Chapter 5 #3
“I love you,” she breathed, and the words wove their way through me, etching her name so deeply into my heart that I knew I would never want to remove it.
“God, Hudson, this is so much land.”
Olivia’s voice brought me back to the present, where her arms were no longer loosely locked around my neck and her gorgeous smile no longer lit my soul.
I cleared my throat, hating the memory and wishing it hadn’t resurfaced.
“This is just one of the cattle pastures. We would move them through the farm to preserve the land.”
I clicked my tongue to get the horse moving again, ignoring the sensation in my chest and of her hands on my stomach.
In silence, I took her through the grazing pastures that no longer had use, then headed south back toward the house.
“What’s over there?” she asked, pointing toward the trees.
“Nothing. It backs up to the neighboring ranch.”
“You back to another farm?”
“Yes, the Johnsons. And it’s a ranch, not a farm.”
“Like there’s a difference.” I wanted to tell her there was, but she continued before I could. “And they have cattle?”
“Sure do. They bought the property about twenty years before I settled in from a family who had owned it for three generations. Took over production and grew the business. A few acres of trees separate the pastures.”
“Stop,” she huffed.
I shot her an annoyed glance, stopping the horse.
She released my waist, fumbling to dismount, and I couldn't help but shake my head at how she slid down with absolutely no grace.
Hands on her hips, she trudged away, her eyes on the tree line.
She turned her head from the overgrown pasture back to the trees, concentration eclipsing her features.
Afraid to ask, because I knew I’d regret it, I said, “What are you doing?” as I hopped from the horse.
Giving Honey a pat, I gathered her reins and moved closer to Olivia.
“The former owners were here for years, right?”
“Yes, it was a family ranch that went back a few generations.”
“Why did they sell?”
Brow pinching, I looked at her. Olivia had always been sharp, acing all her classes with A’s. She had the same look she would get when she was studying.
“He died, and the kids didn’t want the responsibility. They had lives and jobs, and he didn’t have a succession plan in place.”
She scratched the end of her nose, her gaze turning to the tree line again.
“The neighboring farm didn’t want it? Is this one not large enough?”
“Ranch. And on the contrary, this one is larger. They offered, but there was some long-standing feud between the two families, and the kids accepted my lower bid.”
A sharp turn of her head and intense eyes evaluated me.
“You underbid and won?”
“Well, yeah,” I said, scratching my neck.
A flurry of irritation had her hands slamming into my chest.
“Idiot.”
“What the hell, Olivia?” I said, catching my balance.
“They sabotaged you. Did your foreman warn you about them?”
Shit, he had, and I’d written him off.
“Damn it, Hudson.” She shoved me again, and I grabbed her wrists this time, my rough fingers scraping over her delicate skin.
“Settle down, Olivia, or I’ll throw you over the horse and leave you that way for the trip back. All he said was to watch my back, but they were never anything but cordial to me. It’s been twelve years.”
“And in that time, how many cattle have you lost because I don’t see any on this ranch?
” She jerked her wrists from my hold, but I couldn’t help but smile that she’d finally used the correct word.
“And I’m guessing the cattle aren’t the only thing that’s gone wrong, or you wouldn’t have needed my brother. ”
With a sigh, I took my hat off and rubbed my face, hating how she had pieced together something I hadn’t.
“What happened first, Hudson?”
“It was quiet the first few years—”
“Testing time. They figured you’d fail. City boy pretending to be a farmer.”
I was hoping my scowl was clear enough. “Like I said, it was quiet until the fire in the cattle barn. Took months to get a new one built and fitted properly because of the weather.” I rolled my hat brim through my fingers as I spoke.
“Had an infection in the apple orchard the following year. Destroyed all the trees.”
“Slow, precise. Not enough to gain notice, but enough to needle you, to cause damage over time.”
“This is ridiculous. Why would you think they would do any of that? They’ve got a successful ranch.”
“Because that’s what I would do to my competition. Cutthroat and lethal. They gave you time to fail on your own, and when you didn’t, they sabotaged you until you had no choice but to sell. They had all the time in the world.”
I stared at her, seeing who she had become after all these years.
Another version of her father. The vision didn’t sit right with me.
She was so different from the girl I had known that it left a melancholy in my chest that shouldn’t have been there.
Not when she had left it so pulverized that I hadn’t felt any emotions but regret and heartache since the day she stomped all over it.