Wild Card (North Ridge #1)

Oh, Mom. My heart is so heavy.

“It looks like you’ll be living with us until your mother gets better,” Dick says cheerfully. “It sure will be nice to have a woman on this ranch. The good lord knows Shane isn’t bringing anyone home from church or anywhere else.”

I raise my brows. Both at the mention of church, and the fact that, at least according to Dick, he hasn’t been dating anyone. I’m not sure why I feel pleased at that, like it would make any difference whether he has a girlfriend or a fiancée or a wife or not. I mean, I have Samuel.

Speaking of which, I’m sure if he knew I was going to be pretty much living with my ex-boyfriend while I’m here, he wouldn’t be too happy. Then again, by the amount of time he takes to respond to my texts in annoying one-word answers like “K” (is there anything worse?), he might not care that much.

I exhale loudly, reaching for my glass. I’m not only going to be living in North Ridge for an unknown amount of time, I’m going to be living here of all places.

Right next door to the boy that broke my heart.





5





Shane





“I’m guessing you heard the news,” Grandpa says to me over a steaming cup of coffee.

I nod, not wanting to talk about it, and gesture to his bowl of cut up berries, the only part of his breakfast he hasn’t touched. “You know you have to finish those. That’s the trade-off. You can have bacon and eggs but you have to eat your fruit.”

He scowls at me, even though his eyes are still twinkling. “This is horseshit. I’m full. And I’ve gone all my damn life not eating fruit, and look at me, I’m fit as a fiddle.”

I know none of that is true. We have a small orchard behind the worker’s cottage, old fruit trees bearing sweet apples, yellow cherries, and perfect plums. I never knew much about my grandmother because she died when I was three, but I knew that she was a supreme baker. She would win pie contests all across the province, back in the day when pie contests were a big deal and all that. I have no doubt he at least got his fruit that way for years.

“And don’t switch the subject,” he says, pushing the berries toward me. I hesitate, then take them. I can never pass up strawberries.

“I’m not switching anything. Vernalee is moving into the worker’s cottage. That’s great. She needs people right now, good people.”

“Damn right she needs good people. Poor woman having to put up with that man.” He points his coffee cup at me. “You know, the minute I saw Constable Waters I knew he was trouble. I’ve seen a few men like him in my day and it’s always worse when they get into positions of power. The cops we had before, they were good men. They liked being in North Ridge. They raised families here. Not saying that we don’t welcome outsiders, but there’s a way about this town that we’d like to keep. Keep it honest, keep it kind, keep it humble. That’s what we stand for. And that damn man…he stood for none of those things. He came into this town and he ruined more than a few lives. He was a liar, and frankly, pure evil. And that’s the truth.”

Any mention of that man makes my blood boil. I’m not short-tempered except when it comes to him, and I’ve spent the last six years thinking about all the things I should have done. “You talk about him as if he’s dead,” I eventually say. “He’s still out there.”

“Well, he’s rotting in prison where he belongs. I can only hope our court system keeps him there. You have to wonder how many people he hurt before he got caught.”

I can tell from the way my grandpa is saying this that he doesn’t know the full extent of what Chief Constable Errol Waters was capable of. Sometimes I don’t think I do either. But what he does know is that one day he beat someone to death. A native boy, out on his reserve, shooting cans drunk. Things got out of hand, but instead of arresting him, he beat the boy until he was dead, then tried to cover it up by saying he was defending his life. There were witnesses. Maybe he didn’t even see them, maybe he didn’t care. Thought they were beneath him, that he was above the law, that he could get away with murder. But they recorded it all, and because of that, Errol Waters was sent to jail.

I’ve been in his shoes before. I know what it feels like to have anger and revenge take control of your body. But I had reasons for my actions, a sense of justice. All Errol had was hate. Hate for his wife, his daughter, for everyone.

The thing is, that boy’s life could have been saved if I’d only had the guts to say something all those years ago.

“I suppose it’s not the best thing to be talking about before we start our day,” he tells me before he slurps back the rest of his coffee. “How’s your headache?”

I give him a steady look. “I don’t have a headache.”

“You came back late last night.”

My grandfather is in his eighties but he has the ears of a hawk. It caused a lot of problems back when we were teenagers and I was sneaking out to see Rachel or sneaking her in to my room late at night.

Last night, after I took a jerry can and filled up their car with gas, I went right back to the Bear Trap. It was busy and full of people I didn’t feel like talking to, but I managed to keep to myself, drinking beer after beer until I was able to sleep some of it off in the back room. I guess old habits do die hard.

“I feel fine,” I tell him. “Let’s get going.”

Summer on the ranch keeps us pretty good and busy. At the moment we’re short-staffed, though we’re trying to rope Maverick into helping us on his days off. One of the tasks is to move cattle from one range to the next to prevent overgrazing. Though we own seven hundred acres, we have a tenure on 10,000 acres on bordering Crown Land that goes all the way around Cherry Peak, which means there’s a lot of ground to cover.

Luckily today we’re moving some cows from an area about an hour’s ride from here to the next available grazing spot. This group isn’t large, and with just me and my grandfather, plus the dogs, Fletcher, Duke, and Darling, we should get the herd moved with ease.

There’s nothing like being out on the open range to cure what ails you. But the fresh air, the rolling clouds in the distance, the way the golden grass makes the hills look like they’re cloaked in velvet, none of it is managing to clear my head.

All I can think about is Rachel.

Last night nearly killed me.

I honestly thought that if I saw Rachel again, I would be okay. That I could handle it. That it wouldn’t hurt more than a mere scratch, that I wouldn’t drown in the memories and the way I used to feel about her.