Always Mine (Love in Eden 1)

Because as long as Xavier Price worked at Black Hills Ranch, I would need to keep my distance from the place that was starting to feel just a little too much like home.

Chapter 14

Xavier

I hated that I was nervous as I knocked on the door leading to the kitchen of the main house. A couple of weeks earlier, I would've just walked in, but it no longer felt like home to me. Not with Brooks there. I didn't know what it felt like anymore. I just knew that I was desperate to see Brooks, and I was equally desperate not to. It made no sense. The man had twisted me into so many knots, I couldn't see a way that I'd ever be able to undo them all.

It'd been over a week since my mother had gone after Brooks. It had been an agonizing wait for him to return to the ranch, and even after he had and I'd gotten past the relief that he hadn't left Eden for good, it’d still taken me several hours to work up the nerve to go talk to him. I'd resolved myself to explain to him about my mother, and her condition, in the hopes that it would help him understand why she’d done what she had. And truth be told, I'd needed someone to talk to about it.

Brooks was that someone I'd needed.

But he’d cast me aside before I'd even been able to bring it up.

I tried a couple more times to talk to him, but he'd gone out of his way to avoid me. The few times we’d been forced to talk regarding some invoice or bill that he was going through for his uncle’s finances, he’d kept it strictly business, and I hadn’t missed the fact that he’d stayed a good ten feet from me. He’d also only ever confronted me when we were around other people. I had to believe he was doing it on purpose.

I told myself it was a good thing, because the last thing I needed to do was fight him again. That was what I wanted to do because our last couple of fights had led to more pleasurable things, but I knew I couldn't. It was getting far too hard to walk away from Brooks. I was more than ready for him to leave Eden because I needed life to get back to normal. The ranch hands were complaining that I was quick to jump to anger over the smallest things, and they were muttering under their breath about me. I couldn't afford to lose this job, and the bottom line was that the men who worked under me didn't deserve to be treated differently just because I couldn't get my own shit together. I’d promised Curtis I'd be the foreman he needed to get Black Hills Ranch back to its old glory. But with Brooks around, that was an impossible task.

Because he was all I could think of.

And physically, I was running myself ragged trying to work off the constant need I had for him. I’d barely slept in the last week because I’d been working on the foreman's house pretty much every waking minute that I hadn't been doing my regular duties. Some of that had been in the hopes of getting my sister and mother to the ranch sooner rather than later, but I couldn't deny that most of it was because of Brooks.

A whole week without touching him.

A whole week without seeing his smile or hearing the nervousness in his voice as he spoke and focused solely on me.

Like I was all he saw.

"Come on in," I heard from inside. I hadn’t noticed Brooks’s car outside, but it was possible he'd started parking the SUV in a different spot.

I entered the kitchen and saw Curtis sitting at the table drinking a cup of coffee. I instantly felt bad for interrupting his evening ritual.

"You moving back in?" Curtis asked. I didn't miss the hint of impatience in his voice. He’d grown increasingly frustrated with my refusal to return to the main house, choosing instead to use a sleeping bag in the foreman's house. It wasn't easy to deny the older man, but the temptation of being so close to Brooks, not to mention the fear that I could potentially hurt him if I had another nightmare and he tried to wake me, held much more sway over me.

I ignored the question and carried a piece of paper over to him and put it down on the table. "Contracts for the O'Leary purchase," I said. "They want to breed their mare to Whiskey Jack, and they’ve got a three-year-old filly they need help breaking."

Curtis barely looked at the paper. He nodded and said, "Nice work, son. There's some leftover stew on the stove if you want it. I didn’t make as much, seeing as how Brooks went to Casper and all."