Chapter Sixteen – What Cowboys Are For #2
Teddy didn’t respond at first. He looked out the barn door in the direction Fallon had gone.
“I’ve never seen two women so strong and so determined and yet so unable to ask for help.
The old Hurly place is falling down, but Lauren won’t ask Fallon for the money to fix it.
She won’t let Fallon spend an ounce of her inheritance on anything but her own dreams. How can they love each other so much without realizing they’d both hang the moon for the other? ”
I shook my head. I didn’t have an answer for him. Fallon and her mother’s relationship had always been this way—fraught with land mines.
Teddy looked back in at Theo, who was talking quietly to the dogs. “I may not know what to do with Fallon, but I can take care of this little guy and the animals I’ve had under my responsibility for longer than I remember. Go. Take care of her, Parker. You’re the only one here who can.”
And just like that, the full weight of my dual responsibilities slammed back into me.
How would I ever take care of them both without feeling like I was sacrificing one of them?
But Theo was happier than I’d seen him since learning to ride his bike, and Teddy had my number and could call if Theo needed me. Whereas the firebrand who’d stormed off toward the house would never admit to needing anyone, even when it was clear she did.
It was so infuriating I wanted to kiss her until she caved, until she admitted she absolutely did need someone—needed me—just as she had before everything had gotten screwed up between us.
I whirled around and jogged toward the house with a lifetime’s worth of anguish eating me up inside, with a month’s worth of new responsibilities clogging my view.
The only way to fix this newest war inside me, the one battling it out between Fallon and Theo, was if I found who was behind the things happening at the ranch.
Then, I could leave Fallon to her own stubborn determination and get the hell out of Rivers before my willpower crumbled completely.
? ? ?
At the staff meeting, Andie and Fallon reassured the employees as best they could, came up with a canned response for them to use with guests, and promised to keep everyone abreast of the investigation.
When everyone had headed back to their jobs with tasks in hand, Fallon and I set up in the conference room to dig into the former staff and existing employees.
I used Fallon’s laptop and plugged each name into Dad’s background-checking software, searching for criminal records and gathering information from various sources, including social media platforms. While Dad’s app didn’t contain the same level of information the top-secret databases we used in the teams did, it was enough to weed people out.
I’d planned on sending any names with red flags to Cranky, but not a single one of the former employees had any.
No one had unusually large debts that would insinuate a drug or gambling problem.
No one had ties to known gangs or drug cartels.
And only one of the employees had left on anything close to bad terms after repeated complaints from guests that he was too “handsy.”
The truth was, most people liked working at the Harrington Ranch—not only because they paid their staff far more than most employers in the area but also because they treated their employees like family.
With the former staff a dead end, we moved on to the list of current employees with almost as little luck.
A teen named Chuck had been arrested for stealing a hat from the local convenience store and been suspended from school for three days after pulling the fire alarm.
Normal, troubled-teen sort of incidents, but nothing that would put him on my radar for killing cows and burning down buildings.
A couple of the ranch hands, including Teddy, had been charged with driving under the influence, but nothing recent.
Teddy’s last charge had been fifteen years ago, long before the ranch had even been in trouble when Fallon’s stepdad had been alive .
Pushing aside the computer, I stretched my arms over my head and twisted from side to side. My body was screaming for activity, for a workout.
Across the table, Fallon’s brows were furrowed, her shoulders hunched.
“What’s put that look on your face?”
She straightened, face turning into a blank mask. “What look?”
“The one you give me when I say country is the lamest form of music.”
She huffed. “I’ve proven you wrong too many times to count. Your ears are dead from listening to that acid metal you call music.”
Instead of defending my genre of choice, I prompted, “What’s going through your oversized brain, Ducky?”
“The only time we’ve ever had these kinds of problems on the ranch was when Uncle Adam hooked up with Theresa Puzo.”
“Adam is in jail. Theresa is dead,” I reminded her, but I felt that tug at the back of my neck that told me not to discount what she was saying. It was the same tug that had saved my life a few times. An instinct that couldn’t and shouldn’t be ignored.
“I know Dad and Lorenzo tolerate each other now for Sadie’s sake, but Ike and Theresa’s side of the Puzo family still loathes my father.” She twirled a finger around her thumb.
“It’s been ten years since that all went down,” I said, but it wasn’t with the same confidence I wanted it to be, and she read it.
“Lorenzo was in San Diego the day I was arrested.”
“Dad mentioned it.” I told her what we’d learned about Puzo’s cousin who’d gotten out of jail in March and was working for a construction company out there.
Fallon frowned. “Dad went all Dad-like on Lorenzo and demanded to know if someone in his family had come after me, which only made me wonder, have there been other attempts by Theresa and Ike’s side of the family in the last ten years that your dad or mine hasn’t told us about?”
I could easily see Rafe keeping things from Fallon that he didn’t want her to know, but they wouldn’t have kept any of it from me.
Not when I was in San Diego and could protect her.
