Redeeming the Rancher (Meier Ranch Brothers 2)

Self-preservation. Wes knew those notes well. He squirmed again.

Harvey shook his head. “Never made it to sunset.”

She lowered herself to perch on the desk’s corner, lips slackened, glasses slipped along her downturned nose, as if she herself had known Gully. In the fertile mind of an artist, he supposed she did. Wes imagined her at news of Daniel. If she carried this emotion for a man in an old photograph, Daniel’s loss would have eviscerated her.

Amsterdam glanced at Wes. The sight of her glistening eyes damned near eviscerated him.

This one is trouble. She feels too much—things you don’t want to feel at all.

She blinked away the moisture, inhaled deep enough for her chest to rise, and embraced Harvey. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

Harvey froze, arms at his sides, clearly not accustomed to a subtly-beautiful woman throwing herself around his neck. Wes would have laughed had the moment not been so exposed. The man tapped his hands at her back a few times then sank deeper into the embrace. God Almighty, but Wes’s throat tightened. Harvey’s wife had died of cancer ten years ago, probably the last time anyone had listened to him with such intent, embraced him with such warmth.

For all the ceremony that Amsterdam had put into the tale, she left none for the aftermath. She shoved her hands in her enormous pockets and made a beeline out of the office.

Harvey glanced at Wes, his arms now embracing a phantom, his eyes all what-the-hell-just-happened?

Wes shrugged and followed. He settled his hat low across his brow to block the assaulting sunlight and double-timed his pace to catch up with her—no small task given the spinning of the planet and the vertigo in his head.

“Wait,” he said.

She stopped and turned. Nearly toppled him to keep from running square into her. Her fingertips bumped her eyeglasses higher on her nose. Her parted lips, her searching eyes that haunted him, were as expectant as the one thing he could remember about the night before—her in her raincoat outside the bar, waiting for him to acknowledge her, to say something, to pull her closer. Just as he had the previous night, Wes lost all words.

“Yes?” she said, her tone hanging on expectant, slightly irritated.

He ran through what he wanted to say in his mind: Why didn’t you tell me who you were? How could I not refuse anything that reminded me of how I screwed up over there? Why do you toss me so far off myself simply being near you when Daniel was so easy, like a fourth brother? Why are you the only thing I remember from last night? In the end, it all seemed jumbled and sharp. He went with what was now obvious.

“You’re Daniel’s sister.”

“Half sister,” she corrected. Instead of the truth, his awareness snagged on the open-mouthed ah of her vowel, very nearly British yet not, very nearly an accent he could listen to indefinitely.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Between Clyde Hammond’s extra toe and pluots, there was hardly time.”

Wes didn’t want to smile. He did anyway.

“I had to see this place for myself. Close Call made it into nearly every letter he wrote.” She rearranged gravel underfoot, the bare feet in her Jesus sandals so plain, so refreshing compared to the Southern girls who focused, first and foremost, on appearances. “Daniel adored you.”

Wes’s lungs tightened. He breathed through it, tried to brush the discomfort aside, but it lingered. The idea of her being at the ranch gathered in his mind. This time, as much as he fought the notion, extending the invitation eased the ache, felt right. When his voice came, it was strung out.

“Get your things. You’re coming with me.” Wes cleared his throat. “Daniel would give me shit if I let you stay here.”

Her face brightened on a smile. “Stayed at the Starlite Motor Lodge, did he?”

Wes matched her grin. He adored the soft lines at the edge of her lips when she let loose. “A time or two.”

“And here I was starting to think the only inspiration for my bronze would be a Burt Reynolds moustache.”

He caught himself in mid-delight at her humor. Surprised she had any, really. Another thing, he supposed, she shared with Daniel—though hers was more concealed than his. So long as her inspiration didn’t involve him, as the mayor had suggested, the time would be tolerable. He just hoped her little display with Harvey was an anomaly. Now that Wes was finally home for good, he was all about regaining peace, finding his balance, leaving his service time behind him. He wouldn’t allow her to bring intensity and mourning and bronze reminders on Main Street back to his Close Call.

Not even for Daniel.

4

At sixty-five miles an hour, the breeze through the cracked windows of Wes’s truck held a chill. With a month and a half left in the year, Texas felt closer to the sun than New York. The light shone everywhere but on Livie’s mood. She tended to carry things like Gully for days if she allowed herself to. The occupational hazard of feeling too much.

The drive was awkward, vacant of conversation, the only voice a low-volume, string-heavy country song plodding from the radio speakers. Livie pulled her sketchbook from her leather satchel and committed Gully to the page before he was lost. She got as far as the shape of his face, his dreamy hair, when Wes’s tenor singing voice rumbled across the truck’s bench seat and tickled her ribcage.