It would be nice to have someone hug her, tell her that, and somehow convince her that it was true. Like Tyler had been able to when things were easy. But things weren’t easy anymore. So, someone to care might be nice, but that was not in the cards.
She was an island, and while it was better that way, sometimes the loneliness was a bit much. It made Dan enticing. More so than he should be.
Forgetting that he would ultimately leave risked more than she had to lose.
It took a certain something to stay here, in this dying town, surrounded by so many people with sob stories, struggling to get by. It was not for cheerful people who liked to flirt and laugh. People who were used to a certain way of life, who could throw their money around and have all their problems vanish.
Blue Valley was for people who were either too stubborn to leave or didn’t have a choice. She was little bit of both.
Dan was neither of those things.
So, whatever achy feelings she harbored for a guy she’d known all of twenty-four hours, they were stupid. A friendship with him would be stupid. There were too many holes in her heart to willfully add another.
After a few minutes of almost complete silence, Dan made his way down the hill. It was like seeing a completely different side of him—every muscle in his body tense, a scowl so deep it dug grooves in his face, making him look more his age.
Thirty-five. That was totally way too old for her anyway.
“Everything okay?” The words slipped out despite her knowing better. She should not be getting involved in his non-ranch business. Not asking if he was all right. They weren’t friends. He was her meal ticket. The end.
The anger all but waved off him, and whoever had pissed him off should be glad they weren’t here. She was pretty sure if Dan had the source of his anger in front of him, it’d be bruised and bloody.
He didn’t answer her question, thank goodness, but he looked at his phone, then out in the distance. Pulling his arm back, he hurled it into the overgrown brush on the other side of the falling-apart fence. It landed with a thump far away.
Mel looked at the field, then at him. “Feel better?”
He sighed. “Fuck no. I need that damn phone.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and uttered about every curse word known to man.
Then he stomped into the field, cursing all the while, looking for his phone. It took him a few minutes, but he found it and shoved it deep into his pocket. Mel moved her focus to removing the rotted fence post from its hole, biting her tongue so she wouldn’t ask. She didn’t need to know. It was none of her business.
Screw it; she had to ask.
“Okay, so what’s the deal? Why are you suddenly full of rage? Next thing I know you’ll get all big and green and start smashing things.”
He snorted. “The NHL doesn’t want to conduct a formal investigation into whether or not I took bribes to screw up the game, which screws me, because I’m damn innocent, and now I can’t prove it. And no team will take me. And…” He took a deep breath, but it didn’t loosen any of the tension in his face. If anything, it only centered it. “I need to pound something into dust.”
“Here.” She handed him a post and a mallet, pointing at the hole in the ground where the old rotting fence post had been. “Pound away.”
He stared at the tools, then shrugged. “What the hell.” He wedged the post into the ground, then took the mallet. On a deep breath, he lifted it over his head.
She didn’t think she’d fallen into that Thor movie, but she’d keep watching just to be sure.
The fitted T-shirts he always seemed to wear weren’t practical for ranch work, as she’d tried to tell him, but she was a little glad he hadn’t listened, as the thin cotton clung to the line of his back, his muscles an almost graceful wave of tension and then release.
When the mallet came down, biceps and forearms absorbing the impact of rubber on wood, he barely even paused before he was swinging the mallet back up and bringing it down again.
It was all done with a mesmerizing grace…and was it suddenly really hot? The temperature must have jumped ten degrees at least.
Once he’d pounded the post way farther into the ground than it needed to go, she cleared her throat. “That’s probably enough.”
He looked at the post, slowly dropped the mallet from its cocked position behind his shoulder to the ground. “Guess I got carried away.”
“A bit.” So had she, watching him. Shoulder and arm muscles bunching as he’d lifted the mallet and then brought it down hard. Oh, hard. Muscles. Crud. “Feel better?” She hoped he did, because she sure as hell didn’t.
“Yeah, I do.” He took a ragged breath, let it out.
“Can I ask?”
He sighed with a tiredness she recognized, because she felt it almost daily. The kind of exhaustion that wasn’t so much physical as emotional, because you knew you had to keep fighting, but you didn’t think you’d ever get to stop.
“Ask away,” he said with a grand hand gesture, leaning against one of the sturdier fence posts.