16. Landon
CHAPTER 16
Landon
W hen Clint comes to swap me out, I know he got laid. I can see it all over his face.
“So, you’re good with Nora now?” I ask, teasing him lightly. It’s somewhere around one in the morning, and it’s a perfectly clear night. The storm that was supposed to move in clearly hasn’t.
Because the night sky is so bright, you can practically drive with no lights on. It’s part of what I fucking love about Montana. Sure, the stars were good in Nevada, too, but here, they’re fucking stunning.
Clint frowns in response to my question. “How did you know?”
“You look like a dog who just figured out how to get into the trash,” I say, elbowing him.
“I do not.”
“Oh, brother, you most definitely do.”
Clint’s spine goes ramrod straight. “I… I didn’t mean to.”
“Dude,” I laugh. “Chill. Clearly, she doesn’t want one of us over the other ones. She’s super down with all of us.”
Clint doesn’t respond. I continue. “I don’t see the fuckin’ problem. Shane and I have shared before, and if you wanted to share, too…”
“We can’t just drop her,” he says with a guttural voice.
I tense .
“I mean, she’s not one of your conquests that you bring home. We can’t just lead her on like this, and then…”
My eyebrows move up. “So you’re re-thinking your whole ‘buy the ranch’ thing?”
Clint shakes his head. “No.”
“Okay then. Seems like that’s going to be a little hurtful, if she finds that out.”
He glares at me. “You’re holding that back from her, too,” he says in an accusing tone. “You want to tell her about that plan?”
I shake my head. “No. But if we abandon it, maybe we could actually help her with this place.”
Clint blinks. “What?”
“What I’m sayin’ is, let’s say we just assume we’re not going to buy the ranch. Let’s look at it from the perspective of being more… involved with Nora.” I wiggle my eyebrows at him. “If we were committed to her, then it wouldn’t be us just waiting to swoop in and buy the ranch from her.”
He barks a laugh. “Committed? You want to marry her, Landon?”
My chest aches at the word. “No. I’m never getting married.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“But I’m not closed off to a commitment,” I say quietly. “I mean, that’s what I did with you two idiots, right?”
It’s something that’s been on my mind lately. Yes, I will never get married. That’s not the type of future I want for myself, especially seeing how hard it was for my parents to leave. They drew out their pain for fucking years, all in the name of something that was given to them far too easily.
But for Shane and Clint? Fuck. I’d do anything. And my heart feels just a little excited at the prospect of keeping Nora in that same category as them.
“We could help her save her ranch, Clint. Think of how important that would be to her. To them both.”
“We owe them nothing. If anything, they owe us,” Clint responds.
I shrug. “Maybe. But I think that at this point, we’re not new neighbors here to take the ranch the second it goes belly up. We’re out here at two in the morning, guarding her against her ex-boyfriend. A couple of us have fucked her,” I say, my voice roughening. “It’s not the same anymore.”
There’s already been a commitment made of some kind. It’s just a matter of seeing it now.
I definitely know that I feel bad about the plan. Waiting on her and her dad to lose the ranch feels… predatory. Especially if someone is deliberately out here trying to sabotage them.
Clint shakes his head. “Nothing has changed. Having a little fun along the way doesn’t make the fact that their ranch is going to go belly up any different.”
“But it changes how we handle it.”
“Enough, Landon,” he snaps.
I shut my jaw with a click.
“If the ranch goes under, then we’re going to buy it. End of story. It’s what’s best for Wild Spur. Nora and her dad are… good people,” he manages to grit out. “They’ll understand if we do end up going for the sale.”
My eyebrows raise. “Will they? Seems to me like they’re spending most of their time and effort trying to save the ranch, and they won’t take kindly to us waiting to swoop on it like vultures.”
“It’s just business,” Clint says harshly. But I can tell that there’s less conviction behind his words than normal.
I stand. “Just business. Right. Whatever you tell yourself to help you sleep at night.”
“Well then, you fuckin’ tell her!” he snarls.
I shake my head. “No way, man. This is something we all do. We’re all here for her. We’re doing this together, and she knows that. She likes that,” I add, my eyebrows pushing up my forehead. “She told us that she wanted all of us. So, if we’re going to let her down, we’re going to do it together.”
Clint stares at me. I can see his eyes searching mine, the starlight bright and luminous, but he won’t find any trace of my usual jokes there. I’m not fucking joking.
Finally, he sighs. “Go rest,” he murmurs. “She’s in her bed.”
I walk out from the porch, practically sprinting up the stairs after I set my shotgun next to the door. I poke my head into a couple of rooms, waiting until I find Nora’s.
She’s fast asleep in bed. Naked. Which is cool.
