Chapter Seventeen
Marietta, Montana
The gray winter day was turning dark, and no matter where they’d gone over the course of the day, neither one of them had spotted a tail.
Sam glanced at Nate as she sat at a stoplight. She couldn’t quite read his expression. Whatever he was thinking or feeling was carefully schooled away. But she could feel his alertness. The way he looked for any potential sign of someone taking any undue interest.
But it was getting dark. Sam was hungry. And bored. “Maybe we should just head back to the office. I don’t think we’re catching that tail today.”
“Maybe the bad roads kept him indoors,” Nate said, tapping his fingers on his bad leg. “If he’s not from Montana, maybe he doesn’t know how to drive in a little snow.”
Sam considered him, then returned her focus to the road when the light turned green. “Maybe the hulking guy in the passenger seat had something to do with it.”
“Hulking,” he scoffed.
“You’re not tiny, Nate. And the fact of the matter is, I am. And if a guy doesn’t know me, he might take me for an easy mark. Alone. But not with you in the passenger seat.”
“If that’s a suggestion you should drive around alone trying to entice a stalker, I’m going to have to ask what sort of brain injury you’ve suffered recently.”
She couldn’t glare at him since she was focused on the road, but she scowled.
“And I swear to God, Sam, if you say you can take care of yourself I’m going to…”
“You’re going to what exactly?” she asked sharply when he trailed off.
“Hell, I don’t know. Have an aneurism?”
She laughed in spite of herself. She didn’t want to be amused when he was being …
well, not high-handed exactly. She couldn’t even call it overprotective.
In fact, if she really sat with this feeling and was honest with herself about it, she was just …
uncomfortable. She didn’t know what to do with someone actually worrying about her. Especially the way Nate did it.
Like it was just par for the course. A normal thing to do. Not something she had to … earn or pay for.
“Let’s put it this way,” Nate said after a heavy silence.
“I know you can take care of yourself. It’s, in fact, one of the many things I admire about you.
But one of those other things is that you’re smart.
So, you know it’s a bad idea to try to entice this guy we don’t have enough information on when you’re alone. ”
She did know that, unfortunately. What she didn’t know was how to weather compliments. And things like admire. It made her feel like she was in some sort of horrible spotlight. And Nate only saw the good things right now, but eventually…
But this wasn’t about their relationship. It was about a case, more or less. Multiple cases, really.
“You’re right. Let’s head back to the office,” Nate said, shifting in his seat.
It was the kind of shift that made her think maybe his leg was bothering him.
“Make sure your friend didn’t try to break in or anything again. Then we’ll take my truck up to the ranch. Talk to Cal and bring Landon and Aly into the loop. Hayes gave us an idea of what he talked to Glenda about and why. I think that should be a … everyone should know.”
“And what about Cal’s belief we should get rid of Bo?”
Nate sighed. “Look, he’s not wrong that Glenda has been historically on our side and helpful to us.
I think we have to consider her warning at face value, but it’s also the same cryptic bullshit.
So, we need more information. Maybe if we talk to Aly about it, she can talk to Jill.
I just think … we have to lay out all the cards, don’t we? ”
Sam fully agreed. She’d been pushing for that for a while now.
The Bennet players weren’t used to laying the cards out.
Except Nate. Maybe that was why she felt …
resistant. She didn’t like witnessing the way Cal and Landon sometimes formed a kind of team against him.
She knew they weren’t aware that was what they were doing, but they’d fully grown up in the Bennet …
culture was the only word she could think of.
Sure, they were trying to deprogram themselves from the Benjamin Bennet of it all, but whenever Nate suggested something they didn’t like, they looked at him like he was an outsider instead of their brother.
Sam was very aware her feelings on that were … personal and therefore probably shouldn’t factor into their decisions. If he wanted to beat his stubborn Bennet head against theirs, it was his prerogative.
She just hated watching the little pieces of himself that got chipped off along the way. Especially if his leg was bothering him.
And especially when Sam herself couldn’t fully jump on Cal and Nate’s interpretation of what Glenda had said. Not that she’d fully worked out her interpretation. She was still … figuring it out.
She pulled into the Honor’s Edge parking lot, parked next to his truck. She didn’t get out right away.
