11
Talia followed Gordon for the next few hours, and Gordon learned two things very quickly.
First, she was not afraid of work.
Second, she was a dangerous woman to have walking beside him while he was trying to keep his mind on fence hinges, water lines, and loose boards.
She stayed close enough to observe, but not close enough to crowd him.
When he explained what he was doing, she listened.
When he told her to step back from a gate, she stepped back.
When he handed her a pair of work gloves and told her she would ruin her hands if she insisted on touching everything bare-fingered, she gave him a look but put them on.
And every time she smiled, his concentration took a hit.
It was ridiculous.
Gordon had seen beautiful women before. He was not some green boy losing his sense because a woman had smooth skin, bright eyes, and curves his hands had no business thinking about.
But Talia Monroe had a smile that changed her entire face.
Most of the time, she watched him with focus.
Reporter eyes. Sharp. Measuring. Taking in details like she was lining them up for later use.
But when she smiled, the guarded parts of her slipped.
Her eyes warmed. Her mouth softened. Her face lit from the inside, and for one foolish second each time, Gordon wanted to be the reason she forgot to be careful.
That was a problem.
He tightened the last bolt on the fence panel and stepped back.
Talia stood to one side with her notebook open, her pen moving across the page. The sunlight caught the side of her face, turning her skin golden-brown and making the loose strands of her hair shine.
Gordon looked away.
Too late.
“You’re quiet,” she said.
“I’m working.”
“You were working ten minutes ago too. You were less quiet then.”
He glanced at her. “You keeping notes on my silences now?”
“Yes.”
“At least spell them right.”
That smile came again.
Small, quick, devastating.
He turned back to the fence panel before his face betrayed him.
They had spent the morning moving from the stable to a storage shed, then to a section of fencing that needed repair after one of the younger horses decided boundaries were suggestions.
Talia asked questions between tasks, sometimes about him, sometimes about the ranch, sometimes about the people who seemed to appear and disappear with work in their hands and greetings on their lips.
He answered what he could.
Refused what he needed to.
And asked his own questions in return.
That part had started as strategy.
It was becoming curiosity.
“How long did you live with your grandmother?” he asked as he gathered the loose tools and dropped them into the box at his feet.
Talia’s pen paused.
“Most of my childhood.”
He looked at her.
She kept her eyes on the notebook. “My parents traveled a lot. Far-off places. War zones sometimes. Disasters. Political unrest. Human interest stories with high stakes and dramatic backdrops.”
“They were reporters?”
“Journalists,” she said, then glanced up. “Yes. Reporters.”
“Both of them?”
“Yes.”
Gordon picked up a wrench, wiped it on a rag, and set it in the toolbox. “And they left you with your grandmother.”
“They called it stability.”
“What did you call it?”
Her mouth tightened.
For a second, he thought she would refuse to answer. Then she looked toward the pasture beyond the fence, where a few horses grazed with lazy indifference to human history.
“Lonely,” she said.
The word landed between them.
Gordon understood lonely.
Not the kind people complained about when no one invited them to dinner. The other kind. The kind that sat beside a child at night and taught them not to ask for too much.
Talia continued, “My grandmother loved me. She did the best she could. Better than that, honestly. She kept me fed, clothed, in school, alive, mostly on schedule.”
“Mostly?”
“I was stubborn.”
“I’m shocked.”
She gave him a sideways glance. “I’m sure.”
He almost smiled.
“She was steady,” Talia said. “But she was older. Tired. And she had already raised her children. I think part of me always knew I was not supposed to be hers to raise.”
That, too, he understood.
A child could be loved and still feel displaced.
He set another tool into the box. “You said you have a sister.”
“I do.”
“Younger.”
“Yes.”
“You two close?”
The question changed her.
Not loudly. Nothing dramatic.
But her shoulders went still, and her eyes dropped to the page like the answer might be written there if she waited long enough.
Gordon let the silence sit.
He had learned that from Earl. Let a quiet stretch without grabbing at it. People filled it if they wanted. If they did not, that was an answer too.
Talia finally clicked her pen, then clicked it again.
“We don’t really have a relationship,” she said.
He waited.
“She does her own thing. Always has. She pops back into my life when it suits her, then disappears again when it doesn’t.”
There was no bitterness in her voice.
Not much, anyway.
But there was fatigue.
“What’s her name?”
Talia hesitated. “Serena.”
“Does she live in Houston?”
“Sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“That is the most accurate answer.”
