All part of the package of being together … or so she’d thought at the time.
So, here she was now, an outsider with an itch of curiosity about the outlier.
But if she asked about him, Val would pounce. And Val would not let go.
Bexley had known that, but, boy, knowing and feeling it first-hand while they worked together were two different things.
Far safer to let the itch go unscratched.
But then, a couple weeks into her stay and four days after Kiernan’s arrival, Bexley was helping Matty Brennan Currick with the final cleanup in the kitchen after a casual cookout dinner.
Val, Jack, their daughter, Addie, and their eight-month-old son, Mick, had gone home earlier to the foreman’s house a few miles away because Jack had been up all night with a newly arrived rescue horse. Dave and Kiernan were cleaning the grill outside — when Dave wasn’t catching his screaming-with-delight kids with the hose’s stream.
Bexley, putting away a serving dish on the shelves in the eating area, looked out the patio doors, chuckling at the scene.
Kiernan, grinning at what was going on around him, looked up toward her and for half a second she could almost think— Then his expression settled into familiar lines proclaiming she was some kind of enemy. Before he dropped his head and resumed scrubbing.
Matty, looking out the window over the sink at the horseplay, clicked her tongue. But she was smiling with her whole face. “At least Kiernan’s working out there.”
Her smile faded.
“I should say at least Kiernan took a break from working to come to dinner tonight. He’s always working these days.”
With perfect neutrality, Bexley said, “Isn’t he here for a working visit, like me?”
“You don’t need to work so hard, either,” Matty scolded. “But at least Val gets you to join in with a few of the fun things.”
“Like the ride and picnic last weekend. That was amazing.”
Matty grinned, taking a pitcher Bexley had dried and putting it away in a far cupboard. “It was fun. I wish Kiernan had been here then. As it is, he hasn’t let up since he arrived.”
“The computer system, isn’t it?” Bexley had picked that up from casual conversation with a couple of the cowhands.
They’d also said Kiernan spent a lot of time out on the range, testing devices under ranching conditions.
“Yes. He stopped here on his way from the West Coast to Boston for his real job because he said he had software for us to test — except then he’s insisted on doing all the testing. Working, working, working.”
Matty broke off.
“Not that I’m complaining. We’re so fortunate he’s taken over our computer system. He revamped it a while back and it’s made a huge difference. Now he swings by periodically and checks, updates, and tweaks it, so it’s better every time. Or he does one of these bigger overhauls, like now.”
“How did he start working for the Slash-C?”
“Oh, Kiernan is family.” Matty looked out the window again, this time not focusing on her husband and kids. “You know, he’s so far up there in the software world we couldn’t possibly afford his services if he’d let us pay him, which he won’t. I just wish he’d have some fun.”
In one way, Bexley could see Kiernan McCrea being part of the Currick family, she thought later as she neared the mini house where Currick family members stayed when they visited, but generously turned over for her use now.
He acted like family with the adults, but especially with the kids.
Though Bexley did wonder how the Irish branch worked into the Currick family tree. Or was it Matty’s? She was born a Brennan, so maybe that was the connection.
Maybe she’d do a little sleuthing on her laptop tonight. She’d gotten into the habit of taking the laptop to bed with her — appreciating a faithful bed companion. Nothing intrusive, a little dip into publicly posted information—
Darn.
She’d left her laptop in the ranch office where she and Val were working when they were called for dinner.
She turned around and headed back to the office.
Good. The inside door stood open as she and Val left it — intending to do more after dinner, until good company, good conversation, and Jack’s need for sleep changed their plans. The screen door would still be open. Yep. A few steps to the desk, pick up her laptop and—
Kiernan McCrea stood at the desk, looking down at the notes and sketches she and Val had made during their work session.
At some point, she’d heard he slept in the ranch office. But seeing no sign of his occupation the times she and Val worked here with baby Mick napping nearby, she’d forgotten that piece of information until this moment.
He was barefoot and his shirt was unbuttoned, revealing a slice of chest and flat abdomen.
The sight heated her breath and froze her brain.
“Oh.”
She felt wrong-footed. Partly by surprise. Partly by the guilty knowledge of thinking about digging into his family connection to the Curricks. Partly by—
No. Not until the new year.
Prepared to abandon her laptop for now, she started to turn away as she’d done regularly since he’d rebuffed her overtures.
But with him being related to Matty and her likely to cross paths with him again if she was invited back to the Slash-C — which she hoped she would be, because not only was it a wonderful place with terrific people, current company excepted, but she’d such made great strides in creating a new online business under Val’s talented kicking — she’d make more of an effort.
“Hi, Kiernan. Forgot my laptop before dinner. Sorry if I intruded. Didn’t know you were here or I’d have knocked.”
He barely flicked her a look, grunted, and continued looking at the notes and sketches. He even extended one hand down to graze the papers with his fingertips, nudging one to better see what was beneath it.
Her notes and sketches.
Well, hers and Val’s. But for her new online business. In some ways for her new self.
