10. Colton
Leaving my words to sink in, I let her go and return to the driver’s side.
It’d be too easy for her to toss other insults at me, ones that revolve around how being a Korhonen didn’t keep my mum safe, or even about how I dropped her when she needed me most, but she doesn’t say anything as I get behind the wheel.
She just studies me until she turns on her heel and heads for the MacFarlanes’ front door.
Ordinarily, I’d have walked her to it, but I don’t stick around longer than to watch her make it to the porch. The second the door opens, I reverse out of there.
On the road, I veer toward the east side of town.
Since I saw Bea on the street outside Harry’s, my mind’s been racing. I had to tamp it down, though, because Zee sees more than I thought she would.
I don’t know why I didn’t expect that. She was always an astute little thing.
Maybe it comes with the turf of her chosen career, or maybe I was more obvious than I ought to have been. Either way, she picked up on my awareness of Bea and I already have a fight on my hands with Zee—I don’t need her thinking I chase anything in a fucking skirt like my pops.
Unbidden, those words from that note flicker to the forefront of my mind’s eye.
You think you can hurt people and get away with it.
I meant what I said to Hilary—poisonous words hurt everyone.
Part of the reason I threatened her with a lawsuit is I suspect her of being behind the notes I’ve been receiving in the mail lately.
She, Lydia Armstrong, and Jessica Cardinal are all at the top of my list of suspects.
Hilary because she’s a gossiping busybody. Lydia because she always believed the Korhonens were behind her daughter’s disappearance. And Jessica because she’s hated us ever since Pops refused to marry her sister when she got pregnant—both mother and child died during childbirth.
Sighing tiredly, I grab my cell when it buzzes. Spying my brother’s name on the Caller ID, I cut the call and text:
Me: I’ll be in touch later
Cole: Sure thing
Pigeon Creek’s so small that I find my way to Bea’s in less than five minutes.
As I slam the door shut, I see her standing in the window. The curtains are closed but she peeks out from the crack she made in them at the sound of my truck pulling up.
When the door opens a slither, silently, I slip inside.
“How did you get the bruise, honey?” I ask, pitching my tone softer so as not to spook her. “Has he been using you as a punching bag again?”
“N-No. I walked into a door.”
Even if I hadn’t been close to her since junior high, I’d know that was bullshit.
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not.”
Though I’m impatient, I lean against the door. When I fold my arms across my chest, she stares at the floor.
“Bea, I can’t help you if you don’t let me in.”
“It’s nothing. A-A dumb accident.”
“If Marvin’s abusing you, I need to know.”
“You’ll fire him,” she bites off, finding some of that sass I know Marvin tries to extinguish. “That’s the last thing we need. You know he won’t let me get a job. If money’s tight then it’ll add extra pressure, and I can’t cope with that right now.”
My hands ball into fists.
It goes against my grain to employ an abuser, but rationally, I’m aware she’s right—I only hired him for her sake.
“You know I can get you out?—”
“Where would I go, Colton? I’m not like your other charity cases. They come here and you hide them. Where would you send me?”
“You’re not a charity case. Neither are they. You’re in a bad situation and you’re snapping at me for wanting to get you out of it.
“Anyway, this isn’t about charity. We’ve known each other for a long time. Old friends should offer help, freely, don’t you agree?”
“I don’t need help. Just leave me alone.”
But that’s the last thing she ought to have said to me.
She looks tired. Sounds tired. Her words leach it. Everything about her speaks of an exhaustion that goes bone deep. And I get that. Too well.
The need to do something rattles through me like an earthquake.
But as is so often the case in this type of situation, my hands are tied.
Nobody could ever have warned me about how frustrating it is to feel so futile. Not after enduring a childhood shadowed by abuse. The whole point of Dove Bay Sanctuary was to take action, but sometimes, action just isn’t possible.
Patience—I never knew it was one of my virtues.
“If anyone tells him you were here, he’ll lose his shit, Colton,” she rasps when I make no comment. “I need you to go.”
I grit my teeth. “You know where I am if you decide to let me in.”
She turns her head aside, effectively dismissing me.
With a sigh that’s as tired as her, I shift away from the door and slip out.
This whole situation is a mess, but I know there’s nothing I can do to fix it. Not without her active participation. Anything I could do to help would only add pressure on a marriage that’s already toxic.
Stomping over to the truck, my temper on thin ice, I don’t immediately call Cole after I set off.
I love the idiot, but he can get on my last nerve like no one else. His infinite brand of cheerfulness isn’t something I want to face yet.
