Chapter 10
Hope
I make dinner again. It’s easy to cook for Luna, she’s not picky and she keeps Bellamy entertained while I chop vegetables.
They have an excess of green onions, which reminds me of ramen I used to devour when I was a teenager, so I find some pasta in the pantry and make a chicken noodle stir-fry with green onions and red peppers.
Since Zane and Ridge are nowhere to be seen, I leave leftovers in the fridge, and Luna promises that’s fine.
After dinner, we repeat the glorious bath routine from the night before, and Bellamy passes right out. All this time in the fresh air, racing around while we work, is good for her.
Then I have a bath for myself, and when I finish, I get to put on clean—albeit borrowed—PJs.
The flannel pants fit all right. They’re probably only one size bigger than I would usually wear, so I just roll the waistband once.
The rodeo t-shirt I put on is more comically oversized, but it feels nice and smells even better, like a cold mountain stream—a good omen for what our clothes might smell like once they've had a proper wash.
I should take our dirty clothes downstairs and put them in the wash, but the bed calls to me. I snuggle up around my daughter and let myself drift off.
I don’t know how long I’ve napped for when I wake with a jolt.
Not from a nightmare, I don’t think.
I press my hand to my belly, worried I’m going to throw up, but that’s not it, either.
The laundry.
Crap.
Forcing myself out of bed, I gather up our small collection of dirty clothes. My leggings and shorts, the tank top and t-shirt and peasant blouse I wore out of the compound. The layers I put on Bellamy. Everything except my favourite white linen skirt, because I’ll want to wash that by hand.
With a glance back at her, sound asleep in the bed, I leave the door open so I can hear if she cries, and I head down the stairs silently.
The house is quiet and dark, but there’s a warm glow coming from the room right next to the laundry. The library, Luna said.
After I put a load of wash on, I glance through the open doorway.
It’s not Luna bent over a desk.
My cheeks blaze with an uncomfortable heat as I catch sight of Zane.
Even though I haven’t moved, he lifts his head and looks right at me.
“Hope,” he says, half-rising. His face goes tight and his gaze locks on my face.
I jump backward. “Sorry.”
“No, don’t— It’s fine.” Tension tugs at his features for a moment, but then he gestures for me to come into the room, and after a beat, he slowly sits again. “How are you doing?”
“Fine. Just, um, washing some laundry.”
“Ah.” He gives me an unexpected, crooked smile that softens his face in a way that makes me swallow hard. Maybe he’s gotten over being irritated with my arrival on the ranch. “I’ve gotten good at tuning out noises. Hey, thank you for making dinner. It was really good.”
His compliment is sincere enough that it soothes the part of me that has been worried since yesterday about his reaction when I showed up.
“Oh, you’re welcome.” I wrap my arms around my torso. If the way to make him happy as a boss is food, I can press that button again and again. “If you have any requests for tomorrow, just let your mom know.”
“You don’t have to cook for us every night.”
“I don’t mind. It’s good to make myself busy.”
“Speaking of work… I have a phone for you.” Standing up, he grabs a small smartphone off the desk. “I was going to leave it in the kitchen for you to find in the morning. It’s just on ranch WiFi, it doesn’t have a proper phone number, but you can text Luna from it.”
I stare at the device in his outstretched hand.
The internet has no secrets.
“I don’t need a phone,” I say woodenly.
He frowns and sets it down. “You sure? It would also make getting dinner requests from us a little easier. Not that you need to cook for us, I want to reiterate, but we appreciate the help, and you’re good at it. We’ll pay you for your work. Ranch cooks make good money, because cowboys get hungry.”
It’s hard not to perk up at that. “Okay.”
He gives me another crooked smile. It’s dangerously charming. “But part of working here at the ranch means being reachable by everyone else on the ranch.”
I drop my gaze and stare at the device.
“It’s been a while since I've had a phone,” I finally admit.
He doesn’t react. If anything, he goes even more still, his calm exterior turning to glass.
It’s interesting to see him control his reactions like that. Makes me feel bold. “You must think that’s very odd.”
“It’s not that common for a young woman to go without a phone.” He chooses his next words carefully, his gaze searching my face. “Were you not allowed?”
The question pulls me right to the edge of a cliff. Do I answer? Or do I deflect? Do I jump or back away?
