Chapter 17 #2
I’m determined to find her the right sort of wolves so that maybe—just maybe—she’ll want to stay.
Hey, a man has to have a hobby.
I close the tailgate and jog around to the driver’s side.
“All right. I wanted to head up along the ridge, past the falls we were at yesterday.” The truck’s roar and Lanie’s added warmth in the cab are a comfort I let soak beneath my jacket as we peel out of the yard.
“From there, we can search a much larger section without returning the drones as often.”
Lanie peers at me suspiciously. “Wait. Weren’t you supposed to sort the rodeo site first?”
“West is happy to organize it for me. This year has been different. He’ll handle it.” I find her hand and wrap it in mine. “You’re more important.”
“If you’re sure,” she whispers, as though no one has made her the center of their world before.
Hell, maybe they never have.
I squeeze her fingers, lifting her hand in mine to press my lips to her knuckles. She deserves to be the center of this world right here.
My world.
The falls run high after the late-summer rains, the edges still green. The early snows and frost never arrived, granting us golden afternoons and chill air without the slush factor. Lanie walks to the edge, where water cascades to the rocks far below.
“You might need an extra jacket,” I call to her, noting how late the day has grown. Dammit, I thought we had more daylight hours. The corner of my lips pull up. Story of my life.
“I’m good.” She faces me with rosy cheeks, excitement blazing in her gaze. “Alaska, remember?”
My chest tightens all over again. “It’s not like I’ll forget.”
When Lanie arrived at Coyote Falls, she thought I meant for her to be a temporary side piece in my life, a replacement buckle bunny, thanks to my sister’s loose lips. Now, it’s turned out to be me who is the temporary fixture in her life. I’m a hell of a sucker for role reversals.
I swallow a scalding mouthful of coffee from her thermos, but it sticks in my throat halfway. I splutter, eyes watering. Lanie helpfully whacks at my back. When I emerge from my sinus-induced haze, tears track my cheeks.
She giggles. “You’re so human, it’s funny.”
“I’m not normally human?” I don’t give her a chance to answer, distracting her with the drones. When we arrived, I set up a little way from the falls while Lanie wandered about the area, exploring. “Any tracks?”
“No. I thought I saw something there, but…” She stares hard between the trees.
I follow her gaze, but I can’t see anything. Maybe she’s picked up some of the wolfish tendencies, because the light between the trunks as I stare into the shadow is utter shit.
“It’s pretty rocky here. You won’t see as much as you might further down the mountain. We can try there later if we have no luck up top.”
She mutters something to herself, reorganizing the controls and the landing pad. “Maybe. Let’s try this first?”
The first drone launches, hovering high above us.
Lanie directs it out over the cliff face.
A stiff breeze takes it off course almost immediately.
She cusses up a storm but gets a handle on the tech while I watch, my arms draped loose around my knees as I sit next to her on the cliff edge beside the other two black cases.
Every now and then, the drone picks up movement.
But after a lone mountain cat, a coyote that surprises me, and two bears, thankfully a whole lot further out, there are no wolves to be seen on the radar.
“You have your own free-range zoo.” Lanie gazes at me in awe. “This place is incredible. Every time I think I know something about it, or you, I get a hell of a surprise. Just call me Jon Snow.” She hiccups a laugh as the second drone returns to its base. “Last one.”
“You’ve got this,” I murmur, watching her fingers hover over the screen. “Come on, you furry-ass—ah, critters. Show yourselves.”
Lanie covers a snort, directing the drone past the limits of her last pass.
“Where does Coyote Falls end? I don’t want to cross over into Jed’s land.” She clamps her mouth shut and shakes her head, muttering what sounds like an apology.
I lean in and kiss the corner of her mouth. Lanie stops talking. Actually, it looks like she’s stopped breathing. I kiss the corner of her lips again, brushing my mouth lightly over hers.
She shivers. I recall that same shiver coursing over her body as she came beneath my touch. Maybe we can explore her reactions together a little later on. After the rodeo. Work on building a new set of memories then, if I can convince her to stay.
“See that ridge there?” I lean closer into her, keeping my voice level by a miracle, my heart racing. I trace the drone’s trajectory. “Jed’s land starts about three mountains after that one. I think we’re probably safe.”
