Chapter 2
2
Rachel Walton
R achel glanced toward the building, then shook her head. She didn’t know what she was thinking. She couldn’t go chasing after him. But the country club had begun to feel too claustrophobic. It reminded her of those early days when she’d been forced to attend all the charity galas she helped her parents plan.
Now, she could remain behind the scenes and still make a difference. Her gaze swept over to Hudson’s retreating form. She’d hoped that one of the Keagans would end up coming out and saving her from the party. The family didn’t seem like the sort who would spend their whole Friday night at a place like this.
She should have known better than to carpool with Athena and Henry. Of course they’d want to stay long and participate in all the fun activities going on. And she couldn’t blame them.
If Hudson was her only option for getting out of there, then she would need to catch up with him quickly. She sprinted forward, chasing after him and reaching him as he arrived at the street. He gave her a double take, then stopped suddenly. “What are you doing?”
“I’m walking with you.”
He lifted a brow, his eyes flashing with warning. They were like little smoldering balls of kryptonite. She hadn’t realized they could get that bright. Most of the Keagan men had brown or blue eyes. Hudson shook his head and held out his hands. “Nope. Get back to the club.”
“Or what?” she demanded. “I drove to your place. And no one is headed in that direction except you.”
“Then ask someone else to bring you back.”
“But you’re going.”
“ I’m walking.” He groaned and dragged a hand down his face. “You realize that between here and the ranch there’s a lot of open pastures and fields.”
“Yeah, so? It’s not like I’m wearing unreasonable shoes.”
He growled this time, and her eyes widened. He jerked his finger toward the building, where the music could still be heard faintly. “You need to go back. Call a cab or something. But you’re not coming with me.”
“You’re not the sheriff,” she sputtered back. “And I’m not going to ruin someone’s night by making them take me back when you’re already on your way. That would be pretty selfish of me, don’t you think?”
Hudson scowled at her. She didn’t know what she’d ever done to make him hate her so much, so it was probably a good thing that she didn’t like him either. She placed her hands on her hips as they glowered at one another. Finally, he threw his hands into the air and started marching along the road.
She hurried after him, keeping up with little difficulty.
They managed to walk for a good ten minutes without speaking to each other, which had never happened to her before. Rachel didn’t have a problem with long silences. She could sit in the company of anyone and be just fine listening to the quiet whispers of the breeze or the way the reeds in the grass swayed. Out here in Copper Creek, there were plenty of those pretty sounds.
“I hope you know that I wasn’t trying to get you to go back to the club because I didn’t want your company.”
She peeked at him out of the corner of her eye but didn’t say anything. She didn’t care why he wanted her to stay back. She just wanted to get back to the ranch and get her car. This wasn’t exactly her idea of fun, either. Thankfully, she was pretty good at keeping her thoughts to herself.
“There are coyotes out here. You realize that, right?”
“Well, I have been living here for nearly a year,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I know what to expect with the Colorado fauna.”
He snorted.
“What’s that for?” She scoffed. “It’s not like I live under a rock.”
“You might as well,” he shot back. “You didn’t grow up here. You might have been hanging around with Athena a lot lately, but that doesn’t mean you belong. There’s a lot you will never understand about this place.”
“Oh yeah? Like what?” He didn’t know what he was talking about. She’d already been reading up on the charities and organizations that Colorado was proud of. She’d spent hours in the saddle wandering through the rolling hills and the mountains that this place had to offer. She’d talked to locals, and she knew what they liked and didn’t like about the state of their growing town. If anyone was living under a rock, it was Hudson.
He stopped short, his scowl even more brooding than before. “Like that.” He jerked his finger toward the field they were passing. There was a large “for sale” sign staked into the ground. A dangling piece of wood hung from it with the word “foreclosure” in big red letters.
Her focus swept from the sign to Hudson. “It’s for sale. Do you seriously think that in the city we don’t have signs like that? Because I can assure you, I’m very familiar with real estate.” The sarcasm dripped from her voice, and she didn’t even care. If he was going to be a jerk, then she wasn’t going to be nice either.
Hudson rolled his eyes. “It’s not the fact that it’s for sale. It’s who is poking around.”
She turned to the sign again. From what she recalled, Henry said it had only just gone on the market. The man who had lived there was old and he’d let things go. There was a small house on the property, but no one had enforced his mortgage. It was as if the local bank had protected him from getting evicted. But since he’d passed, the property was up for grabs. She didn’t want to admit she didn’t know what he was talking about. Clearly, there was something deeper going on with this particular parcel of land.
