Chapter Six
A fter the boys went to school the next morning, he contacted Marigold. “You ready to go down and make an offer?”
“Yes. I called a buyer’s agent this morning.”
“Perfect. We’ll go take a tour, and then we can put in a formal offer.”
“All right. I’ll meet you down there.”
“Sounds good.”
He felt a bit like he was having an out-of-body experience when he got into his truck and started driving toward Lone Rock. He had been here a month, and it was starting to feel okay that he was home. Starting to feel familiar. Starting to feel like home, but it was still complicated. Sometimes it was like being in a time warp. Other times it was like he had never been here before in his life. Like he was a stranger.
But he was very firmly rooted in the here and now when he pulled up and saw Marigold and the real estate agent already standing in front of the building.
Her hair was so bright, like radiant copper. He hadn’t realized just how guarded she’d been when she was talking to him, because there was an easy pleasantness on her face that he had not seen before as she looked at the other woman on the sidewalk.
He parked his truck against the curb across the street and got out. Instantly he saw the tension rise in her body, saw her shoulders go tight. The corners of her lips pulled taut.
“Hi.”
“Hello, I’m Louisa Ramirez.”
“Buck Carson.” He remembered what they had discussed, her desire that he be more of a silent partner. He looked at Marigold, but she didn’t seem bothered that he had introduced himself.
“I’m excited to show you that—” The phone rang, and Louisa looked down at her phone. “Just one second.”
“Sorry,” he said out of the corner of his mouth while Louisa took the call, turning away from them. “I know you wanted me to keep this on the down-low.”
“You don’t need an alias. I just don’t want it spreading around before I figure out how to approach it with my parents. Louisa is new to town, though. Your name won’t mean anything to her.”
That was a novelty. Not being notorious to somebody in this small town.
Being back the past month hadn’t been as rocky as he’d thought it might be, but it had still been a thing . Some of his brothers were easier on him than others. Boone was still pretty angry and stood by the punch he’d thrown when Buck had first arrived.
Some people in town recognized him right away. Some didn’t. Some genuinely just thought he was one of his brothers from a distance and waved like they knew him. He always waved back.
The principal of the high school was a guy he’d graduated with, which had made him feel desperately old. But the man had been friendly enough to Buck when they’d talked about the boys and their individual situations.
This small town was a mixed bag. And he didn’t hold it against the people who didn’t quite know what to do with him.
“All right.”
“Sorry,” Louisa said, turning back to them. “Childcare. I had to make sure everything was okay. You know, the day care calls and your heart stops.”
“I do know,” said Marigold. “Even though it’s been a while.”
“Of course you do. Anyway. I’m going to go ahead and give you a tour of the inside. It’s in great shape—it has been completely gutted, with new flooring, new walls, new electrical and new plumbing. It’s a complete blank slate.”
“Perfect,” he said. She looked over at him in censure. “What? I mean, it’s up to you, but it seems perfect.”
“But it’s up to me,” she said.
“Of course,” he said. “It’s up to you.” Gradually, over the course of their inspection, he realized Louisa was treating them like a couple. But why wouldn’t she think that? And, since Marigold didn’t want him to make a big deal out of their business partnership, he thought it was probably for the best that he not go making pronouncements. He didn’t know if Marigold was noticing the subtle tone of everything. He supposed it didn’t matter.
They finished the walk-through without incident, but he kept his eyes pinned closely to Marigold’s face.
“We’d like to make an offer,” he said.
She looked at him, and he thought she might want to scold him again for making the decision, but he knew she wanted it. That he could see plain as day.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “We would.”
He didn’t see the point in offering under the asking price, so when they got the paperwork to make the official offer, he went ahead and put it in as it was.
“I’ll take this to the seller,” the agent said.
“Thanks,” he replied.
They walked out of the building, and that left him and Marigold standing on the sidewalk.
“Thank you for that,” she said.
“Not a problem. Do you know of any good contractors around here?”
“Yeah. I do. There’s a couple that seem to have a really good construction business, ones that I’ve only heard good things about.”
“Excellent. Then once the offer is accepted, we’ll line that up.”
“We have to, like, get permits and stuff?”
“That too, but we’re going to need a concrete plan, and the contractor will pull those permits for us.”
She squinted. “So you’ve done this before.”
“I helped with some renovations at the ranch years ago, so I’m familiar with the logistics, yeah.”
