Chapter 11
Hudson
Fighting for scraps. Olivia’s words had been soft but loud enough to shake me.
She had kept her family life distanced when we were together, as if there were a separation between it and me.
And I’d let her, never pushing, and maybe that had been my downfall.
I stopped on the front porch, staring at the thunderclouds barreling down on us.
For the first time in fifteen years, an answer touched my mind.
After years of struggling to understand how we fell apart, to figure out how one small fight became our undoing—an argument she started about something so stupid it hadn’t even been worth the anger—no answer had ever come to me.
But maybe I’d been looking in the wrong place.
Lost in thought, my feet took me to the barn without direction. I opened Honey’s stall and stopped as the thought played in my mind. That our destruction had something to do with whatever it was she hid from me about her family. Something to do with her overbearing father. While I fight for scraps.
The idea had me seething, and I wanted answers. I wanted the truth, but she was so good at running from it I doubted I could get through her defenses.
“Is that your idea of work?”
I turned to see her at the front of the barn, rubbing her arms.
“Where’s your jacket?”
“I didn’t think to bring it.”
“Well, go back inside. I told you to stay there anyway. I don’t need to hear your whining and complaining while I’m working.”
There was something fragile about her today, like a part of her mask had cracked too much to fix. Hazel, with a dusting of gold, gazed at me.
“I want to help.”
My eyes squinted as I waited for some smart-ass comment to follow, but it never did.
“Fine, but one complaint and I’m sending you back in the house to work on whatever it is you do.”
“Operations,” she said as I walked over to grab another pair of gloves for her. Tossing them to her, I drew closer. Captivating. That was what Olivia was. Like a siren, beautiful and deadly, and I wanted to jump into the water with her, to have her pull me under and drown me again.
I took my coat off and placed it on her shoulders, standing too close to her. The scent of jasmine came from her hair, and I breathed it in, savoring it.
“Keep that on and tell me what that means.” I beckoned her to follow me, listening as she talked.
Asking her questions that stuck to facts and looking for answers between her words.
Something to help me understand. All the while, she took my direction, no complaints, no looking at her nails or throwing me daggers.
She worked hard, and the more we worked to clean the stalls and prep them for the horses, the more she relaxed, the more the mask slipped.
By the time we finished up, the wind was howling so hard that it was gusting through the stables.
“Go inside,” I said. “Let me get the horses in before it starts raining.”
“But I can help.”
“No, go in and wash up. You’ve done enough.”
She gave me a nod and turned to walk away.
“And Olivia.”
She turned her head toward me.
“Thank you.”
A tug of her lips preceded a smile that chipped away at my walls.
My eyes trailed her as she left, but a streak of lightning not far from us had me moving again.
Storms weren’t unusual here, but every indication said this one was not one to underestimate, and I wasn’t about to go into it unprepared.
I’d made that mistake my first year, and if not for the arguments of my foreman, I would have lost the horses.
I rounded Honey and Ivy up, tucking them securely in their stalls. They preferred to be out in the fields, but from the flick of their ears and the nervous flutter of their hides, I could see even they didn’t like the brewing storm.
As I ran up the steps to the house, raindrops sounded.
Slow and light. A misleading sound because by the time I got to the door, they were coming down hard.
I put my hat on the peg and kicked my boots off, but my movement stopped when I turned back to the kitchen to find Olivia over the stove, stirring something in a pan.
I rubbed my eyes, surprised when the vision didn’t disappear.
“Are you cooking?”
She jumped, the spoon almost falling from her hand. She peered over at me, her eyes dancing with mischief.
“I figured out how to use the stove.”
Her smile was so wide it was almost like she had discovered the secret to life. I didn’t want to disturb that moment, so I walked over and peeked into the pan.
“Jessie brought soup over this morning,” she said as if it was a regular thing for her.
“Jessie was here? And she left in one piece?” I teased.
Her eyes met mine, still playful. “I was a good girl.”
My hand landed on the counter, and I gripped it as I tried to control the instant reaction those words and that look had caused in me.
“I bet you were,” I replied, hearing the hoarseness in my voice.
“She said you had dinner there last night?” She dropped her eyes back to the pan.
