Chapter 5
Archer
Joe caught Eve’s hand, tugging her up the steps to the ranch house. She looked over her shoulder at me with wide eyes. Something that I couldn’t identify in them made me hesitate.
At the top of the veranda steps, Jude stared down at the ranch hand, his arms still folded across his broad chest. Joe said something I couldn’t hear, and Jude nodded, shifting side to allow the taller man entry.
I turned away Jude started down the stairs toward me, my hand on the door to my truck by the time he reached me.
“You must need a pit stop after driving all that way,” he said behind me in the quiet, reserved way I’d always associated with him.
Absent Natalie, he’d reverted to the foreman’s personality I remembered.
If this was what I’d been greeted with when I turned up at Red Hart, I might have had less concerns.
Burt it wasn’t.
The man I used to know had been then and this was… Now. What I thought I’d find in Montana looked nothing like what I remembered.
I didn’t turn away from watching Eve embrace another man like they were intimate. For all I knew, they were. “Before I saddle up and head back home?” I asked Jude, not bothering to remove the bitter edge that tainted my words.
“It’s not like that. She’s missed you. Damnit, Archer. She’s talked of nothing but you since you both started talking about you coming back.”
“But you didn’t know I was coming for Christmas. This week. She didn’t say anything.” Did she? I held my breath, but Jude’s silence behind me said everything I needed to hear. But I still needed to pick a fight with someone, anyone who got in my path. “Well?” I demanded, swinging around.
Jude fixed me with a steady gaze. “You haven’t been here.”
I snorted. “That’s what she said.”
“And I know you couldn’t get back, Archer. You did what you had to do. Nobody blames you for that.”
A second snort.
I blamed me for it.
“And doing everything the right way—where exactly has that gotten me, Jude? She’s in there with another man, for Christ’s sake.”
Jude lifted both eyebrows. “Then what are you doing out here?”
I opened my mouth to fight back, but something in his face stopped me. I peered closer. “Are you smiling?”
“Yes, sir.” Jude nodded toward the house. “And I’m going to help a certain lady cook for everyone, seeing as she looked a little uh, worse for wear when she arrived.” Jude paused midstride, looking at me askance. “You didn’t actually—” He waggled his eyebrows. “—right away, did you?”
I stared at him with hard eyes that had made a lesser Ranger flinch. “Do you think I’d be this fucking antsy if we had?”
“Good point.” Jude clapped my shoulder, steering me toward the house. “Beer?”
“Please.”
Inside Red Hart’s stunning ranch house seemed warmer with a host of people cluttered in her belly than it had with me running about shouting Eve’s name along vacant halls.
Jude poured me a beer, refusing to let me serve anyone else.
I took it with as much good grace as I could, watching the men Pierce had ‘lent’ Eve mingle around the long table set off to one side of the open space, eating her snack food and talking too loudly.
None of that would usually bother me, but not one of them raised a hand to help in an otherwise empty house. I noted the oven was already warming with bake trays filling the space.
As soon as I made a move to help, Jude fixed me with a hard stare, but the moment his back was turned, I headed out the back door to where I knew the wood pile resided.
Situated at the rear of the house, the white capped mountain that framed Red Hart Ranch loomed over me.
But rather than being dwarfed by the majesty of the behemoth, I was in awe of it.
Some primal part of me wondered what was on the other side. I recalled Natalie saying that she lived over the Canadian border, which must be a royal nuisance to Jude, getting to and from her place.
Humming The Bear Went Over the Mountain to myself, my lips quirked in a stupid smile that had nothing to do with the beer I had downed.
I loaded my arms with the last of this year’s dried firewood.
Protected from the weather, it was perfect for burning now.
But the rack seemed sadly depleted, and I added splitting firewood—if there was any cut—to my list.
Which was growing fast.
Jude and I needed to talk. But first, I refused to let the ranch house fall prey to Eve’s somber mood. Hell, lifting it back to its usual Christmas spirit might actually help her.
“Damn. I didn’t think of it,” Jude muttered as he massacred elk patties on the stovetop.
“You’re doing enough,” I called, adding him to my list.
Warmth spread through the open plan living area in a sunset glow that appealed to the dying early evening light.
