Chapter 4
maverick
Hudson’s got a practiced charm, the slick way of talking that never means a damn thing. I’ve dealt with enough suits and sons-of-somebody to know a liar when I see one, and Hudson is all that.
“She’s always had eyes on him,” Celine tells me when we see him follow Aria up the stairs.
I refrain from saying, Aria isn’t the one following Hudson.
Celine closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “They used to…they used to have a thing.”
I arch an eyebrow.
I can’t imagine that staid woman having anything to do with a smarmy son of a bitch like Hudson.
Celine is na?ve, and I can see her falling for him, but Aria looks shrewd, and from all accounts, granted, most of which come from her younger sister, who doesn’t seem to like her, Aria is cunning enough not to fall for a dickhead like Hudson.
“She made such a fuss when we fell in love.” She’s had a few glasses, and her tongue is looser than usual. “Papa had to ask her to leave. You know? Because she was being such a bitch.”
Something seems off about the story, but I think it’d be in poor taste for me to drill it out of the daughter of a man whom we just buried.
I didn’t know Rami Delgado well. No one did—maybe Earl and Nadine. There was a coldness to him. He was a cowboy through and through. Swore like a sailor. Worked harder than most. Made his share of bad decisions.
I know he struggled, but ranching’s never been the most profitable business. These days, the most valuable thing a rancher owns isn’t his cattle or his crops—it’s the land. And hotel, resort, and other developers are hungry for it.
Some folks want to turn Wildflower Canyon into the next Jackson Hole. But more of us still believe in what it is—pristine ranch country. Sure, some sell out, and we watch our soil get paved over and repackaged into rustic luxury with a side of room service. But the heart of this place holds.
I was worried a few months back when Duke Wilder looked ready to sell off his ranch piece by piece, turning it into some airport and resort monstrosity. But thank God, he changed his mind.
We both see Hudson thunder down the stairs.
Celine brushes past me and chases after her husband. I hear raised voices as she drags him into one of the rooms of the large house.
The sounds of their argument dull after I hear the thud of a closing door.
I walk outside with the intention of leaving.
I get distracted when I find Earl leaning against a tree, smoking a cigarette, facing the ranch house, looking at it with a trace of worry in his eyes.
I like Earl.
He and Rami have kept Longhorn going through thick and thin—though lately, it’s been more thin than thick. Now it’s prime for a developer to snatch up, which is why I’m hellbent on buying it and keeping it a ranch.
“Howdy, Mav.” Earl nods at me.
“Earl.”
He holds out his cigarette to me. I take a long puff and hand it back to him. I don’t smoke per se, but I don’t mind a drag here and there. Earl knows that.
“What’s on your mind?” I ask him because his brow is furrowed.
He nods at a window upstairs, and I look up. I see the shadow of a woman.
Aria.
“I know Celine has told you stories about Aria. Don’t listen to ‘em.”
I nod slowly, considering how to answer him. “Who should I listen to then?”
“Yourself. If she’ll let you close enough.” A shadow passes over his face. “She’s not the same girl who left ten years ago.”
“What do you mean?” I turn away from the window.
There’s something about Aria Delgado that makes me curious. As a man who usually does not get interested in women like her, cold and dispassionate, my emotions seem alien to me. There seems to be something robotic about her.
Except when you saw her lie down beside her father’s grave.
“She’s…hollow.” He lets out a long breath, shaking his head slowly. “Rami made mistakes with her. Regretted them. But he was a stubborn sumbitch, and he didn’t know how to say he was sorry.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I listen because it seems he wants to talk. He lost his closest friend. I can see he’s grieving.
“Now, he’s gone and…Longhorn…,” he trails off.
“Earl, you’ll be taken care of; you know that, don’t you?”
He gives me a bleak smile. “I don’t got a lot of years left, Mav. I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about her.”
“Who? Celine?”
He shakes his head.
“Aria?” I ask, confused.
There’s a flicker of something broken in his eyes. “That girl lost the most when Rami died.”