“Yeah. I sat with her husband, Carl, and had a bowl of soup before we left and grabbed some beers at the bar.”
“Oh.”
I tipped my head from side to side, trying to figure her out.
She was jealous, but I couldn’t figure out why.
She had given me up. Plus, I had explained this to her, reassured her that it hadn’t worked out with Jessie because it never would have.
I moved to the sink, rolling my sleeves and sensing her eyes on me as I washed up.
“Jessie went with us. Her parents kept the baby so they could have a night out.” Why the hell was I explaining myself to her?
It was ridiculous, yet I continued. “She couldn’t stop talking about you the whole time.
Nosy and too curious about the city girl who looked like she stepped from a magazine. ”
Olivia laughed, and I looked over at her as I dried my forearms.
“I did not look like I stepped out of a magazine. My hair was a mess, my makeup worn, and my dress caked in dust from the dirt. I was the furthest thing from glamorous.”
I took her face and forced her to look at me. “You don’t need to be glamorous or put together. You never did need that.”
She swallowed, a flush spreading up her cheeks. And out of a habit that should have died over a decade before, I swept my thumb over one where her freckles peeked from below her foundation.
“I always need to be perfect,” she whispered. The pain reflected in her eyes caused my chest to ache.
“Not for me, Olivia. You were already perfect.”
Her eyes dropped, her head turning as she focused on the soup. “Shoot, it’s boiling.” Flustered, she reached for the knob to turn it off but turned it the wrong way. Flames kicked up, and she jumped back.
“Here,” I said, taking her by the arms and moving her out of the way. I turned off the burner and stirred the soup. “Grab two bowls from the cabinet to the right of the sink.”
No complaints, no arguing that this wasn’t her job.
She remained quiet, the previous moments still lingering over us.
I cursed myself for letting her get to me.
I’d always been weak around her, soft, because with her I could be comfortable and let my guard down.
I hadn’t let it down since, even when I’d dated.
No one broke through to the spaces where Olivia had been.
She brought two bowls over, and I poured the soup into them.
Steam curled from them as I placed the pot back on the stove.
Grabbing two spoons from the drawer, I took the bowls to the table, contemplating what I was doing.
Having another meal with her. The diner had been hard enough, but this… this felt intimate.
I heard the kitchen sink and looked over my shoulder to see her filling a glass of water. My smile came easily. “Look at that. You’re a natural at drinking tap water,” I teased as she took a sip.
Lowering the glass, she grimaced at me.
“Cooking and drinking from the tap. I wonder what other things you’ll be doing by the time you leave here, Olivia Icinda.”
“Probably enough to tarnish my reputation,” she said, turning my thoughts to what I wanted her to do. Dirty images I wiped away quickly.
I needed to stop letting her in, stop letting those thoughts in. Her words didn’t help, and I pulled a seat out for her before I walked around the island to avoid being close to her again. Space was what I needed. For her to return to New York so I could return to my life and forget about her.
I stopped as I was about to grab a beer. Forget about her? I’d done a shitty job at it for fifteen years, so I didn’t think I’d be any better at it now. Especially after having her so close again. My hand tightened around the bottle as I walked back to the table.
The rain poured in thick streams down the windows, and I could see it pooling on the deck.
Rain that forecasters suggested would persist for the next two days.
Not letting up until the next night. With as heavy as it was already coming down, there was no way we could avoid flooding.
Valley Knoll was situated in a valley. When we had storms this bad, the rain would stream down the mountains, looking for a place to go.
The ranch stood below the mountains, so we wouldn’t see the extremes that the town and the roads that sat at the lowest points would see.
Two storms had hit like this since I’d moved here, and both had left a mess of cleanup, but thankfully the town founders had settled the town above the base of the valley, leaving it nestled in the hills so most water drained through it.
“Nasty storm,” Olivia said. Her eyes were on me when I turned my attention back to her.
“It is.” Thunder boomed, and she winced, rubbing her cheek with her shoulder to cover the reaction.
“Still afraid of thunderstorms?” I asked with a grin.
“No.” She took a bite of her soup, dropping the spoon and spitting the soup out. Her tongue popped out, and she grabbed her water, taking several gulps as I tried to stifle my laugh.