Chapter 22
Hudson
It’s funny what years of hearing my mother’s words replayed in my head, telling me I would fail, did to me and my confidence.
When I’d put the ranch up for sale, it had reached its bottom, and only when Victoria Hent, who I now knew was Tori Icinda, had offered a deal that sounded too good to be real, did it begin to return.
With Olivia’s words and her belief in me, it seemed secure again…
as long as I didn’t think about that nagging in the back of my head, the same I suspected was behind her mood shifts.
The ceaseless deadline that hung over us.
As much as I reassured her that we would make it work, I wasn’t entirely sure how to.
Not when our lives were so different, so separate.
“Have you seen your neighbors since you declined their offer?” Olivia’s smooth tone brought my thoughts back.
She had moved a few paces ahead of me, and I took the moment to take her in.
She looked beautiful with the sun shimmering in her auburn curls, strands of which had fallen loose from where she had them piled on her head.
Relaxed and free, her body swayed in the saddle.
So opposed from the first day she’d been here.
It seemed like months ago, yet it had been mere days.
So much had happened in that small time that I almost believed I would wake up from a dream and return to my solitary life where I buried my emotions in brooding and grumpiness.
“No,” I answered, loving how the sun lit her eyes to a dusty green hue when she turned to me. “They keep to themselves. Don’t even go into town.” I swiped at a gnat and stopped my horse.
“They don’t?” she asked, bringing her horse to where I had stopped.
“Nah, not very social. Prickly people. A bit like you now that I think about it.”
“I’m not prickly,” she snapped.
“You can be.”
“Says the bossy one.”
“Don’t disagree with you there.”
She looked over toward the edge of the ranch, the long tree line that cut my property from theirs.
“Do you know what they did before they bought here?”
Scratching my chin, I thought about the few interactions I’d had with them. They’d been cordial at first, but by the end of my first year, they’d stopped interacting with me. Never thought much of it until now. “I remember Carl telling me once they had some kind of mattress business somewhere.”
That piqued her curiosity. I could see her mind working, a fascinating series of shifts in her mouth and brow. “Good to know,” she muttered, giving her horse a pat. “You ready to head back?”
“Are you?” I asked, drawn to the shimmer of gold in her curls where the sun hit them.
She gave me a playful grin that sent my blood rushing through my veins. “Not really.”
“Good.” I hopped down from my horse and took her reins. “Neither am I. What do you say we let them graze for a while?”
“And do what?” she asked, eyeing the hand I was holding out to her.
“I think we can come up with a few things.”
I helped her from the horse, my hands sliding up her silk shirt and pushing it loose from where she had it tucked in.
She’d looked sexy the night before but not herself.
Today, she was a gorgeous blend of the two sides of her, and it struck me as she met my eyes that there really were two sides to her.
Forced to live with one side for so many years, she was now navigating what the other side meant.
If it would mean changing completely or compromising.
And seeing her this happy, this comfortable in her designer shirt and small-town jeans gave me hope that this really could work the way I wanted. The way I needed it.
Compromise. If I wanted to keep her, that’s what we needed to do.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
I blinked, realizing I’d been gawking at her as my mind whirled.
Because I want to keep you forever.
“Just thinking about how pretty you are.”
Her cheeks turned a delicate shade of pink, highlighting her freckles, and I kissed one before releasing her and turning back to my horse.
A sense of giddiness overcame me, and it was like I was back in school, taking her out for the first time.
Maybe it was the air, the cold front that was moving in after our week of unexpected warmth.
Or maybe it was something else. Love. That emotion, which had evaded me for years and was now like a giant pounding at the interior of my chest, reminding me it had never faded, it had only been waiting to find her again.
I grabbed the blanket from the saddlebag and, walking past Olivia, took her hand to lead her further from the horses. Spreading the blanket out, I gestured for her to sit.
“Well, aren’t you full of surprises.”
Giving her a shrug, I clawed my hand through my hair and said, “It’s nothing fancy. Just thought we could enjoy the view.”