She nods, shifting a little closer into my side. My hand slides around her waist, settling on her denim-clad hip. The drone circles to the next ridgeline.
“And how far this way?”
“I’m not sure you’ll see it from here.”
Lanie stops, her face hidden in shadow as the sun drops behind a cloud. “That’s miles away.”
“Yeah.”
The same yeah I gave her the day when she asked me how big Coyote Falls was back at Valiant Peak, and she laughed. Hell, that feels like a million years ago. I was a different man then. We were different. The day she ripped Jenkins a new one. I knew then that I wanted her.
Lanie’s hair whips out behind her on a chill wind. She returns to the screen, muttering. I grin, leaning over her shoulder, and brush my lips across the tiny inch of skin at the back of her neck where her jacket and hair don’t quite meet.
She shivers again, shifting as my arms wind around her. “Cord, I can’t think.”
“That’s a good thing.”
Lanie holds up a hand. I kiss her again, and she jabs me with a blessedly padded elbow. “There.”
Her finger hovers above a red spot somewhere about ground level beneath the tree line. Two more dots emerge, following the first onto a granite outcrop beyond our line of sight. We won’t be able to spot anything without the drones unless we’re on the ground right there beside them.
The wolves’ shapes become clear, the red-and-yellow flare of their heat signatures next to the blue of fast-cooling ground and pale purple of the granite chunks.
“Where is that? Where are we looking at?” Lanie stares over the treetops as the drone wobbles in its flight path.
My hands close on her shoulders, swinging her in the right direction. “Right… there.” I point, digging in my pocket for a pair of binoculars. I swap them for the drone’s screen, taking over the controls.
“They’re Grays. Two juveniles, and a female, I think. I can’t see the male.” The elation in her voice prickles my skin beneath my shirt with goose bumps. “Can we get to that area?”
I blow out a hard breath. “I don’t have a track that will take us that far in, Lanie. We could hike, but it would be a good day in and another back out. Any other week, I’d offer to do it, but this week…”
This year has been off from the moment the Invitational popped up on my damn calendar.
I’m not the only one who has felt it; it’s like a curse is hovering over the event.
Stock missing or stolen. Our agent, ever reliable, canceling acts.
Everything feels last minute and rushed.
Lanie coming into my life has been the only blessing, apart from my boys, who have been steadfast as ever.
And now the bet with Jed. I have to admit my pride played a part in there, too, though the inspiration aspect I told Lanie about wasn’t a lie.
I chance a look at Lanie, her wild hair cascading around her heart-shaped face, her eyes that match the high Montana sky. She belongs here even though she doesn’t seem to know it. With my boys.
With me.
I want my forever with this woman so bad it hurts. But first, I have to get through tomorrow to make sure there is a future. Then I promise myself I’ll fight for her, all the way to Alaska, if that’s what it costs me.
“It’s okay, Cord. I get it. Maybe I can come back after—” Her words jar. She grips the binoculars hard enough to elicit a creak in the plastic.
I slip them out of her hands. “You don’t have to go.”
For the love of all things gray and furry on these mountains, please don’t leave. I can’t imagine the future of Coyote Falls without her as a part of this place. Of me.
A really big fucking part.
Lanie nods, looking me straight in the eye as the sun chooses that moment to glow right over her head. “And you don’t have to ride.”
I shove up from where I’m perched on the cliff edge beside her, striding away to thump the bed of the truck with my fist. It should hurt, but it doesn’t.
I count backward from ten until my ragged breaths steady.
No, I don’t have to ride. But I’ve committed to the wager, and my ethics run deeper than my business interests.
Fine fingers grazing over my skin in a close inspection. “You’re bleeding.”
I study the cracked skin over my scarred knuckles dispassionately. “I can’t feel anything.”
Lanie watches me from the side, but oddly, her gaze holds no weight. She plants her hands on her hips, a bandage I didn’t realize we brought with us dangling from her fingers.
I reach out with my undamaged hand to stroke her cheek. “Hell, you’re beautiful.”
