9
The stable smelled like hay, leather, horse, and work.
Talia stood just outside the stall Gordon was cleaning, close enough to hear the scrape of the rake against straw, but not close enough to be in the way. She had learned that much in her first hour of shadowing him.
Do not stand where a gate needed to swing.
Do not stand where a horse might back up.
Do not stand where Gordon Windgate needed to move, because he moved with purpose, and if she was honest with herself, that purpose was becoming a problem.
A serious problem.
He had taken off his hat and hung it on a post near the stall door.
His hair was slightly damp at the temples, his dark T-shirt pulling across his shoulders every time he bent or lifted.
Talia also got a good look at his backside, and the phrase with a great booty comes great responsibility danced around her mind.
The muscles in his forearms flexed as he worked, veins standing out beneath sun-browned skin.
His body had the kind of definition that came from labor, not vanity, and Talia was having an increasingly difficult time pretending she was watching him for journalistic reasons.
She was supposed to be observing work patterns.
Not the way his back moved beneath cotton.
She was supposed to be documenting setting.
Not the shape of his arms.
She was supposed to be preparing questions.
Not wondering what it would feel like to have that quiet strength turned toward her in a way that had nothing to do with interviews.
Gordon paused, rake still in hand.
He did not look at her right away.
“Do you have actual questions to ask me,” he said, “or are you just planning to stare until I finish the stall?”
Heat rushed up her neck.
Talia snapped her gaze to his face.
He looked over his shoulder then, one eyebrow slightly raised.
“I was not staring.”
“You were.”
“I was observing.”
His eyes moved over her notebook, which was closed in her hand.
“Without writing anything down.”
“I have a good memory.”
“I’m sure.”
Her grip tightened around the notebook.
Attraction was irrelevant.
Completely irrelevant.
She flipped the notebook open and clicked her pen with more force than necessary. “Fine. I’ll ask a question.”
“Good.”
He went back to mucking the stall.
Talia took a breath and chose the one question that had been sitting at the top of her list since before she ever came to Stanley Ranch.
“Why are you different from Beau and Logan Windgate?”
The rake stopped.
The stable quieted around them, though not completely. A horse shifted in the next stall. Somewhere down the aisle, a bucket clanked. Dust floated in the slanted light.
Gordon did not turn around.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Talia waited.
She had learned better than to fill silence around him. Gordon used silence like other men used walls.
Finally, he resumed working, slower now.
“I didn’t always live with them,” he said.
Her pen moved.
“My mother was Paul Windgate’s mistress.”
Talia’s pen slowed.
Gordon said it plainly. No flinch. No attempt to soften the word.
“When she died, my father moved me into the family home he shared with his wife and kids.”
Talia’s eyes lifted from the page.
Gordon bent, scooped soiled straw into the wheelbarrow, and continued as if he were discussing weather.
“Until then, I had never used the Windgate name. I was born under my mother’s name. Cross. Gordon Cross.”
“Your father changed it?”
“Legally. Shortly after he brought me to the house.”
Talia wrote that down, though she felt the story rearranging in her head as quickly as he spoke.
Gordon Cross.
Not always Gordon Windgate.
That changed things.
No, that explained things.
Some of them, at least.
“You asked why I’m different,” he said. “That’s part of it.”
He pushed the rake through the straw, gathering another pile.
“The first years of my life were spent with my mother. She had good moral values.”
A dry humor crossed his voice.
“With the obvious exception of loving a man who had a wife and children.”
Talia said nothing.
“My mother taught me right from wrong. She taught me to be honest. To respect people. To work for what I needed. To never look down on a person because I had more than they did.”
He paused, then added, “She also taught me that love could make people stupid.”
Talia’s pen hovered.
“Did she say that?”
“Not in those words.” He glanced at her. “I learned that part by watching.”
There was no bitterness in his tone.
That almost made it worse.
“I’m not like my brothers because I didn’t grow up idolizing Paul Windgate,” Gordon said. “Beau and Logan did.”
He tossed another load into the wheelbarrow.
“I’m not blaming their mother either.”
Talia looked up fully.
He turned then, resting one hand on the rake handle.
“A part of me believes she was as much a victim of Paul’s wickedness as my mother and I were.”
That was not what Talia expected him to say.
Not even close.
“She hated you?” Talia asked before she could stop herself.
“She had reason to.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No. It’s not.”
