8. Dangerous Territory
Chapter eight
Dangerous Territory
Laney
The problem with Beckett Wilder is that he keeps getting harder to dislike.
I've been managing this ranch for four years and in that time I have developed a very reliable system for dealing with difficult people.
You identify what they want, you figure out what the ranch needs, you find the overlap, then work from there.
It's practical, it works, it has never once required me to think about anyone's forearms or the way they look in a saddle or the completely unreasonable thing that happens to their face when they smile.
The system is failing me.
It's been three weeks since Beckett and Maisie arrived at Silver Mesa and the evidence against my original assessment is mounting in a way that is becoming difficult to ignore. He shows up before sunrise every morning without fail. He does what he's asked without complaint.
He asks better questions every day, makes fewer mistakes every week, and the ones he does make he fixes without being told twice.
He moved Maisie into the ranch house and made it a home.
He offered me a cabin without making it about himself.
He stood in a round pen yesterday, got bucked around by a canter, stayed on through sheer stubbornness, then thanked me afterward like I'd done him a favor instead of spent an hour trying not to laugh at him.
I am having a problem.
I sit on the cabin two porch with my morning coffee and look out at the ranch in the early light.
Then I try to have an honest conversation with myself about it.
The cabin is quiet, clean, with a porch view I've been walking past for four years without ever properly sitting down to appreciate.
Beckett was right about that, which is also annoying.
I moved in three days ago.
I told myself it was practical. The cabin is bigger than my bunk.
It has its own bathroom, a real kitchen, a porch, considerably more square footage than anything I've had to myself in four years of ranch living.
Those are all practical reasons that have nothing to do with the fact that Beckett Wilder noticed I deserved better before I noticed it myself.
Remy knocked on my cabin door the first morning with a coffee and a grin and said absolutely nothing, which was the most eloquent thing he's ever communicated.
Silas said, "Good," and went back to work.
I drank my coffee, stared at my own four walls, felt something uncomfortably close to grateful.
The attraction has been there since the beginning, if I'm being completely honest, which I'm only willing to be at six in the morning on my own porch when nobody can hear me.
It was inconvenient from day one. The bone structure. The forearms. The way he talks to Maisie like she's a real person whose ideas are actually worth listening to. The way he wrote, ask before optimizing, in the margin of his spreadsheet and actually meant it.
The way he looked at me across a bar while another woman had his attention and made me feel like I was the only person in the room anyway.
That's the dangerous part.
Not the attraction. I can manage attraction. I've managed it for three weeks and I'll keep managing it.
The dangerous part is that I'm starting to like him.
Actually like him.
And that is a problem of a completely different size.
The clock hits eleven and Weston Blackthorn shows up.
He doesn't call ahead because Weston never calls ahead.
Calling ahead would imply that other people's schedules matter.
Which is a concept Weston has engaged with approximately never in the forty years he's been on this earth.
He just appears, the way wealthy men with too much confidence tend to appear, like the world has been expecting him all along and is simply slow to acknowledge it.
His truck is newer than mine, cleaner than mine, with the kind of shine that says it has never once been driven through mud on purpose.
He parks it in front of the main barn with the casual authority of a man who has parked wherever he wanted his entire life and climbs out in pressed jeans and a shirt that fits extremely well and a hat that has never seen a hard day's work.
I know all of this because I've known Weston Blackthorn for six years.
He runs Blackthorn Ranch, twelve hundred acres on the other side of Silver Ridge. Inherited from his father, expanded through aggressive land acquisition, managed by a team of people who are very good at their jobs so Weston doesn't have to be.
He's smart enough to know what he doesn't know and wealthy enough not to care. He's also, objectively speaking, a very good looking man who is completely aware of that fact, which cancels out approximately half the benefit.
He spots me crossing the yard and his face arranges itself into that easy confident smile.
"Laney Jenkins," he says, like my name is something he enjoys saying.
"Weston." I keep walking. "What do you need?"
He falls into step beside me without being invited. "Heard Silver Mesa changed hands. Thought I'd come introduce myself to the new neighbor." He glances around the property with the assessing eye of a man pricing things. "Place looks good."
