Chapter 5
Zane
I’m pacing in the barn with my phone wedged against my ear, jotting updated feed prices in my notebook as I wait for the guy at the feed store to come back on the line, when I hear a vehicle come up the drive.
I ditch my notebook in the tack room and head out to the paddock to see who’s arrived.
Mercy’s SUV is parked in front of the greenhouse.
Must be an urgent meeting of the International Order of Kale Enthusiasts.
Since I just dropped off a produce order yesterday, I don’t think The Friendly Table is out of vegetables. But sometimes she likes to just stop in and say hi to my mom. Chat with Luna, keep an eye out for Ridge. Maybe have a little barbed quarrel, just for fun.
Optimism, thy name is Mercy Lane. Nobody else on this planet would have half as much patience—or endless amounts of snappy comebacks—for my brother as that one does.
“All right, Zane, I’ve checked with the boss and we can give you a ten percent discount on that chicken feed if you buy two hundred pounds or more,” the feed store clerk says in my ear, pulling my attention back to the call.
That’s about what we need for a month, give or take what we supplement with from scraps. “Can you do better if I double that order?”
“Fifteen percent?”
“I’ll take it. I’ll come by in an hour and pick it—” I cut myself off as the greenhouse door swings open, and Mercy steps outside, but beyond her, I catch a glimpse of someone else.
Someone tall, with strawberry blonde hair and tinted sunglasses.
There’s probably a fuzzy green frog being waved around in the greenhouse, too.
I hang up on the feed store and shove my phone in my back pocket. My legs are carrying me across the paddock faster than I can think about what I’m going to say. I plant my hands on the near fence and vault over it, which catches Mercy’s attention.
She waves at me. “Hi, Zane.”
I take a deep breath and plant my hands on my hips as I stop in front of her. “What’s going on?”
“I’ve brought Luna some help. Cash mentioned that she has a serious kale problem.”
I rock back on my heels. “He did what?”
“It’s perfect, really, because…” She lowers her voice. “Look, this young mother is incredibly sweet, but she needs somewhere quiet to stay while he’s fixing her car.”
Fuck me. “No.”
“Look, Zane, it’s a complicated situation, but—”
“This isn’t a good idea.” I cut her off.
I’m sure it is complicated. And it would only get messier if a young single mother was found out to be crashing at Kincaid’s Refuge.
But I don’t want to argue with Mercy about my family’s reputation—and I definitely don’t want to tell her about my inconvenient attraction to her newly adopted pet project yesterday.
So I focus on the safest reason. The Luna reason.
“You can’t bring a stranger here. You know better than that. ”
“She’s not a stranger. She worked for me last night and this morning, but the diner isn’t a good fit.”
Against my better judgement, I frown. “What do you mean? What happened?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
I shouldn’t care. I don’t want to care. I find myself caring so fucking much. “What are you not telling me?”
Mercy’s gaze snaps back to my face. Maybe careful, but not timid.
“About a stranger? A lot. It’s none of your business.
What’s with the third degree? Luna needs help, I’ve delivered her help.
And she is thrilled, by the way, so whatever this overprotective son routine is that you’re doing, it’s not necessary. ”
Fucking hell. This conversation is a runaway train that I’ve lost control over.
She tilts her head. “Do you suddenly want to pretend you vet everyone who comes onto this property? You want a background check on the propane guy? The vet? The kid who delivers hay? You’ve been waving people up this driveway for five years and now.
This is a helpless young woman with a kid. What’s your problem?”
I don’t answer. I can feel the heat climbing up the back of my neck.
And then it doesn’t matter, because the greenhouse door opens again, and Hope steps outside.
That glimpse of her wasn’t a figment of my imagination.
You stayed, I want to say.
I also want to ask her if she’s okay, I want to ask about whatever drove her out of Mercy’s diner after less than a day, and if she knows what it means to come here.
But I don’t say anything.
I just stare.
She’s wearing those sandals again today, with black leggings and a floral peasant blouse. Her sunglasses are pushed up on top of her head, and I get my first proper look at her lovely face. So soft, so pretty, so fucking out of place on my ranch.
When she feels my gaze on her, she swivels her attention, her eyes going wide. “Zane?”
Mercy’s head snaps from me to Hope and then back to me. “Do you know each other?”
“We met,” I say. My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to. I clear my throat. “Yesterday. On the road. Her car was overheating. I stopped.”
Yesterday I handed this woman two hundred dollars and my word that I’d forget I ever saw her. That didn’t last long.
Fuck.
“He directed us into town,” Hope adds.
Mercy says something else, but I don’t hear it, because all I can focus on is the panic rolling off Hope in unrelenting waves—and the desperate need in my chest to make her problems my problems. To make sure she doesn’t have any problems, ever again.
But that’s not reality.
Reality is that we’re strangers, and I have no idea what kind of trouble she’s mixed up in. I also know exactly what kind of extra trouble would roll her way, inevitably, because of proximity to us. This has disaster written all over it.
“Mommy…”
She turns around, kneeling to give her daughter—Bellamy—her attention.
