Chapter 11
SAGE
The next day after I closed the diner, I visited Aunt Mabel at the rehab facility in the neighboring town.
“It took me ten minutes to figure out how to put the new register tape in,” I said with a sad shake of my head.
Everything at the diner seemed extra hard for me.
Keeping orders straight. Remembering drinks. Refills. To go boxes.
I was a lawyer. It shouldn’t be that hard for me, but it was.
She was using a walker, but her pace was good. She wasn’t favoring her new hip as much as the other day when I stopped in last.
“Earl says hi and misses you,” I added as I walked beside her down the hall.
She looked at me and smiled. Her gray hair was a little tousled, but still stylish as it brushed her jaw. She had on a pretty green sweatsuit and sneakers.
She was sixty-five and healthy. It was the hip and the physical therapy she needed for it that had her in here. Her motivation to get back to her full and busy life was what had her walking the halls.
“He’s a sweet man.”
“I heard from the plumber–he’s a friend of Buck Wilder’s–and it’s going to take a week for the basement to air out, since we can’t open the windows in this cold. He’ll patch the pipe to the hot water heater but thinks both it and the furnace should be replaced.”
She nodded. “Yes, Curtis called me and gave me that update. Plus, he had Vince, the HVAC guy, reach out to me with furnace options. Said it would be ten days.”
“Ten days?” I asked, wide eyed.
She grinned. “Think you can stay with Buck Wilder all that time?”
I flushed. Hard.
After he’d made me come–okay, he’d finger fucked me to orgasm–he’d cut the twine on the hay bales, then spread it for the cattle. By the time he’d dumped out a long line of it, the cattle had moseyed over and started to eat.
Then I’d driven the tractor back to the barn. He’d made dinner–a chicken dish that’d been in his slow cooker all day–then watched football sprawled on his couch in front of the fireplace.
When it was time for bed, he’d given me one of his flannels and told me it looked better on me as he adjusted his dick in his jeans.
Instead of having sex like I wanted, he’d kissed me and pulled me into his arms. Then we talked. Beneath his cozy down comforter and my head tucked against his shoulder, I couldn’t remember feeling so safe. Protected. Wanted.
When I talked about my life in New York, he heard me. And listened.
I shared about my job. My parents. How I liked yoga and hated sweet potatoes.
I learned he was twenty-five. The third youngest Wilder kid.
The one who rode a horse and a tractor before he knew how to ride a bike.
That his favorite meal was enchiladas and that he liked cinnamon toothpaste.
We talked for hours, like it was easy. Like it was natural.
Like being in Buck’s arms, in his bed, was the most natural thing in the world.
What guy would hold off on sex like this?
I was a sure thing. I’d literally begged for it in the tractor like a dick-starved hussy.
Any guy… probably any guy in the world besides Buck would have let me ride his dick in the tractor. Then left. Gotten what he wanted from me and bailed.
Buck wasn’t having sex with me because I hadn’t committed to everything he wanted. I had no doubt that he wanted sex with me, but he wanted everything else with me more. He wanted it all.
To share our thoughts and feelings. Work the land with him. Eat a meal he prepared. Savor a quiet night on the couch. Tangled together in bed.
He was showing me what our life could be if I just said yes.
He wanted me. Watched him come in the tractor. I felt him hard and thick beneath his boxers all night in bed.
Before dawn even brightened the sky, he’d brought me into town since I’d left my car the day before at Aunt Mabel’s house. There, I’d changed my clothes, then drove to the diner. Buck followed, then honked and drove off once I was inside with Joe, who arrived early to make the baked goods.
I was afraid to admit it, but I missed him. It’d been nine hours and I wanted to see him. To feel that dark, heated gaze on me. His beard on my neck. His voice murmuring good girl in my ear.
“Speaking of sweet men,” she added, cutting through my thoughts.
“Buck? Sweet?” I countered.
We made it to the end of the corridor and turned. The building was only one floor and laid out like a figure eight. We’d already done one lap and Mabel was aiming for four.
“What would you call him then?” she asked with a smile on her face.
“Frustrating,” I said automatically. I tossed up my hands. “Honest. Good looking. Bossy.”
And sweet. And cozy like a big teddy bear. The big guy was like a furnace and radiated heat.
My phone chimed from my purse, signaling a text. I pulled it out.
Shep is going to bring you to the ranch when you’re done.
I held my phone out for her to read. “See? Bossy.”
She read it, then laughed. “He’s being protective. It’s been snowing all day. My car has new tires, but it’s ten miles out to the Wilder ranch. And before you came here, when was the last time you drove?”
“A car? A few years. A tractor? Last night.” That had been fun.
My cell chimed again.
This is Shep. Buck says you’re with Mabel. Text me when you’re done and I’ll meet you out front.
“I don’t need to be picked up like I’m in middle school,” I told her.
“Shep runs the mechanic shop. Since he’s nearby, I think it’s nice that he’s going to drive you out to the ranch. That’s what family does.”
