7. Zee
Sun Moon - Above Beyond, Richard Bedford
Settling into the cab of his truck—a truck my family wouldn’t be able to afford even if we sold the damn ranch—as he drives me into town, I study him.
Unashamedly.
The boy became a man. One loaded with muscles and scars and?—
“You’re staring.” His lips kick up to the left, revealing a dimple that has always fascinated me. “I won’t bite… unless you ask me to.”
My eyes flare at his teasing—also unexpected. Since I asked him if he thought I was capable of hurting Loki, he’s done a one-eighty. From stern to… well, I’m not sure what this is but I don’t hate it.
“I was thinking. Not staring.” Liar.
He’s more potent than 100-proof vodka in a Henley, flannel shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. All he’s missing is the hat right now and I’d?—
“Looked like you were staring.”
I scowl. “I wasn’t.”
“So, what were you thinking about?”
About how hot he is.
About how he defended me against Grand-mère.
How he covered me with his sheepskin coat.
How he signed the contract without reading it once I told him what I’d added.
“How we’ll be married soon.”
He isn’t your knight in shining armor, Zee McAllister. He stopped being your safe space a long time ago.
He scrapes his fingers over his jaw. “Crazy, isn’t it?”
“More than crazy.” I shift my focus from him and onto the road that takes us to town. “You’re so calm about it.”
“I’ve been worrying about the situation with the water at Seven Cs for so long that knowing this’ll resolve it is a massive weight off.”
“Don’t you care that you’re going to have to marry me? I’m a stranger.”
“This isn’t ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but you’re not a stranger.”
“Of course I am. You haven’t spoken to me in a decade, Colton. I’m a woman, not the girl you used to know.”
“You think I’m an idiot?”
“No.”
“Good. I managed to figure out you’re not the same, Zee.”
His mocking tone has me folding my arms across my chest. “How long have you known about this?”
“Two days.”
“Oh.”
“You asked me earlier why I didn’t stop the contract. I was in Wyoming on business and when I got home, Pops presented it to me. Fait accompli.
“Because we’re desperate for water, after he agreed to my terms, I read the contract and approached your grandmother. I told her my signature hinged on you being granted the rights of majority shareholder to the Bar 9. That was the only consolation prize I could offer you,” he excuses.
My brothers’ signatures weren’t outright betrayals, then. Just their hands being forced by Grand-mère.
Like she’d done with me.
“How did you get your brothers to agree? I’m assuming they had to do the same as the triplets if our child is to become the sole beneficiary of both ranches.”
“That’s not how it works with the Seven Cs.”
“No?”
“The eldest child of the next generation inherits everything. The other siblings only gain access to a trust fund.”
“So, on your end, our child would always benefit?”
“Yes, and that’s all that matters.”
Who is this man?
“Two days ago, along with everyone else in this goddamn town, you thought I was an arsonist. Can we add martyr complex to the list of qualities you have now?”
“You’ve grown claws,” he says simply, not getting angry with me or letting me rile him.
“Had to. Especially around here.”
His alibi might have spared me three years in a youth correctional facility, but that didn’t stop Pigeon Creek’s good citizens from believing the worst.
McAllisters hate Korhonens.
A McAllister was at the scene of the Korhonen fire.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
We have ourselves a perp.
“I suppose I feel better knowing that I wasn’t sabotaged,” I admit begrudgingly. And that he’s only had two days to collect his thoughts and measure his reaction.
“You were,” he disagrees. “We both were. But I’m getting more out of this than you.”
“Hardly. Our ranches are merging. The Bar 9 will finally be safe and my grand-mère can live out her days in her home instead of…” I pull a face. “I don’t know where she’d live if she wasn’t on the ranch.
“She’d rather die than go into assisted living, and I think she’d prefer that than moving in with me and Christy in New York City.” My lips twist at the idea of Tee letting that happen—talk about testing the bonds of our friendship. “I probably gave her an extra lease on life. Go me.”
He sighs. “Family, huh?”
“Yeah.” I study him again. “When will you be the head of your company?”