He snorted again, drawing her attention to him. “You really don’t know what’s going on, do you?”
Her scowl returned. “I’m sorry if I don’t find myself visiting with the bank officials at their watering hole to discuss the gossip of people who are losing their property.”
Hudson stared at her with a mildly triumphant look on his face. “That place isn’t just any place. It’s the largest piece of land on this side of town. There are acres and acres of land, and the bank doesn’t want to break it up. The guy who lived there—he’d gotten it from his parents, who had gotten it from theirs. They might have been the first people to settle here.”
“Then why is it in foreclosure? Wasn’t it paid for?”
His snicker was getting really annoying. “You really don’t know as much as you think you do. That guy took out a second mortgage on his place. He didn’t have enough income to keep things running, and he also couldn’t live off of what he had for retirement. The bank did him a favor because he was a good member of this community. If it had been any other corporate place, they would have kicked him out decades ago.”
Still, she didn’t know why this story was so important. Besides the place being large, what was the big deal that it was getting sold?
Hudson turned to the field and heaved a sigh. “You know that country club we were at? It used to be rolling hills, too. It was a place just waiting to be developed by money-hungry people who don’t understand what it’s like to live in a place like this.”
“But that club isn’t just a club. There’s the therapy side of it, too.”
“Yeah, we got lucky,” he muttered. “But this?” He gestured toward the land once more. “There’s already talk of a company who wants to turn this place into a bonafide resort. I hear they even want to incorporate a private airport for the super-rich people who want to have a real cowboy experience.”
The disgust was written all over his face. Only the moon was able to illuminate the irritation he had with the whole idea, but she could see it as clearly as if the sun was out and shining.
Rachel stared out at the empty pasture, her heart aching for him. She knew exactly what he was talking about, having visited places like that before. Usually, they were closer to the coast so people could also ride horses on the beach. From a business perspective, this place would be perfect for what he was describing. It was remote enough for the city folk to enjoy that small-town feel and yet large enough that they wouldn’t have to worry about finding the necessities in town. “It will be good business for people operating establishments in Copper Creek,” she hedged quietly.
His sharp gaze swung around at her like an axe. “You can’t be serious.”
She shrugged.
“If that actually happens, you can say goodbye to seeing the stars. Forget about walking along this road without a million cars zooming past us. And you’ll never get a reservation out at that country club. That place was bad enough, but at least it isn’t a magnet for people to come and destroy what we have here.”
“You really don’t like people, do you,” she mused. That was also something she could understand. More people meant more problems. People in her life didn’t have the best track record for being genuine. And there was less of a chance for her to weed out who was genuine the more she was surrounded by them.
“And I’ll never understand why people like you do.” Hudson shook his head and turned to continue walking.
“Who says I do?” She hurried after him. “Why do you think I wanted to get out of there so quickly? Why do you think I wanted to stay out here instead of going back home to where my family is?”
He peeked at her with veiled interest.
“You don’t know anything about me,” she continued. “And if you did, you wouldn’t have said any of that stuff.” It wasn’t that she wanted to share her life story with the guy. Far from it. But she also had never liked people judging her before she had a chance to prove what kind of person she really was.
This conversation was the one thing that helped her decide if he was someone she wanted to confide in, and the answer was a big fat no.
“Honestly, I don’t care if you like big groups or not. I don’t even care that you’re still here. It’s only a matter of time before you get tired of it…” He motioned around him with a wide sweep of his arms. “This place isn’t for everyone. People don’t tend to like it when they start hearing their own thoughts. The world is bigger than they expect. Or there’s something more important for them to go off in search of. Either way, they don’t want to stick around, and they leave. You will too, eventually.”
Her jaw tightened. How had she not noticed his deep-seated pessimism? How had she missed that he was nothing like the easy-going brother her sister had fallen in love with? From what she could tell, this man was nothing like the rest of his family, and it wasn’t any wonder that he was still alone. No one liked to spend time with a brooding child, and that was exactly what he was.
Rachel wasn’t going to let him get to her, though. He was just trying to goad her on, and she was better than that. If nothing else, she could thank her adoptive parents for that. The social circles they’d forced her to swim through were shark-infested. She was used to back-handed comments and dealing with people who seriously wanted her to fail. Well, they didn’t succeed then, and they weren’t going to succeed now.