She took a seat and laid back on the blanket. That hadn’t been the view I had in mind, but when her blouse slipped over the curve of her breast, revealing the swell of soft skin, I didn’t complain. A few steps had me by her side, staring up at the clouds.
“Do you ever miss it?” she asked in a soft tone accented by the screech of a hawk flying overhead.
“What?”
“The city. It’s so different here. Peaceful. Do you ever miss being back home?”
“This is my home. And no, I don’t.” I took a deep breath, letting the clean air calm me.
“After you left, going back home became a nightmare. I knew you were out there, working for your father. Knew if I just crossed town I could find you. Maybe see you in passing, maybe confront you.” Her fingers brushed over mine, and I took them in my hand.
“I thought about it until I remembered you were the one who left, and if you wanted to find me, you knew where I was. But every day, I searched for you in the faces of people I passed on the streets, in voices I heard in the crowds. That, combined with how miserable I was working for my mother, made for the perfect storm. I didn’t hesitate to move away. ”
“Did it help?”
I turned my head to look at her, seeing the pain in her eyes, the same that stabbed me whenever I thought back to that time.
“Not really. It was a distraction. Nothing more. And finally, it quieted. After years of shoving those memories away, I built a wall around them and my heart.” I looked back up at the sky.
“I went through the motions of moving on and convinced myself that I had, but I never let anyone knock that wall down.”
The blanket moved with her as she curled into my chest, running her hand over it.
“I’m sorry.”
“If I’d gone after you, come pounding on your door and confronted you, would it have worked?”
Her hand stopped its movement as her breathing grew shallow, and I waited for her answer.
“I don’t know.” She leaned up, her eyes glistening with moisture.
“It took every bit of strength for me to walk away from you. I don’t know if I could have done it again, but…
” Her sight shifted as if she was seeing something beyond me, a memory that had tears building in her eyes.
I wondered if she’d ever stop crying now that she’d started.
It seemed a daily thing, and I had never seen her cry. Not even when her mother died.
“I dreamed about it. Envisioned you crashing into the building and demanding to see me. But with every day that passed, I built my own walls. My father was a dick, sticking me on the hotel desk assisting the manager. Like I wasn’t his daughter.
He rotated me through so many lower positions, telling me how I had to earn my way to the top.
Weekly check-ins while he berated me, chastised me for being a woman, saying Gabe was smarter and I’d never make it.
” A wrench twisted in my chest. This man was the lowest, and the idea that he had made her think she was less than she was had me seeing red.
“But every word drove me to work harder, to prove him wrong and…” She gave a ragged inhale, the tears falling.
“…I shut thoughts of you out, replaced them with revenge, with memories of my mother and what he’d done to her and to Gabe.
And in time, I left that part of myself to my sleepless nights and anniversaries.
Reminders of you that would slip in when my guard was down. ”
I wiped a tear away and cupped her cheek, seeing something I wasn’t so sure she had seen herself.
As much as I wanted to deck her father and would if I ever saw him again, he had pushed her to be better.
Almost as if he knew she would defy every underestimation, every insult, everything that could make her weak in a world that thrived on breaking people, especially women who often couldn’t hold their own against the aggressive nature of men.
Olivia could. In fact, I had no doubt that men stepped out of her way because she was a force of her own. One that her father had shaped, even if he’d gone about it in a way that should have had him arrested.
“So, I guess if you’d come after me days later, I may have wavered, but I don’t know that I would have gone back. I owed it to my brother and my mother’s memory. And if you’d come months later, well, you would have found a very different woman and likely have turned and walked away from me.”
I tucked a curl behind her ear. “Like the woman who showed up a week ago?”
A smile formed as she sniffled. “Yeah, like her.”
“I think I dealt with her, although I did think about leaving my door locked when she couldn’t get a ride. Pictured her standing out there all night bitching about how the bugs were biting her. Maybe added a coyote to the mix.”
She slapped my chest, and I caught her wrist, dragging her onto me. “I wasn’t that bad.”
“Yeah, you were. Spoiled and nasty.” Her mouth twisted, flames dancing in her eyes. “But so fucking sexy with that pouty mouth and those damned spiked heels.”