She sat there for a minute trying to find the right words. “I don’t think Cal’s going to appreciate us deciding to lay out the cards without his input.”
“No, he’s not. But I’m a big boy, Sam. I can handle Cal being pissed at me if that’s what you’re worried about. It’s not going to torpedo whatever … progress we’ve made to be a family again.”
He said that very pointedly. Pointedly enough Sam wasn’t about to touch it. Because she thought for all Nate’s usual amount of reason, he had too much optimism when it came to people.
“Besides, Cal’s just pissed in general,” Nate continued. “And he will be, for a while yet.”
She looked at him since she was parked now. “You say that with such confidence.”
“I’ve seen my share of PTSD.”
She finally voiced something she’d thought a lot about over the past few months. She figured sleeping together gave her some kind of … right to ask.
Maybe. “Seen it or experienced it?”
He met her gaze. Didn’t answer right away. She couldn’t tell if he was thinking through some sort of superficial, pat answer, or just considering the question.
“Mostly seen,” he said after the pause. “There was a bad spell when I was in the hospital for my leg. Maybe that even worked in my favor. I had a safe space to work through all that while my leg was healing. A nightmare still pops up every now and again. Haven’t had much of a flashback since Tennessee.
Mostly, I dealt with what I saw, what happened to me.
Cal hasn’t. And there’s no guarantee he will or that dealing will lead to some …
healthy acceptance. If there is healthy acceptance of any of this. ”
“Are you worried that he just … won’t ever get better?”
“Sometimes. There’s no … rhyme or reason for these things. It’s like any other disease. Some people suffer. Some people don’t. Luck of the shitty draw, I guess. But he’s taking the right steps, mostly, and that’s all he can do.”
“I guess that’s all anybody could do,” Sam muttered, more to herself than him.
Which meant, as much as she didn’t want to admit it, he was right. They should head up to the ranch, lay out all the cards. See what kind of hand they could come up with. Together. Even if there was friction. Even if things got sticky.
Maybe life was just damn sticky.
“Text Aly we’re coming. God knows she’ll want to make food for us.”
*
Nate texted Aly while Sam checked her security footage, just to make sure no one had been poking around. Nate warmed up his truck and waited for her, studying the snowy landscape around them.
Maybe she wasn’t totally off, that him by her side all day might have dissuaded someone following her from doing so.
But he also thought if Hayes didn’t know the guy, hadn’t yet been able to ID him, it was more than a little likely the guy wasn’t from around here.
Didn’t know how to navigate a Montana winter.
And Nate wasn’t about to let her find out if her theory was correct, because as long as someone who was mixed up with his dad’s lawyer was trying to break into Sam’s place and following her around, he wasn’t letting her out of his sight.
She wouldn’t like it. Maybe she shouldn’t like it. But he didn’t know how to … not. And as much as last night might have changed things, that wasn’t one of them. He’d have made that determination lines crossed or not.
Sam opened the passenger door and climbed up into the seat. A reminder that maybe she could wield that gun on her hip, but she was small. He’d never seen it, but he had no doubt she could fight or punch. He had no doubt that she had a myriad of ways to protect herself.
But life was cruel, and was it so bad to protect each other?
“Anything?” he asked.
Her hesitation had some of the tension he’d finally shaken creep back into his shoulders.
“Not really,” she hedged, fastening her seat belt while he pulled out of his spot. “Bo came by. He didn’t try to get in. Just looked in the windows.”
Bo Lake. Continual problem. Still no answers. “Doesn’t he have the office phone number?”
“Yeah. I checked the messages. He didn’t leave one. I think sometimes he just … he doesn’t want to be pushy. So he walks by hoping we’re in, and if we’re not he moves on.”
Nate didn’t have anything to say to that.
Not anything Sam wanted to hear. He supposed he understood why she defended Bo.
He was some lost puppy who’d come to her door looking for answers, for the truth.
And yeah, the truth was her calling—bone deep, he had no doubt.
But it wasn’t that simple, that straightforward, that callous.
Her determination to find the truth wasn’t some … flaw.
He knew she thought it was—probably because her asshole dad and aunt had done a number on her—but it wasn’t just the truth.
She wanted to help people, save people. He wasn’t sure she fully realized that. How much of it had become her, not just a random consequence of trying to prove her father’s innocence for fifteen years.
