Chapter Two
The Porsche’s wheels locked just as Jace noticed the stunning woman on the side of the road.
He skidded, then swerved, narrowly missing her with the back end of the ridiculous vehicle, and her bags spilled into the ditch beside the road.
He took his foot completely off the gas and pressed down on the brake pedal as lightly as if he was nudging a puppy awake with the toe of his loafers.
All of this happened in the blink of an eye and rattled Jace’s nerves.
Shit. He’d been driving way the hell too fast, too trapped in his own thoughts to take a good, hard look at where he was, an error that could have seriously hurt someone, and on his first day back in town.
Cammie, his agent, had called the car one of the “perks” of his celebrity, even though the last thing he wanted was to cash in on that.
Not here, not ever.
Not that she or the studio knew the real reason for his trip.
If they had, they’d have given him a pickup and marching orders.
But how could he tell them what he didn’t know himself?
Sure, he’d felt done with Hollywood for some time now, or at least with the stereotyped cowboy roles he kept landing, but how was he supposed to turn his back on something that had given him the kind of life he had?
Ha. You’ve done it before; you can do it again.
He shut his snarky subconscious up with prejudice. It’s not like he wasn’t aware of the life he’d left to head to Hollywood in the first place.
He’d been thinking through that particular conundrum when he’d taken the last corner by his father’s house, which is why he’d been going way too fast. It was hard to hide from his past when it was staring at him through expensive glass.
Then there was the woman.
His hands shook from the near miss, as well as the image she’d seared into his vision.
She was an aberration, a ghost on the hilly, almost-dirt road in the middle of the country, but a gorgeous one at that.
Her hair was dark as the black coffee he drank, and hung nearly to her hips, both of which swayed in the light breeze. Surely, she couldn’t be real?
The scowl she shot him said otherwise. Heat spread to his chest when he registered her lips pressed into a thin line directed at him.
But none of that answered the question. What was she doing walking alone on an all-but-deserted road, with shopping bags to boot?
Didn’t she give a shit about her safety, not just as a pedestrian, but as a woman around all these farmers?
She’d be eaten alive in the city, and that thought turned the heat kindling in his chest into a raging inferno.
Not my problem.
The loaner car’s GPS spoke in the female, British voice he’d downloaded that it was time for him to turn left. Like his body could forget his path home for the first eighteen years of his life.
He slowed down to almost a crawl, noting the For Sale sign outside the property. At least the realtor had gotten started, even if he had work to do to make the place sellable. He cringed as the bottom of the car scraped the edge of a pothole he hadn’t seen.
Yeah, he’d be trading this sucker out for a truck, even if he was just here for the week to wrap up his dad’s estate.
One week. You can do this. Then you can decide what comes next. Acting? Working on different roles? Travel? Retirement? It doesn’t matter… Just get through this damned week.
A whisper of anxiety coursed through his veins as his childhood home came into view.
His dad had sent photos through the years, small nuggets designed to entice Jace to come back home and take on his “birthright.” Didn’t his father get it?
The term birthright meant someone else’s dreams hoisted on his shoulders.
Had he played a cowboy on TV and in films?
Of course. All too often, unfortunately.
Directors claimed he was as authentic as they came, and the roles fell into his lap.
Hell, Cammie barely had to reach out anymore.
But being one was another matter entirely.
Sure, it was romantic—working the land, caring for something bigger than yourself—but his dad had never understood that it was also stifling.
The same job, same land, same views every day. Jace had wanted more. And he shouldn’t feel bad for that, right?
Anyway, the photos had shown Jace enough.
He was well aware what kind of shape his dad’s place was in; it wasn’t good.
Which is why Jace had the top architects and decorators out of LA working together to execute plans to incorporate the landscape more, make the home more functional for a buyer’s needs.
They’d be in tomorrow to demolish the old house, and for the first time since his dad passed away—since Jace had gotten the paperwork with the deed to the ranch—an electric bolt of excitement coursed through him.