“Already am. Pops resigned from the board yesterday during an emergency meeting, and I was given the position,” he says with no small amount of satisfaction. “He returned to Saskatoon last night.”
His smug smile should make me want to slap him, but my memory fires to life, reminding me of the times I was permitted to see his amusement. His joy. His sorrows.
There’s no denying that the boy was beautiful, but the man is so much more.
His hair’s all over the place thanks to the impromptu swim he had this morning, but it’s messy and tousled, so dark that it’s almost black. Doesn’t stop my fingers from itching to stroke it.
The glossy locks flop onto his forehead, where just-as-dark brows frame a face that reminds me I’m marrying the hot Korhonen. And all the Korhonens are handsome AF.
His mouth’s firm and his jaw tells me he doesn’t crack enough smiles. A man like him, out on the range as much as he is, should have wrinkles at his eyes. Crow’s feet show the passage of time as well as emotions, but his face is smooth if a tad rough around the edges from exposure.
Bright blue eyes are shielded by lashes so thick I’m jealous.
I used to have the right to stare into those eyes. Once upon a time, he let me touch his chin without thinking anything of it.
“Why are you agreeing to this? Surely there was an alternative?” I rasp, fully aware that this man needs no contract to get a woman down the aisle.
He could have anyone he wanted, and instead, he’s stuck with me.
Someone he already rejected ten years ago.
“I needed Pops off the ranch yesterday.” His hands tighten on the wheel. “But also, Loki.”
“What about him?”
That horse—I still cry some nights thinking about how he died.
I cry wondering how Colt could believe I’d do that to Loki.
I cry knowing I’ll never stroke him or bury my face in his mane again.
“It was… Everything was a mess back then. I let grief cloud…” The steering wheel squeaks under the pressure of his grip. “I should never have thought you’d do that to him.”
“Really?” I can hear the hope leaching into my voice. The long-held desperation I still feel to have him believe me.
“Really. His death is an open wound that never healed, Susanne. I mean, Zee. That you were there at all, it felt like you were punishing me. Distance and, Jesus, maturity, I know it was irrational to blame you.
“This arrangement will save both our legacies. Loki… he, we, I-I think I’d have agreed to marry Lilith herself if it meant protecting the Seven Cs—” Charming. “—but you’re not that. You never were. And I’m the one who should be asking you why you’re willing to marry me.”
He scrubs a hand over his face as he shuffles in his seat.
Every inch of him screams discomfort.
Good.
“You know what hurt the most? I-I kissed you. I mistook the situation. I know that now. But I k-kissed you and you rejected me. I was only sixteen and you were twenty-two. You were being a good guy. But that you’d think me being rejected would trigger—” I close my eyes. “You thought I was nothing more than a no-good McAllister. You tarred and feathered me with that brush.”
“I did,” he agrees, his voice low and simmering with shame. “I’m sorry, Zee.”
Five words.
An admission of guilt. An apology.
With my name of choice.
I don’t accept his apology, just gnaw on my lip and decide to change the subject because concession and apology aside, that ache in my heart hasn’t let up. I thought it would. But it’s still there. Raw and weeping as if it’s infected.
His opinion has changed so fast, but I don’t know if I can believe it. Believe in him. And that hurts too. There was a time when I trusted him implicitly and the difference is jarring.
With Main Street in the near distance, I order, “You can drop me off on the corner.”
“No. I want to talk to you first.”
“But I’m supposed to meet my friend!”
That was the only reason I agreed to get in the truck with him—he was the fastest mode of transportation off the Bar 9 after Grand-mère declared I couldn’t leave without discussing the wedding.
Colt, in full-on savior mode, swept me into his truck and took me away.
Swear to God, if I don’t discuss what’s going on with Tee soon, I’ll lose my cool for real. I’ve already had to deal with one bout of hypoglycemia at the house. In front of him no less.
I need my BFF.
Stat.
“I know you are,” he soothes. “And I won’t keep you long. I wanted to get to know you better before you return to New York to close things up.”