He nodded and did not push.
Her eyes lifted to his, and for a moment, something unguarded passed through them. Not gratitude exactly. Relief, maybe. She had expected him to pry harder and seemed surprised when he did not.
He recognized that feeling too.
“Your turn,” she said.
“Go ahead.”
She tucked the pen against the page. “Why did Luke take you in?”
Gordon’s hand stilled over the toolbox.
Talia’s gaze sharpened. “Considering what Beau and Logan had done, or were trying to do, depending on the timeline. Why would Luke offer you a place here?”
Gordon closed the toolbox and straightened.
That answer was not simple.
None of the important ones were.
He looked toward the main house in the distance. From here, only part of it was visible past the trees and the curve of the road. Still, he knew exactly where Luke’s office sat. Knew the door he had walked through two years ago with his stomach twisted and his future hanging by a thread.
“Luke didn’t take me in because he trusted me,” he said.
Talia’s pen moved again.
“He would have been stupid to do that.”
“Do you think Luke Stanley is capable of stupid?”
Gordon glanced at her. “Ask Edye.”
Her mouth curved.
He looked away before the smile could get him again.
“The truth is, you and I aren’t that different,” he said.
Her pen stopped.
“That’s a dangerous comparison,” she said.
“Yes.”
“How so?”
“I came here as a spy for my brothers.”
Talia’s face shifted.
Not shock exactly.
Interest sharpened by the knowledge that she had just stepped onto important ground.
“What does that mean?”
“Beau and Logan wanted information. Weak points. Anything they could use against Luke, against the ranch. They thought I could get closer than they could because I hadn’t been as openly hostile. I was supposed to listen, report back, help them build whatever plan they were putting together.”
“And you agreed?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes held his. “Why?”
Gordon looked down at his hands.
There was dirt under his nails. A healing scrape across one knuckle. Hands that had done decent work for two years, and still remembered what it felt like to belong to a life he despised.
“I didn’t want to,” he said. “But I saw a way out.”
“A way out of what?”
“The path I was on.”
She stayed quiet.
Good reporter.
Or maybe good listener, when she let herself be.
“I knew who Luke was,” Gordon said. “Not personally, not then. But I knew his reputation. I knew he was honorable. Hard, maybe. Proud, certainly. But honorable.”
He swallowed.
“And that was all I had ever wanted to be.”
Talia’s expression softened in a way he wished he did not notice.
“I wanted to be the kind of man my mother meant to raise,” he said.
“The kind of man she might be proud of if she could see me. I knew I wasn’t going to become that standing beside Beau and Logan.
I knew if I stayed with them, whatever was still decent in me would either die or learn to keep quiet forever. ”
The wind moved over the grass.
He kept his eyes on the ranch.
“So I made a choice. I came here. I told Luke what I knew about my brothers’ intentions. I gave him what I had.”
“In exchange for what?”
“A place to live,” Gordon said. “Work. A chance to start over.”
Talia did not write immediately.
He looked back at her.
Her face had gone still, thoughtful.
“That sounds like desperation,” she said.
“It was.”
“And strategy.”
“That too.”
“And faith.”
That one caught him.
He looked at her longer than he meant to. “Faith?”
“You came to a man who had every reason to hate your name and gambled that he would judge you by what you did instead of who your father was.”
Gordon’s throat tightened.
He had not thought of it that way.
Or maybe he had, but not with those words.
“I suppose,” he said.
Talia wrote something down.
“What did you just write?”
Her brows lifted. “Now you’re interviewing my notes?”
“You were writing about me.”
“That is the arrangement.”
“What did you write?”
She looked at the page, then back at him.
“I wrote, ‘He came to Stanley Ranch as a spy and made himself a witness instead.’”
Something moved in Gordon’s chest.
He looked away.
“That too pretty for you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Too bad. It’s accurate.”
He bent to pick up the toolbox. “Your turn.”
She closed the notebook slightly. “Ask.”
“Why do you care so much about this job?”
“I told you.”
“You told me you were tired of being passed over.”
“That’s true.”
“That’s not the whole truth.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re getting comfortable with these questions.”
“You agreed to the terms.”
“So did you.”
“Yes. And I answered.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then sighed.
“My parents are impressive people,” she said. “To other people, anyway. Award-winning. Brave. Important. They chased stories all over the world, and everyone admired them for it.”
“But?”
“But when the world clapped for their courage, I was at my grandmother’s house wondering whether they’d remember my birthday before the day ended.”