16. Bishop
bishop
. . .
I walked through the door of the Hayes household five minutes before seven, hoping it might earn me some brownie points if I was early to dinner. I would’ve been here sooner, but I was too busy overthinking and wearing a hole in the carpet of my living room as I paced back and forth.
The interaction with Lennox earlier had taken up space permanently in my brain.
Guilt had gnawed at my conscience since I watched her ride away.
I forced myself to watch until she was nothing more than a little dot in the distance, leaving Titan and me standing in my yard wondering what the fuck had just happened.
The prospect of seeing her tonight had me reaching for my phone a thousand times, ready to tell Doug and Ruby how sorry I was that I couldn’t come to dinner because I was a coward.
Lennox’s disappointment was heavy. It weighed on my shoulders and twisted my stomach into knots.
I didn’t realize how much her anger would eat me up.
This was different than the other times we’d bickered because there was true hurt behind both of our words.
We both ached for something we couldn’t have, but I was terrified to risk what I already had.
This job was a sure thing, and before I complicated things with Lennox, I hadn’t ever had to worry about it before.
She didn’t understand that, and I didn’t hold it against her.
I was grateful she’d never had to make the choice.
I sucked in a breath, relishing the scent of freshly baked bread and whatever pumpkin-spiced candle Ruby had burning throughout the house. Doug’s surprisingly hearty laughter filtered through the air, and the tension in my muscles lessened slightly.
But not nearly enough.
The past week had been a mixture of worrying about how he was doing and when he’d be back home.
I think Ruby had gotten sick of me texting her every day for an update, but she sent them anyway—even if one was just a picture of Doug flipping off the camera with a message that said, “Get back to work.”
“Will you stop fussing over me?” he asked. I rounded the corner, watching him bat away Cleo’s hand as she tried to fill his cup with water. “I’m not completely useless, you know.”
“Oh, I know, Daddy,” she said, holding the pitcher of water out of his reach. “I’ll tell you what… If you can get it from me, I’ll let you fill it yourself.”
His eyes darted between his daughter and the jug, clearly trying to decide whether this was a battle he could win. “Fine.”
“That’s what I thought.” She looked up and found me staring, waving me inside. “Look, Bishop’s here. Maybe the two of you can see who is grumpier.”
“I’ve got him beat,” Doug grumbled.
I shook my head, forcing a laugh over the lump forming in my throat. “I dunno. I’ve been told I’m pretty unmanageable at times.”
Doug said something sarcastic, still fussing over something Cleo had done, but I’d stopped listening and turned away at the sound of approaching footsteps .
Lennox rounded the corner with two plates of fresh bread in her hands.
Her hair was up in a twist, the bright red clip standing out against her silvery blonde strands.
She’d changed into an old Wrangler t-shirt that nearly hid the little black shorts she had on beneath, leaving her long, tanned legs on display.
It reminded me of the way my own shirt had dwarfed her body, how I’d had to fight myself from getting hard at the thought of slowly lifting it to find her perfect pussy bared to me beneath the fabric.
Get it the fuck together, Bishop. You can’t be foaming at the mouth over her at dinner.
My head knew that, of course, but my dick? Not exactly. And that didn’t take into consideration the pathetic thump of my heart hiding in my chest.
Despite my insistence on keeping things between Lennox Hayes and me professional, I was failing miserably.
I spent nearly every waking moment over the past few months thinking about her in some capacity.
It started as a fantasy, a way for my mind to safely explore the boundaries of what could’ve happened that night without crossing any lines.
For a while, I was okay with knowing that was all it’d ever be.
But as time marched on, that changed. I watched the witty, sarcastic banter we had turn to something full of anger and pain.
We were alike in so many ways, both of us building up our walls and using words as a weapon to keep others away.
She’d proved time and again that hers were sharper than I ever imagined.
The worst part was knowing I had no one to blame but myself.
She wanted to know why I’d stayed away all week? Without Doug on the ranch as a reminder of who she was, it would’ve been too damn easy to give in. I was weak for her. I didn’t know how much longer I could stop myself from acting on the things I wanted.
Lennox Hayes was a goddamn lightning strike to my heart.
