Chapter 2
Ava
A long stream of air rushed from Steven’s mouth, like a moving tire that accidentally picked up a nail. “Shit.”
“Language.” In the year I’d known him, I’d never seen him speechless. I waited. He wouldn’t get any roadside assistance from me.
He smoothed a pale palm along his dark, cropped hair, scanned the parking lot, and waved to his client as the older man pulled out of the lot. “I planned to talk to you about this.”
“Really? Before or after you sold it?”
“Before. I mean, in general.”
I threw my arms out wide, a replica of Christ the Redeemer. “I’m here.”
“This offer came in yesterday,” he insisted. “I didn’t realize it was the same ranch until today when I printed it.”
“Well, that would have been a good time to find me. At my desk. Where I live six days a week!”
“And say what?”
I stared at him, unblinking as molten acid rose in my chest. Was it a ploy? Date me, distract me, and screw me over? I couldn’t decide what upset me more–that he’d violated my trust behind my back, or that I’d let him?
His mouth opened again. “Can we talk about this later? Rob is probably at the restaurant.”
“Steven, I don’t want Chinese right now!”
“Shit, Ava, this is bad timing!”
I cupped my hands over Nina’s ears. “Language!” For a fleeting beat, I thought he intended to apologize.
“You’re upset.” I didn’t like the shift in his tone. “Let’s cool down. Have some dinner. I’ll even treat you to dessert. Then we can talk about it.”
“You can’t buy my cooperation! We can talk about it later, or we can talk about it now. My response won’t change. Tell your client that the property is not for sale.”
Steven shrugged out of his sports coat and laid it across the signs in the back.
A black truck rumbled into a spot in front of the Circle K.
A group of teens spilled out of the Mexican place, conversation at full volume, plastic bags swinging.
Nina tried to climb back into the trunk, but her little legs wouldn't reach. All around me, the world carried on like I didn’t hover on a cliff’s edge.
“It’s not that simple, Ava.”
“Then you’re overcomplicating it,” I seethed, clutching the folder to my chest. The one that should have my name on it.
“This client is a game-changer. A major hotel chain? This could make my career! I can’t call him and tell him no deal because my girlfriend wants it, and she saw it first.”
I shook my head, insulted that he made it sound so childish. “How did you not know? I talk about it all the time. This place is everything to me!”
“Everything?” he challenged.
Hidden Meadows held the last traces of Jason. If I lost our ranch, I lost him forever. My fingers clenched the folder. “This is not new. This paperwork is weeks in the making.”
“Come on, Ava. I’m between a rock and a hard place.” His hands went out like a judicial scale. “Secure my career. Appease my girlfriend.” One upturned palm hovered by his shoulder. The latter dropped past his hip.
The brutal honesty in that little gesture settled it. “Enjoy being single.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“And good luck finding an admin half as competent as I am.”
“For fuck’s sake, you can’t qui–”
“Language!”
The squeal of tires drowned our words, and in that halting moment, I realized Nina no longer stood beside me. I spun to see a man in a baseball cap sprinting into the lot, shouting, and grabbing my child from the path of a moving car.
“Oh, my God!”
The folder in my hands fell to the pavement, my heart surged up my throat, and the world melted into a blur. Every worst-case scenario battled for real estate in my head.
The stranger held Nina to his chest, slamming his free palm into the hood of the culprit’s striped mustang. “Slow down! This is a parking lot!”
I rushed to the scene. The man supplied my outstretched arm with Nina. She latched onto me with all her limbs as the driver sped around us, yelling profanities until he was out of sight.
When the shock fled, Nina’s tears started. I began a visual inspection of injuries. Head, arms, legs, feet … “Nina, are you hurt?”
Her answer comprised intensified wails.
The man paced a circle, pressing a hand into his chest the way people will their heart to slow. My arms were full, or I’d have been doing the same.
“Is she okay?” he asked.
Her sobs grew louder.
“I-I think so.” I blinked up at my all-American hero in his frayed baseball cap and worn jeans.
His chest heaved under a snug gray tee. “That idiot peeled outta here like this was the freaking Indy 500.” He shook his head. “Unbelievable.”
I hugged Nina, absorbing her cries. “Thank you. Thank you so much. I–She was right there. I was …” Too busy arguing with Steven?
“Just glad I saw her,” he said.
Following his eyes to the front of the convenience store, I noticed a dented case of beer sitting in a puddle of its own making.
“Ava!” Steven yelled, still beside his car. “Let’s go!”
I was a horrible mother! What if this stranger hadn’t …
if he hadn’t … I should’ve been watching her!
My gaze bounced between the two men. One active, one passive.
The stranger wore dusty jeans and had a faint, familiar earthy odor to him.
Steven always reminded me of a department store cologne counter.
