Chapter 11
COLE
For several years now, Cole had avoided spending more than a month or two in one place.
He moved around about as much as he could without running out of cash.
As long as he’d been living like this, he’d actually started to get used to it, never really missing a place once he’d moved on from it.
This time, though, he got the very real impression he would miss this place.
Or he’d miss its owner, more accurately.
He pushed it out of his mind for the time being.
In the distance, he saw evidence that the weather was about to turn ugly.
The only thing he wanted to worry about right now was getting back to the hotel before dark.
Of course, though, his engine wouldn’t start.
It struggled a few times, and then it wouldn’t even try.
“Perfect,” he said, rolling his eyes. This could have happened in town, and he would have someone nearby to call.
But it had to happen out in the middle of nowhere.
Correction. There was someone nearby to call, but that person was the one he’d been trying to avoid talking to for the last twenty-four hours.
After the first coat was on the red cabin, he suggested they work on the other two separately.
Splitting up would improve their efficiency, he’d said, which was a complete lie.
It would have been better if he’d stayed with her to supervise and answer questions.
But he was worried they would come together again, and he’d be tempted like he was before.
As prickly as his exterior was, Cole Bartow had a marshmallow center.
The last thing he wanted to do was hurt this woman when he knew any kind of relationship between them was impossible.
He hated to see a woman cry. He hated to see a broken heart.
And one of the best ways to avoid that very thing was to discourage anyone from getting attached to him.
This had been the unavoidable truth since he started his nomadic life, and it was one he never tried to ignore or fool himself about. It was too risky.
He climbed out of his truck and popped the hood.
Luckily, he wasn’t completely ignorant about vehicles, but he also wasn’t any kind of professional mechanic.
Thinking it could possibly be his battery, he brought out the portable jump starter and gave it a whirl.
Nothing happened. So it wasn’t the battery.
“It must be the starter,” he mumbled. And then, as though the universe was well aware of his situation and shooting for the best comedic timing, the downpour began.
In seconds, he was drenched. And that was when Kat came outside to check on him. “Hey, what’s going on?” she asked because, of course, he was supposed to be gone already. “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” Cole answered, pushing his dripping hair out of his face. “Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for my truck here.”
She leaned to the side to look around him at the guts of his truck. “You’re fixing it now?”
“What other option do I have?” he asked with a shrug.
She shook her head. “Oh my gosh, come inside, will you? At least wait until it stops raining. You look like something they just pulled out of the river.”
“Thanks,” he said, with a roll of his eyes. “Now I feel way better.”
She led him to the main cabin, the one that was already on the property before she added the other three, and invited him inside.
This cabin was bare wood, far more rustic than the others.
It was set apart from the guest suites, and Cole suspected that was part of the point.
This was where Kat lived, and she would not be renting it out in the near future.
Inside, it was cozy. Knowing it had been her uncle’s cabin, he had expected something far more rustic inside, but she had clearly already been remodeling and redecorating.
Now, it definitely had a woman’s touch about it—more sleek than frilly, classy, he thought, almost like a fancy Houston apartment.
Kat disappeared into a bedroom and came back out with a large towel, which she threw across the living room to Cole. “Bathroom’s over there,” she said, pointing to a door off the main room. “Go ahead and dry off.”
He went into her bathroom and started vigorously towel-drying his hair.
It didn’t seem to change the fact that he looked like he’d just fallen into a swimming pool and crawled out like a swamp thing.
He was dripping all over her new tile floor, so he carefully removed his shirt and draped it over a towel rack.
Then, he dried his torso. His pants were dripping just as much, but he didn’t think she would appreciate him removing them and prancing around her house in his underwear.
When he finally emerged, she took one look at him, and her cheeks turned bright red while her jaw dropped.
He recognized the look. She liked what she was seeing.
It was good to be appreciated so obviously, but he had to interrupt the moment.
“I’m guessing you don’t want me to sit anywhere in these.
” He gestured to his still-dripping pants.
“Do you have anything I can wear instead?”
All of a sudden, she snapped out of her daze.
“Oh, right. I’m sure I can come up with something.
” She disappeared into her bedroom and Cole waited patiently for her to return.
When she came back, she was carrying a pair of pajama pants in one hand.
“This is all I could find,” she said, handing them to him.
“They’re probably way too short for you, but they have a drawstring, so they’ll probably fit around your waist. Sorry I don’t have anything better. ”
He chuckled as he took the pants from her.
“I wouldn’t expect you to keep clothing for hypothetical men in your house.
Don’t worry about it.” What he didn’t say was that he was relieved she didn’t have men’s clothes in her closet.
It was evidence that she didn’t have a man in her life, at least not one she was intimate with.
As soon as he had the thought, he shut it down fast. He was not the sort of person a woman could safely get attached to. He knew this, and as cute as he may have thought she was, it wouldn’t be fair to her.
From outside the bathroom, he heard her ask, “You want something to drink?”
“Whatever you have is fine with me.”
He exited the bathroom wearing her pajama pants and feeling a bit ridiculous in them.
They were, in fact, far too short for him.
But Kat looked at him like he was some kind of irresistible snack.
She handed him a sweating bottle with cheeks even redder than they had been before.
“Uhm… it’s just soda,” she said in a timid voice.
It threw him off a little because timid was not at all typical for her. She was usually overconfident, in his opinion. He decided to tease her. “My eyes are up here,” he said with a grin.
That got to her properly. She turned her back and sat down at her dining table to sip her own soda.
Without much else to do, Cole sat across from her.
And they stayed that way, in silence, for far too long.
When they were working or bickering, they seemed to never miss a beat when it came to conversation.
They were always at each other’s throats in a manner of speaking, not hatefully but in a way that challenged Cole like he’d never been challenged before.
