Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
RYE
Hot damn! There’s the Spitfire I remember.
When we got outside, I stood in front of my childhood home, looking out at the dusty, barren landscape and the mountains in the distance, both lit up and shadowed by the moon.
And I knew for sure it had come time for me to leave it.
I had no clue what I’d say to my dad, how to explain the need I felt to go out on my own, but whether he understood or not, I was doing it.
And when I looked down at Aubrey in my arms and her brilliant smile, I knew the name of my new endeavor:
Spitfire Ranch.
Wyoming SusBeef didn’t have much of a ring to it. Any name that spoke more to the type of sustainable farming I planned on doing would probably have been more conducive to the whole business-model thing I’d heard people talking about. I had to admit, that shit had never come easy to me, but the woman currently in my arms knew a thing or two about business, and I planned to utilize her beautiful brain if she’d let me. And I’d pay her for it too. In fact, if I could convince her to love me, she could have it all.
And if she’d inspired it, why not name it after her?
“You got me in some kinda mood, Spitfire.”
Reaching up, she scratched her fingers through my beard softly and trailed one finger over my lips. “Show me.”
“Feel like a roll in the hay?”
She smirked. “Do I ever.”
I looked down at her legs hanging over my arm, her skirt inching up her thighs and the cowgirl boots I still remembered her wearing with that pink dress decades ago dangling in the night air.
“Okay, but you’re leavin’ those boots on.”
Her head tipped back and she laughed, and I could’ve died of satisfaction. This was it.
She was it for me.
Did she have any clue how much I’d been yearning for her? If she didn’t, I was about to show her.
After I called Bax and made him an official offer for his land, I asked him to meet me for a drink in town.
My sister-in-law out in the Midwest worked in real estate, and I’d asked her to do some research for me so that the number I gave Bax was competitive. My mama wasn’t Sorelle’s biggest fan even though she’d given my parents three really cute grandkids (it seemed Calla Graves wasn’t a fan of any woman who tried to claim one of her sons), so bonus, I knew Sorelle would keep quiet until I was ready.
I wasn’t quite there yet. I needed to have all my shit situated before I went to my dad.
Bax and Brand met me at Manny’s Bar in town the next weekend, and we had a rowdy good time, remembering our teens and early twenties and all the trouble we’d gotten into. Brand had always been the quietest of the three Lee brothers or their younger sister, Abey, but when you got a couple beers in him, his personality leaked out.
“Oh, no, don’t you dare blame that tractor explosion on me,” he said, laughing after finishing his third beer. “That honor goes to Abey. Our baby sister was the real troublemaker in our household. But I’ve got a good one. You remember the time we let all the chickens out of the coops at Lee Farms after we got into our mama’s wine coolers?”
“Oh man,” I remembered, “your dad called my dad, and he drove up to whip my ass. I was thirteen! It was embarrassin’.”
Bax laughed. “You think our dad was any more pleased than yours? The sheep were terrified of those chickens, and they chased all the ewes out of the pen that Dixon forgot to latch. Some of those fuckers were loose for a day before we finally caught ’em all. One of ’em ended up over on old man Marley’s property. If we hadn’t figured it out, he would’ve eaten that animal.”
Bax and Brand shot their arms up in the air, shouting, “My land. My rules!”
“Shit,” Brand said, “I lost baseballs, frisbees, and hard-earned money to that man’s land.”
Bax took a swig of his beer and nodded. “Me too. What a grump-ass. You know, even after Dad died and I took over the farm, that man was still a damn pain. He had to get around with a walker in his later years, and he couldn’t see for shit, but he never missed the opportunity to screech and holler at us. He got up in Candy’s face one time when she got a flat tire and had to pull over at the end of his drive until I could get there. She had Athena with her, a truckload of groceries, and she was six months pregnant with?—”
Bax’s long pause said everything I needed to know about how my friend had been dealing with the loss of his wife and unborn son. I couldn’t remember ever hearing him mention the baby, but it seemed to be getting a little easier for him to talk about Candy.
“What a dick,” I said, watching Bax carefully as he saw the memory in his head.
It had been three years. Raising a spunky thirteen-year-old on his own couldn’t be easy, but Bax had pulled himself up by his bootstraps with the help of his family.
“Anyway,” Bax said, trying to shrug off the painful subject, “that brings us to the land part of this conversation, and Brand and I have an addendum to add to your proposal.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked. “What’s that?”
“A joint venture.”
Wait. What? “A joint… Seriously? You wanna go in on this with me?”
“Yeah, man,” Brand said. “Bax mentioned that whole eco-farming thing you wanna do, and I did some research. It looks profitable, and it looks like a good thing to be involved in. I’ve got my construction company up in Sheridan, but it’s big enough now that I don’t need to be there every day to nitpick.”
Bax rolled his eyes. “Mr. High and Mighty over here’s got people for that. And his people got people.”
Brand agreed with a shrug.
“Yeah,” Bax said, “and I’ve got the new rental-cabin business goin’ up on the other side of our property, but I thought we might tie the two together. It’s somethin’ we wanna talk to you about, maybe turnin’ the farm side of things into a teachable moment, and we could use it to lure people to the cabin side and vice versa. Like a dude ranch but for sustainable cows.”
Bells were ringing inside my head. What a great fucking idea! If I didn’t have to go this thing alone, I could make Spitfire Ranch profitable a lot faster than I’d been thinking. And knowing I’d have support and camaraderie didn’t suck either.