His eyes held hers, steady and unreadable.
Then he looked away and returned to the stall.
“Paul made a wreck of that house long before I walked into it. I was proof of the wreck, not the cause.”
Talia wrote the sentence carefully.
Proof of the wreck, not the cause.
“That’s how you see yourself?”
“That’s how I learned to see it.”
“And Beau and Logan?”
“They saw me as an insult. A threat. Sometimes a toy. Sometimes a punching bag. Depended on the day.”
Her throat tightened.
He said it too simply.
Men did that sometimes when the truth had lived with them too long.
“Paul was not some grand villain with genius plans,” Gordon said. “He was a man with a small intellect and a big ego. A dangerous combination when money and power cushion every fall.”
Talia stared at him.
That was better than anything she had hoped to get from him today.
Sharper. More human. Less headline and more wound.
She clicked her pen again, mind racing. “Had you spent time with your father and brothers before your mother died?”
Gordon stopped working.
This time, he turned fully.
His expression changed.
Not anger exactly.
Decision.
“I’m putting another condition on our deal.”
Talia blinked. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“That’s not fair. You can’t change the rules now.”
He leaned the rake against the stall wall and faced her.
“I can.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Yes,” he said calmly. “I can.”
She stared at him, irritation rising fast. “You agreed to answer my questions.”
“I agreed you could ask anything. I did not say I wouldn’t set terms as I went.”
“That is a very convenient distinction.”
“It is.”
“Gordon.”
He stepped to the stall opening, close enough now that she had to tilt her head slightly to keep his gaze.
“Do you want the interview or not?”
The question landed between them.
Talia hated how much power he had in that moment.
She hated more that he knew it.
Her jaw tightened. “Fine. What is the new condition?”
“For every question you ask me, I get to ask you one.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“This is not how interviews work.”
“This one does.”
“I’m the reporter.”
“And I’m the source who can end this whenever I want.”
Her teeth pressed together.
He was right.
Again.
Infuriating man.
“And I have to answer honestly?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You realize I have professional limits too.”
“I’m not asking for your source list or the Chronicle’s coffee budget. I’m asking for honesty.”
She studied him, trying to decide whether the deal was reckless or fair.
Probably both.
If she refused, he could stop talking. If she agreed, she risked giving him more of herself than she intended.
But he had already given her more than she expected.
His mother.
His name.
His place in a house that had never been ready for him.
Talia let out a slow breath. “Fine. One question for one question. But if something crosses a professional line, I can say so.”
“And if something crosses a personal line for me, I can say so.”
“Agreed.”
“Good.”
He picked the rake back up.
She narrowed her eyes. “So do I get an answer to the question I already asked?”
“Yes. After you answer mine.”
Talia should have expected that.
“What’s your question?”
Gordon’s eyes stayed on her face. “Why did you lie to everyone when you first came to the ranch?”
She looked down at her notebook.
Of course he would start there.
The stable seemed to tighten around her.
She could give him the clean answer. The professional answer. The one that made her sound ambitious but not desperate, strategic but not ashamed.
But he had asked for honesty.
And she had agreed.
She stared at the blank space beneath her last note for several seconds.
“Because I didn’t think you would grant an interview.”
Gordon said nothing.
“Everyone in media tried to talk to you after everything with the Windgates came out. You said no. Luke said no. Everyone connected to the ranch shut it down. I thought if I approached honestly, I would get the same answer.”
“You would have.”
She looked up. “I know.”
“So you lied.”
“Yes.”
The word scraped on the way out.
“I thought it was the only way to get close enough to you.”
His expression did not change.
“Did it bother you?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
She almost snapped at him that it was not his turn again, but the question had come too naturally, and she owed him the rest of the answer.
“It left a bad taste in my mouth, but…”
She stopped.
Gordon’s gaze sharpened. “But what?”
Talia looked away toward the open stable doors. Sunlight washed the yard beyond them, too bright for the conversation.
“But I’m tired,” she said quietly.
He waited.
She forced herself to continue.
“I’m tired of being passed over for jobs that should have been mine.
I’m tired of watching men with half my skill get promoted because they had the right friends, the right timing, the right confidence, the right face.
I’m tired of being told I’m good, but not quite enough.
Almost, but not yet. Promising, but wait your turn. ”
Her throat tightened, surprising her.
“My boss dangled a promotion in front of me. He said if I got your story, I would get the job.”