Chapter 11
ELEVEN
WEST
Scheduling a Perfect Date
Winnie takes the cute directive literally. I’m salivating before I pull away from the curb. Hell, I’m kissing her before I pull away. Now that I’ve broken the habit of not touching her, keeping my hands to myself is harder than ever.
“We’re never going to get anywhere if you don’t stop,” she says breathlessly a moment later.
“I know,” I mutter, half to myself, shoving my truck into second gear far too early. The gear box crunches and my black Ranger bunny hops its way along the road.
Dressed in her super-short jumpsuit and a hoodie that nearly covers the entire outfit plus hiking boots—her practical side showing—Winnie slides down in the passenger seat.
“Hey, my driving isn’t that bad,” I protest, getting my shit under control by the time we’re halfway across town.
“It’s so bad,” she mutters, fiddling with her phone on her lap. “I’ll never be able to park my ambulance near my house ever again.”
I shoot her a hard look as she flips the phone over and over, then squeezes it. And it hits me that this conversation isn’t about my sorry-ass driving at all. Or at least, it’s not only about my driving.
“I’m sorry I broke the news about Lanie in such a shitty way.” I rub my knuckles across the back of her hand when she doesn’t respond.
Winnie shrugs. “I mean, I would have found out, anyway. How far along is she?” she asks casually.
I keep my eyes on the road, thinking of Sally staying at Coyote for the next few nights and how much Winnie and her daughter share between themselves. My jaw locks. I force the words out as gently as I can.
“Four months, if I haven’t screwed that up.” I count back in my head. I think that’s right.
Winnie doesn’t move. Hell, I don’t think she breathes.
“I’m sorry, Winnie—”
“I spoke to her, just days ago,” she interrupts me. “We talked about inane shit. What she’s doing at Coyote. Why she can’t come back to see me. Her research, the university’s expectations. The wolves and their new pups. Ha. All the reasons.”
I choke the steering wheel on her behalf. Yeah, Cord gave me the same spiel about why I didn’t get leave for my own project to Haiti. I found a way to go anyway. All it cost me was my place on the land I loved as much as the man, but, hey, I built a bridge. Whaddya know.
“Where are we going?” Winnie looks over at me curiously, and I wonder how long I’ve been lost in my own head.
I push my crap away, focusing on the curly-haired woman I’ve been obsessed with for far too long, and drop a hand to the gear shift, though I don’t reach for her. I figure she’s had enough of me clinging to her body for the past hours—is that all it’s been? Fuck.
“Bilkhorn. It’s a… town. Up north.” I shoot her a glance. She seems okay now that we’ve changed topics. I don’t want to drag her back into the emotional quagmire of abandonment we’re both feeling right now. “Have you heard of it?”
Winnie shakes her head and settles back, tossing her phone onto the dash, out of reach as it buzzes. She doesn’t grab for it immediately. “Nope.”
“All right. I’m gonna stop for coffee, then you can get some shut-eye, okay?”
She slaps at my arm. “You just had coffee. Wasn’t mine good enough?”
I bark a laugh. “I’ll drink whatever you put in front of me, including poison.” I catch her hand midslap this time and pull her close enough to kiss her knuckles without taking my eyes off the road. “The coffee and nap are for you.”
She huffs but doesn’t object. “Are you going to be okay for a long haul, cowboy?”
I smirk at her acceptance of the date I’ve proposed without giving her a single detail. “You need a teddy bear, sister, I’m right here.”
Winnie fusses as I get her coffee from a drive-through, ordering herself the biggest frappe she can get her hands on with as many shots of cold-pressed coffee as the shop allows.
As we pull away, she edges closer, letting her thigh rest against mine across the bench seat. I revel in the sensation of her bare skin against the borrowed jeans I tucked my ass into, even though they’re a bit tight.
“Better?” I sling an arm across her shoulder.
She nods, settling into my side. “Only because I’m going to burn those damn shorts later.”
“Whatever makes you happy, Rand.”
“You’re the one wearing his jeans.”
For once, the burn doesn’t sting, not so long as my girl is tucked into my side. She’s fed and warm and sleepy as the road opens out before us and my tires eat the miles to come.
“Bilkhorn is a… ghost town?” Winnie slides down from my truck, staring around at the row of buildings on the side of the rise and the overgrown street that once ran between them.
The concept of a tumbleweed isn’t out of place here. I’m half-tempted to give her a soundtrack to match, but she’s stunned into mostly silence as I park my truck after the gate I unlocked earlier. I figure that’s the sort of reaction I was aiming for.
I don’t bother locking my truck. It’s not like there’s anyone else out here to steal it, which is part of the reason I chose the area for our date. That, and one other.
“Good pick on the shoes, Rand. We’re walking from here.”
Winnie nods, still enamored with the view of the ancient-looking houses with their flat facades. The part of the town we can see right now is guided by a gentle, rolling hill. The remaining structures that once formed the main street arc over the rise, forming a rigid skyline.
