Chapter Eleven
THENEXTDAYshe wore overalls. She was an absurd little varmint. And none of the behavior should be cute in any way.
Yet he found it was.
He wanted her to leave and not come back. He wanted her to show up every day when she said she would. He wanted her to keep her damned mouth shut. And he wanted her to chatter like the ridiculous little squirrel that she was. He wanted to pull the girl’s pigtails. That was the problem. He couldn’t recall the last time he had felt an impulse like that. Not even in school. She made him feel that way. She made him feel some kind of riled up that he didn’t quite understand. And that was another thing. He didn’t like not understanding. He had put himself in a position in life where he never felt stupid. Except for the rare moments when he had to disappear into paperwork in his office, he didn’t do things that made him struggle.
He’d overcome. In a very specific way. He had made it so that he never had to feel that way again.
She made him feel that way. On so many levels. In so many ways. Not the least of which was that he didn’t understand this pull.
He didn’t do complicated attraction. He never had. Because complicated would necessitate a relationship of some kind, and he didn’t do those, either.
Shit. You’d think with that kind of thinking he’d be a total manwhore, but he wasn’t. It wasn’t about that. It was...
Love hurt so damned much. And his desire, his ability to feel any more, had been killed hard the day his father had gone back to the earth.
Knowing what he did, seeing what he’d seen, he’d have to be dumb to want to indulge attraction like this.
Quinn Sullivan made him feel dumb.
Overalls.
Pigtails.
Dammit.
“Ready?” she said, grinning up at him.
“Sure.”
The freckles on her face had intensified since they had begun working together. And her nose was a bit pink from the prolonged exposure to the sun in the afternoon heat.
“I thought you put sunblock on.”
She frowned. “I did.”
“Are you reapplying every two to four hours? Because you’re supposed to.”
Her mouth opened. “I... Yes. Maybe.”
“You look a little sun-kissed there, honey.”
Her eyebrows shot up, and she blinked rapidly. She pursed her lips and frowned. “Honey?”
“What’s weird about that?”
“It’s weird.”
“I called you a carrot the other day,” he pointed out.
“That was less weird.”
“Come on,” he said, beckoning her into the house. She followed, and, with the full intent of being a condescending asshole, he got out the bottle of sunscreen that he used every day and put a measure on his palm.Then he swiped at it with his fingertips and put some on her nose, rubbing it across to her cheek, and then again to the other cheek.
She only looked at him, her eyes filled with a mixture of anger and...
Shit. He’d made a mistake.
Her skin was soft, and being this close to her was dangerous.
She smelled like flower petals and sleep. Like coffee. Like the kind of morning he never had with women.
Well. And coconuts. But that was the sunscreen. And because he was a stubborn asshole, he put his other hand on her face and rubbed from both sides, getting the cream worked into her skin, because he wasn’t backing down now, even though he knew that he was doing an idiotic thing.
It was too late to turn back, so he might as well be in with both feet. Both thumbs.
Whatever.
Lord Almighty.
Her lips parted, and they were pink and soft looking, and far too lovely for his own good.
That was the problem with Quinn Sullivan; she had been too lovely for his own good from the moment she showed up on his doorstep.
He didn’t have time for this. He didn’t need it.
He didn’t like what she did to him. What she did to his life.
And he had no room for anyone else in his world.
He was done. Done helping people. Taking care of them. He’d done it. He was living for himself now.
And Camilla was hovering around and Quinn was here, and none of it was fair. He still had to worry about fucking Dylan, who was out in the middle of the desert, and... At least Jessie was with Damien.
As weird as he had found that whole thing, at least his middle sister was with a man that he trusted, so he knew that she was all right day to day.
He could not say the same for his other siblings, and he didn’t like it. Because he wanted all of this to be over. He had been under the strain of needing to take care of everybody else from the time he was eighteen years old. Hell, really from the time he was sixteen.
He hadn’t asked to be a parent.
He had just wanted to be a kid.
And he didn’t harbor any fantasies about having a second adolescence or anything like that, but he definitely wanted a little bit more freedom.
And that did not include being tangled up in Quinn Sullivan in any regard. None whatsoever.
“Levi...” she whispered.