I strip, aware that I’m dirty but too tired to care. I slide in next to Nora. She makes a little noise in her sleep before she leans back against me, her ass tucking against my side.
I wrap my arms around her, breathing the smell of her hair.
I need to get Shane and Clint on board with telling her. She deserves to know that, while our motivations might have changed, initially, we wanted to buy the ranch. She needs to know.
But what I told Clint is also true. We’re doing this, the three of us, together.
The least that we can do is disappoint her together as well.
In the morning, Richard returns to the ranch. Nora and I are long out of bed, and Shane’s installing the security cameras that he apparently had lying around our barn on her house.
I choose not to ask questions about that. I have a feeling that he has far more security than even Clint and I realize, but in this situation, I’m kind of okay with it.
Nora looks up as her dad walks in the door. “Dad!” she cries, her voice very pleased. “How are you? What did the doctor say?”
Richard casts me a meaningful look, and I bow out. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”
I let them catch up, choosing to help Shane with the security instead.
“Yo,” I call up to him. He’s on a ladder at the edge of the farmhouse. “Need any help?”
“Yeah. Toss me up those wires,” he says, gesturing to the pile of wires on the ground.
I oblige, squinting. “How good are these things?”
“You could take a high-resolution still picture from sixty yards.”
“Cool,” I say, nodding my approval.
“Her dad back? ”
I nod again. Shane finally comes down, wiping his hands as he does. I look up at him. “So, where does the feed from all of these go?”
“My computer. And an app that I’ll install on Nora’s and her dad’s phones.”
“They work without cell signal?”
“Connected to satellite internet,” he says, nodding at the sky. “Basically, have coverage twenty-four hours a day, except for a couple of hours when the comms are down.”
“You think we’ll catch this fucker?”
Shane looks at the house before he leans down. “Between you and me? This guy’s fucking trouble.”
“How?”
He pulls out his phone. “I ran a search on him. At first, I thought he was just a standard trust fund baby. Frat boy idiot who has fucked up his chances of ever being a real boy, all that.”
“Takes one to know one,” I say, grinning at Shane.
“Fuck you, man.”
“Sorry. Keep going.”
“I dug a little deeper, and there’s a lot more. His dad’s a developer. Real estate, mostly, down in Colorado and New Mexico. But he’s recently acquired some land out near Helena.”
My heart drops. “You think that he’s interested in Nora’s ranch?”
“I think that’s entirely possible.”
“And the kid?”
He shrugs. “Who knows? Again, he seems like just a standard asshole. Nothing remarkable, a couple of closed cases that have been sealed.”
“Can you find out what’s in those?” I ask. If he has a history of something like arson, or he has some kind of assault record…
“Already on it.”
I clap him on the back. “Good man, Shane.”
“She and Clint fucked last night.”
“Yup.”
“It doesn’t feel right,” Shane says quietly. “To be so involved and still be waiting to buy the ranch out from under them if they can’t make it happen. ”
“I know,” I say. “But Clint is convinced that she’ll leave. One way or another, he sees this as something temporary. Something that’s going to end at some point.”
“Doesn’t have to be,” Shane grunts.
I grin. “That’s what I’m saying. If we could just come clean to her, tell her how it started and how it is now?—”
He tilts his head. “How is it now?”
I shrug. “I don’t know about you, man. But I do know that right now, I’m more inclined to help her save the ranch than wait for it to fail.”
“Because…”
“Because they’ve earned it.”
Shane gives me another sharp nod. “That they have.”
We’re quiet for a minute, watching the ranch around us. The smoking ruin of the barn seems to glare at me, a reminder of the near-disaster of last night.
“Can’t believe that motherfucker burned their barn down.”
“I think he’s definitely been behind the other shit, too,” Shane says in a thoughtful tone. “Which means he’s been here for a while.”
“A while?”
“At least since Nora got back from college.”
“You think she’s right? That he followed her here?”
“I think it’s the most logical explanation.”
My eyes narrow. “What if losing Nora is motivation, too? Not just the whole daddy developer thing. What if he’s mad at her for walking away?”
Shane snorts. “Tracks for that type of a man, don’t it?”
“Sure does.”
His eyes glimmer. “If that’s the case, he’s probably gonna be mighty upset that she’s been spending some time in the arms of three guys like us.”
“Probably will,” I say, catching his drift.
“Bet we could lure him out if he suspected that Nora has moved on,” Shane says, turning his head slightly to look back at the farmhouse.
It’s a risky plan. One that we will definitely need Nora to buy into, because she won’t want to put her dad in danger. And she would be pretty darn mad if we pulled it off behind her back. Plus, if we’re using her as bait, she probably deserves to know.
I give Shane a look. “Shall we pitch this to the crew?”
He rises, his face set in a hard line.
“Let’s fuckin’ do it.”