“Y’all are geniuses, and you honor me,” I said, holding up my beer for a cheers. The guys joined me and we tapped bottlenecks, but there was one stipulation I needed to make before I decided to start a business with my friends. “I’m all for your joint venture, lads. Fair warnin’, though. It might mean you gotta deal with sheep again. It’s important to raise more than one type of animal because—well, it’s all about the soil…”
Bax nodded.
“Alright, I hope you know the amount of homework and heavy labor you’re agreein’ to, but if you’re up for it, I’d be proud to call you partners. There’s just one term you’re gonna have to shake on first.”
“What’s that?” Bax asked.
“The name. The ranch part of this deal will be called Spitfire. Ain’t nothin’ gonna change my mind.”
Looking across the table at each other, they both shrugged and at the same time turned their heads back in my direction and said, “Deal.”
Sunday evening brought with it late-May gloom and chill.
I’d busted my ass all week, getting everything ready before the drive, and I’d spent some time with the Lee brothers at their farm earlier in the day, talking dreams and ideas, but I needed to head back home early the next morning and planned on having “the talk” with my parents later at dinner, but before I went and did the biggest thing I’d probably ever do, I had to see my Spitfire.
When I knocked on her door, her porch light was off again. I tried to fluff the bunch of bright pink peonies in my hand, like the flowers in the drawing hanging in her living room she loved so much, but all I accomplished in the darkness was knocking off petals, so I left them be and waited for her to open the door for me so I could see her face and breathe again.
The bouquet of flowers I’d spent two-hundred bucks on became a distant memory when the door swung open and she appeared in a deep-green silk robe, fresh from a shower, her cheeks blushing and her hair messy and falling out of the clip she’d put it up in.
Aubrey was all I knew.
“Damn, I missed you.” I stepped over the threshold, dropped the flowers onto a chair in her living room as I kicked the door shut with my boot, and picked her up.
I carried her to the hallway leading to her bedroom without her saying a word, but she pulled the clip out of her hair ’cause she knew what my intentions were. She gazed up into my eyes while I walked, and in that moment, I knew that she knew how I felt about her.
I hoped she was right there with me. The coy smile on her lips, the need coming off her body in waves of heat, and the sultry look in her eyes made me think she was.
“I want in you,” I said roughly.
She breathed, “Yes.”
When I had her sprawled across her bed, knees bent and open for me, I leaned over her and untied the robe. It slid over her luscious curves as her body was bared completely to me, lit up softly by a flickering candle on her bedside table, and I felt overwhelmed.
How was I the guy lucky enough to have this woman?
I had no clue, but I wasn’t about to waste time digging around my brain trying to come up with the answer.
“Strip,” she said.
Towering over her at the end of her bed, I obeyed, but I worried for a second that I might hurt her; she looked small and precious, but the want inside me felt so big.
I undressed as slowly as I could manage, teasing her a little. I pulled my shirt over my head and loved how her hips flexed in response and her legs spread wider for me. I was never disappointed with the way her slow gaze ate me up, and when she saw my chest and arms, those amber eyes always ended up on my tattoo.
I sat and slowly pulled off my boots, and she crawled up behind me silently, wrapped her arms around my waist, and unbuttoned my jeans.
In a soft voice, she demanded, “Off.”
I shucked the jeans and my boxers and socks, and then I twisted and caged her between my arms. She backed up the bed until her soft, strawberry waves cascaded over her pillow, and I moved the robe free of her skin with one slow glide of my hand, then splayed it wide over her belly.
She tried again to move my hand and cover her stomach.
“Baby, what is it you’re tryin’ so hard to hide from me?”
“My…” She sighed. “My scar.”
I found the faded, raised line below her navel. “This?”
“Yes,” she said, and she closed her eyes.
The skin around it was soft and a little loose, but I liked it ’cause it moved to the rhythm of my fingers and mouth when I went down on her. “Is that from havin’ your boys?”
“No.”
“Does it hurt?” I asked, trailing my finger softly down the scar. I kissed it, and she shivered.
“No.”
“Tell me.”
“I had… cancer. Three years ago. They took my uterus out.”
Fuck . She’d gone through cancer all alone? The boys had been away at school. I hadn’t noticed she’d closed her shop for any length of time, although, back then I didn’t get to town as much as I did now.
“Aubrey, if I’d known— I’m so sorry you had to go through that. Are you okay? Are you sick?”
Everything would stop if she was. I’d give her anything she needed, take her anywhere her doctors told her to go.
“I’m not sick anymore,” she said, and her eyes opened cautiously. “I survived. I’m a survivor. But does that— Do you see me differently? God, Rye. You’re so young, and I’m… not. And my body’s changin’. How can I be beautiful to you? I don’t get it.”
That was what she’d been worried about?
“I know you said you don’t want kids, but I definitely can’t give them to you if you change your mind. Not that I could at my age, even if I still had all the necessary parts.” Blushing, she shook her head against the pillow. “Not that we… I mean, we’re not—this isn’t a real relationship.”
“How else can I say it to make you understand? You are, hands down, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. Now. Not just when you were twenty or twenty-five.” Pushing up on my hands, I hovered above her. “Hear me when I tell you, Aubrey, you’re forty-seven, yes, and you are drop-dead gorgeous. When I look at you, I can hardly breathe.
“And this has been real for me since that day in your store when you said yes. Maybe you can’t see it yet, but everything I want is in my arms at this very moment. I don’t want kids. I don’t need kids.
“I just need you.”