3. Gianna
— ? —
Gianna
I was standing in the kitchen when Orion finally came home that evening. The sunset was painting the ranch outside in shades of orange and gold, beautiful and completely irrelevant, while my husband stood in the doorway. He’d just come in from the pastures.
He was still in his work clothes. Dusty boots, worn jeans slung low on his hips, a sweat-damp henley that clung to his chest in ways that should have been illegal.
His Stetson was in his hand, his dark hair mussed beneath it, and there was a smudge of dirt on his jaw that somehow made him look more attractive.
My husband. Looking at me like he was trying to figure out what kind of mood I was in.
“Sarah reached out to Demi,” he said, moving toward the sink to wash his hands. “She starts Monday. We already sent her the money she needed to relocate. She’s flying tonight.”
I watched the muscles in his forearms flex as he scrubbed ranch dirt from his knuckles. “That fast?”
“She was available. We had an opening. No point in dragging it out.” He dried his hands on a towel and turned to face me, leaning back against the counter. “You’re the one who wanted this, remember?”
“I remember.”
“So why do you look like you’re already regretting it?”
Because I was. The moment the words had left my mouth this morning, the moment Orion had agreed, I’d felt the wrongness of it settle into my bones. But it was too late now. The offer had been made. Demi had accepted.
“I just want to make sure we have ground rules,” I said. “Clear boundaries.”
Orion’s eyebrows rose slightly. “I told you. Strictly professional.”
“I know what you said. But I want specifics.” I moved around the kitchen island, putting myself in his line of sight, forcing him to look at me.
“No after-work socializing. No drinks, no dinners, no late nights in your office. If you’re going to be spending time with my sister, I want to know about it. ”
“Gianna.” His voice was patient, but there was an edge to it now. “This was your idea.”
“I know it was my idea. That doesn’t mean I trust her.”
“Then why did you…”
“Because she’s my sister!” The words came out louder than I intended, echoing off the kitchen’s high ceilings. “Because I’m tired of her hating me. Because I thought maybe, maybe, if I gave her something, she’d finally see that I’m not her enemy.”
Orion was quiet for a moment, studying me with those dark eyes that saw too much.
“You want her to love you,” he said finally. “And you think a job is going to do that.”
“I think it’s worth trying.”
“Even though it means putting her in my office. In my life. In our life.”
“You said you’d keep it professional.”
“I will.” He pushed off from the counter and crossed to me, his boots heavy on the hardwood.
When he reached me, he put his hands on my shoulders, his palms warm and rough.
“Nothing inappropriate. Nothing that makes you uncomfortable. I’ll treat her like any other employee.
Probably worse, actually, because I’ll be going out of my way to keep my distance. You have my word.”
“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay.”
He kissed my forehead, a gentle kiss, almost tender, so different from his usual distracted gestures, and I let myself lean into it. Let myself hope that maybe I was overreacting. That maybe Demi would surprise me, would take this opportunity and grow from it instead of using it as a weapon.
Then Orion’s phone buzzed, and he pulled away to check it, and the moment was over.
“I have some calls to make,” he said, already moving toward his study. “Don’t wait up.”
I watched him go, his boots echoing through the house, his attention already somewhere else.
This is just work, he’d said.
That’s all it’s ever going to be.
***
I tried to keep myself busy Monday evening. Always convincing myself that this was the evening I’d finally find something to keep me busy.
I made tea. I reviewed the nursery checklist. The room was nearly done now, painted a soft sage green with a mural of horses running across one wall.
I texted Daisy about nothing in particular just to feel connected to someone.
I walked out onto the back porch and watched the sunset paint the pastures in shades of gold, watched the cattle moving like slow shadows in the distance.
At 9 o’clock, I gave up on distraction and texted Orion: Coming to bed soon?
His reply came five minutes later: Working late. Don’t wait up.
I threw my phone onto the couch cushion with more force than necessary.
Don’t wait up. Don’t wait up. Don’t wait up.
If I heard those words one more time, I was going to scream.
I was pacing the great room, too restless to sit, when my phone buzzed with an Instagram notification. Daisy had tagged me in some meme about pregnancy cravings. Harmless, dumb, exactly the kind of thing I needed right now.
But when I opened the app, my thumb moved automatically to the stories at the top of the screen.
And there, in the little circle next to accounts I followed, was Demi’s face.
I shouldn’t have tapped it. I knew, even as my finger moved toward the screen, that nothing good waited on the other side. Demi’s stories were always carefully curated performances. The right angle, the right filter, the right caption to make her life look effortlessly glamorous.
I tapped anyway.
The image filled my screen.
A window. A view I recognized intimately.
The Austin skyline at night, the Frost Bank Tower lit up against the darkness, the Capitol dome glowing in the distance.
The view from Orion’s office at the Cliff headquarters downtown.
The view I’d stood in front of a hundred times, feeling small in the face of all that glass and ambition.
On the desk in the foreground, his desk, the one made of reclaimed barn wood from the original Barnes family homestead, sat two glasses of bourbon. Amber liquid catching the city lights. Ice cubes slowly melting.
The caption: Late nights building empires ???
I stared at the screen until my vision blurred.
Two glasses.
No after-work socializing, I’d said. No drinks.
You have my word, he’d said.
And here was Demi, in his office, drinking bourbon and posting about it like she wanted me to see. Like she was planting a flag. Staking a claim.
This was my idea. I was the one who’d asked Orion to hire her. I was the one who’d thought this could fix things between us.
The baby kicked, hard, and I pressed my hand to my stomach without looking away from the screen.
He promised, I thought. He gave me his word.
But Demi’s story glowed in front of me, bright and undeniable, and I felt the first crack form in everything I’d been trying to believe.