The Marriage Deal (Sunset Falls #1)

Chapter 1

SOMETIMES YOU GOTTA JUMP

LILAH

“It’s not worth it.” I twist at the sound of the gruff voice that interrupts my killer view of Sunset Falls, to see a man I’ve yet to meet but recognize on the spot as Briggs Alder. “Whatever it is, it’s never worth it.”

My eyes flick over him to the horse he rides.

It’s brown and beautiful, shining red like the falls under the glow of the setting sun.

I know there’s a name for this kind of horse, but I never could be bothered to learn.

Sue me. Dad’s opinion of the beautiful beasts being expensive crowbait got passed down.

Besides, a girl facing my finances has absolutely no business drooling over a horse, no matter how beautiful it may be.

Some things just aren’t in the cards for some souls.

I’m some souls.

I turn back to the view I’d been appreciating, but this time I’m scowling. I don’t know what Briggs Alder is on about, and right now I can’t say I care. I came here for peace, and he’s putting a kink in it.

“Hey!” A rustle of movement precedes the sound of booted feet thudding to the earth. But it’s the surge of fear that clips the rough timbre of his tone that has me turning back around.

His eyes—wide and green, I realize—land on my scowl. He holds his hands between us, palms up. They’re big hands, I note. A little rougher than I anticipated, considering the rumors around town about him.

My eyes drop to the boot covered foot he slides cautiously closer to me. I feel my scowl dip into a puzzled frown. What is he…?

“Come here.” He beckons me closer as he takes another cautious boot-slide toward me. “Just—just come here.”

Realization dawns and my jaw drops. I take a quick step back that has the blood rushing from Briggs’ face as he freezes.

The guy looks like he’s about to suffer a colon cleanse which—maybe wouldn’t be the worst of fates.

He does seem a bit…backed up? Again, I’m basing this on town tongue wagging, so I can’t be held entirely responsible for the level of accuracy of such a claim.

But seriously, the guy doesn’t have a shred of chill.

I lift my jaw to pucker my lips in a moment of thought. Green eyes lined in black lashes—damn, it’s almost criminal that lashes like his be wasted on a man. Women across the globe pay big dollars for what I’m confident he doesn’t know he has.

Anyway, those green eyes surrounded by thick black lashes snap to the hands I plop on my hips with all the rightful sass of an incensed woman.

“You think I’m suicidal?” His cheeks redden under my hot accusation. I can’t help but note that the red, along with the pretty eyes that wing up to mine, soften the otherwise impossibly hard features of his face. He says nothing, so I push, “You do, don’t you?”

He flips off his cowboy hat—suspiciously worn even as it’s obviously cared for, again, considering town gossip.

If the tongue wagging has any merit, Briggs Alder isn’t the cowboy type.

More the tycoon type. The type to bring a wrecking ball of change no one in Sunset Falls wants as he sits behind a sprawling desk that looks down over the town. Never getting his soft hands dirty.

But they aren’t soft, are they?

And he’d sure seemed comfortable up on that horse. Would a man who was all tycoon be as comfortable on horseback as Briggs? More, would a man rumored to be as cutthroat as this man be in possession of an obviously well-loved, weathered-by-life, cowboy hat?

He runs one big hand through hair that is dark—not black, but not far from it.

It’s curled just enough to hint at a side of sweet I figure most don’t see.

He tips the hat back onto his head. In that same softly rough tone that first interrupted the chaotic mess of my life contemplations, he says, “You’re standing on the edge of a cliff looking like—”

“Like what?” I tip my head to the side, making a show of my impatience. I tap my toes in my flip flop.

He sighs heavenward, and twin flames of red paint his cut cheekbones as he shakes his head. Damn if he isn’t just a little bit adorable.

He smothers the adorable thought when he mutters, “Like a god damned kicked puppy.”

I flinch. Ouch.

“I look like a kicked puppy?” Dang, and here I thought I looked cute when I did my triple-check in the mirror this morning. Cut-off jean shorts and a pink top with the cutest little ruffle at the hem, the outfit should have been a winner. I even curled my hair—yesterday, but I digress.

I do not look like a kicked puppy.

The man plants his feet as he puts his hands on his hips. He rolls broad shoulders back and mutters, “Well, you don’t look happy.”