“In New York, I–”
“You’re not in New York and Buck Wilder is taking care of you. Making sure you’re safe, unlike your parents who only care about you when it suits their purpose.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but snapped it shut, because she was right. Jackson was that way, too, getting what he wanted from me–connections to my father’s legal networking and the family money.
“Want to tell me when your relationship started?”
“Relationship? With Buck?” I repeated. “I don’t know what it is between us.”
It was as if Buck had decided I was his and he’d incorporated me right into his life. His couch, his tractor, his bed. Making sure I got to the ranch safely. As if it was a given as being his instead of temporary while Mabel’s basement was fixed.
She frowned. “He hasn’t made himself clear? That’s not like the Wilder boys.”
I huffed. “Oh, he has. Very clear.” My pussy ached with emptiness because of it.
“And?”
We turned another corner. Mabel waved to someone in pink scrubs as we passed.
“Aunt Mabel, I met him two days ago.”
She stopped and looked at me. “So?”
“So? He wants… he wants…”
I couldn’t say that he wanted to put a baby in me. That he wasn’t going to fuck me until I said yes to everything with him.
“He wants you, honey,” she said with a smile.
I knew very well how much he wanted me. He couldn’t keep his hands off me.
“Jackson wants me, too.”
She looked appalled. “Jackson? Why?”
I shrugged. “No idea. He won’t stop. Says he wants me to call him. Then he says he wants his stupid bag.”
“What bag? That fancy one you brought with you?”
“Yeah, that thing cost four thousand dollars.”
Her eyes lifted to mine. Widened. “Four thou–” She laughed, shaking her head.
“He loves that thing, so when I found him with Sheryl, I took it.”
“Good for you, honey. Why would he want the bag back? I mean, he’s a big city lawyer and can afford another.”
The answer was obvious. “He’s crazy.”
“Or it’s got something in it he wants,” she offered.
“I dumped the contents into a trash can before I left town.”
“That’s where you should’ve dumped him, too,” she added. “Let’s talk about Buck Wilder instead. Besides being handsome, he’s nice, too,” she repeated, circling back after being distracted by Jackson. “He’s done amazing things with the family ranch.”
I couldn’t help but smile. “He let me drive the tractor.”
She laughed. “I bet that was fun.”
It had been. Especially what we’d done in the cab.
“I… really like him,” I admitted. “The way I feel when I’m with him is… exhilarating and normal. It just feels right. We watched football on his couch last night. Me. Watching football. But I don’t know if I can trust a man again,” I admitted.
She patted my arm. “Honey, he’s one of the good ones and if it feels right, then it probably is. You have to decide that for yourself though. He’s also not what’s-his-name. I highly doubt he’s got a four thousand dollar man purse.”
She very well knew Jackson’s name, but she didn’t want to even say it anymore, which made me grin. I wasn’t heartbroken over breaking up with Jackson. I was heartbroken at how he’d strung me along and kept me from being with the right person.
“You’re not the same person either. You’re smarter and not listening to your parents or your ex. You know what you want.”
I wanted Buck’s dick. I also wanted to watch more football and eat more slow cooker meals and see his soft smile directed my way and his arms around me as we talked in the dark.
“Do I?” I wondered.
“You told me you only went to law school because your parents expected it, not because it’s your dream. You were with a man who didn’t put you first.”
“I’m aware of all that,” I sighed.
“Then make a different life.”
“Here?”
“Why not? It’s not the place who makes a home, it’s the person.”
Was Buck my person? It felt like it, which was crazy.
“Make a life that isn’t what your parents want or what a man expects, but what you want for yourself.”
“Is that why you moved here? To escape all that?”
She gave me a soft smile. “It was a different generation. Your grandparents were a lot like your parents, knowing what was best, even when it wasn’t.
I was destined for a life as a socialite.
While your mom went to med school like your grandfather, I was supposed to be my mother’s sidekick at luncheons and charity functions. Can you imagine?”
She laughed.
“When I was nineteen, I met Uncle Chuck in the Denver airport after a week skiing with friends in Aspen. We both skipped our flights and spent two days in an airport hotel.”
She waggled her eyebrows and grinned unrepentantly.
“After that, I went back to New York, packed up my things and moved here to be with him.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” she added, smiling. “We’re very similar, you and I.”
“Me? I’m twenty-six and finally not listening to my parents any longer. I was a lawyer in New York until a couple of weeks ago. I have an apartment there. A wardrobe full of power suits, not jeans and sturdy ranch boots.”
She reached out, patted my arm. “It just took you a little longer than me, that’s all. And all of that? You walked away. You can stay away.”
“But–
“But what? Do you miss your job? Don’t think, just answer.”
“No.” My eyes widened as I admitted that. “No, I don’t.”
“Do you miss New York?”
I shook my head.
“Do you like it here? And I don’t mean serving at the Sip N’ Serv. I mean Devil’s Ditch.”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to be with Buck?”
“Yes.” I gasped and set my hand over my mouth at the surprise answer.
She didn’t reply, only winked because I answered with my heart. The one my parents or Jackson hadn’t been able to touch. Only Buck.