"It is good."
"New owner settling in alright?"
"Fine."
He looks at me sideways. "That's a short answer."
"It's a complete answer."
He grins. Weston finds my efficiency charming, which I find irritating, which he also finds charming. It's an exhausting cycle. "I also came to see you," he says. "Thought maybe you'd want to grab dinner in town this week. Catch up."
"We don't have anything to catch up on, Weston."
"Sure we do. It's been a while."
"It's been two months."
"Like I said." He tips his hat slightly. "A while."
I stop at the fence line and turn to face him with the direct expression I use when I need a conversation to end. He meets it with that same easy smile, unbothered, comfortable in his own skin in the way that men who've never had to fight for anything tend to be.
That's when I hear Beckett behind me.
He comes around the side of the barn with his work gloves on, a fence tool in one hand, moving with the unhurried purposeful stride he's developed over the past few weeks.
He's filled out in the shoulders slightly from the ranch work.
His skin is starting to carry some color from the Texas sun, and his hat sits differently than it did on day one.
He looks like he belongs here.
That thought moves through me fast before I can catch it.
Beckett sees Weston and his stride doesn't break but something shifts. Something subtle, around the jaw, behind the eyes. I clock that immediately because I've been paying extremely close attention to Beckett Wilder's face for three weeks, and I know its geography better than I should.
"Didn't know we had company," he says. Calm, easy, directed at me.
Weston turns and sizes him up with a smile that has a competitive edge underneath it. "Weston Blackthorn. Blackthorn Ranch."
Beckett pulls his glove off and shakes his hand. "Beckett Wilder."
"Good spread you've got here," Weston says. "Laney's done a hell of a job with it."
"Yeah," Beckett says, looking at me. "She has."
The space between the three of us does something complicated.
Weston notices. His smile gets slightly wider, which means he's filed something away.
I look at my fence line and think that this day just got considerably more interesting than I needed it to be.
Weston stays for an hour.
It feels longer.
He's perfectly pleasant about it, which somehow manages to be the most irritating version of Weston available. He talks cattle prices with Beckett with the easy confidence of a man who knows his subject.
He asks reasonable questions about the Silver Mesa operation, compliments the horse barn twice. He's on his best behavior and I know exactly why because I've known Weston long enough to recognize when he's performing for an audience.
The audience is Beckett.
The performance is for me.
I busy myself with the fence line check I was already doing and let the conversation happen around me. Then I try very hard to look like a woman who is completely unbothered by any of this.
Remy appears from somewhere, reads the situation in approximately four seconds, manufactures a reason to be nearby that fools nobody.
Silas doesn't bother manufacturing a reason. He just leans on the fence twenty feet away and watches with the quiet attention of a man at a chess match.
Weston finds his moment about forty minutes in.
He waits until Beckett is momentarily distracted by something Remy says. He turns to me with that easy smile dialed up slightly, and says low enough that it's directed at me specifically, "Dinner Friday, Laney. Come on. For old times sake."
"There are no old times, Weston."
"There could be new times."
"Still no."
He leans on the fence rail beside me, close enough to make a point, not close enough to be inappropriate. "You've been out here managing someone else's ranch for four years. Don't you ever want something that's just yours?"
It's a calculated thing to say and we both know it. Weston didn't get where he is by being unobservant. He's noticed something in the last forty minutes and he's poking at it deliberately to see what moves.
I keep my eyes on the fence line. "I'm good, Weston. Thanks."
That's when Maisie comes flying around the corner of the barn at full speed with Rowdy on her heels and a picture frame clutched in both hands like she's carrying something fragile and extremely important.
She skids to a stop when she sees Weston.
Looks at him. Looks at me. Looks at Beckett. Reads the room with the uncanny accuracy she always has and decides none of whatever this is, concerns her right now.
"Laney," she says breathlessly. "The picture we hung above the fireplace is crooked. I tried to fix it and now it's more crooked. Can you come look at it?"
Weston glances between us with fresh interest.
"In a minute, bud," I say.
"It's pretty crooked," she says seriously.
"Two minutes."