I pressed my lips into a thin line. I had no idea why I’d even mentioned Beth. If Cord knew about her drug use, then Riley probably did, too. Still, they didn’t need to know about my burdens; we’d just met. And Beth was a burden.
But they both remained quiet as we drove, patient. I knew they were waiting for me to talk, to tell them about her. I sighed.
“Yes. When my parents died, I’d just started teaching. The job was lined up because I did my assistant teaching work at the school. The new job, that kept me busy. Focused. Beth had just started her freshman year at college and my parents were driving to see her for parent weekend. After…she dropped out. She couldn’t stay at the school. She blames herself for their deaths. I told her it wasn’t her fault over and over, but she wouldn’t believe me. See, they wanted her to go the state school, but she decided to go to a place in Florida, wanting the warm weather. If she hadn’t gone there, they wouldn’t have been killed.”
“It was an unfortunate accident,” Riley murmured. I realized then that his hand was stroking over my arm. Gently. Soothing. I looked up at him, nodded.
“I know that. But nothing made her feel better. Except drugs. They took over her life. I’ve tried to help.”
I sighed again, thinking of the help groups we’d joined together, the counselors, the drug treatment centers. None of it had worked, only given me false hope. After three years, I’d pretty much known there was no way I’d get the old Beth back. Just like my parents, that Beth was gone forever.
The most recent incident, the hospital had called me at three in the morning. Beth’s neighbor had found her in their apartment complex hallway, and after she’d been stabilized, Beth had agreed to go into a rehab center. Again. A four month stay. Only two months ago, I’d taken a second mortgage on the house to pay for it. This trip, the news that I’d come into some money, was timely. I needed a break from Philly, and I needed to pay the extra mortgage. But I didn’t say all that to them. It was too depressing. Too personal. So completely unsexy. I might as well wear a burlap sack and have a huge wart on my nose for all the interest these two would have in me after hearing all that unpleasantness. I didn’t want to talk about Beth, about my sad past. So I pushed it down into an imaginary box and shut the lid.
“Tell me about you two,” I said, pasting on a big, fake smile.
Cord was looking at me with his piercing dark gaze. It was almost unnerving the way he paid attention to me as if nothing else was going on around him. To him, there wasn’t any beautiful scenery to look at. Only me. With his hat in his lap, I could see his dark hair was cut short, neatly styled. A crease ran in a ring around his head caused by his hat. Total cowboy.
With a strong brow, his eyes were even more intense. His nose had a crook to it as if it had been broken a few too many times. Football or bar brawl? His face was wide, his jaw strong. Dark stubble covered his cheeks and strong chin. He was the kind of man who probably needed to shave twice a day. And his size!
He was so big. Like he could smoosh me big. And his hands. Dinner plates. And yet when he watched me with his quiet, intense patience, I sensed a gentleness about him. A gentle giant, although I doubted he let anyone see that. Why I could sense it, I had no idea.
I wanted to run my fingers over his face, over his broad shoulders, feel the differences between us. I had muscles, but they were hidden beneath a layer of womanly curves that wouldn’t go away no matter how many spin classes I took or yoga poses I did.
Riley put on his blinker and took another turn. Each road went on for as far as I could see, straight and even. After an hour of driving, I still had no idea where we were or where we were headed besides Steele Ranch. But his easy confidence as he drove set me at ease. No, Riley set me at ease. He didn’t hold himself with the stiff bearing of a military man like Cord did. His hands were relaxed on the wheel, and he gave me a quick glance and an even quicker smile. But that casual attitude didn’t show his smart mind or complex career as a lawyer.
While my online searches for Cord hadn’t turned up much—as a security guy he could easily hide any details of his life or the complexity of his business—Riley had been easier to find. His law firm’s website shared his resume, his schooling at Harvard and Denver University Law School. His successes on cases relating to water rights and dealing with big oil. He was impressive on paper. But words on paper weren’t everything, just as Cord had said.
“I followed in my father’s footsteps,” Riley finally shared. “He was a lawyer in Louisiana for twenty years before my mother died of cancer. He moved here with me when I was in seventh grade. Change of pace for both of us. That’s when I met that behemoth.” He angled his head toward the back seat, winked again. “After law school, I joined my dad at his firm and then took over when he died. You could say I inherited Aiden Steele as a client.”
“I saw the papers, signed them, but what does all this mean?” I asked as we turned beneath a wooden archway.
Two thick vertical logs flanked a wide dirt driveway. Spanning them was a third and centered on it was a metal sign. Steele Ranch. It wasn’t fancy, but it was impressive and screamed Old West. There was no house that I could see. Nothing but the road we turned off and perpendicular to it, the driveway. The land rolled, but was still covered in the tall grass that waved in the breeze. Mountains were bigger here and the snowy peaks seemed taller, craggy and even more impressive.
We drove for a minute then Riley pointed out the windshield. “There’s the main house. Off to the side are the stables. Barn. Bunkhouse and small cabins for those who live here. Steele Ranch employs fifteen people full-time.”
The driveway curved to the right and down. In the valley, I could see the various buildings he mentioned and a house in the distance. Wow. The main residence wasn’t mansion big, but it was as formidable as the entrance. I looked back and all I could see was dust that had been kicked up by the truck.
As we drove closer, I took in the house I’d inherited. Well, one-fifth of it. Two story, full wraparound porch. Balanced windows, a dark wood front door at the center. It appeared old, as if built decades before Aiden Steele was even born. If I had to guess the size, five or six bedrooms on the second floor.
“Did my… fa—did Aiden start the ranch?” I wasn’t ready to call the man my father, even though he’d recognized me, at least in death, as his daughter.
Riley shook his head, slowing the truck as we went over the metal slats of a cattle guard. “His grandfather. It’s one of the original homesteads in the area, but your grandfather added on a large parcel to the property back in the thirties, then again in the fifties. Your father, even though he was a pain in the ass, was a smart businessman.”
It was the first mention of Aiden being a difficult man, but I had to imagine it since he left women pregnant all across the country. Charming, certainly, to get them that way—including my mother—but difficult if none of the women wanted him around long after conception.
“How big is the property?” I wondered, not too interested in thinking about my father’s long string of lovers.
“The road we were on is the south property line.” Riley thumbed over his shoulder. “There’s over sixty-thousand acres.”
My mouth fell open as I did the math quietly to myself. “Forty-three thousand five-hundred sixty square feet times sixty-thousand.”
Riley laughed as he pulled up in front of t
he house. The dirt driveway formed a circle, with an extension that went off toward the white buildings I could see in the distance.
“I see you know your math. No need to worry about trespassing on neighbors. Everything you see is Steele property.”
The grass was mowed down in front of the house with smooth pavers as a path to the steps, but it wasn’t a high maintenance place. No fancy flowerbeds, only hanging pots along the porch. No manicured lawn, only prairie that belonged to me as far as the eye could see. Well, a fifth of it. Just as Riley said.