That was when he knew. She felt it, too.
That was the most dangerous realization he could have had.
And he took a step back, and he pretended that he hadn’t noticed anything. Pretended like nothing had just passed between them. Like there was no electrical current, like he hadn’t been looking at her the same way she had been looking at him. Like her skin wasn’t a revelation, like flower petals in springtime. Like she wasn’t making him think poetry.
Yeah. Like that.
Because poetry had no home between himself and Quinn Sullivan.
Poetry had no room within him.
For more reasons than he could name.
“Let’s get to work.”
“Fine,” she said.
“You need some coffee?” he asked.
“Oh, I had my cup before I left, and I couldn’t find my thermos and...”
“I have time to get you a cup of coffee.”
“You said you didn’t share.”
“I don’t,” he said.
But he poured her a cup all the same, and stuck it in the service and put it in her hands.
They were pretty hands. Petite.
And he was a man, so in that moment, he wasn’t picturing her hand wrapped around the thermos. He was picturing it wrapped around him.
He gritted his teeth and took a step away from her. “Let’s go.”
He knew that in a few minutes she would be annoying. Just like clockwork. It was one of the things he liked about Quinn. That when things did begin to get too companionable between them, he could count on her to say something irritating and undo it.
To take any of the attraction that was burning beneath the surface and douse it with some cold water.
She...had been doing that on purpose. After that moment that had passed between them, he was sure of that.
“I was doing some research on Christmas trees,” she said.
“Were you?”
“Yes. I was.”
“Great.”
“We can talk about it later,” she said. “I want to know what our assignment is for the day.”
“Our assignment. Well. Charity McCloud is going to come by a little later to do some vaccinations. We need to get the calves all rounded up so that they’re ready for her. And after that, we need to get one of the herds moved from the upper pasture down to the lower pasture. So we’ll be doing a bit of riding again today.”
“Not my favorite,” she said.
“I don’t understand how it cannot be your favorite.”
“Because it just isn’t. Because horses are big and kind of unpredictable.” She waved her hand over her whole body. “And I’m very small.”
He chuckled. “That you are. I love horses.”
He hadn’t meant to say that last part. Not that he was such a caveman he couldn’t admit to loving something, but still. He didn’t much see the point in telling her that.
Or anything about him.
But what had been the point to the sunscreen?
It was a weird day and it wasn’t even seven.
“You do?” she asked.
He nodded slowly. And he really had no reason to go on about this, but it just seemed a natural thing. Anyway, he was looking. Searching for the thing. Because Quinn would say something. And as long as he kept talking, it would make her keep talking, and then she would bring that verbal bucket of water his way. He wanted that. Needed it.
“When I was younger I figured I would be in the rodeo. Riding horses was about the only thing that I ever cared about. As soon as I got off the school bus, I would head out to the field every day. More often than not, I would cut, pretend to go to the bus and then not go, get on the horse and ride him around.”
“You skipped school?”
And there she was. Sounding so offended. Like he had just confessed to cussing in church.
“Oh, yeah. I was always way more interested in physical pursuits.”
He looked at her, and he smiled.
And he had not meant to introduce a double entendre, but he saw something spark in her green eyes. And then he felt an answering heat low in his gut.
Physical pursuits.
“I see,” she said, her voice sounding scratchy now.
“People have different priorities,” he said, his words hard now, whether he intended them to be or not.
“Yes,” she said. “Of course they do. Different philosophies.”
She said nothing for a moment. “You never got to be in the rodeo, did you?”
Her voice sounded soft all of a sudden, and he couldn’t say he cared for that.
“No,” he said. “I was kind of busy.”
“Right. Levi, that must’ve been really difficult. I mean, that is such a limp thing to say. In the face of everything. I can’t imagine what you went through. And I’m sorry that you had to give up your dreams. That is the one thing about having my parents leave like they did... I didn’t have to give anything up. They didn’t care about the ranch anymore. And yes, I think to an extent I felt like I needed to support Fia. After all, she is our older sister, and she did take care of us and everything, but she wouldn’t have been alone if we had left. And I did get to leave, for school. I was always planning on coming back, sure, but still.”