“I guess I needed a partner more than I realized.” She looked at him for a moment, and it felt like their eyes locked together, for just a moment. His gut went tight. She looked away quickly. “Okay. I guess we’re doing this.”
“Yeah.”
“So...” She squinted. “Lily wants to have Colton over to study. And she swears that they’re actually going to study.”
“Oh. Well. Sounds believable.”
She snorted. “I told her they have to leave the door open in the room where they’re studying the whole time. Also, I was wondering if you wanted to come over and work on the plans for this.”
“Better idea. Why don’t you guys all come out to my place, and we can do the planning there? There’s more room, and the kids can sprawl out in public areas, but still have some quiet for studying.”
“Oh. That’s great. If we do that, let me do dinner. I’m very efficient at dinner.”
“I’m not going to say no to that.”
“Okay. It sounds good.”
“Yeah. Still not a date,” he said.
“No,” she said. “Still not a date.”
Lily was a little bit irritated with Marigold at co-opting the study night, but her daughter seemed pleased to go to Colton’s house. Like it would give her a window into this boy she liked, and it would probably be enjoyable.
“I mean, I haven’t gotten to go inside,” she said.
“No, and now you will. But not into his bedroom.”
“ Mom ,” said Lily.
“Well. His dad and I both thought this plan would be a good idea.”
“Right.”
Marigold needed to explain to Lily everything that was going on. She had mentioned that Buck had offered to invest in her business, and for all that she had been uninterested in the topic, Lily had seemed happy for her.
“To be clear,” Marigold said, “I am not dating his dad.”
Lily’s face contorted in horror. “Why would I have ever thought you were?”
A good question. As Marigold had schooled herself into a sexless paragon. She had fashioned herself into a puritanical version of a mother. Not a woman. A mother. She had never gone on a date, not in Lily’s whole life, so why would Lily assume that of her now?
Marigold had mentioned dates several times in regards to Buck Carson, and she couldn’t pretend that she didn’t know why.
She was attracted to him. He made her heart beat just a little faster, but the problem was that with every heartbeat there was a little pain as well.
He was inextricably linked to her brother’s death. That was an old wound, but one that had not been tested in quite this way in a very long time. Well. Ever, really.
She had distance and perspective. She had age and wisdom. But that was about it.
She also had very large gaps in experience, and a whole lot of peaks and valleys in her personal development. She was a mother. She had started a business. She had raised a child to this point. She had bought a house and made a budget.
All her experiences with men and sex were the experiences of a teenage girl. And maybe that was why she felt slightly teenage now. Attaching herself to the most ridiculous man she could have possibly attached herself to.
Or maybe the problem was that old attraction simply died hard.
She had always felt an attraction to him. Even when it had been a young and innocent fascination. Back then, he had been the boy who had the power to ignite her fantasies. Now he had evolved into the man who could apparently stoke a flame that had grown cold after so many years of neglect.
So maybe she was projecting when she continually mentioned dates. She was going to have to stop that.
“Well, it isn’t, I just wanted to make it clear.”
“It’s worse than a date,” Lily said. “You’re supervising me.”
“You made yourself worthy of supervision, Lily.”
Lily scowled.
“All right. Let’s just get there and see how it goes. Anyway, his house is bigger, and you were excited about seeing the house.”
“Yes, yes.”
Teenagers really were so mercurial. But normally, Marigold wasn’t the subject of Lily’s changing moods, so she couldn’t say that she’d noticed so much. Or been bothered by it.
That felt significantly different right at the moment.
“It is a really nice house,” she said as they pulled up to the large, modern dwelling.
“What does he do?” Lily asked.
“You didn’t ask Colton?”
“I did. He said his dad used to work at a camp for troubled kids. Which is how he ended up adopting Colton. But that doesn’t make any sense. Because I know everything is more expensive than you could possibly believe, and that you don’t get paid good money for being a decent human being. This house is billionaire money. This is scamming other people’s money. And yeah, you don’t get that kind of money helping kids.”
“Colton’s grandfather is the commissioner for the rodeo.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You don’t really know the Carsons, but they were a big factor when I was growing up. They moved to town right before I started middle school. And they brought a lot of money with them. They had a lot of kids too, and they infiltrated every single school around. You couldn’t ignore them.”
“I don’t know the lore,” Lily said.
“Well. That’s the lore. Abe Carson is the bigwig of the largest rodeo organization in the country. They travel all over the place putting on events, he has made a massive organization and he has tons of money. And what Buck said was that they had trust funds. All the kids.”
