Suddenly she grabbed me and pushed me against the building. There was fire in her eyes and for a moment I was afraid I had said something to anger her. She was powerful for such a little thing and her strength held me against the wall as she looked up into my eyes.
Her eyes were like darts to mine and she refused to look away as she started to talk. It was erotic how much she had taken control of me and pushed me like that. I hadn’t had a woman be so forceful around me before; it turned me on and I smiled as she looked seriously at me.
“I like wild horses, not wild men,” she said sternly. “Now let’s go get this saddle.”
She pulled her hand away from my chest and I couldn’t help but smile even more at the fire that was inside of her. It had been totally out of the blue, I couldn’t have pretended to be prepared. But, oh, how I loved the way she pressed me against t
hat wall and took control of the moment. Sarah didn’t like what I had said and instead of just smiling and brushing it off, she made sure I understood. Although, I secretly suspected she also liked wild men, but wasn’t about to push her into admitting it.
The problem was I wasn’t a wild man. Sure, I was pretending to be a drifter, but I couldn’t pretend to be a rough and wild man that I wasn’t; I just didn’t have those kinds of acting skills. I was pretending to be this aloof man who didn’t have a home and didn’t care where he was going or what he did for work, but Garrett Reynolds wasn’t who I was.
I didn’t wear cowboy boots ever in my normal life. I certainly didn’t shovel horse shit or chase after angry pigs. In the real world, I lived a cushy life in Los Angeles and flew on my own private jets to grand vacations. I had beautiful women who threw themselves at me and I often kept them by my side for the briefest of relationships. I tried to be fair and kind to people but I was often too caught up in my business and my own life to notice anyone else outside of my close circle of friends.
The longer I was away from my old life, the more I worried I hadn’t been that great of a guy at all. Not only had I put my employees at risk by getting into business with Frank Gordano, but I had put money ahead of everything else. Which was stupid; I had more money than I could spend reasonably in a lifetime, yet I wanted more and more.
Before getting sent away with the Witness Protection Program, I couldn’t remember a time in my life where I was ever content with what I had. Whether it was in business or my personal life; I always wanted something more or something different. A beautiful woman by my side had never been enough, I wanted a different one than the one I had at any specific moment. In business, when everything was going perfectly, I would make changes to add new things that would inevitably shake up the symbiosis that was going on.
Perfection wasn’t exactly what I was searching for, but satisfaction was what I wanted. Somehow I wanted to feel like what I had was enough. The problem was, I never could get to that point no matter how much I switched girlfriends and no matter how many things I changed in the company.
The weird thing was, I felt happy, or at least I thought I was happy. I went to work every day with a smile on my face and a bit of a jump in my step. Running a small airline was a fun bit of work, but I wasn’t satisfied and therefore didn’t ever truly feel happiness.
The simplicity of life on the ranch had me feeling happier than I had felt in a very long time. Sure, I liked to think of Sarah and even flirt with her when I had the chance, but just being on the ranch and working hard was changing my mindset. There were days when nothing seemed out of place and I was happy to finish my jobs before nighttime and get a warm shower in. I didn’t yearn for more. I didn’t long to have a different amount of money in my pocket or a different fancy bed; I was happy with what I had.
I was happy with three good meals a day and a safe place to sleep. They were things I had taken for granted most of my adult life, yet they were so essential to living. I vowed to myself that I would do better in my life when I returned to it. I would do better at being less self-centered. My eyes were certainly being opened by my time at the ranch and in the witness protection program.
The drive back to the ranch was silent again, but I didn’t feel like pushing Sarah any more. My thoughts were wrapped up in my past and what I hoped would be my future. When the Gordano trial was over, I was going to make changes in my life. I wasn’t sure what they were or how it would happen, but my old life could never be the same after my time at the Miller ranch.
As we pulled into the driveway, Sid Miller was standing there waiting for us. The look on his face seemed full of relief when we first pulled in, but then it quickly turned to anger. I had seen a similar look on the faces of fathers over the years when I had returned their daughters home from a date later than I was supposed to.
“Uh oh,” Sarah said under her breath. “He’s looks angry.”
I suspected Sid was angrier with me than he was at Sarah, but I couldn’t give that information out. Instead, I went along were her notion that her father was actually upset with her. Although, I wasn’t sure why she would think he was angry with her just for driving into tow.
Sarah climbed out of the truck and I grabbed the saddle out of the back and started to bring it into the barn. I didn’t want to make waves if Sid was angry with his daughter; I was going to stay out of it. If he was angry with me, I wanted to get out of sight as quickly as possible to avoid any sort of altercation of words when he explained how wrong I was for leaving.
“Garrett, I need a word with you,” Sid said loudly.
“I’ll take that,” one of the other ranch hands said as he grabbed the saddle.
“Sure.”
“In my office, please,” Sid said as he walked to the small building off to the side of his house.
My eyes caught Sarah’s and she shrugged her shoulders at me. I was clearly the one in trouble and not her, and I knew it was because I had left the ranch. There was no excuse and I shouldn’t have gone. Luckily nothing had happened. We simply went into the supply store and shopped around for a little bit and then bought the saddle and left. There had only been two people in the store that I had seen and neither of them seemed even the slightest interested in what I was doing. But I knew I was wrong and that was all that mattered, I took ownership when I made mistakes and this was certainly all my fault.
“I’m sorry, Sid,” I said quickly as I entered his office.
Sid picked up the telephone and dialed a number. He held his hand up for me not to talk while he punched in a couple numbers on the touchpad telephone. His lips were pressed tightly together and he was angry. Before that moment, I had almost believed that Sid never got angry. But I could see it in his face and even in how he was sitting in his chair, Sid Miller was not happy with me at all.
“Do you know what I’m doing right now?” he asked me sternly, but didn’t wait for me to reply. “I’m calling off the massive search for you that was ordered when I had to report that you and my daughter were both missing.”
Shit. I hadn’t thought about what it would look like if I was gone with his daughter. I felt bad at the mention of people out looking for me and instantly wished I hadn’t gone with Sarah into town. There was genuine concern coming from Sid and I realized that he wasn’t angry: he was scared. Sid had been scared that the people who were after me had found me and had decided to take Sarah with as they kidnapped me.
My gut twisted at the ideas that must have been going through Sid’s mind when he realized we were both gone. At first he probably thought we were riding horses or something else, but soon he realized we had both left the ranch and we hadn’t told anyone where we were going. The fear that started slowly had probably spread quickly the longer we were gone until he decided to report us missing.
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, you’re sorry that for the last hour I thought that a dangerous killer had taken my daughter and the stranger who I had agreed to protect? You’re sorry?”