The Ranch (A Second Chance Romance)

I sighed as I moved methodically around the room. I appreciated the manager’s attempt at putting a positive spin on the situation, but there was no point in pretending Jas had gone out to the grocery store or something.

She really was missing.

“Nothing seems out of place?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he confirmed. “If you will excuse me, but don’t hesitate to ask at reception if there is anything we can do.”

“We should probably head out to her family’s land. If they’ve seen her, they can tell us where she is—or perhaps she’s still there. That would be the best-case scenario, I guess.”

“And if they haven’t seen her?” Muriel asked quietly.

Nolan stepped in and gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “If they haven’t seen her, they still deserve to know we’re looking for her. They can tell her to check in with us if she does happen to show up out there.”

“He’s right,” Cooper nodded. “We should go pay them a visit even if they don’t appreciate visitors, especially unannounced, but I’m sure they’ll make an exception for Jasmine’s friends.”

We had to hope so, anyway.

To say Jasmine’s family kept to themselves would’ve been the understatement of the century. I hated to admit it—and never would have said it out loud—but even Jas used to warn us that her relatives lived up to just about every backwoods southern Georgia stereotype in the book.

She’d told me once that they even made moonshine, and I didn’t doubt her for a second.

Muriel took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Okay. Yes, You’re both right. We must go visit her family—and I’d like to come along, if that’s okay?”

“There’s a spare seat in the pickup,” Cooper shrugged. “So that’s fine with me. At least they should remember you and Poppy are friends of Jasmine’s. That hopefully will be enough to keep her crazy uncle from shooting us the minute we pull up in front of their cabin.”

I wasn’t sure whether that was a comforting thought or a frightening one, but it didn’t make much of a difference. Regardless of whether Jas’s trigger-happy family would shoot first and ask questions later, we had to go.

I was already moving toward the door. “We should get started. It’s a long drive out to the sticks.”

Cooper, Nolan, and Muriel fell in line behind me. “Do you remember the way out there?” Cooper asked.

Would it have been bad to admit that my memory was a little hazy as far as those back roads were concerned?

Would it have given any of them an excuse to back out?

I wasn’t sure, but I wasn’t taking any chances. If we ended up lost, at least we’d be together. It was more comfort than our poor Jas had at that moment wherever the hell she was.

I only answered with a half-shrug. “I guess we’ll find out.”

Chapter Eighteen

Nolan Reed

My ass was sore from riding around in the cramped, not-very-cushioned, poor excuse for a back seat of Cooper’s extended cab pickup.

Extended enough for small children, maybe.

Definitely not for grown men with grown-men legs.

To make matters worse, I was growing sicker and sicker with every mile that passed, taking us closer to Jasmine’s family home.

The Bailey homestead was the last place I’d ever willingly return to. After our previous run-in with Jasmine’s relatives, Coop and I had vowed to stay as far away from that backwoods-ass place as possible.

No offense to Jasmine, of course. She was always cool with us, and we never had anything bad to say about her.

But the girl’s family were a bunch of fucking nuts.

That was a fact. Hell, she’d even told us they were looney tunes on more than one occasion.

So even though there weren’t too many things in life that got me all riled up, I still couldn’t seem to stop my knee from bouncing up and down as we drove closer to the little dirt road off the state highway that led the way back into the woods.

“Can you imagine growing up in those woods?” Muriel asked as we approached the exit that wasn’t even marked at all from the highway. A small break in the trees and a rusted old stop sign that was mostly overgrown with weeds and vines was the only indication there was a road at all. “I would have been scared to death. Especially as far back there as Jasmine’s family lives.”

“I would’ve been more scared of the people around me than any of the animals in the woods,” I said as I looked out the tiny back seat window. “I’d consider myself to be pretty redneck, but these guys back here... they’re on a whole other level.”

Everyone laughed. “Come on,” Coop said. “They aren’t that bad.”

“Says the man who almost had his brains blown out the last time we went there—and that was even after they found out who we were,” I fired back. “You can’t tell me they aren’t that bad.”