She did this, too. It was part of the dance of the last few days. Anger, warmth, prickliness, sharing. A tango he hadn’t asked to do, but here they were. And like he had several other times, he resisted this.
“I don’t need your pity,” he said.
“Why not? A little bit of pity isn’t the worst thing, is it?”
“Yeah, it can be. Because when people pity you, you begin to buy into the idea that you’re worthy of pity. And when you feel like that, then you expect the whole world to treat you like maybe you’re a victim. Like maybe you deserve to get something nice, something extra. But let me tell you, all that you get with that kind of mindset is wolves. Wolves smell blood. They know when you’re weak. And I don’t want to be weak. I never have been, not since any of that happened. I had to be the wolf. I had to be the strong one. Defending my pack. So I never could afford to sit down and indulge myself. Pity can be damaging. If you buy into it too much. There’s always a danger in believing your own bullshit—you have to remember that.”
“My dad was a wolf.”
“Quinn... I think that’s something you and I should leave alone.” It wasn’t about protecting her. It was him. Because when you got down into the fine details of it, it exposed his own weaknesses, and that was something he couldn’t stand.
“Why? It’s between us. We don’t have to talk about it for it to be between us.”
“So why talk about it at all?”
“Because would it be so bad to have someone know? To have someone care?”
“It depends. Like I said, it can lure you into a situation where you begin to think of yourself that way. Then get taken advantage of. Listen, I signed those contracts. I can’t put all the blame on your father. But I was eighteen years old and doing my best. It just wasn’t good enough. But you tell me—was he opportunistic or not?”
“He was. I don’t have to know...everything to know that.”
“And I seemed easy to take advantage of. Because I was. That’s what I mean. You don’t want to give them that kind of opportunity.”
“You can’t count on anybody, right?”
“No, you can’t,” he said.
That wasn’t exactly the conversation he’d been trying to walk her into, but it was a life lesson that she needed. She might rub him the wrong way, but he didn’t want her to get hurt, and the truth was, that kind of bravado she carried around with her was liable to get her ass handed to her one of these days.
They drove out to the field, and he was feeling a little overheated from sitting in her presence for all this time.
He needed a new system. A new system for getting laid. If he went out, he could get it done. Women liked him. Well, women didn’t like him. They liked his body. Women didn’t know him well enough to like him or dislike him, and it didn’t matter to him at all what they thought of him as a human being. It just mattered whether they wanted to take a ride or not. Mostly they did.
But he had never really gotten in the pattern of going out, and he would have to go out by himself, which, again, was fine, most especially when he was in the mood to get laid. He had old-man patterns and old-man habits. That was the truth of it. He just didn’t especially know the social scene, not that the town really had one anyway, but couple that with the fact that he was an empty nester and thirty-six... Well. It was what it was. But that was why Quinn was getting to him.
Because she was just a skinny little redhead—with some decent curves, sure, but lots of women had curves. She wasn’t anything special. And in fact, she was infuriating. So there was really no reason in all the damned world for the woman to be under his skin quite like this. The relative dry spell was to blame, he was sure. He wasn’t entirely certain when the last time he’d had sex was. But it had been a little bit.
He didn’t think of it that way, normally. Hazard of going without for long periods of time while single parenting.
If not for Hannah, that girl from class who’d paid him a visit that night, he’d have ended up the world’s oldest living virgin. God bless her. She’d given him just the right way to experience sex for the first time. A pattern he’d kept forever on after.
He didn’t want connections. He didn’t want to know anyone. He didn’t want them to know him.
Maybe that was why Quinn’s sharing moments irked him so much. She made him almost wish...
It didn’t matter.
They worked until it was time to gather the calves, which Quinn did with almost amusing determination. She was amped up, and she may not love riding horses, but she was pretty damn good at it. She helped him corral the little calves, and got them ready for Charity’s arrival.
The sweet-natured veterinarian had always been well-known in the community. Her father had been the veterinarian before her.
She had always been tied in with the McCloud family, best friends with Lachlan, and even though Levi couldn’t say he really knew the McClouds at all, he had always known Charity to be exceptionally good people. He had been pretty damn surprised when she had married Lachlan.