“Wow. Must be nice.”
“Right?”
“So that’s what he used to buy this?”
“Yes.”
“I guess at least a good person got the money.”
It was interesting that Lily saw him simply as a good person. But then, why should she see him any differently? Jason’s accident was theoretical to her. He had been gone long before she was born. And all Marigold could really say about Buck’s connection to the accident was that he had been there. Everything else had been innuendo.
About the way he might’ve influenced the evening. It wasn’t actually fair. Not if she stepped back from it.
It didn’t make the wound less tender.
But that was all it was. Tender.
Such an old pain now. Dull and aching.
They got out of the car.
They walked up to the door together this time, rather than Marigold going alone, being on a warpath, and Marigold rang the doorbell.
Colton was the one who answered. “Come on in. My dad said you were making dinner?”
“He is correct. I’m offering dinner in exchange for the use of the house for studying. Since we decided not to do it over at our place. But I hear tell that you have a lot more room.”
“Yeah. That is true.”
They walked into the house, and Lily and Colton went off into a sitting room to the left. She heard noise coming from the kitchen and popped her head inside. “I just have a couple of bags to bring in,” she said.
Buck was facing away from her, standing at the sink. His shoulders broad, his waist tapered. He was... He was gorgeous. It was problematic.
She realized right then that maybe she wasn’t a paragon when it came to not dating so much as no one had ever been interesting enough for her to upset the delicate balance she had with her daughter. She had never met a man who tempted her to risk anything.
She had thought she was just super responsible and enlightened. She had been a little bit self-righteous about it, truth be told. Yeah, on the surface, she’d tried to pretend she was okay with how everybody else lived their own lives, but actually, she had let herself get very up her own rear about the whole thing, and she could see now in that moment just how ridiculous it was. Because Buck Carson was bad on every level.
Getting involved with him would be wrong.
And she was tempted.
Because he was compelling. Beautiful.
He turned to face her, and the hard, stark lines of his expression took her breath away.
Those blue eyes, chiseled cheekbones and square jaw. It was like he was carved out of granite.
And suddenly, her fingertips itched to trace the lines there.
She was so screwed.
She couldn’t pretend it was just a lack of male interaction. Because she was around men all the time. She lived in the world. There were plenty of single dads at the school. And they didn’t make her feel like this.
She did wonder if there was some kind of sickness in all this. If she had some thwarted feelings from the past where he was concerned, and that was informing everything now.
“Yeah,” he said, grabbing a dishrag and drying his hands. “Sure.”
He did not look domesticated, and yet the vision of him in the kitchen doing the dishes like this was domestic. There was something about the contrast that was... Too much. Way too much.
“Just a second.”
She scurried outside and grabbed her bag of groceries, bringing it back in. “I thought I would make us stew. I have a loaf of bread that I made this morning.”
“Sounds great,” he said.
“Yeah. It will be. I am a great cook.”
“Glad to hear that.”
“Especially since you’re going to benefit from that cooking.”
“Also, it’s related to the investment that I’m making.”
“True.”
Silence fell between them, and she covered it up with movement, briskly making her way across the kitchen and beginning to unload the grocery bag. “I’m going to need a knife and a cutting board.”
“Pretty sure I know where that is.”
“If I find it faster than you, I’m going to shame you.”
“The good thing about having a sister-in-law who owns a bar is that a lot of times I just pick up hamburgers from there.”
“Oh, I mean, the burgers at Karen’s place are good, but come on, not if you have them that often,” Marigold replied.
“Do you actually go to the bar?” he asked. “There’s not an embargo on my whole family?”
“No. Nobody...”
“Nobody wanted to punish the whole family because of me?”
“Basically,” she said, feeling regretful. “Listen... I don’t want to make you feel bad.”
“Oh. I get something out of feeling bad. Or have you not noticed that yet?”
“You’re awfully self-aware.”
“It’s one of my better qualities. But then, that’s also a side effect of having been on my own for a long time. Nothing to do but think about myself. A form of narcissistic healing.”
She snorted out a laugh. “I’m actually kinda familiar with that.”
“Right. Single parenting?”
“Specifically, when I was pregnant.”
“Tell me about that,” he said, getting his cutting board down and putting it on the counter.
“Why?”
“Because I’m interested, Marigold. And I want to know. Because...we’re doing this thing together. Also, I like you. I’m trying to get to know you.”
She squinted. “Why?”