The edifice she’d built around the lifestyle she lived with Nigel had proven all polish and fluff. Why, oh why, in the few times Nigel consented to spend time with her family, hadn’t she paid attention to their reaction? Her parents’ polite distance, her siblings’ guarded distrust, including her younger brother’s crack she wasn’t supposed to hear about Nigel resembling a glossy magazine you’d flip through in a waiting room, but wouldn’t bring home.
She’d thought at the time their reaction was because he had so much more polish and experience of the world than her family, which he’d pointed out with stiff amusement.
She’d eventually learned it was because, dazzled by the polish, she’d missed the minimal substance beneath.
Not ever again.
Not in her personal life. Not in her business life.
This plan had substance. Because it was based on her — core elements of her that had survived Nigel’s gloss offensive and would survive. No matter what.
Val helped her find a way to help people with what she knew. Not create a lifestyle, but build a better life. A real life.
“I see you’re looking at what Val’s helping me put together for my new online business. Planning all the pieces — videos, classes, website, podcast. Starting to put them together.”
Another grunt.
Forget friendly. Kiernan McCrea wasn’t even polite.
A grunt. For all their hard work. For all she hoped for—
Not that he owed her anything. But what about Val’s work and creativity? And how about his family? Showing him so much love while he sat there through dinner like a lump of coal.
Hands on hips, she demanded, “So, how are you related to Matty?”
If he picked up a strong inference that the only conceivable reason his miserable self would be allowed to be around the fine people of the Slash-C was nepotism added to their inexplicable generosity in his case, she could live with that.
“Matty?” His dark brows drove down without narrowing his eyes to the point of obscuring their distinctive green.
“She said you’re family,” she said, none too patiently, because his lack of understanding wasn’t from lack of brains, making it more likely it was from lack of interest in anything she said.
He looked up, staring. Not seeing her — clearly — for several beats. He blinked and it was like light came on inside him. It dazzled her. The way a match flame could in a dark room.
And then he laughed.
She could swear it vibrated through her nerves and reverberated in her bones.
“Related? Try her ranch foreman’s wife’s cousin’s brother-in-law — no, wait. It’s worse, because Jack officially started as the Curricks’ foreman, so I’m her husband’s ranch foreman’s wife’s cousin’s husband’s brother. That’s Matty’s definition of family.”
She could not help chuckling back — strictly for Matty, not for him, since he had a lot of sourpuss to make up for.
Maybe also for herself, because chuckling was a heck of a lot less disconcerting than vibrating.
“Matty’s husband’s ranch’s foreman.” By repeating the words, she started to follow along the thread he’d drawn. “So, that’s Jack. And his wife’s Val.”
“Right. Val’s cousin, Eleanor, married my brother Cahill. They’re not here, but they come to visit regularly with their kids.”
She stepped through it again with care, trying to get it straight in her head. “Matty’s husband’s foreman’s wife’s—” Matty, Dave, Jack, and Val, all people she knew. Now she ventured into unknown territory, though she’d certainly heard about them from Val. “—cousin’s husband’s—”
“That’s Eleanor, who’s Val’s cousin, and Cahill, who’s my—”
“Brother,” they ended together.
He laughed.
She laughed.
Way past what it deserved, maybe. Making up for his coldness to her, her prickliness toward him, probably.
Laughed long enough and hard enough to feel like ribcages had shrunk.
Looking at each other as they tried to replenish oxygen levels.
That was one instant.
In the next, that match flame in the dark ignited something entirely unexpected. Something volatile.
Oxygen still depleted, but now because the fire of his look consumed every bit around her.
Impossible.
Yet she felt her breasts rising and falling faster and faster with the need to pull in air.
No, no, no, no, no. This was not possible.
He raised his hands, half reaching for her.
She didn’t move.
He dropped his hands. Stepped back.
They stayed put. More distance between them. Safer distance between them.
Except his breathing was as bad as hers. And eye contact? She might combust from the eye contact alone.
One of them had to look away. Now.
His green-eyed gaze holding hers, he surged forward, his hands bracketing her upturned face, his fingers driving into her hair. Then his mouth on hers. His tongue inside. And hers exploring him. Tasting. Delving.
His one hand cupped the back of her head. The other came to her shoulder.
“Bexley.”
Talking meant a sliver of space between them. No longer heartbeat to heartbeat. Enough for sense to return.
Her hand was high on his chest, spanning his open shirt. Her fingers bunched the fabric. She tugged him toward her.
CHAPTER THREE
December 23
“Bexley, wake up. We’ve a problem.”
She couldn’t have been deeply asleep, because she responded the instant Kiernan said her name. And she already knew the vehicle had stopped. Yet straightening up and looking around, shock jolted her. Someone had dumped a gazillion flour bags over the world and was still dumping.
She leaned forward, hoping it would help her see through the white in the instant wipers contacted a slice of the windshield. For an instant, she thought Kiernan had nudged her, then she realized the whole vehicle rocked from the wind.