I give Earl a measured look.
There’s a wiry resilience about him—like the kind of man who’s been knocked down by life more times than he can count and just got back up meaner.
At over seventy, he’s still all lean muscle and hard edges, his skin leathered by sun and wind, and his hands look like they were made to grip fence wire and horse reins.
His eyes are sharp. He doesn’t miss much, even when he pretends he’s not paying attention.
Earl’s not the kind of man who talks to fill the silence. When he speaks, it means something.
“What are you tryin’ to tell me, Earl?” I’m done beating around the bush.
He fixes his gaze on me. His stormy gray eyes are sharp. “She’s not goin’ to sell, Mav.”
The fuck?
“She say that?” I ask calmly when I want to demand he explain this because I’ve been crystal clear about wanting to buy Longhorn. And for the past six months, while Rami was sick, even he was on board. Said it himself. Gave me his blessing. He knew Celine wanted to sell ‘cause she needed the money.
Hudson used to keep the books at Longhorn, but, near as I can tell, he was just good at losing money. He came from wealth, sure, but that’s long gone. Blew through it. Speaking of bad decisions, Hudson’s made a few—one of them is a habit he can’t shake at the underground poker games in Aspen.
And Rami had been fairly certain Aria would not return. He hadn’t even been sure she’d come back for his funeral.
As a man for whom family means everything, Aria walking away is the biggest mark against her as far as I’m concerned.
Earl shakes his head and stubs his cigarette under his boot. “Nah. Haven’t talked to her ‘bout it. But I’ve gotta feelin’.”
My heartbeat slows down. The man is just spouting shit.
“Earl, I told you, you’ll be taken care of.”
He smiles at me, like he pities me. “Mav, this ain’t about me. This is about her. This is about a legacy.”
With that cryptic remark, he leaves me by the tree.
I decide I’ve had enough and walk around the house to where my truck is parked.
I see her in the back garden. She’s sitting on a swing, looking at the mountains. She’s still in that black dress with tights and Ugg boots and just a cardigan.
The woman thinks she’s still in California? Christ’s sake! And Earl believes she isn’t going to sell?
Does she even know how much debt is hanging over the place? And how the debtors are circling like buzzards? I’m giving her and her sister a lifeline—fair, generous, a hell of a deal considering the ranch’s state.
Is she going to complicate my life?
Fuck that. I don’t do complicated. This woman has no idea how this land bleeds—she’s a California girl, and the sooner she goes home, the better for everyone.
I walk over slowly, my boots crunching over the cold ground. She doesn’t turn until I’m close enough to smell the hint of apples. Her shampoo?
She’s staring out at the horizon like she’s waiting for something to rise out of it.
I should leave her be. Now isn’t the time. But….
“You always sneak up on women when they’re trying to be alone?” she asks without looking at me, surprising me.
“I don’t think we’ve been introduced.” I ignore her comment.
She sways on the swing, her eyes still on the mountains in the distance. “I know who you are and you know who I am; and this isn’t the Victorian era where we need to be introduced.”
She bites!
There is none of the femininity that Celine exudes. There is something hard and bitter about Aria.
Her dark hair’s tied back in a braid that’s coming loose in the wind, and her eyes—black coffee and moonless-night dark—are cold. There’s no softness in them.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
She swivels the swing around and looks at me. “Are you now?”
I don’t like her tone. I don’t like her.
Celine told me her sister’s a cold fish. And standing here now, I believe her, despite the way Aria lay down beside her father’s grave like a child waiting for him to wake up.
Her dark eyes are unreadable, holding nothing. No grief. No rage. No anything. Just a calm, practiced emptiness that makes me wonder what kind of woman learns to bury everything that deep.
“I am,” I admit, and then add because it’s polite, “Rami was a good man.”
She lets out a breathy laugh. “Papa was a lot of things, good he wasn’t.”
Her face shifts when she laughs. She relaxes, opens.