“She had a panic attack this morning,” Mercy says quietly, for my ears only. I guess she’s decided I get to know more, after all. “She’s running on fumes and she’s scared of something specific, and I don’t know what it is, but I know a woman in trouble when I see one.”
I do too.
That’s the problem.
“Maybe we can put her up in the motel in town. If she’s running on fumes, she shouldn’t have to work,” I try to reason. “I can cover the costs.”
“Zane,” my mother says, cutting our private conversation off. “Hope and Bellamy are going to stay with us for a few days. Since Dax is gone, they’ll have the whole second floor to themselves. Can you take Bellamy’s car seat and their bag up to the house?”
“Luna, I think—”
She raises her eyebrow, cutting me off.
After pushing her to have help with the harvest, I can’t tell her this help isn’t acceptable.
“Sure,” I hear myself say instead of the curt no I really want to snarl out.
In the back of Mercy’s car, I find the car seat and a reusable grocery store bag with some clothes in it. There’s nothing to the weight of it, and that’s a giant red flag.
Hope has nothing to her name. And if she’s running, someone’s bound to chase her.
In the house, I call my brother.
Cash picks up on the second ring. “Hey there, sunshine.”
“You didn’t think to give me a heads up about sending strangers to the ranch?”
“Oh, Mercy’s new friends?”
“Yes, Mercy’s new friends.” The words catch in my throat like a burr.
“What’s the problem? You were the one crying about the kale yesterday.”
“I was telling you that Luna needed help from us. Not so you could install a woman and child on the property without telling me.”
“Mercy vouched for her.”
“Mercy met her yesterday.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “You don’t know anything about this woman. You don’t know where she came from, you don’t know what she’s running from, you don’t know if there’s somebody behind her—”
“If someone’s looking for her, they’ll only get as far as the garage, and I’m not telling them she’s on the ranch. Which makes her safer with you than anywhere else, don’t it?”
“I don’t want to be her protector.” I sound desperate to my own ear.
Cash laughs. Almost like he knows I do want to protect her. But protecting women has always been our weakness. It sent him to jail, didn’t it? But he clearly doesn’t see this as the problem I do. “Did you tell her to get the hell off your land?”
“I can’t fucking do that.”
“So you’re pissed because I made a decision that you would have made yourself anyway. You just wanted to be the one who made it.”
“That’s not—”
“I’m sure it’s going to be fine, bud. I gotta go. We’re busy. I’ll try to look at her car this afternoon, but probably won’t get to it until tomorrow at the earliest. Tell Mom she has help for at least a few days.”
And then he hangs up on me.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I carry the light bag of clothes upstairs. Luna’s right—this floor would be all theirs, since Dax is on the road and Cash has moved to town. It’s possible to give them lots of space, create a safe harbour for them here until the car is ready.
But as I put the bag on the never-used guest bed, I can already feel a too-curious tug in my belly, low and persistent. I’ll give them space, but I won’t be able to forget they’re up here.
For every second of every minute of every day that Hope and Bellamy are on my ranch, I’m going to be painfully aware of them—and that’s too close to the raw, real nature of my personality for comfort.
I don’t want to be that kind of man.
No, that’s not good enough.
I can’t be, won’t be that kind of man.
By the time I walk back across the yard toward the greenhouse, I’m composed. I’m fine. I’m a man who helped his mother with a logistical problem and is now going to go back to his afternoon.
Hope is standing just outside the greenhouse door. Her daughter tugs on her, wanting up. I’m transfixed as Hope reaches down and scoops her up. There’s a small wince as she settles the girl on her hip, because Bellamy grabs hold of her mom’s hair.
I’d like to tangle my fingers in those waves, too.
God damn it, those thoughts are hard to suppress.
But the afternoon sun makes the wavy strands look like they’re made of spun rose gold, and it’s an immediate test of my resolve.
It’s also hard to look away because of how closely entwined the two of them are, the way they bow their heads together.
How fragile but strong they are.
They have nothing, but they have each other. Twenty years ago, that was my family, but instead of one little girl, my mother had four rowdy boys who wouldn’t stop wrestling around her.
I know the instant Hope feels my attention, because her whole body changes. Her shoulders come up, her back stiffening under that soft cotton shirt. The same wariness that she had when I stopped behind her on the road yesterday, when I was a stranger.
I’m still a stranger to her. Still dangerous. But I’m also the man whose house she’s sleeping in tonight.
Something goes cold and flat behind my sternum, and instead of closing the gap between us, I shift course and head for my truck. I have chicken feed to pick up.
Luna can give them the tour of the house.
I don’t look back.
It’ll probably take a few days for Cash to get parts in for the car, and he’s juggling different jobs at the garage. Odds are good she’s here for a week.
Luna will love the help, and I can already see that stretching longer if she works out as a ranch hand.
Fuck. Me.
At least seven days of a woman I can’t stop looking at sleeping two floors above me. A week of Hope flinching every time I walk into a room because her body reads me correctly and mine has the audacity to be surprised about it.
I put the truck in gear.
I can be a ghost in my own house for one week. I’ll stay out of her way so she doesn’t have to notice me. That’s the only problem that she has that I have any business trying to solve, because it’s the one that’s wholly in my control.