They’d have wanted me to keep my eyes wide open if there was even the slightest chance the Puzos were still coming for Rafe and his family.
“It’s worth looking into, right?” she asked.
“Because I seriously don’t have any other ideas.
And if my only options are JJ and that drug addict Ace or the Puzos, the Puzos would have way more resources at their disposal than two beach bums. That security video was modified, and the cow…
Can you seriously see JJ killing a cow?”
Fallon was right. If I had to weigh JJ on one side and the Puzo family on the other, the Puzos were just the type to burn people’s worlds down.
“It’s a good lead,” I told her. “I’ll see what else Dad can dig up. Maybe have Sheriff Wylee investigate it too. Ten years seems an awfully long time to wait to come after any of you for revenge though.”
“Theresa waited almost as long to come after Dad,” she said before turning back to her laptop.
I didn’t mention it, but she hadn’t brought up her mother’s brother sitting in jail in Tennessee.
Adam Hurly had just as much reason, if not more, to come after Rafe, Lauren, and the ranch.
But he’d been arrested, tried, and sentenced for first-degree murder, kidnapping, and embezzlement.
He was stuck in prison for life with all the money he’d stolen from the ranch accounted for.
And as far as I knew, Lauren hadn’t once interacted with her brother since he’d taken Fallon and Sadie hostage at gunpoint, killed his partner, and then been thwarted by Sadie’s and Fallon’s bravery.
My gaze settled on Fallon, taking in every nuance and change since I’d seen her last. Dark shadows hung beneath her eyes, and the vibrant light that normally shifted around her like some goddamn halo was dimmer today.
She needed a break. She needed to get her mind off all her responsibilities and the violence that had once again shown up at her door.
I pushed away from the table. “Let’s go.”
“What?” she glanced up, startled.
“We’re done dealing with this for today.
We need food.” I waved at the barely touched sandwiches her staff had brought in earlier.
“And we need some physical activity before our bodies congeal.” Her eyes flared, and as much as I hated myself for it, I was happy to know her thoughts had gone to where mine always did when it came to her—the one type of activity we couldn’t engage in.
“I know I’m damn irresistible, but get your mind out of the gutter, Ducky.
I simply meant, let’s pick up some food and Theo and drag some inner tubes down to the falls. ”
“You want to go tubing?” Surprise filled her voice. “We haven’t done that in…” She trailed off. I couldn’t remember how long either. Years.
She shook her head. “I can’t. Not only do we still have files to get through”—she waved at the paper and computers—“but it wouldn’t look right to the staff. I can’t just go gallivanting off to play in the water while everything is falling apart.”
“Nothing is falling apart, Fallon. And your staff needs you to role model resilience. They need to see it’s okay to continue living even in the face of tragedy. Plus, if you’re seen out there enjoying yourself, any worries your guests have will disappear.”
She hesitated. But I’d be damned if I let her sit here, dwelling on everything that happened and internalizing it all as somehow being her fault. Whoever was doing this, Fallon wasn’t responsible. She’d done the right thing every fucking time something terrible had made its way into her life.
Determined to get her out of the chair and this office with no windows, I pressed further. “Let’s go, Marquess. You can spare a few hours to entertain me and the kid.”
She finally stood up, defiance straightening her back and raising her chin. “Harrington. If you’re going to shorten my name, use the Harrington portion. It’s my goddamn legacy, after all.”
And I wondered if that was part of what was weighing on her. If she’d inherited a legacy she no longer wanted and would never admit to after forcing Rafe to spend millions of dollars to save it.
She’d never even breathed such a thought to me.
If anything, she’d always insisted the opposite, that she loved the land and the home she’d been given.
That she was determined to make both her Hurly and Harrington sides proud, as well as her dad and the Marquess name he’d taken on from his mother.
Years of convoluted, twisted dramas had coalesced into Fallon being the sole remaining heir on all sides, and she’d always told me she wanted it that way.
She wanted to take the bad of their past and turn it into something so good everyone forgot the turbulence of the ranch’s history.
But maybe her years in San Diego, going after different dreams, had shown her a different life than the one she’d once wanted.
I’d never thought it would be possible for either of us to consider our lives having alternate endings than the ones we’d envisioned.
We’d both been focused on one dream, one goal, one purpose, for as long as we’d known each other.
It was yet another of the many ways we were alike and one of the many reasons our friendship had been so strong.
For the first time in my twenty-nine years, my goals and dreams were being threatened.
I’d been handed Theo to raise—a child I had insisted I would never have because I would never want to leave one behind for months at a time.
Will had said he was leaving the teams to ensure his son didn’t lose both parents.
What would happen to the kid if he lost them and his new guardian?
My gut turned sour.
Somehow, I had to figure out a way to right the ship without giving up everything I’d always thought I wanted.
Maybe that was all Fallon needed too—time to figure out what her new normal looked like.
Maybe we both just needed time to once more bend our lives toward the goals that had first shaped us.