I was headed home, but instead, I stop off at our headquarters in Pigeon County because I feel like making the pain in my ass worse.
Three annoying hours later, and twenty minutes into the ride home, my mind shifts from the corporate bullshit that comes whenever I visit HQ. Instead, I focus on what I can legally do to Marvin without direct involvement, but because my hands are tied, I decide to phone Cole.
Hopefully, he’ll take away the urge I have to find my ranch hand and beat the everliving shit out of him.
“What did you do?” is my greeting.
“Colt, why do you always assume I call you with problems?”
“Because otherwise, you text.”
“Ah. It’s a generational flaw. That’s what we do. You wouldn’t understand.”
“I’m barely seven years older than you, Cole. So fuck you.”
“Mia does that very nicely.”
“Cole!” I hear my future sister-in-law yelp.
“What? You do!”
“Don’t be a jerk,” I chide.
“I’m not being a jerk. I’m being truthful.”
“I swear Mum dropped you on the head when you were a baby.”
“It’d explain a lot.”
“What do you want?”
“I don’t technically want anything.”
“Technically.” I ponder that word for about half a second. “Get it out, Cole. You’ll feel better.”
“I have no sins to confess,” he counters. “Just… You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
He clears his throat.
“Just ask him,” Mia whispers.
I roll my eyes. “If we could hurry this along, I’d appreciate it.”
“I spoke with Callan.”
“And?”
“And he said Pops left the ranch.”
A smug smile creases my jaw. “He sure did. But there’s nothing new there.”
“No,” he concedes. “Callan made it sound… different.”
Oh, was it ever.
If anything, it had been a decadently different day.
The best one of my damn life.
When that realization hits, I figure I need to work on having better days because, shit, that’s depressing.
“Callan barely leaves his room so how would he know?” I half-lie, fully aware that I haven’t shared the news with Cole. Yet. “Not that I’m complaining about Callan living in his room. It’s better than joyriding or taking drugs or playing hockey.”
He scoffs at the dig. “Just because you wish I’d taken up baseball.”
“‘Course I do. That you never got to knock a baseball out of Rogers Centre with your Louisville Slugger is a tragic waste.”
“I’m not exactly cooling my jets with the New York Stars.”
“Hockey.” I pshaw to piss him off.
He grunts. “Okay, before I have to fly home to smack some sense into you about why hockey is God’s game of choice and how my team made it to the playoffs, tell me what made Callan think Pops leaving is different this time.”
“Maybe because it’s permanent,” I admit.
“Permanent?”
“Yup.”
Even I can hear how self-satisfied I sound.
“I’m confused.”
“Doesn’t take much.”
“Screw. You.”
“Pops wanted me to do something for him.” And for the first time in thirty-two years, the balance of power shifted in my favor. “I agreed.”
“If he left the ranch?”
“No. He had to make me the head of Seven Cs Inc. before retiring from the company entirely. He’s only a shareholder now. And I tacked on an eviction notice.”
“What the hell did he want?! How did you get him to agree to any of that?”
“He didn’t want to be the Korhonen who broke the legacy.”
“Explain.”
“I warned you about the water situation last summer. He screwed us over with his mismanagement. The man knows how to manage a portfolio,” I concede, “but he can’t run a ranch to save his life. Our ratios are a mess. Too many steers for our water capacity. His solution was to get more water.”
“Make it rain,” he mocks.
“I’m sure Pops wishes he could. Instead, he and Old Bitch McAllister organized a merger.” I brace myself for the shit that’s about to hit the fan. “Susanne McAllister and I are getting married, Cole.”
“You’re what?!”
“The hell, Cole?” Mia shrieks in the background. “You scared the crap out of me!”
“Colt’s getting married to the cow who set the fire that killed Betsy!”
With one hand on the wheel, I use the other to rub my temple. “Cole, she did not set fire to the stables.”
“You can’t seriously be marrying the woman who murdered Betsy!”
“Calm down, baby,” Mia soothes my brother, but it’s futile. There’s no soothing this old hurt.
“You weren’t the only one with a heart horse in the stables, Cole,” I rumble, echoes of grief still lingering in my voice. “You know Loki died too.”
“Then how can you hitch yourself to?—”
“Because I’m telling you she had nothing to do with it.”
Before, those words had been a lie.
Today, they’re the truth.
I get why Zee’s suspicious of my turnaround. It is swift. Enough to give anyone whiplash. But her question opened the floodgates of memories I’d repressed because thinking of Loki hurt too badly.
I remember how she’d hold onto him as if he were the only thing keeping her sane…
No way she’d hurt him.