“Road’s closed.” Kiernan nodded to the bar across the road and a sign, each appearing for a flicker as the wipers passed.
Road? The world looked like it had closed.
“But—”
A knock on the driver’s window interrupted.
Kiernan lowered the window, where snow rapidly collected.
“Road ahead’s closed. Can’t go any farther.” An official voice came from an oddly shaped snowman under a frosted trooper’s hat.
“But the forecast—” Bexley started, trying to assimilate this new reality.
“Weather didn’t get the forecast memo,” the official voice rumbled.
“Can we go back and go around the worst of this, north or south?” Kiernan asked.
The hat twirled a fall of snow with a head shake.
“We’ll have to go back to the Curricks’.”
She said it mostly to herself. Better or worse than remaining in the car alone with Kiernan? Both. Better with more people around them. Worse with too many of those people trying to push them together.
Another twirl of snow indicated another head shake. “No going back. Westbound’s closed, too. You’ll follow me to shelter and stay there until we say otherwise.”
“How far is it?” Kiernan asked.
“Down the road from the exit. Keep my rear lights in sight, but don’t ride my bumper.”
The snowman trudged away.
“Nothing for it but to do as he says,” Kiernan said.
“When did this start?”
“It was snowing for a while. After the previous exit it started coming down like a pillow ripped open. When I could see the country around, it looked like it had been going for some time. I hoped it was a bad pocket we’d get through. But it kept getting worse.”
She started to ask more, but saw Kiernan’s deep concentration on driving as the trooper’s vehicle pulled in front of them, with emergency lights flashing.
Down the exit, they started. At the bottom, the rear end of the vehicle wanted to take a different path, but Kiernan persuaded it back in time to make the turn onto the highway behind the trooper. The interstate passed above them, buffering some of the wind and snow for a few moments. Which seemed to make both all the stronger when they left the relative protection of the underpass.
“Where’s he headed? There’s nothing,” Kiernan muttered. “Nothing a’tall.”
Bexley leaned forward. “I think I see … something. A roof, maybe?”
Through the snow, a shape like an upside down V appeared on the left side of the road.
“Can’t even try to look,” he said.
“No, don’t. But I do think there’s something ahead on the left side of the road. Yes! The trooper turned his indicator on.”
The trooper pulled into a snow-covered lot, bypassing where a single gas pump stood lonely, snow-shrouded sentry, and stopping in front of a building, leaving a space between his vehicle and a four-wheel drive with Wyoming plates.
Kiernan steered after him. Bexley felt the wind try to shove them sideways, but Kiernan kept in the trooper’s tire tracks. Until they pushed across fresh snow to park in the space.
She looked at Kiernan. He looked at her. Quickly, they both looked back at the building visible through the windshield.
The driving snow didn’t help the view much. Through it, they saw what appeared to be two small buildings smashed together. Both had rock facades, with short, rectangular windows under the low eaves of sharply peaked roofs. Each had a door in the center with a peaked eave over it, though the door on the right appeared to be boarded up. The building on the left had a dark gray roof, the one on the right rusty red in the few places snow didn’t cover. That right-hand roof sat significantly lower than the other, making it appear the runt of this two-building litter.
To either side of the operable door were snow-covered lumps. A flap of blue
indicated a tarp had covered something there before it was mostly covered in turn by snow.
The trooper left his vehicle running. As they exited Kiernan’s rental, the trooper shouted, “Get your things.”
A sound came to her. Familiar, but she couldn’t immediately identify it as the wind whipped it away.
“We’re staying here? At a gas station?” Bexley asked as she and Kiernan met at the back of the vehicle. She squinted into the snow, trying to locate the source of the sound. She could make out the outlines of a pickup with a trailer behind it.
Kiernan pulled out her bag and held onto it as he got his own as well. “Not much of a gas station, either. Would you bring that shopping bag in? Things in there might freeze.”
“I can carry my suitcase…” Remembering its weight and accepting there’d be no rolling the suitcase in the accumulating snow, she let her protest die and accepted the help. “I’ll get the shopping bag and close up.”
“Don’t. I’ll come back for the gear the Curricks stowed. If we’re to stay here any time a’tall, we’ll need it.”
The trooper opened the building’s door from inside as they arrived. Kiernan left what he’d carried and went back immediately.
“What’s he doing?”
“More gear,” was all Bexley could get out as she maneuvered herself and her load out of the way of the door.
Kiernan returned before she had her breath back.
The trooper opened the door again, then pulled it closed immediately, winning a tussle with the wind.
With Kiernan safely inside, Bexley looked around.
CHAPTER FOUR
They’d stepped into a crowded shop with rows of shoulder-high shelves hugging narrow aisles. The back showed ranks of glass doors to cold storage, the right side held more racks until reaching an opening at the back that must connect to the shorter building next door. The left side held the counter to check out, with a microwave and a trio of coffee machines in the corner beyond it.
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