Wild Card (North Ridge #1)

Rachel’s voice echoes in my head, a voice that I shouldn’t hear. Her face looms large yet vague, a passing phantasm in my mind, that look in her eyes. It took so long to realize what she was running away from, took so long to see the depths of her pain. I should have known from the start.

Shit, I hope this isn’t the start of old memories getting dredged up, memories I’ve spent six years trying to bury.

“I probably shouldn’t,” I tell Del.

She’s surprised. I don’t blame her. I’m usually drinking on Saturday night, pretty much the only time off I get from the ranch. “Early start tomorrow?” she asks.

“Not really,” I tell her. “Might have to go out on the range, move some cows.” And at my lack of argument, I pick up my empty beer bottle and wave it at her with a nod.

“Pushover,” she says with a smile as she reaches into the fridge and pulls out another cold one, passing it over to me.

Del’s mother, Jeanine, was my nanny growing up. After my mother died when I was six months old, my father needed as much help as he could to raise me and my brothers, Maverick and Fox, while he and my grandpa ran Ravenswood Ranch. Jeanine and Del lived in the guest cottage on the property for as long as I could remember. She was six when I was born and she’s felt like my big sister ever since.

And she is big, too, as in tall. Delilah is five foot eleven and in great shape. It’s probably why she does such a good job at running the Bear Trap. She’s usually as sweet as can be and her face is girl-next-door cute, but she’s got a lot of sass and I’ve seen her throw a few punches to unruly patrons more than a few times. Most of the guys don’t think the tall pretty girl has it in her so it’s often a moment worth putting on YouTube, if you’re into that kind of thing.

But North Ridge is a small town. Population of 10,000 in the off-season. Word travels fast. If you’re going to be an asshole and pick fights, the Bear Trap isn’t the place to do it, social media videos of a girl handing you your ass aside.

Not that many tourists come here anyway. It’s dimly lit, the walls dark wood, and there’s a layer of peanut shells on the floor with bowls of peanuts at each table. The neon signs, advertising beer companies that are no longer in business, buzz and flicker half-heartedly. Delilah keeps the bar stocked with only the basics, and if you come in here ordering a drink that has more than three ingredients, she’ll look at you like you’re hard of hearing.

Outside, thunder rumbles, drawing our attention over to the windows. Cherry Peak rises in the distance across the river, a mass of dark clouds approaching from the north. That’s home to me. Ravenswood Ranch lies in the foothills, the perfect place to raise beef cattle. There’s the Queen’s River running past, then the open plains and rolling hills that run alongside it, the elevation toward the peak slow and gradual, going from tall grass to pine and eventually to alpine. All seven hundred acres belong to the Nelson family. Hopefully they always will.

“Could be lightning strikes,” Del says, and when I look at her, there’s worry on her brow. My brother Fox is a smoke jumper and the two of them are close. Del doesn’t seem to worry about much but she’s always worrying about Fox.

“Could be,” I tell her, taking a swig of the beer. “But you know better by now than to worry about him, don’t you?”

She stares out the window for a few beats until she comes back to earth and realizes what I’ve said. She gives me a sheepish grin while straightening her shoulders a moment later. “I know. But you know it’s my job to worry about you boys.”

No. It’s your job to worry about Fox. You don’t give me half as much hell.

Not that it bothers me. Like I said, Del is like a sister to my family. But I’ve been noticing over the years that her attention is a bit lopsided when it comes to my brothers.

“And it’s my job to worry about the herd. I better go back to the ranch, make sure I’m around in case there are problems.” I pound back the rest of the bottle and place a twenty-dollar bill on the bar before waving goodbye to the others.

The air outside has changed dramatically since I’ve been in the bar. Earlier it was hot as sin with the kind of humidity that makes your clothes stick to your skin. Now with the coming storm and the evening settling in, the air pressure has transformed. There’s a freshness to it, like it’s crawling with life and electricity. The dark clouds are starting to crowd over the ranch, and long sheets of grey rain are skirting across the river. The skies above the town have an eerie golden glow from the setting sun. In minutes, the deluge will be here.

I used to love summer storms as a kid. I’d be the first to run out into them with my arms out, feeling that charge in the air, calling on the lightning until Jeanine would pull me back into the house, where I would watch with Mav and Fox from the windows. Once a strike of lightning lit our old shed on fire and we had to call on a lot of help to put it out. I’m pretty sure that’s what triggered Fox’s fascination with flames.

Now, though, storms just cause nothing but problems for me. Because of North Ridge’s placement, settled at the southern end of British Columbia, with dry, rolling hills on one side, the start of the Selkirk Mountain range and the Kokanee Glacier on the other, a long, deep lake in the middle, it’s the perfect breeding ground for storms. In the winter, they can bury the town in drifts or kill your cattle if it comes in too early. That’s when Maverick has his work cut out for him as head of the local search and rescue team.

In the summer, the lightning brings a constant threat of wildfires, which Fox fights, and if not that, flash flooding. Last year we had a hell of a time when a mudslide took out a few of our cows. Three of them didn’t make it. I know by now you shouldn’t get emotionally attached to beef cattle, but every loss like that hurts.

As I head toward my dusty, beat-up Tacoma, I feel a tug in my brain. It wants to reflect on the past. Not last year, not the year before.

It wants to think about Rachel.

It wants to think about Rachel and that time we were caught in a thunderstorm.

The first time I ever saw her with new eyes.

The first time I kissed her.