One thing he did know about Lachlan McCloud was that, prior to his marriage, the man had a reputation for being a huge player about town. Hooking up with a different woman pretty much every night. And then there was Charity...
Well, Charity seemed happy, so all must be well.
Quinn seemed delighted to see her, and it was clear to him that the two of them knew each other.
“I’m excited to get to watch you work,” said Quinn, planting her hands on her knees and bending over in the ridiculous overalls. He did not know why she was the way that she was.
“Yeah, you normally aren’t around for the animal stuff,” said Charity, getting the vaccines out and lining them up.
“No. Though, I’ve been getting to do quite a bit of it with Levi this last week. It’s great.”
He studied her face, trying to see if she was lying. She seemed like she was telling the truth.
Which was weird. He wasn’t sure what she would’ve thought of their time together, but enjoyment was not really what he’d been expecting.
“What are you working on here?”
“Remains to be seen,” said Levi.
Charity looked at him speculatively.
Well. He had probably deserved that. Because yeah. He could see that an answer like that left things open to interpretation. And he decided he wasn’t going to overcorrect or disabuse her of the notion.
Quinn, for her part, seemed oblivious to what Charity had been musing on.
Fine with him.
It was hot, sweaty work, but done fairly quickly, because Charity was a professional, and that was one reason he had her out to do it.
He probably could’ve bought a supply and done it himself, but it didn’t appeal. He knew that there was some truth in that to be examined. Because he had learned to hire out when need be. He had learned to hire out for work that he didn’t enjoy doing, or that took longer for him to do than something else might.
He had learned to play to his own strengths, so it wasn’t that he had grown entirely insular.
It was the control stuff...
Well, hell. Whatever.
He didn’t like all the navel-gazing that Quinn was forcing him to do. Not in the least. It was boring.
By the time they were finished, they were both sweaty, and hungry, but it wasn’t time to stop for lunch yet, not when they needed to get the cows moved from the upper pasture.
“It’s hot,” Quinn groused as they rode the horses up the side of the hill that led to the upper pasture.
“I know,” he said.
“Yeah, but I’m really hot.”
“I didn’t make you come today.”
“I know,” she said fiercely.
“We gotta get the cows from here down to the lower pasture, because the water dries up this way this time of year. It’s better for them to be down there where there’s a year-round pond. I move the grazing about seasonally.”
“Smart,” she said.
“Smart? I thought that was a word that wasn’t reserved for me.”
“Oh, don’t,” said Quinn. “You make so many assumptions about what I think, and it’s not fair. I never said that you weren’t smart.”
“You just think it.”
He could feel her fuming.
The herd was small, and it was easy for the two of them to get them corralled where they needed them to go, and when it was time to get them to move quick, he urged his horse into a trot, then a gallop, and Quinn followed suit.
The cows thundered down right where he wanted them to go.
And for a moment, he shut everything out but this. Because this was where things had always made sense. This was where he had always been able to find some kind of bliss.
This was where no man stood taller than him, and no one had more power.
This was his land. His.
No one and nothing could take that from him, and it was everything.
It was just damn well everything. By the time they got the cows down to the lower pasture, near the pond, he was drenched in sweat.
“Let’s stop for a second,” he said.
He stripped his shirt off and made his way over to the pond, dipping it down into the water, because that would feel better than wearing a shirt soaked in his own sweat.
He turned to look at Quinn, who was furiously looking down at her phone, and not looking at him, with what seemed to be great determination.
So.
She had to make an effort to not look when he took his clothes off.
Nice to know. But it shouldn’t be.
“The Christmas trees,” she said suddenly, very loudly.
“The Christmas trees?”
“Yes,” she said. “The Christmas trees. I was doing some research on different outfits who will lease...”
“I’m not interested in leasing anything,” he said.
“No, just listen to me.”
He straightened and looked at her, and noticed that she still wasn’t looking at him. “Quinn,” he said.
“No, you’re not listening.” She took a step toward him and held her phone out, but she still wasn’t looking at him.
“Just read this,” she said.
She shoved the phone in his face at a weird-ass angle, and even if it had been straight on, there was no way in hell he was going to be able to stand there and read articles with tiny lettering on demand like that. He could barely sit down and read when the font was altered to something friendlier and he didn’t have any pressure put on him.