Her pursuit of the truth was to help, because she believed the truth was better. Even when it wasn’t.
So he drove and didn’t harp on Bo Lake. She leaned her head on his shoulder, like she knew it and appreciated it. He couldn’t put an arm around her with the roads up the ranch the way they were, but it was nice nonetheless. This casually intimate moment, instigated by Sam herself.
It was Nate’s first winter home or anywhere with serious winter weather in fifteen years, and he was surprised to find he’d missed it.
That his determination to choose Tennessee after his discharge hadn’t been about the weather like he’d convinced himself but had simply been to stay far away from this.
This thing he’d missed. The people he’d missed.
He navigated his truck up to the ridge where the Bennet Ranch started. It hadn’t been plowed here, but clearly someone had dug out a little.
There was a spot cleared for his truck, but wind had clearly done a number on it, and they’d have to tromp through some snow to get to a dug-out path that led up to the house.
The house looked almost cozy in the snow with the windows glowing. The ranch had almost started to feel like … well, not his home, but a home. Landon and Aly’s home. Like they’d exorcised the ghost of Bennet past by excising Dad from the place.
He hoped they had. Hoped that there’d been some goodness before Dad here on this generational ranch, and that there could be again.
Nate parked and they both got out into a frigid, quickly falling evening. Nate skirted the hood of the truck, easy with his long legs to navigate the drifts. He grabbed Sam before she could try.
“That snow’s going to come up to your ears, sweetheart.”
She held him off with a hand, fixed him with a narrow-eyed glare. “You get one warning and one warning only. Don’t ever, and I mean ever, call me sweetheart, ever again.” She was trying so hard to keep a straight face, but humor was dancing in her eyes.
“Or what?” Nate returned, curious. “Something hot?”
“I could probably get some tips from your brother on castration. Is that hot?”
He laughed. He couldn’t remember laughing as much in his whole life as he did with her. Even as a kid. Even before he understood what a mess his family was. There hadn’t been a lot of laughter.
And she grinned back at him.
So he pulled her to him and pressed his mouth to hers. Here where he’d once been a kid. Not sure why nothing ever felt quite right. Or fully wrong.
He’d lived most of his life in that space between. The army had fit, but it hadn’t been right. Running away had been right—the only thing to do, really—but it hadn’t fit. Even coming back had been an awkward balance of both.
Sam wasn’t. Sam just felt right.
He heard a sound, and Sam must have heard it too, because they broke the kiss at the same time and looked toward the house.
Aly stood there in the doorway. Her eyes were comically wide, and she almost looked like she’d frozen in forward motion. Like she’d seen them and stopped in her tracks.
Nate realized he hadn’t exactly thought this part through, but Sam had said she didn’t care about Hayes putting two and two together, so why should this matter? If they were seeing where it goes, people were going to know.
His family was going to know. Landon and Cal probably wouldn’t have much to say about it. Well, Cal might, but just a snide comment here or there. Landon would keep his feelings on the matter to himself. Maybe a little more dour than usual.
Aly, on the other hand, might have a lot to say. To him. To Sam.
“Well, this should be interesting,” Sam muttered, taking a step forward.
The snow was deeper up here, practically up to her knee. He moved forward in one easy stride, caught up with her, and slid his arm around her waist. Just a little extra balance before they made it to the pathway.
She didn’t stiffen. Didn’t act like she wished they hadn’t come. He’d take that as a positive sign.
Aly stood there on the porch, arms crossed over her chest, unreadable expression on her face, but one thing Nate knew for sure. Her gaze was pointed and on Sam. Not Nate.
When they crested the stairs of the porch, Aly spoke before either of them could.
“Go on inside, Nate.” She said it so authoritatively and certainly, Nate’s arm fell from Sam’s waist before he’d fully thought it through. He didn’t even hesitate, maybe because she made him think of his mom standing there. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Coward,” Sam muttered.
But he shrugged, flashed her a grin as he skirted Aly. And he didn’t worry about being a coward and leaving her out here, because as much as she was trying to scowl at him, she was failing. Her mouth curved ever so slightly upward.
Like she was happy.
And he realized just how much he liked being the one who’d made Sam Price happy.