Wild Card (North Ridge #1)

“Shoes off?” I ask, coming over to them.

“Horseshoes,” Fox explains to me. “It’s not so bad right now, but if it doesn’t rain again soon, it’s going to get worse, and if you’re out riding on the range and the horseshoe strikes a rock, it can create a spark. That’s all it takes sometimes to set this place ablaze.”

“It won’t be a problem,” Shane says, taking off his hat and wiping his brow. “We’ll have to go out and move some cattle later in the week but Polly and the other horses are fine without their shoes. Are you staying for dinner?”

I can’t help but pick up on the tone in Shane’s voice. Both wary and hopeful all at once.

“I need to get home and just take a load off,” Fox says. He grins at me. “Just wanted to come here first and see Rachel while I had the chance.”

“I’ll see you before you go, right?” I ask him, not wanting him to leave.

“Hopefully.”

He then turns and walks past Shane, giving him a quick punch on the shoulder as he goes. That’s pretty much the extent of their relationship.

I expect Shane to follow behind him—when we were growing up, sometimes Shane followed Fox around like a dog looking for scraps—but instead he walks up the steps and hovers on the porch, staring at me.

“How did you sleep last night?”

His expression is honest and open. Shane has a face that makes you want to tell him a million secrets. I swear somewhere in my chest a little piece of my heart is breaking off.

“Fine.” I clear my throat, twisting the towel in my hands.

“You moved in okay?”

I nod. “No problems. We had a lot of help.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be there. I had to fix some of the irrigation pipes.”

“No worries.”

We both lapse into silence as Shane continues to stand there.

I think about what Del said yesterday about closure.

Face it. Face it, face him, and move on.

I gesture to the rocking chairs on the porch. “Want to come in and put your feet up? I made some lemonade earlier. You look like you could use it.”

“Are you sure?”

I nod. “It’s fucking hot as balls.”

That makes his mouth quirk up into a half-smile. Shane never smiled very much; he was always so serious, but when he does, it’s like the sun bursting through the clouds. When I was younger, I did whatever I could to make him smile, just because it made my heart feel like it could fly away.

“All right then,” he says, stepping onto the porch and sitting down on one of the chairs.

I turn and head to the kitchen, taking in deep breaths, trying to calm my nerves. I feel hotter now than ever so I splash cold water on my face and the back of my neck before I pour us each a mason jar of lemonade.

Talk to him. Get it all out.

I step back outside and give him a small smile as I pass him his drink. I catch a whiff of him as I do, and that fuzzy feeling in my stomach intensifies. He smells like I remembered. Dry grass and sunshine and sage. He smells like the very earth itself. Home.

You can do this, I tell myself, ignoring all those stupid feelings fluttering up, the fact that my heart is starting to race.

“Thank you,” he says, and he stares at me so intensely that I feel my skin ignite, an inferno growing within me.

A memory takes over—us making love in the hayloft, him so deep inside me in body, heart, and mind that I could swear the whole barn was going to go up in flames.

Run away with me, I’d whispered to him.

I’ll go wherever your heart is, he replied.

“I know this must be quite the change,” Shane says as he sits down in the rocking chair, bringing my attention back to him, to this Shane in the present. He rests his elbows on his thighs and stares out at the view. His forearms are large, tanned and sculpted, and I know they’re strong enough to throw a two-hundred-pound calf over his shoulders. “No skyscrapers here.”

I’m so focused on his body that it takes me a moment to respond. “No. But it’s a nice change of pace.”

“How long do you think you’re going to stay?”

I shrug, hating how up in the air all of this is. “I went with my mom to the hospital the other day. The doctors are trying to get her an appointment for her surgery in either Kelowna or somewhere near Vancouver. Even though it’s, like, fucking cancer, there’s still a waiting list. And of course, I can’t even pay her way since there are no private clinics here. Still, they said it shouldn’t be more than a few weeks. Fingers crossed.”

“That’s a lot longer than I thought. Is your job okay with that? All your time off?”

I exhale, the stress from earlier creeping back. “They say they are. It’s coming out of my vacation pay now, which sucks because I never take vacations and really wanted to keep that.”

“Why don’t you take vacations?”

I give him a steady look. “Do you ever take vacations?”

“Fair enough. It’s rare that I even get an evening off. And anyway, what would I do? For me, all I need to do to have a break is go down to the river or the lake or the hot springs and sort myself out. Maybe go fishing with Maverick. Otherwise, it’s a pretty good life. I can’t ask for much more.”

I have to admit, I’m both envious and happy for him. Envious because growing up, this is all Shane wanted to do and he’s doing it and it makes him happy.

He also said he wanted to marry you one day, to have lots of babies, a voice inside me says, forever dredging up the past.

“Well,” I say, “it’s not like I wouldn’t want to jet off to Cuba for a week or spend some time traveling across Europe, but the moment I go, the moment my job becomes vulnerable. There are too many people at the agency dying to have my spot and I’ve worked too hard to let it go.”

He frowns, shaking his head, has a sip of his lemonade, licks his lips. God, those lips. They gave me my first kiss, whispered secrets, promised me the world. “That doesn’t sound like a fun career to me.”

I look away, feeling slighted. “It is a fun career. I mean, it’s exciting and challenging and there’s always something new to learn.” I don’t add that I think it’s giving me an ulcer, nor the fact that my doctor has prescribed me medication for anxiety which started flaring up again when I started this job.

“I have to say, when I heard that’s what you were doing, I was surprised. All that time together and I never once heard you mention any interest in advertising. When we were growing up, all you wanted to do was breed horses and have a garden.”

“I have a garden,” I say stubbornly, thinking of my potted plants on my balcony which are probably all dead now because I forgot to get someone to water them. “And I just kind of discovered advertising in university. I was going to do communications but advertising pulled me in.”

“Too many episodes of Mad Men?” he asks.

I smile. “Shane Nelson, I am shocked you know of a TV show. How else have you changed? Are you doing Netflix binges like the rest of the world?”

“I’ll have you know I’m not as ass backwards as you remember.”