He’d raze the place that had held him back, that had tried to make him into someone he wasn’t, and then he’d move on.
He might’ve been a rancher’s son, born into a role that had him tied to the land, but now that the legacy had died with his father, there was nothing pulsing in his chest anymore, nothing beating to get out.
Further proof that it was his father’s magnetism that had called to him, not the ranch. Not this life. As if in mutiny against this idea, his heart clenched, but it didn’t take much to figure out why.
Even with photos of the home every year since he’d left it behind, nothing could have prepared him for what his gaze settled on as he crested the drive.
He expected the worn pine siding, cracked along its borders.
He expected the chipped paint on the deck, the gentle slope where his father had tried to remedy a broken post himself one spring.
He even expected the overgrown grasses and dogwoods along the perimeter.
What he hadn’t expected? To be floored by the kind of beauty usually CGI-ed into his films or enhanced in postproduction. But this was natural. Live.
Dammit, it was breathtaking.
His land, or at least his until he could offload it, was the other half of the bequest. It was like something out of a nature magazine, but more majestic, more surreal than anything a photographer could capture because it spread around him 360 degrees.
He got out of the car and was met with a rush of air that felt heavy and inviting at the same time, like it carried life itself on its breeze.
He shuddered as the chill snaked its way beneath his collar, but the slight tremble that remained in his hands was solely a result of the rugged peaks surrounding him.
When he was a kid, this world had seemed myopic. Now…
Now that word held no meaning. It was stunning, full stop.
The way the supple, green fields rolled like the waves in front of his Malibu apartment, crashing against the peaks that soared above them, left Jace slack-jawed.
The horizon—not as straight across as he was used to recently—boasted a line of peaks he’d seen the equal of only in Colorado and Switzerland, the tips of them snow-capped already.
It was a little early in the season for lingering moisture, but maybe his memory was betraying him there.
The peaks jutted back toward the jagged horizon for miles, sharp layers of them resembling shark teeth.
The light above them cast a pale yellow hue on the sparse clouds in the sky and the deep blue mountains below it.
He’d worked in show business long enough to be a little jaded when it came to beauty.
Too much of what was shoved down the throats of the public from his end of things was phony.
Fabricated 3D sets, enhanced CGI muscles, augmented breasts, computer-generated whole characters…
It was enough to make him cringe at his role in the scheme to manipulate the fans and viewers.
But this, this place, was authentic. Jace’s throat was suddenly dry.
“Dad, I-I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to say goodbye.”
The loss was fresh even though he’d had months to get used to the idea. The words were still seared in his brain from when he’d gotten the email from his father almost a year ago to the day.
Cancer.
Stage three.
Then the worst one.
Can you come back? Help me run the cattle this year? I’ll find someone else if…
The if hung in the open air, chillier than the mountain breeze. The if had stolen his dad’s future, upended Jace’s life in LA. Even now, he felt the pulsing in his chest again, the pull to give up who he was and what he wanted for his old man.
What is it you want?
He wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t his past, reincarnated, that was for sure.
Even if his past was something pretty spectacular to look at.
Jace was assaulted with every shade of red, green, and purple on the land that rolled toward him from the base of the mountains.
The leaves of the deciduous trees that bordered his property along the front and to the east were in full spring splendor, blooms as gorgeous as they were fragrant.
He was no stranger to the changing of the seasons.
Hell, just last spring he’d been up at Harley’s parents’ cabin in Vermont to see the cherry trees in bloom.
But he’d never witnessed such vibrant colors juxtaposed against the rest of the view spread in front of him, the bright jade-green fields that seemed to radiate a light of their own as if they were touched by Midas himself.
The forest that bordered the south end of his property boasted the rich emerald hues of evergreen trees for miles.
When his gaze caught a glimpse of small breaks in the foliage that promised trails leading up and out of the valley, his pulse sped up.
He remembered the view from the ridgelines above him, what gazing down on the valley was like from the runs he’d taken in high school.
He had half a mind to throw on his trail shoes and explore before he did anything else.
It was all too much.