“Stop,” he said.
“You’re just being stubborn,” she said. “If you’ll just look at it.”
She shoved her phone into his hand and looked at him expectantly.
He looked down at the screen, and it infuriated him to see the letters scramble. It was nonsense. Might’ve been in some alien language. Might have been in Russian. Didn’t fucking matter.
And right then he just about hated her. For being so damned full of her own mission that she couldn’t even stop to...
She just didn’t think. That was the thing. She thought everybody was her. She thought everybody was her with her exact same brain and her exact same array of choices. And she had no concept of the fact that things were different for different people.
She thought it made you less. But it made you dumb.
And he felt his anger rising.
“If you’ll just read the article.”
“I told you, I have no interest.”
“It’s just...”
“Look at me,” he said.
And he saw that it took a great and mighty force of will to get her to turn her eyes upon him. “Why can’t you look at me, Quinn?”
“I don’t have any problem...”
“Seems like you do.”
“I don’t,” she said.
“Got a problem with me taking my shirt off?”
“No. I don’t. I mean, I think it’s a little bit gratuitous, but I’m used to men and their muscles, and their frequent need to strip half the way naked just because the sun came out from behind the clouds, but you don’t see me climbing out of these overalls running around in my panties, do you?”
Damn. That put an image in his head that he didn’t need.
He wondered if her thighs were freckled, too.
Damn her.
“No, I don’t. But I do think that you should cool off, Quinn.”
“I don’t need to cool off.”
“You don’t? You seem a little bit heated.”
“Heated? No. I’m just irritated that you are being a stubborn, ridiculous, hardheaded...”
And that just did it. He wasn’t listening anymore. And he still had her phone. So everything that was about to get wet would dry just fine.
He picked her up off the ground with one arm and draped her over his shoulder. His bare shoulder. And he had a feeling she was getting a good look at his bare back while she dangled there.
Then he walked her over to the edge of the pond and flipped her down into it.
The unholy shriek that she made before she hit the water, and then submerged, almost made him laugh. Almost.
“You bastard!” she screamed as she sputtered up to the surface of the water.
“You can swim, right?”
“Lucky for you.”
“It would be a real waste if you had all that fancy college learning and didn’t know how to swim. That’s pretty basic.”
“But you didn’t know,” she said.
“I could fish you out easily enough.”
“You...you...”
“You’ll dry just fine, little carrot. We’ll put you in a bag of rice.”
“I don’t need to be put in a bag of rice!”
“Then what are you complaining about? You probably just need a little bit more sunshine.”
She sloshed over to the shore. “I am in overalls.”
“You could strip down to your panties,” he said, making direct eye contact with her. “I wouldn’t mind. Would be fair, after all, all things considered.” He gestured to his bare chest.
“Bastard,” she spit as she got out of the water. And then she was racing toward him. And she planted both hands on his bare chest and shoved him backward. “I got into a fistfight with Trevor Morton in the ninth grade, and I will fist-fight you, too.”
“Calm down. You don’t want to be fist-fighting me.”
“Yes, I do,” she said, shoving him again. “Because you’re infuriating.”
“Your fists are the size of tiny little pebbles, sweetie. They aren’t going to do anything.”
He’d be lying if he didn’t say he found her fury interesting.
It was so potent. He could taste it. It was heavier than anything he’d ever experienced.
It was strange to think that his experience of women was so limited. He didn’t often think of it that way.
He had hookups in bars. Women who were done up to the nines, because they’d gone out for the same reason that he had. Everybody on their best behavior, in their best clothes, with their best underwear. It was a fine, civilized way to get sex.
But that meant he didn’t see things like this. Meant he didn’t often see a woman looking bedraggled and somehow still sexy. Meant he didn’t get in fights with women. Fights that produced the kind of palpable sexual tension that could grab a man by the throat and strangle him.
It meant he hadn’t ever looked at a woman all waterlogged and wrecked and thought that he probably wanted her more than he had when she was wearing little white socks and shoes.
Well. Maybe not more. But it was definitely still want. A particular kind.
What made him angriest was that, right about now, she seemed like she could show him a particular kind of thing that he’d never known he’d wanted.
