Chapter 12
Grant
“Come on, little outlaw.” Grant pressed a kiss to his babygirl’s hair as she let out another shuddering breath. “Let’s get you to bed.”
Her whimper of agreement nearly shattered his heart. Juggling her carefully in his arms, he rose and carried her up the stairs to the first room on the left. Light shone under the door to Edie’s room, but it was almost eerily quiet in the house save for Jesse’s sniffles.
Thankfully, the two guest bedrooms shared a Jack and Jill style bathroom, so he was able to wash her face and help her use the bathroom without having to step back out into the hall.
She didn’t talk again until he was tucking her into bed. “I didn’t mean to break her heart.”
“I know, baby.” Brushing her hair back, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Go to sleep. You can try again in the morning.”
“Do you think she’ll ever forgive me?”
Honesty was the best policy. That was a belief he lived and breathed in all aspects of his life.
But there were times when protecting the ones you loved meant lying through your fucking teeth. “I’m sure she will, baby.”
“I hope so.” Her eyes fluttered closed as she snuggled beneath the blankets. “I just don’t want her to hate me anymore.”
“Go to sleep, little outlaw. Things will be better in the daylight.”
He waited until the familiar rhythmic sound of her breathing told him she was asleep before he slipped out of the room. A shadow moving across Edie’s floor caught his attention and he paused, watching the light shift and change as she moved around her room.
Before he realized what he was doing, his fist was raised, and he just barely caught himself before he knocked on her door. What the hell was he even going to say to her? As much as he felt he should be pissed at her for hurting his babygirl, after learning the truth of how Jesse had left things, he couldn’t really blame Edie for drawing such a hard line. But offering comfort felt like betraying Jesse, even though there was certainly a part of him that wanted nothing more than to hold Edie through her tears the way he’d done with his Little girl.
Better to just leave her be until he could figure out exactly how to handle things. Forcing himself to turn away from her door, he headed downstairs to the kitchen to clean up the mess left behind from their abandoned dinner.
Edie
She didn’t sleep worth shit.
But the animals didn’t care if she was so exhausted she could barely force herself out of bed. They only cared that they got to eat on time.
Coffee. She needed coffee.
Praying her guests would sleep until she felt at least marginally more human, she tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen—and for the second time in forty-eight hours stopped dead in her tracks.
Her kitchen wasn’t just clean. It sparkled. While she kept a fairly tidy house, she couldn’t remember the last time any room of her house had looked so… shiny.
Was this some sort of weird penance on Jesse’s part? Her way of trying to make things right between them?
If it was, it wasn’t going to work.
Still, that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy how nice and sparkly her kitchen was as she brewed herself a pot of coffee. And while she enjoyed that first, life-giving cup as the sun turned the sky into a masterpiece of pinks and yellows and oranges.
She left her mug beside the pot so she could easily pour herself another cup after her morning chores, then headed outside to go through the familiar routine of feeding and cleaning up after her animals.
It was all routine enough for her mind to wander as she went through the steps. And wander it did, right back to the night before.
Jesse had finally apologized. Not only that, she’d literally flown from one coast to another to do so in person. That meant something. Edie wasn’t so heartless she couldn’t appreciate the effort behind it.
And once upon a time, she’d have given anything to hear those words. At first, because she would have delighted in throwing them back in Jesse’s face before shutting her out of her life for good, but later because she would have genuinely appreciated the apology.
Now… now it just felt like too little, too late. She’d meant what she’d said the night before about moving on. Ken had helped with that, more than he’d probably ever realized. Though she’d fought him at first, he’d worn her down over time and eventually she’d told him everything. About falling for Jesse, about fighting with her parents, about being left behind and heartbroken beyond repair. And through it all, he’d just loved her. Supported her until she’d finally been able to breathe without her chest feeling as though it might crack open at any second.
And then he’d been gone. Taken from her without a word, just like before, though at least with Ken it hadn’t been through any fault of his own.
Blinking back yet another wave of tears, she stopped in front of Luna’s stall and smiled as those big brown eyes stared at her. “Hi, Luna baby. Ready for breakfast?”
“She’s beautiful.”
It was a testament to her sturdy disposition that she didn’t jump three feet in the air and scream at the sound of Grant’s voice. “She is.” Running her hand down Luna’s snout as much for her own comfort as Luna’s, she glanced over at him. Dressed in a pair of dark jeans that molded perfectly to his legs and a white t-shirt that did the same, he was enough to make any woman’s mouth water.
Not yours. Not yours. Not even remotely yours.
“Need something?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” The corner of his mouth quirked up in a wry smile. “Heard you get up and thought you might want some help.”
