3. Lennon
LENNON
There was not a single thing in this one-room log cabin not constructed of knotty pine.
The wide-planked walls. The ceiling that came down a few inches closer than I would have liked.
The floor beneath the colorful braided rug.
Even the furniture was the same golden pine.
I had seen pictures of the cabin on their website I had pulled up through the link on the postcard, but seeing it and being inside it were two very different things.
It gave me the feeling of being in a tree hollow. Like a claustrophobic squirrel.
Jeremiah cleared his throat, and I gave him my sweetest, I’m-a-low-maintenance-girl smile.
A lie. I wasn’t low-maintenance. I wasn’t easygoing.
I had clawed my way out of a world very few girls ever managed to leave and then spent the next decade working my ass off to stay out.
I was excruciatingly aware of every cent it cost to maintain this lifestyle that I had never quite allowed myself to become accustomed to.
“It’s cute,” I said brightly.
He arched a golden-brown eyebrow—the exact shade as the pine that surrounded us.
It wasn’t weird that I noticed. With that same color coming at me from all angles, it would have been weird if I hadn’t noticed.
But judging from the way that eyebrow nearly disappeared into his matching hairline, cute wasn’t the look he was going for.
It was a ranch, after all, and he was an honest-to-goodness cowboy.
Men were so delicate about these things.
“Cozy,” I amended. “It’s very cozy in here.”
His lips twitched beneath his mustache as if I had amused him.
A man of few words, this cowboy. I didn’t hate it.
The mustache, that is. The jury was still out on how I felt about his way of saying a whole lot without using his words.
But I didn’t hate the mustache, and that was weird, because normally I was not a fan of facial hair at all.
But it suited him. He looked like Westley from The Princess Bride, before the farm boy went all Dread Pirate Roberts.
Golden hair and blue-gray eyes like a stormy sea, but a decade older and a mustache that didn’t make me wish for a razor.
He hooked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans. Why are you staring at me? his raised eyebrows seemed to ask.
Because I feel like it, my smirk silently answered.
The polite thing to do would be to break eye contact, say something about the weather, and turn away.
But I didn’t do that. I kept right on staring at him because he was staring back at me, and suddenly it felt like the most important competition of my life, and dammit, I wanted to win.
Everything about my life felt out of my control right now, but this? This I could control.
He dipped his chin, studying me. I was a tall girl, but he still had a good two inches on me. Were his cheeks a little pinker now? He was going to crack first, I could feel it. Any second now, the awkwardness would make him say something—
Unless he doesn’t know this is a staring contest. Maybe he simply thought he had a very rude, very odd guest on his hands and was trying to be professional about it.
Oh, god.
I never blushed—shameless, my mom called me, and she didn’t mean it as a compliment—but my skin prickled like it almost remembered how. I cleared my throat. “So.”
Jeremiah grinned, the smile lighting up his face like Christmas morning. Oh, goddammit. He’d known. Only winning could make a person glow like that. With an annoyed huff, I crossed my arms under my chest and turned away.
He chuckled softly. “Now, don’t be like that. We already have one sore loser around here, and I don’t think the ranch is big enough for the both of you.”
“Is it Holly?” I’d gotten a vibe from her. She hadn’t liked me on sight, and that made me inclined to believe she had other faults as well. I ignored the part about the other sore loser in this scenario being me. He wasn’t wrong, but I saw no reason to admit that.
“It doesn’t matter who it is. We don’t need two of them.”
I snorted. “Yeah. It’s Holly.”
He ignored me. “Do you want to settle in now, or do the tour of the ranch? If you need a minute, I can come back later.”
“Now is fine. I just need to use the bathroom first.”
“I’ll wait for you on the porch.”
I made use of the small bathroom, which was not wood-paneled, but instead tiled floor to ceiling in green and white porcelain squares.
The sink vanity was too small to hold more than a bar of soap and a toothbrush, but at least there was a bathtub.
I was a hot-soak-after-a-long-day girl through and through.
I paused on the way out and took another look around. It was cozy, actually. No TV, but there was a mini-fridge and a coffeemaker. Jeremiah had set my luggage next to the (pine) dresser that definitely wouldn’t hold everything I brought.
The décor was simple but thoughtful. A gorgeous black-and-white photograph of Yellowstone National Park hung over the small (pine) desk.
The cushion on the (pine) chair was a dark green that matched the flannel curtains hanging in the window.
Across the room, the quilt on the (pine) bed was the same dark green.
The color added to the whole you live in a tree now aesthetic.
My home for the next two months. New York, it was not.
For a moment, I felt completely lost. Discombobulated.
Everything had happened so fast. Once Hector decided I should disappear, he went all in.
He hadn’t wanted to tip the feds off to my destination, so he’d flown me all the way to Seattle.
One of Benny’s associates had met me at the airport there with a car he claimed was registered to his ninety-year-old grandmother who wouldn’t miss it, and I’d backtracked to Mercy River Ranch.
Four days. How could my entire life change so much in four days?
I took a breath and squared my shoulders. I could do this.
Starting over was my specialty.
“There are nine guest cabins, all of them spread out here on the east side of the property. They’re close together, but the trees provide privacy.”
Jeremiah gestured to the log cabins that peeked out between the towering evergreens as we climbed into the golf cart.
From the outside, they were all identical.
Quaint structures, like something out of Little House on the Prairie, each with a green roof and a front porch with two rocking chairs.