Seeing her in the lake, the vulnerability in her expression, it was like a veil had been lifted off me, one that had been fogging my brain for years. Or maybe it was simply the fact that the fire was years ago. Time’s the only thing that heals all wounds, don’t they say?
“They have the water we need, Cole. Whatever dumb vendetta the Korhonens had with the McAllisters is in the past. We’re about to unite and conquer to keep both ranches alive.”
“It’s divide and conquer.”
“Not in this case.”
“This is fucking insane and?—”
I don’t let him finish that sentence. “No, it isn’t. I’ve never been more lucid in my life. I got Pops off the ranch. This deal forced his hand. I’m now in charge of the Seven Cs. If you think I wouldn’t make a deal with the devil himself to ensure that happened, you’re the one who’s lost his mind.”
“I can’t talk to you when you’re being like this.”
“When I’m not listening to your pearls of wisdom? You hate the ranch. That’s fine, Cole. Your future’s not here. But mine is. I’ll safeguard it when no one else in our line does because that’s all it needs—one guardian—me.
“I’ll do what has to be done. Just like always.”
Disconnecting the call before we hurl insults at one another, I suck in a sharp breath and let my annoyance drain away with the exhalation.
There’s no point in blaming Cole.
It’s not his fault he was born third and I was born first.
It’s not his fault that he hates the land because all it reminds him of is how we lost our mother.
It’s not his fault he’d do anything to get away when I’d do anything to stay.
We’re different people.
With different needs and aspirations.
Still, Marvin Grantley is good for something—a distraction.
As fate would have it, he crosses my path as I park in front of the house.
Because I leave direct staff scheduling to Theo Frobisher, my ranch manager and best friend, I follow my nose and find him over by a paddock, working with one of two fillies we’re trying to gentle. One’s a bolter, the other’s a biter.
Theo should be managing his own ranch to the west of the Seven Cs, but he and his brothers don’t get along to the point where it’d be like dumping three pissed-off cougars in a sack and expecting ‘em not to kill one another. Instead, he works for me and, together with Callan, we run this place like it’s a two-bit operation—not a billion-dollar company.
That’s how my grandfather did it, my uncle Clay, and it’s how I’ll do it.
The corporate side of things, and Seven Cs Inc.’s investment portfolio, is another matter entirely—the business has exploded since Grandfather was alive—but the ranch itself is my domain.
When Theo sees me approach the corral, he ambles over, dragging his hat back and swiping a hand across his sweaty face at the same time. “You look like someone pissed in your cornflakes.”
“Only you’d dare.”
“Cole and Cody would too.” At my grunt, his brows lift and his grin fades. “Problem?”
“Marvin’s at it again.”
His scowl is immediate. “That fucker.”
I grab his arm when he makes to storm off. “Bea asked me not to get involved.”
He grits his teeth—the sound’s audible. “You. Not me. I can?—”
“No. We have to honor her wishes. She’s the one who gets the beating if we mess things up.”
“Why does she stay with him?” he growls.
“If I had an answer to that, I’d be able to convince her to leave.”
“What was it this time?”
“Black eye.”
He grips his nape. “If we can’t beat the shit out of him, what can we do?”
“I want you to give him the grody jobs. But don’t make it look like he’s being targeted,” I warn. “He’ll take out his frustrations on her.”
The flash of fire in his eyes says it all.
But I get it.
“I’ll be clever about it,” he assures me, his voice like gravel as he struggles to contain his temper.
A part of me wonders why he didn’t get with her when they were younger, but that’s a conversation we never have.
Best buds or not, he keeps that shit close to his chest.
Because both of us are feeling murderous, I tip my chin at the filly. “How’s she doing?”
“She bit me.” His grin is tight. “Twice.”
Snorting, I clap him on the shoulder. “It’s the effect you have on women.”
Though he slugs me in the arm, he comments, “Mom wants you to visit.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yup. She made you some of that cake you like.”
“Isn’t your cousin visiting from out of town?”
He groans. “Ah, hell. You see through her better than I do. Oh, that reminds me. Gillon quit.”
“Asshole. Set up some interviews?”
“On it. Everything go okay last night?”
I nod—three women had been transported to our bunkhouse under the light of the full moon. This is their safe haven. It just grates on me that it can’t be Bea’s too.
“More are coming in thick and fast.”
“The economy nosedives so they take it out on the wife,” he grinds out, ire lacing the words.
“That’s why we do this.”
“Some days, it doesn’t feel like enough.”
I wish I could argue with him, but with the lingering memory of that bruise on our friend’s face, I can’t.