Slowly, tentatively, I shake my head. Just a little. It feels like I’m admitting so much, but Zane doesn’t judge me.
His gaze is steady as he nods. “What else can I get you, then? Maybe something to read while you wait for your wash?”
I step further inside the room and look around. The room is part office, part library, part…plant hospital, it looks like, from the scraggly sad green things on a stand in front of the window.
As I glance around, I feel his gaze slide down to my shirt. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice his mouth quirks up, his neat moustache twitching.
“What’s so funny?” I ask. Free falling into a canyon makes me brave. Or dumb. Probably dumb.
“Luna gave you some hand-me-downs, I see.”
Definitely dumb. Embarrassed, I nod.
But the confession is rewarded with a story, a little gift of information about my host.
“That was my one and only rodeo attempt.” He sits down again and leans back in his chair, crossing his arms behind his head.
“I’m not as reckless as my brothers, it turns out.
Came in dead last in my event. Only wore that shirt to sleep in, and finally tossed it on the donate pile. I’m glad it’s getting a second life.”
I shiver at the thought that he used to sleep in this, too. And I chose it after my bath. Pressed my face in the soft cotton and inhaled the scent, thinking it was just laundry.
Maybe it was laundry and a very off-limits man, too.
My cheeks heat up. I don't know how to properly react to that. And my improper reaction is best ignored. I take a step back, because that feels like the right thing to do. It doesn’t carry me far, though.
I can’t seem to move my body all the way to the door.
“I won’t bother you any more if you’re working. ”
“I don’t mind the interruption, I promise.” He glances at his watch and winces. “And it’s almost bedtime for me. I didn’t realize it had gotten this late.” He looks up at me, and this time there’s something blatantly curious in his gaze. “Are you a night owl? Or are you having trouble sleeping?”
“I fell asleep with Bellamy earlier. Then I woke up and remembered I wanted to do laundry, so…”
"Make yourself comfortable, then.” He gestures at the room, then returns his attention to his work.
There’s something about his shift in focus that makes me feel like his offer is genuine. He’s working, I’m waiting for the washing machine to run its cycle, so why can’t I look around?
The bookshelves take up the entire wall opposite the window. Floor to ceiling, densely packed with a wide variety of titles. I drag my eyes across the spines. History, mostly. Some military nonfiction, a few thick biographies. Piles of agriculture magazines.
And then a big chunk of fiction books that make my heart race. A lot of thrillers, some battered fantasy paperbacks, and an entire shelf of romance novels.
I slow down there, pulling a book out to read the back, feeling like I’m doing something incredibly wrong, that feels secretly good.
“What do you read?" Zane asks from behind me.
I shove the book back onto the shelf and whirl around.
He’s looking at me, but in a casual way, like half of his attention is still on the papers in front of him.
Which gives me time to think of the long, quiet evenings on the island when Derek would disappear into his office.
The stories I had to dream of in my head because I wasn’t allowed anything other than the Bible and children’s books for Bellamy.
"It’s been a while since I’ve read something new. "
He waves a hand. “Take whatever looks interesting up to your room, then. Most of those Luna bought for us over the years, vainly hoping we’d become readers like she is.”
“You’re not a reader?”
“Not fiction. I’m currently reading a history of the Canadian Pacific Railway.”
"Is it good?"
"Depends on your interest in surveying disputes."
My face screws up despite myself. Don’t insult your host, Hope Waterford!
But Zane doesn’t look offended.
Which pulls a different request from me, unbidden. "Do you have anything that I might be able to read to Bellamy? I’m making up her bedtime stories right now.”
He gets up and wanders across to a smaller bookshelf on the opposite side of the room from me. “How about a book about the biggest and smallest animals in the Rockies?”
“That’ll do just fine, thank you.”
He doesn’t come all the way over to me, he just sets it down on a small table between us before returning to his desk.
After a beat, he picks up the phone and moves it to sit on top of the book.
My pulse races, and I force myself to keep moving along the shelves. To keep acting like I’m just killing time waiting for laundry, and not panicking on the inside about something that I know—I know—is irrational.
There’s no way Derek can find me if I use a ranch phone just to contact Luna and her sons about chores. I won’t use my name.
How can I make sure that Zane doesn’t use my name?
But he hasn’t even asked me to fill out employment paperwork yet.
He knows I’m on the run.
He hasn’t asked me too much about that yet.
Maybe he never will.