He gripped her wrists and held her back, away from him, until she stopped huffing and trying to hit him. She hadn’t hurt him. He was more concerned she’d hurt herself. Though she’d deserve it.
She took a deep breath. Then another. And another.
Her face contorted, her eyes going wide with horror.
“I hit you.”
“You did,” he said, standing there holding on to her still.
“I’m so sorry. I am so sorry. I don’t do that kind of thing anymore. I don’t. I...”
“Chill out, Quinn.”
She frowned. “You just told me to chill out.”
“I did. Calm the hell down. I’m fine. You didn’t hurt me. I threw you in the water but I didn’t hurt you. It’s all fine.”
“You were really mad at me,” she said.
“I was.”
“You aren’t now, though.”
“I’m more amused than I am mad right at this moment, yes.”
She sniffed loudly and he released his hold on her. She took a step back, and somehow managed to look both down and up at his chest right at the same time. Then she looked away. Resolutely.
“It’s okay that you like the look of me without my shirt, Quinn.”
“You...!” She was mad again.
“What? I take it as a compliment. But you don’t need to worry about me.”
She didn’t. For every reason he’d already listed, but frankly, her age, too. Now he’d gotten to thinking about his own sexual history and...no.
When he went out, he found women who wanted the same thing and who were close to his age. Older, younger, didn’t matter, but in the same ballpark.
Quinn was young. Eleven years younger. And that was a big no in his book.
Her personality was the bigger barrier, but still.
He ignored the kick in his gut that called him a liar, because there was nothing at all that made him feel deterred from looking at how pretty she was.
“I don’t... I... No, I’m not worried because I wasn’t looking at you. Be shirtless. I don’t care. You’re just a basic...bro...muscle...hunk cowboy.”
“A muscle hunk?” he repeated.
“You heard me! Basic. Nothing special. Seen it all before.” She waved a hand.
“Oh, have you?”
“Um. Yes, I went to college in California, remember? Surfers, cowboys...whatever.”
And then he quite literally hauled her up by the back of her overalls to position her to where she could get on the back of her horse. She looked like an angry kitten that had been collared by the scruff, but she scrabbled back into the saddle.
“You got something to say?” he asked.
“You going to put your shirt on?” she asked.
“Not planning on it.”
She took several deep breaths, and he could see that she was trying. Trying to not be outraged. Trying to not be angry.
And she was all of those things, but he could see that she was trying.
She felt guilty about hitting him. She shouldn’t.
He’d been an asshole. That was the truth of it. And maybe, maybe, she had deserved it. But what he had gotten afterward had been well deserved, as well.
It was the truth. “Listen,” he said. “I started a fight with you, so you don’t need to feel guilty about fighting back.”
“I don’t feel guilty. I feel as if I let myself down. That’s it. I have a personal ethic, and this was not it.”
“Okay,” he responded.
“You know, you could try to not be condescending to me.”
“Only when you try to not be condescending to me.”
She shook her head, and water droplets flew off the ends of her pigtails. “Our issue is that we are too different,” she said. “We don’t see the world the same. At all. You are an absolute hardheaded, stubborn pig of a human being, and you don’t care if you get in an altercation. I absolutely...do care if I get in a confrontation.”
He couldn’t help it. He laughed at that. The same way she had laughed when he’d called her a carrot.
“Yeah. I mean, that is true. Way too different.”
“You don’t value the things that I value.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t. And I’m not worried about that, carrot. Truly, I’m not. You’re the one who came here. You could leave.”
“I can’t, though,” she said. “Because I...I have to make it work.”
“Why?”
“Because I do,” she said. “Because I do. Okay?”
“Fine. But this is the thing. You made your little pond bed, so you have to deal with it.”
“I said that I would finish out the week. I’m going to. I’m going to.”
And he could’ve told her right then that she was wasting her time. But he didn’t. Maybe it was the pile of paperwork sitting in his office, or maybe it was something else. He didn’t know.
But they rode, wet and half-dressed, back to the ranch, and when they got to the barn, he got off his horse and reached his hands up, offering to help her down, too. She looked furious, but reached down, almost reflexively, and he gripped her by the waist and lifted her off.