I suspected the inside had the same pine bed, dresser, and desk, and the same green curtains.
“Seven of the cabins are full right now. There’s one of your neighbors right now, as a matter of fact,” Jeremiah said, nodding in the direction of a man heading down the path to one of the cabins.
I slipped on my oversized sunglasses before lifting my hand in a wave. The man jerked a shoulder in response. Slowly I lowered my hand. “What’s with him?”
“That’s Caleb. Got here a few days ago. Most guests keep to themselves the first week or so, I’ve noticed. It takes time to reset the nervous system.”
That made sense. The website had made it clear that this wasn’t a dude ranch for family vacations or city slickers looking for a cowboy adventure.
It was first and foremost a working ranch, and a wellness retreat on the side.
Kind of like the monastery my friend Kimmy went to every February for a two-week electronic detox.
They couldn’t even talk there—the monks had taken a vow of silence, and the guests were expected to be respectful of it.
This wasn’t a vacation. It was an escape.
That was why I was here, too, even if my reasons were forced upon me rather than chosen.
“As I was saying,” Jeremiah continued, “you’ll have plenty of time to get to know the other guests. Some are more sociable than others, but you’ll see them at meal times.”
“Oh.” The golf cart bumped over a dip in the dirt road, kicking up red-brown dust, and my stomach lurched with it. “Is there room service?”
His assessing look told me the answer before he spoke, so I wasn’t surprised when he said, “No room service. Let us know if you’re sick and someone will bring you food and get you medical care.”
I nodded uneasily. With the exception of the cowboy who had looked at me a little too long this morning, his forehead furrowed like he was trying to figure out where he knew me from, no one had recognized me yet.
That didn’t surprise me. Mercy River was a blue-collar town.
I very much doubted the locals spent their free time watching my naked floral arrangement livestreams or thumbing through clothing catalogues.
But the guests…they could be anyone from anywhere. A New York socialite who had seen me with Benny. A Los Angeles photographer. Some random middle-aged man from Chicago who paid my monthly subscription fee.
Still, the odds of someone recognizing me from my modeling work or social media were almost nonexistent.
I knew that. But somehow I couldn’t seem to convince my nervous system I was safe.
Which was ridiculous because I wasn’t the one in danger.
Unlike Benny, I was fastidious when it came to my taxes.
The cash he left in the mornings appeared with or without fucking, which made it a gift, not payment. Totally legal.
“The east side of the property is the bunkhouse for the ranch hands and owners’ cabins,” he went on. “Where the road meets in the middle is the lodge. That’s where you’ll find the dining hall, the library, and the game room.”
“What about the spa?”
He gave me that assessing look again. It did not bode well.
“The health center is behind the lodge. We have a physical therapist on staff, and a massage therapist, too. The gym has free weights, barbells, and some cardio machines, but it doesn’t get much use.
Most people find that after a long day of ranching, lifting heavy objects and putting them down again with no real purpose loses its appeal. ”
Okay, the website had definitely oversold the amenities here. “So I guess a facial isn’t going to happen?”
“What’s a facial?” he asked, and I truly could not tell if he was fucking with me.
But that didn’t stop me from fucking with him right back.
“Oh, you haven’t tried it yet? It’s the latest skincare craze. Semen does wonders for skin tone. Tightens everything right up.”
It took him a beat to work through what I meant, but when he did, a mottled red crested his cheeks. “You’re joking. People wouldn’t—”
“People absolutely would.” I snickered. “Have you met people?”
The flush deepened. I couldn’t help but stare.
I had never seen a full-grown man—much less a cowboy—actually blush.
I hadn’t blushed in a decade. Nothing fazed me anymore.
I took pride in that. But seeing this man who was older than me, rougher than me, turn bright red at a little sexual innuendo made me nostalgic for the little girl I had been before I’d installed a deadbolt on the inside of my bedroom door.
“I’ve met people,” he muttered. “Usually I shake their hand. I don’t do…that.”
I burst out laughing. “I think that’s the kind of thing you have to work up to. Consent is important.”
His lips parted and he stared at me as if he were wondering how a person might go about asking for something like that in a spa.
“You know I’m joking, right?” Suddenly I was hyperaware that if the roles were reversed, I would be asking to speak to his manager right about now. Probably. That mustache might slow me down a little.
“What you city folk get up to is none of my business.”
“No one does that for skincare.” I don’t think. “Just sex.”
The look he gave me made it clear he didn’t think that was better.
There wasn’t a great way to end this conversation I had trapped us in.
This was so unlike me. I didn’t ramble on about kinks for the pleasure of watching someone squirm.
I was the queen of small talk! Especially with men.
Mostly that meant asking questions and parroting their own words back at them with wide-eyed wonder as if I were awed by their existence and dying to know more, all while perfectly roasting a chicken and stripping my clothes off.
Maybe I could roll myself right out of the golf cart. We couldn’t be going more than five miles an hour.
“I could have gone my whole life without knowing that,” he mused. “I only had another forty years or so to go. Damn shame.”
Wonderful. This rough and rugged cowboy had at least a decade on me, and I had come along and stolen the last vestiges of his innocence. I eyed the ground speculatively. The dirt looked hard, but I could probably land on my feet.
His large hand cupped my triceps, preventing my escape. “Don’t even think about it. If I have to live with this conversation, so do you. You want to meet the horses? Stables are coming up.”