“Close things up?” I repeat blankly.
Get to know me better?
“You have to come back to Pigeon Creek, Zee. Whether we live at the Bar 9 or the Seven Cs, we have to minimize the gossip.
“The fact that a McAllister is marrying a Korhonen is going to trigger enough of a shitstorm but?—”
“We don’t have to live together!” I blurt out.
His brow furrows. For the first time, he looks angry and that’s aimed at me. “I agreed we could divorce after you gave me a child, but if you think I’m going to let that kid be raised in this town and have them be gossiped about or have them trip over the bullshit that’s associated with being our kid as well as having to deal with rumors over how our marriage worked—you’re insane.”
Weakly, I slump in the passenger seat.
I don’t argue with him because I know he’s right.
Not even death will stop the gossip in Pigeon Creek—it goes on hiatus.
Which is why I love New York City.
Anonymity FTW.
Because this is Rumorville, population 2402.
Every action comes with a consequence that will be held against you for the rest of your life.
While the prospect of motherhood terrifies the living crap out of me, he’s right to be so proactive.
Right to be concerned about protecting our child.
God help me because as unhinged as this is, I’m grateful that he’s thinking ahead.
“I can see you agree and know I’m right,” he states, tone more wooden than at any other point of our conversation since we first met today.
“Yeah,” is all I’m capable of mumbling. That’s when I remember what he said. “You’d live at the Bar 9?”
“We have more space at the Seven Cs, but if it makes you feel better being at home?—”
“No.” I ignore how I can scent his aftershave—pine and a soft musk. It’s oddly comforting because it’s the same. My nose remembers what I’d forgotten—the first time he’d shaved. These flashes of memory make me feel like I’m waking up after contracting amnesia. “I-I can’t live with Grand-mère so I’d prefer to move in with you.” Definitely time for a change of subject. “God, this place’s like a buried time capsule,” I mutter, taking in the arterial street of the town.
“Some things change.”
“Like what?”
“The Korhonens aren’t the only ones keeping it going.”
“Bull.”
“We still hire seventy-five percent of the town, sure, but the Rock Eagle Casino opened twenty minutes away from here four years ago. Whoever we don’t hire, or Our Lady of Sorrows, they have on staff.”
My brow puckers at the mention of the nearby boarding school, but I only remark, “Grand-mère told me about the casino.”
“She didn’t approve?”
“She didn’t. Her grandfather was an inveterate gambler. She also said it was on Korhonen land.”
He hums. “I choose to believe that it was reserve land. We sectioned off the northwestern acreage for the Métis?*.”
That has me blinking. “Did you have to drug Clyde to get him to agree to that?”
“No. I blinded him with science.”
I have no idea what that means and I don’t have a chance to pick his brains either as he’s reversing into a parking space outside Harold’s Baked Goods. Which is when he turns to me and tosses me the keys.
“Put these in the glove compartment for me, would you?”
Before I can tell him to do it his damn self, he jumps out of the truck.
Water splashes as he lands in a puddle, but he doesn’t grumble or grouse. Have a tantrum and stick out his boot then shout at the clouds for daring to lay rain where he was going to stand. Nah, he reminds me of the Colt I remembered by shaking his foot and closing the door.
Chill—that’s Colt.
Very little riles him.
It’d be annoying if that hadn’t always attracted me to him.
He’s the kind of man who’ll weather any storm, and for a kid raised in the chaos of loss and grief, that was something I appreciated. Then and now.
When I open the glove compartment to store the keys, a couple sheets of paper fall out.
One looks like a bill. The amount of zeroes on it makes my heart palpitate—ranching isn’t cheap.
A truck pulls up beside Colt’s and after he rounds the fender, he ambles over to it.
While he talks to the driver, I quickly glance at the other letter, eyes widening with every word.
You Korhonens are all the same. You think you can hurt people and get away with it.
Well, I’m not letting you get away with ANYTHING.
Your day of reckoning is coming, Korhonen, and I can’t wait to ruin your life like you ruined mine.
* ?People of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry. One of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples inCanada