There’s a sensuality to the way she shows emotion, like it costs her something, which is why she doesn’t give it away for free.
But it doesn’t last. From one moment to another, it’s gone, and I wonder if I imagined it.
“He was an ornery bastard,” I agree.
“Now, that’s honest.” She shifts her weight, the swing creaking as she moves it gently. “Papa would appreciate that. He was a straight shooter. No bullshit.”
“Speaking of being honest.” I grip one of the thick ropes holding the swing, stilling her. “I want you to know I’m interested in buying Longhorn. No bullshit.”
“If it’s for sale,” she challenges.
“Isn’t it?”
Her lips curl into a smirk, like she doesn’t believe me. No, it’s worse, it’s as if she doesn’t give two damns about what I’m saying.
I don’t like this woman, I think at the same time as I wonder what it will be like to fuck her, make her submit.
I don’t mind prickly women—just not in my bed.
But this one…is she cold as ice under the sheets, or does she light up?
“I have no idea, Maverick.” She says my name with disdain, like she doesn’t like how it feels on her tongue.
“You don’t?” I ask sarcastically, my disbelief evident.
She studies me for a beat, like she’s measuring how much nonsense I’m capable of.
“Once the will is read, we’ll know what’s what. Who knows, Papa may have left everything to Celine, and then you won’t have to talk to me about this at all.”
“Would you care if he did that?”
She eyes my hand holding the rope of the swing. I let go. I don’t know why I wanted to restrain her as I did.
You want to control her.
That thought makes me uncomfortable.
Why was this woman evoking such emotions inside of me?
Flat chested, no curves, hard lines, an angular face—there’s nothing here that I usually find attractive.
And, yet….
“Do you know that Longhorn Ranch has been in our family for five generations?” she tells me conversationally.
I nod. I did know that. I think everyone in Wildflower Canyon does.
“My great-great-grandfather settled this land in the late 1800s—came up from New Mexico with nothing but a few head of cattle and a prayer.” The swing moves softly, as do her feet.
“Every Delgado after him worked this ranch through droughts, the Depression, recessions, fires…all of it. It’s more than just land to me. It’s blood. It’s my legacy.”
Legacy. Earl had used the same word minutes ago.
She tilts her head, leans it against a thick rope of the swing as if she’s somewhere else. “Mama hated the ranch. Hated everything about it. Most days, she didn’t like Papa much.”
I say nothing and wait for her to make her point.
“Didn’t like me either.” The corners of her mouth dip almost imperceptibly. “She married him because, oops, she got knocked up. Never forgave me for that.”
I want to ask her why she’s telling me all this. She doesn’t even know me.
“Celine was her golden child. Even Papa’s.” She turns, locks her eyes with mine. “If he left her everything, then he has done what I anticipated. When people behave as you expect them to—it doesn’t cause cracks.”
We remain in silence for a moment as the wind tugs at the loose tendrils of her hair, the mountains stretched out behind her like an old promise.
“You’re not what I expected,” I blurt out because she isn’t.
Her brow lifts. “Let me guess—Celine told you I ran off to LA to become a yoga instructor-slash-lifestyle influencer who burned through a trust fund and a few boyfriends?”
“What the fuck is a yoga instructor-slash-lifestyle influencer?”
“Fuck if I know,” she replies cheerfully.
She’s about to say buzz off to me, so I say my piece, get it out in the open. “Look. My offer is real. And fair. I’ll take care of this place.”
The small amount of brightness in her eyes fades into retreat. “Right now, all I want to take care of is grieving my father.”
“Fair,” I agree.
“You have a good rest of your evening, Maverick.” She walks past me into the house from the back door.
What I told her is true.
She’s not what I thought she’d be like.
I came here thinking she’d be a spoiled, runaway daughter.
What we’ve got here is a woman who seems to have depth. Added to that, she’s got dignity and poise.
And after speaking with her, I am certain, there’s fire under the quiet.
She won’t be cold in bed.
She’ll be a live wire.