“I don’t know a single woman who would look happy at being told she looks like a kicked animal.” I huff a bitter laugh that could have been described as just a touch unhinged. “No wonder you’re single.”

His eyes snap to mine at the comment, one brow arched. He ignores my dig. “Well, are you?” He juts his chin to the cliff, and I instantly pick up on the words unsaid.

My hands fall with my shoulders, and I let my head roll back on a groan of disbelief. “I can’t believe you, right now.”

“Hell, woman, I’m out for a ride minding my own when I see you leaning over that cliff like you’re about to fling yourself over it. Tell me what I should have done?”

“Um…continued minding your own?”

“You’re on my land,” he returns dryly, and not wrongly.

It is his land, but the previous owner, even as he had been a little more than a lot pompous, had never enforced the boundary line.

In fact, there was a trail that led right up to this looking point with a big old sign that cautioned: ‘trespass at one’s own risk’.

Sensibly, the sign had been planted to protect the land’s owner.

But everyone in town knew the beauty of the lookout over Sunset Falls was for everyone.

It always has been, and I’d just assumed it always would be.

Even if old man Alder had allowed the townsfolk to hike his cliff just for the bragging rights that it was his cliff.

Now, looking at Briggs Alder, I’m not so sure.

“I’m not suicidal.” I harrumph. “Depressed? A mess? Sure. But not suicidal.”

His tense shoulders don’t fall. I cast my gaze out to the falls that now look like they are burning under the glow of the setting sun. I hadn’t come up here with the intention to jump, but now…

Well, now I kind of want to. I want to show this man, who came here to loom his righteous self over the town’s means of survival—the town’s way of survival—just where he was. And that the folks of Sunset Falls were a few nicks short on the scale of sanity.

I had to admit, on that scale I was probably a few nicks shorter than most. Whatever.

I might be a bit of a nut when the situation calls for it, but I’m not cruel. I ask, “Do you have experience with suicide?”

There’s no way I’ll jump if he says yes.

His brows, thick and full and dark, pull together. “No.”

I push a little more, just to be sure. “Why so freaked out then?”

“I already told you. You look like—”

I cut him off. “Yeah, yeah, a kicked puppy.” I shoot him a suspicious glare. “How do you even know what that looks like? You’re not an animal abuser, are you?”

If he was, I’d throw him over the cliff myself. Then I’d follow him just to give him a good swift kick in the ass.

“What’s wrong with you?” He scowls. Goodness, the man sure is serious. I bet he could use some loosening up.

Who better to give him a real good shake-up than Sunset Falls’ very own wild child?

I shrug as I release a heavy, mock-contemplative breath. “A lot, I’m afraid.” I take a couple steps toward him. This has him laughably tensing. Honestly, I can’t help my snicker as I stop and turn back to the cliff and the burning falls. “It was nice meeting you, handsome.”

With a parting two-finger salute, I turn and run for the cliff.

He barks a roar that looses a spill of unhinged laughter on the tail of my shriek as I fall through nothing before I connect with familiar cold water, sinking deep below.

The fall is—damn, it’s been forever since I’ve made this jump. Since I’ve felt this free. It feels like youth and freedom and blissful idiocy all wrapped in the cleansing of cold water threaded with the burning gold of a setting sun. And, God, how I need to be cleansed.

For a moment, I just linger in the deep. I let all the weight of being twenty-seven and totally screwed-up finally, finally lift. Even if it’s only for a moment.

I laugh again under the water, bubbles spilling into the deep blue before I swim for the golden surface.

Through the mist of the burning falls, I see the man leaning over the rocky cliff, hat gone. Even though he’s not exactly close anymore, my brain fills in the lines of panic and sheer male rage on his face.

I fight my giggle as I give him a flirty little finger-wave, wading on my back as though I don’t give a single fuck toward the shore. Usually, I don’t. I guess that’s why I’m in the predicament I’m in, though.

Like Briggs could loosen up, I could definitely muster a fuck or two. Alas…old habits die hard.

“Live a little, Briggs!” I push all thoughts of my messed-up life from my mind and call up once more with my very sage advice that I probably take a little too much to heart. “Sometimes you just gotta jump.”

I swear, I see him curse.