She wanted to be left alone but telling him so seemed a bit like cutting off her nose to spite her face since a new animal meant more work than usual, and despite the hit of caffeine earlier she was still exhausted from her sleepless night. “Sure. Luna and her new friend here need some fresh hay.”
To her surprise, he didn’t balk at the suggestion. After a bit of direction, he got the hang of what needed to be done pretty quickly and they worked side by side in what could almost be called a companionable silence.
Almost, because the longer she spent in his presence, the less ‘companionable’ she was feeling. There was a buzz under her skin, the kind she recognized as attraction, and with every ripple of his muscles beneath his ridiculously tight shirt, the worse the buzzing got. And no matter how much she silently berated herself for having the hots for her ex-girlfriend’s fiancé—Jesus, her life was a goddamn soap opera—she couldn’t shake the buzz.
By the time they got Luna and the not-a-llama out to the small pasture behind the barn, she wanted nothing more than to go back inside and hide herself away until her two unwelcome guests got the hint and took themselves back to California.
Grant, on the other hand, seemed to have other ideas. “How are you doing this morning?”
“Fine.” She bit off the word with a snarl and tried to ignore the way her stomach rolled. It didn’t matter to her one bit if he didn’t like her tone. He wasn’t her Daddy.
“Yeah, you sound completely fine.” By contrast, his delivery was dry and sarcastic, making her lips twitch with amusement despite her annoyance with the situation.
Dammit.
“I’ll be fine when you come to your senses and take her back to Hollywood where she belongs.”
One of his eyebrows rose in a look that was both warning and amusement. “Trust me, I would love nothing more than to do exactly that. But when Jesse sets her mind to something, she can be a bit…”
“Stubborn?” Edie provided when he trailed off.
“To say the least.” Flashing a quick, wicked grin that sent her heart galloping in her chest, Grant shrugged. “If I drag her back, she’ll just find a way to sneak off again. And she’ll keep coming back until she gets what she wants. I think we both know that.”
A headache was brewing, but she resisted the urge to rub at her temples. “What do you want me to do about that? She’s not my Little girl.” Her voice cracked a bit, and her hope that he wouldn’t notice was dashed by the way his expression softened.
“I know this isn’t easy for you. But…” He paused, clearly struggling with what he wanted to say next. “But I think it would be good for both of you if you could find a way to forgive her. So you can both move on.”
“I moved on ten years ago.”
Grant raised an eyebrow, and damn if her stomach didn’t clench in response. “If you’d moved on, you wouldn’t still be punishing her for what she did.”
“Moving on and forgiveness aren’t the same thing.”
“They are for Jesse. I would think you of all people would understand that.”
There went her stomach again, rolling to the point she had to clench her jaw to fight back a wave of nausea. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Where she was a mess of emotions threatening to boil over at any second, Grant was the opposite. The eye in the center of a storm as he watched her with that steady gaze. “You know exactly what I mean. This has obviously been eating at Jesse for a while, and she’s not going to be able to move past it until she feels forgiven.”
“That’s not my problem.”
But even as she said the words, guilt stabbed at her chest. Was she really going to cling to her anger for the sole purpose of making Jesse suffer?
The look Grant sent her was the very embodiment of ‘Disappointed Daddy’, and she fought not to squirm under his heated gaze. “You’re better than that, Edie.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
He stepped toward her, closing the distance between them in a way that forced her to lean her head back in order to meet his gaze. Despite her size, it wasn’t often someone actually managed to make her feel small, not in the way he did with that one simple move. “I think I know you better than you realize,” he murmured, his soft tone sliding over her skin like a caress. “You’re strong because you’ve had to be. All your life, someone has depended on you for something. And you like it that way because you like taking care of the people you love. But you’re also dying for someone to take care of you for once. To take a bit of the burden you carry from your shoulders so you can fucking breathe for once in your life.”
The truth of it stuck in her throat, making it difficult to speak, so she simply stared at him, refusing to give him the satisfaction of confirming his thoughts.
“Strong,” he repeated, the corner of his mouth kicking up in a wry smile. “And stubborn. But also compassionate. You’d have to be, to do what you do here at the farm. And to inspire the kind of loyalty I saw yesterday when I was trying to track Jesse down. This whole damn town fell in line and wouldn’t tell me a single thing about where she might be, all because you said so. Because they love you almost as much as Jesse does.”
“Did,” she whispered. “As much as Jesse did.”
She was close enough to watch his eyes soften with a sadness that made her breath catch in her throat. “No, Edie. Present tense. That’s why I can’t just take her back to California. Because if I force her to leave before she gets some kind of closure, I’ll always know that a piece of her heart is still here. With you. And I think it might actually kill me to have to live the rest of my life knowing the woman I love is still in love with someone else.”