Beyond that is what I want her to see. After our tour.
“This is so pretty. And peaceful,” Winnie whispers, treading through the scrubby grass and low-lying shrubs that have reclaimed the original roads and pathways. “When was it abandoned?”
“1919. Early on. This area gets a lot of rainfall.” I slide an arm around her waist, pleased when she doesn’t object, and lead her toward the buildings.
We take our time, and my voice is low, though the wind carries it between the structures as we climb.
“But it’s cold as hell overnight regardless of the month, and winter is brutal.
The conditions and the war might have had something to do with driving the local population to other towns once the silver deposits ran out. ”
Winnie glances up at the gray skies overhead. “As long as it doesn’t rain on us,” she mutters, pulling her hood up.
I laugh. “We should be good. I checked,” I promise her.
“This was a general store that also doubled as a mailroom. The bank was over there, but it burned down, I think. And that was the jail.” I turn around in the middle of the street, holding her hand.
“The saloon was… that one.” I point to a two-story building with a flat front. “The hotel was above.”
She wiggles her nose. “Brothel?”
I shrug. “Probably. Sex workers are part of history, after all.”
Winnie slides back beside me, lacing her fingers tighter through mine.
“Church.” She points to a half building with a telltale steeple a moment later as we emerge through the other end of the main street and find evidence of a crossroads beyond.
Beside the church sits a small graveyard. Winnie tugs on my hand.
“This is your thing?”
“Yep.”
I let her lead me through the overgrown graves, standing back as she tugs weeds away from both stone and wooden markers. Most of the scratched names and dates are unreadable or close to that condition. Winnie sits back after a moment, frowning.
“You wanted to know the names, huh?” I squat next to her, stroking her back.
She shrugs. “I want to know who lived here. Who they were.” She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Warmth slams my chest. “It does. I’ll find out for you.”
She utters a harsh laugh, standing and brushing random bits of overgrowth from her legs. “Are we adding cataloguing and historian to your innumerable talents?”
Her skin is soft and warm beneath mine when I press my lips to her temple. “Only if I can add taphophile to yours.”
“Touché, Mister Cowboy.” She sends me an amused glance and looks down the hill on the other side of the town at a cluster of small cabins. “This is where they lived.”
I point out four small buildings together. “Parents, grandparents, unlived in, and newlyweds.”
Winnie freezes as the penny drops for her. “That’s awfully specific information.”
I hold out my hand and turn toward a patch of trees that head along the foothills of a small rise, away from the town. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
But Winnie has planted her feet. “Wilder West. Are we supposed to be here?”
My fingers wiggle in offering. “Define ‘supposed to’?”
She glares. “West…”
Dammit. I swivel back to face her. “I have permission from the owner.”
Her eyes narrow. “And the owner is…?”
“The land is privately held.”
“West!”
My name rings across the empty landscape.
I sigh. “Rand gave me permission a long time ago, Winnie. We’re fine.”
Her eyes blaze at me. Shit.
Winnie stamps a foot. “Why didn’t I know my brother owned a ghost town? Wait.” She turns in a circle, staring back at the town, then longingly at the cemetery we’ve just vacated like she’s not allowed to be there anymore. “Why does Cord own a ghost town?”
Why does your brother do any of the things he does?
I give her the corporate-safe answer. “He purchased the land about eight years ago on a Rand-style whim when there was a chance that the silver deposits weren’t as dry as was previously thought. When he worked out that they were, he asked me to catalog the history of the town.”
She frowns. “But never show it.”
I nod. “Hence the locked gate. He wants to preserve the history for as long as possible until he works out what to do with it. His headspace has been…”
Not great doesn’t come close to describing the last decade living with her brother’s fascinating quirks.
“Depressive, manic, and narcissistic.” Winnie runs through the negatives faster than I get there.
“Yes,” I say cautiously. “But he’s also intelligent, compassionate—when his head is out of his ass—and generous to a fault.”
She snorts. “It’s easy to be generous when you have the world at your feet.”
I catch her chin in a firm grip between my thumb and forefinger. “Your brother would give that world up to show you and your daughter that he loves you. Money doesn’t mean a thing to him, Winnie. It’s taken life from him, more than given him anything.”
Winnie stares up at me, her lips parting. “I thought he just kicked you out after you’ve given him years of your life. Why are you defending him?” she whispers, her eyes that match his searching my face.
Her lips are soft beneath mine when I kiss her. “Because I walked away. He didn’t kick me out. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression.” Communication is a two-way door. It hasn’t always been my best trait, either.
Winnie folds her arms in a single-person hug around herself, barring me from her. “If you’d told me all that, I probably wouldn’t have come out here,” she mutters, staring at the ground as the first raindrop spatters the dirt near my feet.
“I know.” I stare up at the sky. “Winnie?”
“Yeah?”
“I lied.”