And she just looked at him, those ferocious green eyes burning into his and making his heart speed up.
The woman got his blood pumping harder, faster.
He’d been furious, frankly still was, but he wasn’t dead to the attraction that burned between them.
He didn’t want to call it that. Didn’t want to acknowledge it. But there was no way around it. She was gripping his forearms with her hands, and when her eyes met his this time, they were worried.
She was afraid of this.
Maybe that was why she hissed and spit quite so loud.
But he could show her. He could show her there was nothing to be afraid of. That it would feel good.
What the hell is wrong with you?
He took a step back, letting go of her.
“I think that’s it for the day. You need to go home and get dried off.”
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
“Get.”
And there was a warning in that word, and she, for the first time in his acquaintance with her, heeded it.
She didn’t get in his truck; instead, she turned and took off back toward the house on her own two feet.
And he decided that he would get the horses finished, and when he came back, she’d better be gone.
She was, thank God.
He growled into the house, and Camilla was sitting there at the kitchen bar, eating a bowl of ice cream. “Well. What happened to you?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said.
“You just always roam around shirtless like you’re some kind of hot cowboy calendar just waiting to break out into a photo shoot?”
He glared at his sister. “I got warm.”
“You weren’t by chance cavorting with the pretty redhead that’s supposed to be helping you with your paperwork?”
“I was not,” he said. “It isn’t like that.”
“But you’re kind of mad about it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Camilla, and you know what? If you would like me to have some time to cavort with women, maybe get your ass back to school.”
She rolled her eyes. “Levi, I don’t need you to pretend that you’re a monk for my benefit. I know that you’re not.”
“Maybe let’s not talk about this. Ever.”
“I don’t really want to talk about the details of it, but you have to stop.” She pushed her bowl of ice cream back dramatically. “You have to stop sacrificing everything just because I exist. You have to stop putting your life on pause every time I show up, because it makes me feel like you don’t want me here.”
“It isn’t that,” he said. “I love you—you know that. Camilla... You...you could literally be my daughter, and I raised you as such. There is not a person in this world...” His chest went all tight. “Nobody else is quite like you. Okay? But I don’t want you to be stuck here. I don’t want you to choose this life, just because you’re worried about me. That I couldn’t take.”
“You’re going to accept her help, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, making his way toward the fridge.
“Why don’t I believe you?”
“It isn’t up to you to believe me or not. You’re not the parent.”
“You aren’t, either,” she said softly. “Not really. You’re my brother. I love you. I don’t even remember what it’s like to have parents, Levi. So yeah, you are kind of it for me. But it isn’t really fair, is it? Because you are my brother. And you were sixteen when I was born. You’re not really old enough to be my dad. You weren’t really old enough to take all this on. I don’t want to be a burden.”
“I don’t want to be a burden,” he said. “Don’t you get that? That’s the thing that I can’t stand, Camilla. You can’t treat me like I’m a burden just because I don’t do things the way that you would.”
“I’m just worried that you need help.”
He looked at his sister, and he just felt...defeated. Like he might have to give in to Quinn. And he couldn’t even quite remember why that was such a bad thing now.
The graves. The road.
Admitting that he needed help. Maybe it was all those things.
“I’m going to handle this the way that I see fit. Like I did the whole time I raised you. You don’t get to tell me what to do. Not now. If I’m like a parent to you, then do what I tell you to do. Go back to school.”
“Levi...”
“We’re done with this conversation. You can sit there and have your ice cream. Let me have a beer.”
She nodded slowly, and he could see that he had kind of hurt her feelings. He didn’t like that. But he didn’t need her being a mother hen to him. That actually felt like it undermined everything he’d sacrificed, and he didn’t want to get into that. Because he didn’t want to go on about his sacrifice. Because that was a shitty thing to do, and he didn’t want to make her feel bad. He just...
He didn’t know why he was beset by so many difficult women.
But rather than continuing to talk, he and his sister sat there, her with her ice cream and him with his beer, and after a fashion, he had to admit to himself that he wasn’t all that sorry that she was there.
But he did need her to leave. Because he needed her to get on with things.
And as for him? Things would just keep clicking along like they always had.
That was all he expected. It was all he needed.
And there was nothing wrong with that.