I’d spent more time than I thought on the western boundary with Eve, the dapple light already low in the forest. The decent drive back stole extra hours I didn't have to give, and suddenly I craved the solitude I'd hoped for in holding her while she explained what the hell happened here.
Now I knew that wouldn’t happen.
Jude continued to attempt to cook and when I joined him to assist, I noted some of Joe’s friends filter into the living room, filling it with conversation and laughter.
When Eve appeared at the top of the stairs, I paused, watching her small frame, thinner than she had been the last time I had seen her, I was sure.
Still, she was the epitome of stunning as she walked slowly down the stairs, taking in the ambience I’d helped to build. She halted on the bottom step gripping the banister with clenched fingers.
I stopped chopping the vegetables that Jude hadn’t kicked me out of the kitchen for stealing from him.
“Go to her,” the foreman nudged me. “If nothing else, Archer, the girl needs a damn good loving. Bring her back to us.”
I laid down my knife in an instant. Flashing a grin to my friend that faded just as fast, I went to meet her. Not that I needed his permission, but this was Jude’s domain as much as it was hers. Maintaining the status quo had always been key at Red Hart.
“Eve.” I caught her on the bottom step of the stairs, so she stood at perfect eye height with me.
She halted, her eyes cautious. I hated that we weren’t on even ground straight up, but hell, if I had to work to earn her trust again, then I’d put in the hours.
I smiled, risking brushing my hand across her waist where a leather tie belt cinched in her denim dress that flowed to her ankles.
Buttons were done up in a neat row from her ankles to mid chest giving a tantalizing glimpse of flesh.
Her damp curls dried fast in the heat as the temperatures plummeted outside. I knew it would snow tonight.
I swallowed hard as she let me touch her, the warmth of her body seeping through the scarred pads of my fingers. “This is new. I—” My throat closed up, leaving me as speechless as a schoolboy talking to his first crush.
“I missed you too.” She stared at me with fathomless eyes I swore I could fall into and never emerge.
Hell, I didn't want to.
“Was I this useless to you last time I was here?” I murmured, grazing my fingers across her hip in a back and forth motion, enjoying the way her breath hitched a little too much.
Her gaze flicked up and over my shoulder. “Maybe you were better then,” she acknowledged, her cheeks flaring with color. “Archer—”
“I know. Not in front of the locals.” I dropped my hand and stepped back to let her pass.
Eve stepped down from the last step, and looked up at me.
The color remained in her cheeks as she tipped her head back, defiance and awareness vying for dominance in her honey and burnt cinnamon gaze.
“Damnit, Rhys. It's my house. I should be able to talk to a man when I want. Without worrying. But I do.” What started out as a huff transformed into a worry, her brows meeting in the middle.
I ached to fold my hands around her waist and draw her into me, shielding her from the world, but we weren’t there, not yet.
“When you’re ready,” I said in a low voice, keeping our conversation private from the rest of the room. “I’m yours, Eve. But not until you ask. Until then, I’ll respect those boundaries.” Even when they sting like fuck.
Eve swayed toward me. “Even if I want you to shatter them?”
I swallowed hard. “Ask me again at the end of the night when everyone's left,” I murmured. “See how you feel then.”
Fuck me if I didn’t want to take her up on that offer right here in front of everyone. But right now, what she chose mattered. If Eve changed her mind then I’d respect that choice, even if it wasn’t the one that I wanted.
The faintest smile played at the corners of her mouth, tipping them upward in the sort of motion I wanted to lick.
“Good,” she murmured as she passed me, her hips sashaying in a way that left me clenching my teeth to hold back the urge to ignore everything we just said and kiss her in front of everyone, claim her as mine.
But then she’d run, and the fragile trust we’d garnered would never settle between us.
Someone at the long table groaned, and it took everything in me not to slap the fucker on the back of the head. Thankfully Jude called dinner, and I made my way with the rest of the small crowd to the kitchen, grabbing a plate and filling it full of food.
Eve ate alone, with Jude. Neither of them sat at the main table.
That was something new. More trust issues, or maybe Jude was protecting her.
Either way the new process had my approval.
Even though it meant that I spent less time with her, it also meant the other ranch hands kept their eyeballs to themselves.
“You staying the entire season, Archer?” Joe called from the other end of the table as I finished my steak and dived into my sides of vegetables.