Her eyes blaze blue flame, but her stance softens as she leans into me hand, pressing her lips to my fingers. I stand still as she flaps the bandage at me, letting her minister to my self-inflicted wound. My chin props on top of her head.
“If you don’t believe you’re coming back to this, then you won’t. You know that.” The fear and desperation lacing her voice rings true.
Because I do know that. All too well. The psychology of bull riding is no different from any other sport—physical training is only part of the equation. I haven’t done the training this time, but I have to believe I can do this, regardless. I can’t see anything beyond the next twenty-four hours.
Hell, it’s less than that.
“I’ve brought enough supplies and my old bedroll if you want to bunk out here tonight.” I don’t look down at her, opting to study the mountainside that has been my refuge for nearly a decade.
A refuge from judgment, from the pressures the rest of the world put on me. But just when I’ve found the right woman to share it with, everything falls away.
“You’re not losing me or Coyote Falls, Cord,” Lanie says firmly, her lips tracing the words over my mouth like a promise. She reaches up and winds her hands around my neck to pull my mouth down to hers, light fingers tracing the scar at the back of my neck.
This time, I feel every single touch.
“Being at the top of a ridgeline not enough for you?” I ask, holding back a stubborn pine branch. Lanie ducks beneath my arm with an impish smile, seeming hyperaware of my gaze following her swaying hips.
Our kiss earlier changed something between us, shattered some of the barriers that I’ve clung to in order to hold up my end of the anger that has fueled my fight. The anger that overrides what lies hidden beneath: fear. But it’s not necessary anymore.
“How can I be in such a magnificent place and not want to see it firsthand?” Lanie pivots about, the epitome of pure joy.
I can’t argue with that. Not when I felt the same way the first time I walked Coyote Falls, though it wasn’t called that then. “What you want to see is gray and walks on four legs, babe. Don’t try kidding me.” I huff out a laugh at her wolfish attempt at sleight of hand.
“Well, that, too. But it is beautiful, Cord. Thank you for sharing this with me.” Lanie sends me a second coy look over her shoulder, flicking her hair in a long arc behind her.
A half smile plays on my lips. “Like I said, I’m on a one-day mission to make you fall in love with the place.”
“And with you?” The words tumble from her, though I suspect we already hit that little faux pas back at the homestead. Lanie spins, clapping her hands over her mouth. Bright blue eyes flare wide. She lowers her hands slowly. “I am so sorry. I did not mean—”
I reach forward and snag her waist before she can say another word, pulling my girl sharply into me. A tiny gasp tumbles from her lips.
“Do I want you to fall in love with me?” I graze my knuckles beneath her chin, forcing her to meet my unyielding gaze.
“Damn right, I do. You’re like no one else I’ve ever met.
’Cept maybe West. You two are equal in the stubbornness department,” I admit, albeit grudgingly.
“But out of the two of you, you’re the sweeter to cuddle. ”
Lanie bursts out laughing. Her whole body shakes in my arms.
“I meant it as a compliment,” I mutter, tracing her bottom lip with the pad of my thumb, watching the depression it makes in her pillowy flesh.
“That has the most convoluted explanation of love I have ever heard. Only you would compare a woman to your best friend and think you can get away with it.”
I grin ruefully. “So… I got away with it then? And I guess that only you would not be offended by it. Seriously, Lanie. You’re not interested in money, or power, or influence, or bragging rights…
All the reasons I hide away out here and surround myself with people I can trust. People who occasionally like me for who I am. ”
Who I’m supposed to be, and keep fucking up.
Ten thousand percent of me needs her to hear what I’m not saying—that the people I surround myself with aren’t the people whose love I need to buy.
Light fingers trace my cheek, running into my hair as she stretches onto her toes. I close my eyes and let out a groan.
“Oh, I’m only here because all that land and money provides me with daily access to wolves.” Lanie grins. “But the ranch owner is all right.”
“All right enough to love?” I swallow. So much for not pushing her.
Lanie’s eyes never leave mine. “Maybe.”
She rises higher on her toes to brush her mouth against mine. Our breath mingles in a promise that leaves me dizzy as hell with the sort of need I can’t vocalize. Not that it seems to matter—her kisses say enough for both of us.