven. The food was the only good part about Sunday dinner with my parents.
“Where’s Theo?” I asked. Now that he was back in town I assumed he would have made it to dinner. But I knew he was slammed with training for his big rodeo coming up in the new year. We’d hardly had a chance to talk since he started training.
“He’s busy at the Carnelle’s ranch,” my mother responded, swirling the wine in her glass as she always did at dinner.
My father shook his head. “I still don’t understand what possessed him to choose that ranch of all places. If he is going to change his career, I would have preferred for him to at least associate with good people.”
I nearly laughed at his comment, but I choked it down. It wasn’t that long ago when my parents were great friends with the Carnelles.
“They certainly had a hard fall from grace. But that’s the price one must pay when engaging in unsavory behaviors.” Her steely gaze landed on Ranger and I froze. I was giving them a chance, but I’d be damned if we stayed a second longer if she said one word to him about his time in prison.
Thankfully, the staff made their rounds with the pot roast, filling the center of our dishes with meat, potatoes, carrots, and a thin red wine sauce. My mouth watered. The savory aromas were a nice distraction from my reeling thoughts.
Glancing at Ranger, he didn’t seem to mind my mother’s eyes on him. He was already digging into the food. We all ate in silence for a short while and I hated that I didn’t know what to talk to my parents about. Not having been around them for so long, I had no idea what was going on in their lives. I didn’t even know where to start with asking them either.
“Ranger, do tell us about this ranch of yours. Has the land been in your family for long?”
He set his fork and knife down and wiped his mouth with the napkin before speaking. “It has, ma’am. Five generations. My father passed it on to me when he died in combat. I’ve been working hard to turn it into something great ever since.”
My mother’s delicately shaped brows rose slightly. I knew she was looking for a way in. A crack to seep through and garner information to embarrass him with.
“That’s wonderful,” my father said. “We certainly admire hard work in this family.”
I stopped chewing my food. He had to be joking. Admire hard work? I’d spent over a decade working my butt off to build my company without their help. Endless nights in the kitchen baking until I was fairly certain flour had seeped through my pores and entered my bloodstream.
My parents didn’t admire hard work. They admired people becoming rich from aspiring in a ‘respectable’ field of work.
Ranger must have sensed my growing tension because he slipped his hand over my lower thigh under the table. His touch soothed my fried nerves, reminding me that I wasn’t here to fight.
My mother leaned back in her chair, food hardly touched, but the wine glass she held in her hand was already half empty.
“So, Sarah, why don’t you tell us how long you two have been seeing one another?”
I stole a glance at Ranger, his expression was calm. “Um.” I looked back at my mother. “We had our first date about two months ago now.”
My mother’s face turned serious. “Two months.”
I swallowed. “Yes.”
She leaned forward, wine glass still in hand. “So you were already seeing him when we made our little arrangement?”
The room seemed to be getting smaller, but I kept my focus on Ranger’s hand over my thigh. I could do this. I could get through this dinner.
“Ranger already knows that I was seeing Jones at your request, mom. So, if you’re trying to rattle us with that reveal, you’re too late.” The words seemed far away as I said them, but my voice was strong.
“Rattle you?” she scoffed. “Darling, you’ve already been rattled enough to decide it would be a wise idea to throw everything away and chase after a convict. You’re a foolish child. Always have been.”
I gaped at her. Ranger’s soothing circles over my leg stopped. I looked at my father, but he was staring straight ahead of himself toward the other end of the table.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I seethed. “I came here thinking that you might have seen the error in your ways. That you had a change of heart and would finally be willing to put your bullshit expectations and prejudices aside.”
Fury burned in my mother’s eyes. “You degraded yourself the moment you started talking to him!” She pointed right at Ranger’s chest.
Enough. I’d had enough of her outrageous view of the world. I was sick and tired of being in the firing line for my choices and there was no way in hell I was going to make Ranger endure this any longer.
“Fuck you,” I seethed, glaring at her before shifting my gaze toward my father. “Fuck both of you.”
“You better watch your tone when you are under my roof.” It seemed my father had finally joined the conversation. Not that it mattered at this point.
I rose from my seat, Ranger followed suit and just as I was about to open my mouth to give a retort, his large hand settled on my shoulder. A wordless demand. And then he spoke.
“Sarah loves you both, despite what you’ve put her through over the years. She came here tonight with hope in her heart that things might be different between you. I’ve been used to folks like you having an opinion about me my entire life. So, say what you want about me. But let me make myself clear.” He took a moment to look both of them in their eyes. “I will not tolerate you speaking to my woman in the manner you’ve done tonight. As you know, I’m a dangerous man when provoked. So, I suggest you both keep quiet while we make our exit.”
Tears of frustration started rolling down my face as Ranger stepped behind his chair and made room for me. I gave my parents one final glance before we rounded the dining room wall and left.