“Misplaced guilt, probably. But if it doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t bother me.”
“Doesn’t bother me.” She took a breath and took her butcher paper–wrapped steak out of the bag and began to carefully take the paper off. “After Jason died, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I wanted to disappear and I wanted attention. I wanted to explode, and I wanted to hide. I loved him. My parents were really going through it. Of course they were. They lost their son. I started rebelling in small ways. But really, the way I was able to get all those needs met was men.”
“Boys, you mean.”
She laughed. “I wish. No. I liked them slightly older. I didn’t really want to sleep with somebody at my school.”
“When you were fourteen?”
“Usually they were nineteen or so. A lot of times I wasn’t honest about my age. Okay, anytime. Granted, it didn’t come up. I don’t think they cared. It was just the way I found this false feeling of control and power. And then it really came home to roost. Because I got pregnant. And he was headed off to college. He didn’t want a baby. I realized I needed the baby. Which is maybe a terrible reason to have a baby, but I wasn’t making the best decisions at the time, as we have established.”
“And you had a bunch of assholes ready to take advantage of you being so lonely.”
“That’s the world, Buck. We make weird, bad decisions when we’re in pain, and someone is always willing to take advantage of those reactions and traumas. I own my part in that. But you know, it’s not any different from what we all did to you. We were angry. Collectively, as a community, and you were the survivor, so you became the scapegoat. Because nobody could yell at the three boys who had made the same decision you did. To get behind the wheel drunk, to get in a car with somebody drunk. To spend graduation night wasting their potential. The truth is... I was probably angry at Jason. But he was dead. So yelling at you was a replacement.”
“Maybe.” He looked sad. Thoughtful. That he still carried the grief of it all made her feel... Not better. That sounded mean. But she felt a kinship to him she had never imagined she might feel. “That whole period of time was a dark one for me too.”
“So you mentioned.”
“I had to hit rock bottom before I changed. I mean, I really had to.”
“I think I would have too. If not for Lily. I think I narrowly escaped rock bottom. Some people would consider getting pregnant at sixteen rock bottom, I’m sure. But for me, it was the hand up that I needed. It was the only thing that was ever going to reach me.”
“And now she’s headed off to college. That means you did something right.”
“I hope so. That’s all you can do with kids, Buck. Hope. Hope you did the right thing. Hope your best intentions matter. Because sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. You hope the good you do outweighs the bad. The mistakes.”
“Thanks,” he said. He was silent for a long moment. “It’s heavy. The way having kids makes you see things differently. The way being close to kids, even if they aren’t yours, changes the way you look at your own life. Even when I was just working at the ranch, looking at those kids made me feel, for the first time, an appreciation for how young we were back then. But especially now. Looking at my boys. I feel old. And they feel so, so young.”
“It’s difficult,” she said. “Because being a teenager should be a time when you’re allowed to be stupid. But you and I both know that, depending on the stupidity...” She swallowed hard. “You just can’t take some things back.”
“No,” he said, his voice rough. “And I’m trying to figure out how to impress that upon them while...”
“Not crushing them?”
“Yeah.”
“I relate to that.”
Again, she realized she had more in common with him than not.
It was such a strange realization.
Because she had thought he was an enemy. When in fact he was an ally.
“We just have to do our best.”
She was chopping vegetables when he spoke again.
“You know. I lost my sister.”
She stopped. She had vaguely known that. That the Carsons had lost a child before they moved to Lone Rock. But there were so many of them, and the loss had been abstract, so she had never really considered their grief. That it meant she and Buck had both experienced the loss of a sibling.
“You did,” she said. “I‘m sorry. I never really thought about that. I was... I’m really sorry that I blamed you.”
“I’m not telling you that to make you feel sorry for me,” he said. “I don’t need or deserve pity of any kind.”
“Yes. You do. Because you have really been through hell with all of this. And you had been through hell before all this too.”
“I had a therapist diagnose me with survivor’s guilt,” he said. “And I thought that was the dumbest thing. Because why should you be in pain because you survived? I just don’t get it.”
“I think everything is just hard. And maybe part of the problem is trying to decide who’s allowed to feel bad about what when... Life has a way of breaking us all down.”
“Right. Cheery conversation,” he said.
“Well. We don’t exactly have a cheery shared history.”
“True.”
Suddenly, giggles erupted from the other room. He grinned. And it made her stomach go tight.
“I guess we’re building a different shared history right now,” she said.
“I guess so.”