Relief and adrenaline filled me up with no place to go.
Perhaps that’s why I crossed the few feet to the stranger and threw my free arm around him.
The man was a rock. As in, solid. Good. I needed something stable.
“Thank you.” I gushed again. “Words feel wildly insufficient.”
His hand settled on my back like a friend. “You’re welcome.”
I wanted to stay there, under his arm, an umbrella from this emotional downpour. But this man didn’t know me. Or I him. So I forced myself away. “Let me buy you a new case of beer?”
He looked over his shoulder at the mess, his baseball cap shading his face and making his expression difficult to read. “Nah. There’s plenty of good ones left.”
I yelped when Steven appeared at my elbow. His sharp, artificial sea breeze hit me before his words did. “Is Nina okay? Do we need to take her to the ER?”
I turned, narrowing my eyes at his 180.
The stranger ran a palm over his frayed cap. “I don’t think the car actually hit her.”
Steven reached his arm out to Nina’s rescuer. “Thank you. We really appreciate what you did.”
When they shook hands, Steven’s looked frail by comparison.
“No problem. I was telling your wife I’m just glad I saw her.”
“We’re not married,” I blurted, but as the words blew from my mouth, Steven’s arm settled over my shoulder.
“Well, if everyone’s fine …” Steven murmured in my ear as if it were a sweet nothing, “We can still make it to dinner.”
Is he serious?
I stepped out from under his hold, giving the stranger my back out of respect for Steven, although I couldn’t say he deserved it. In a hushed voice, I said, “I meant what I said. If you intend to sell my ranch to anyone but me, there is no we.”
For once, he had the good sense not to speak. He slid his hands in his pockets, eyes directed at his feet, perhaps thinking meek might change my mind.
I knew better. “Steven.”
“Ava.” Sympathy and understanding dripped from his voice in two-dimensional sincerity. “You haven’t set foot on that property in a year.”
“That’s not the point.”
“You kind of abandoned them.”
“I didn’t, I–”
“Have you even talked with Terry? What makes you think it’s still yours?”
Low blow. And a gross oversimplification. He couldn’t know my struggle. How each passing day added one more brick to my chest. How every time I picked up the phone, my throat closed until I couldn’t breathe.
Steven cupped his hands on my shoulders. “Ava, I’m sorry. I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but if it causes you so much pain, maybe you need to let it go.” His eyes cut over my shoulder to the man behind me.
It was always a show with him.
“Steven, I think I made a mistake.”
He rubbed my arm. “It’s okay, Ava. I forgive you.”
“No.” I stepped back. “I don’t think we’re suited for each other. Work-wise, or–”
“Ava, you’re just emotional because of the whole near-hit thing.”
Behind me, the man scoffed. An echo of my well-capped sentiments.
Steven’s eyes shot up over my shoulder again, this time like tiny little tin swords in a gladiator match. I used to appreciate how unassuming he was: a partner, not a dictator. But now I wondered if that’s only how he wanted me to feel. What would happen if I didn’t bend the way he intended?
“I’d like you to take us home,” I told him.
“What about dinner?”
“I don’t want to go.”
A vein in Steven’s temple started pulsing.
I stared evenly at him. For the first time in a year, I didn’t question my decision.
Impatience, frustration, and hurt moved across his clean-shaven features.
Then anger puffed up his skinny chest. I took an instinctive step back.
Into a warm, solid wall of reinforcement.
Steven stiffened, his amiable game dropping into hard, sour lines. With both hands, he smoothed back his already perfected hair. “You know something, Ava? You are your own worst enemy.” Then he turned and marched to his car.
“Hey!” I started after him, but my stupid heels in this heat were my undoing. I couldn’t match his pace. Not with Nina plastered to my chest. “Where are you going?”
“Mr. Bodyguard can take you home.”
“Steven!” Never had I been more tempted to throw my shoe at someone. “Hey!”
In the space of my next heaving exhale, all that remained of my recently appointed ex were the black tire lines marking his abrupt departure.
Mentos in a soda bottle.
That was me. Except I’d capped it too well, so it piled up, building silent pressure. Then another Mentos dropped in.
“Oh.”
A horrible realization.
“Oh, no.”
The cap twisted counterclockwise.
The stranger moved in close. Too close. Worried eyes stared out from under the bill of his hat. “What? What’s wrong?”
Deep breath, Ava.
It was coming. Everything I tried to keep down. On a forced inhale, I caught a whiff of my hero’s earthy scent. It hit my brain, freezing the moment like dry ice.
Horses. He smelled like horses.
His arm shot out to steady me. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“I-I …” My heart sped. But not out of anguish. More like when you’re at the top of a roller coaster. I staggered back. “He has my purse.”
The bill of his ball cap followed my gaze as I searched down McDowell.
Steven’s car was out of sight.