She’d cracked the wall I’d carefully erected, letting in dangerous ideations that threatened to send me to my knees.
I didn’t know what she saw in me. A woman like her may have thought she wanted a grumpy old man to show her a good time, but that was all it’d ever be.
A good time.
A one-night stand. A fling. A single, reckless moment that would become a fun anecdote she’d tell her friends about down the road.
But for me, it was sickeningly different.
It’d become obvious after our first kiss that she would turn my world upside down.
That was why I needed to keep my distance.
If I had to act like an outright dickhead to do it, to protect myself from her unintentional destruction, then I was willing to do that.
It’d killed me to ignore her, but she deserved more than an emotionally stunted forty-year-old man who’d never been in a relationship.
Her eyes flicked to meet my own, as if she could feel me staring.
They lingered, and for a moment, I swore I stopped breathing.
It was like I’d forgotten how to perform essential bodily functions.
My chest grew tight as I tried to suck in a lungful of air, suspended in this awkward tension hanging between us.
A loud clattering from the kitchen broke the connection, and we both looked away. I blew out a sharp breath, running my hand along the back of my neck in hopes of releasing my tightly coiled muscles to no fucking avail.
“You just gonna stand there all night?” Doug asked, gesturing my way. “Go get your dinner and sit down. I’m starving. You won’t believe the swill they serve at the hospital. It’s disgusting. I can’t believe they give that to sick people.”
Ruby came around and laid a hand on her husband’s shoulder, patting it lightly. “You just didn’t like it because it was healthy,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I ate it all week with no complaints. ”
“What if that was the last thing I’d ever eaten, Rubes? Serving that to people who’re on their deathbed should be illegal.”
Josie walked out with two bowls of steaming soup, setting one in front of her father and the other on her own placemat. “It’s a good thing you weren’t dying then, isn’t it?”
“But I could’ve,” he argued. “And then you all would feel bad about denying me one last meal before I died.”
Lincoln chuckled, pulling out Josie’s seat before dropping into his own.
“Doug, sometimes I wonder where your girls got their sass from. Then you go and open your mouth, and it hits me.” He reached forward and plucked a steaming piece of bread from the plate, pointing it toward the head of the table. “They’re just like you.”
At Lincoln’s words, a knowing smirk crossed Doug’s lips. “And that’s the best compliment you’ve ever given me, son.”
I slunk away into the kitchen, avoiding any more of the conversation in favor of grabbing my own meal. It was silly and stupid, but there was something about Doug and Lincoln’s easy-going relationship that made me nervous.
Doug and I had always worked as a team. The work was more manageable when we split the load.
Sometimes, I needed an extra hand on roundups or branding, and he’d pitch in.
Other times, he’d need help with his training clinics and I’d tag along—which was few and far between, seeing as I didn’t really have the temperament to handle idiots with kid gloves.
Since Lincoln had started at the ranch, he and Doug had been spending more and more time together. We all worked great together, but sometimes I felt like a third wheel when they got to talking, so I’d make up some excuse and let them do their thing. He was family, and I was… what?
How long would it be until they realized they didn’t need me at all?
It’d crossed my mind on more than one occasion that maybe I’d been a placeholder all this time for Doug’s eventual son-in-law. Black Springs Ranch had been in the Hayes family for damn near a century, so why would he let someone who didn’t belong run the place?
That’s what I desperately wanted Lennox to understand.
If something went tits up with us, I was the one who would lose absolutely everything.
I had nothing and no one outside of this ranch, while she would still have the full support of every single person in this house.
Doug would fire me, kicking me out of the only home I’d ever known.
And maybe worst of all? I would lose her .
As I rounded the corner, I found Lennox standing at the kitchen sink.
She was staring out the window toward the barn, her fingers tapping gently against the porcelain fixture.
Her eyes had a faraway look, like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders, but I clocked the tension in her body the moment she was in my line of sight.
I did that. I pushed her away and told all the same lies I told myself as a reminder not to cross the line. All I wanted to do was to walk over and tell her how sorry I was, how much of a fucking idiot I’d been, and hoped she would forgive me.