Sitting here in silence like this felt wrong somehow.
“You ever play poker?” Cole asked on a whim.
She shook her head.
“Do you have a deck of cards?”
“Sure.” She got up from the table and returned with a deck, which she slid from the box like a pro. “I do play cards, you know, just not poker.”
“Do you want to learn?” he asked.
“Could be fun.”
“You swear you aren’t hustling me right now?”
She smiled sweetly. “If I was, would it be smart to tell you so?”
“Oh-ho! Touché, darlin’.” This was going to be a delight, he could tell. He dealt the cards several times for trial games, taught her the different hands and their values, and gave her a few other pointers, too.
“Sounds easy enough,” she said, utilizing her confidence in a new kind of way.
Cole fanned his cards out in front of him after his most recent deal. “The trick is to never let your face show what your hand is,” he said. “Whether it’s bad or good. Don’t let disappointment or excitement show in your expression. That way you can bluff and win.”
They played for a while, and Cole quickly learned that, in this case at least, Kat’s confidence was baseless.
She made it so obvious every time she got what she wanted or didn’t.
And she could never quite read Cole’s expression.
He was so practiced at hiding his feelings that poker had become a particular skill of his.
A couple times, he let her win, but the rest of the time, he played the best he could and beat the pants off her.
After a while, just playing the game got dull, so Cole started probing for information. “So,” he began, “this place looks a little bit Houston to me.”
She looked up from her cards. “What do you mean, a little bit Houston?”
He shrugged. “Just the way it’s put together, decorated and all that. From the outside, I expected a rustic sort of cabin. But in here, it looks pretty modern for a cabin on a ranch, don’t you think?”
She glanced around her own place as though seeing it for the first time. “I guess so,” she concluded. “I never really thought of ‘Houston’ as a decorating style, but I agree it’s more modern than you’d expect in a place like this. I guess… I just like it.”
“Homesick for Houston?” He cocked his head and hit her with a more straightforward question. “What made you decide to leave the city anyway?”
Her eyes went back to her cards, which Cole felt was more a way for her to avoid eye contact than her really needing to see her hand. “My uncle left me a ranch to run, so I came here to run it.”
“Calling your bluff on that one,” Cole said.
“You could have sold it off. Your uncle can’t force you to run the place.
You could have given it to one of your brothers if you wanted, and they could have run it.
There were so many ways to get out of this obligation.
As far as I know, you didn’t even try. I’m curious why you gave up Houston for a place like this. ”
Her smile dropped as she considered his question again.
It was a shame, but he realized this meant he was about to hear a much more honest answer from her.
“It was strange,” she said in a quiet voice.
“Houston had everything I ever wanted. It was the big city with the perfect job, the perfect apartment, and perfect friends. I should have been so happy there. But I wasn’t.
” Her eyes found him for a second and dropped back down to her cards again.
“I never felt like I belonged there. Nothing came naturally to me. I didn’t really fit in. ”
“So you came back home.” Another quick glance told him he’d gotten it right.
“I hadn’t planned to stay,” she admitted.
“But my uncle left the ranch to me, and my boss just happened to be a jerk right after, and so I quit my job. I was sure I could do this instead. I mean, I was raised here, wasn’t I?
We visited Uncle Roy all the time, and he loved showing the ranch off to me.
I loved it here. I think that’s part of why he left it to me. He thought I’d feel at home here.”
The way she worded that was strange, so Cole pressed her. “And was he right?”
Kat frowned and laid her cards face down on the table.
“No. I think I lost something while I was in Houston. I forgot how to belong here, too. The town seemed so different to me, even though I knew where everything was. Even talking to my brothers, I felt like a visiting stranger. It… didn’t feel like coming home at all. ”
Cole’s heart sank when he heard that. All he could think about was how he may have contributed to that feeling of being a stranger in her own hometown.
He hadn’t thought about how his words might have affected her.
He’d only thought about how keeping her at a distance would inevitably protect both of them.
Now, there was a less than zero percent chance he felt differently.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I think you fit in beautifully.”
She didn’t respond verbally, but her expression, her wide eyes and slightly parted lips, let him know he was making an impact.
“Look,” he went on without waiting. “I may not know a lot about the hospitality industry, or social media, or marketing, or whatever else it is you’re trying to do here.
But I do know a bit about ranching. My father was a rancher, and he taught me everything he knew.
I’ve been paying attention to your progress.
” He paused, realizing how he was coming across. “Not in a creepy way, I swear.”
She laughed at that, and he was glad she was in a place where she could laugh. It meant she could be cheered up, if only he could find the right words to say in the right order.
“The truth is, I’m impressed with how quickly you’re learning,” he said.
“You work hard, and you have some amazing ideas. I may not understand them, and they may be the opposite of what I’ve been taught about ranching.
But I can see how they might bring in more people, more revenue.
You’ve been moving so fast, bringing your vision to life.
” He paused and glanced across the table to see her watching him, examining his face for any sincerity.
He didn’t even try to hide his feelings because, for once, he meant every word he had spoken.
He was sincere as he concluded, too. “I can see why your uncle chose you, over everyone else, to revive his ranch.”
She was clearly touched but doubtful. “But you hardly even know me.”
He shrugged. “I feel like I’ve known you my whole life. You’re an open book, kitten.”
At first, she looked pleasantly overwhelmed, and then she was skeptical again. When she finally responded, he realized he wasn’t wrong about her doubt. What he was wrong about was what she was doubtful about. “So, why are you closed and chained and locked in a safe?”
He knit his brow, unsure how to respond to that. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know anything about you. This is the first time I’ve heard that your father was a rancher. So how long did you live on a ranch?”
She wanted to know about his past, and that was usually a sign that it was well past time to move on.