by Maisey Yates
He could fill the forms out online, but he was going to have to submit them in person.
Because why would anyone want to make the process smoother?
He sighed and printed the forms off, getting a pen and sitting down at the coffee table in the living room with a beer in his hand. He went through checking boxes and entering information.
Doing as many estimates as he could based on what he and Bea had talked about before. He filled in as much as he could, but he was going to have to talk to Bea. He was going to have to see her.
He thought of how she’d been last night with the sun shining over her, and her face glowing like a damned angel. And oh, Lord it hadn’t been heavenly things on his mind when he’d looked at that mouth of hers.
He wanted to make her fall. And that’s what it would be. Sweet Beatrix Leighton getting down and dirty with him.
No. No way in hell. Or heaven. Or Gold Valley.
Anywhere.
Funny how doing paperwork didn’t seem so bad when the alternative was dealing with Bea and whatever the hell weirdness there was there.
He was exhausted after the week of hard work too, but he was a damn sight better than he’d been even over a week ago, when he had taken a fall out in the grapevines.
So at least there was that.
He put his pen down and rubbed his temples, and noticed he had another text.
The chickens are here.
He smiled.
Congratulations.
Do you want to come and see the chickens?
Do I need to see the chickens?
You are a very large part of the reason they ended up being rescued.
He chuckled. That was Bea. Her being so very in character made it easy to forget that things had gotten so upside down with them recently. It was easy to forget the past week had happened at all. This was the Bea he knew. Texting him easily, no tension in the words.
He should go see the chickens. There was no reason not to. And he and Bea were going to have to see each other eventually, anyway.
Sure. I will come see your chickens. And I have some questions for you.
He reached for his truck keys, then paused. He decided that he was going to walk down to the cabin. He was feeling better, anyway.
“Come on, Joe,” he said, rallying his old companion to come with him. He would walk slowly.
For Joe.
He held the forms and pen in his hand, leaving behind crutches. He hadn’t been using them, and while sometimes he relied on them to get over uneven ground, he didn’t like to use them as a matter of course.
Joe limped along with him, and Dane made sure to keep an easy pace. One that happened to be gentler on his leg too.
It was nice out, the early spring air getting warm, reminding him of that time of year when it was getting to be close to ride time. When everything started to get busy and his whole life reduced to adrenaline-fueled punches when the gates burst open and the crowds cheered his name.
Long wild nights in bars and very late mornings tangled up in hotel sheets. Not always alone. Sometimes with a woman, usually with hangovers from hell. Often with both.
Glory that settled like stale confetti on a barroom floor. A celebration while it floated all around, drifting to the earth.
Trash once it landed.
This moment seemed in sharp contrast to those memories. It was quiet. With nothing but the golden sun high in the sky and the smell of sweet grass and early blooming flowers. A carpet of purple and orange beginning to spread out in the green field.
He couldn’t remember the last time he had really stopped and noticed something like wildflowers. For him that wasn’t what this time of year was about. It was about saddling up, about getting ready to go on the road again. Getting in his souped-up truck and migrating from town to town.
Filling his bank account. Win after win.
Each ride, each dollar, a brick in the fortress he built up for himself. The one that kept him from going back to where he’d come from.
The thing that separated Dane Parker, rodeo star, from Dane Parker, fatherless trailer trash.
But he couldn’t do that now. Not anymore.
And the idea should fill him with terror. It had for the past eight months. A waking nightmare that followed him around. But he didn’t feel full of horror now.
He didn’t recognize the man walking across the field now, a limp in his step and a slow, stiff dog at his side.
No, he didn’t know that man. But what struck him was that he wasn’t deeply unhappy in the moment either.
He wouldn’t call it happy either, but it was something else he hadn’t experienced in recent memory.
Peaceful.
Bea’s little cabin came into view, and his stomach tensed up.
He hadn’t expected that. But he pushed it down and continued walking on. Stopping to let Joe sniff around, probably smelling Evan’s scent.
“If you see him,” Dane said, looking down at Joe, “you have my permission to eat him.”
Joe only looked back up at him, his tail swinging back and forth a couple of times.
“You wouldn’t eat him, would you?” Dane asked. “You’d probably make friends with him.”
The door opened and Bea came running out, a short floral dress whipping around her thighs, a pair of simple white sandals on her feet. He wondered if her toenails were painted. Which was about the dumbest and most inexplicable thing he’d ever wondered.
And he realized he was a damned fool.
He had imagined that everything would feel right back to the way that it was, but it didn’t. That just because he was aware it was happening, it meant he could make it stop.
He’d seen her that day, standing in the river. Really seen her. He didn’t know how to make the image go away.
He curled his hands into fists, keeping himself steady where he stood.
“Come and see!” she said, leading the way down the path toward the coop.
He followed slowly, careful to keep his distance, and Bea seemed happy to not wait for him. He was okay with that.
And there they were. The group of rescue chickens that had frankly started most of his troubles. Chickens and a raccoon.
And a bull.
Really. His entire life had been upended by a group of animals, if he thought too deeply about it.
“They’re settling in,” Beatrix said, looking luminously happy, staring at a group of nine little brown chickens and one multicolored rooster, who was strutting around with all the confidence of...well, of a cock really.
“Yes, they are,” Dane responded.
“And that is the first of what I hope to be many successful official rescues.”
“I think you’ve conducted a great many successful rescues,” he said, his tone dry.
“I guess,” she said, waving her hand. “But, the chickens spurred on the whole idea for the sanctuary. So, the chickens are significant.”
“Yes. Very significant rescue chickens.”
He watched them scratch and cluck around the little space, and he was surprised by how...accomplished he felt. They were just chickens.
Hell, he ate chickens.
But he’d helped fix up the coop, and now they were here. He’d built something, changed something, even with the way his body was right now.
“Thanks, Bea,” he said, his voice rough.
She looked up at him, confusion shimmering in her eyes. “For what?”
“For giving me this.”
“You built the coop for me,” she said, smiling up at him.
“No, I think you let me do it for me. Thanks.”
It was like a thread whipped up on the wind and wrapped around them both, tightened, drew them both together.
But he resisted it.
He had t
o resist it.
He took a step away from her.
She cleared her throat. “Come with me. I want to show you some of the other parts of the property I want to use.”
He thought about saying no. Thought about telling her they needed to see to the paperwork. Instead, he set the forms and pen down on a stump by the chicken coop.
“Sure. Lead the way.”
He followed her down a trail that—thankfully—led off to the right, and not straight on ahead toward the river, because he didn’t think that he could handle revisiting that particular crime scene. The fence around the field seemed in pretty good shape, which was good news as far as Dane was concerned. There would need to be some fixing here and there, but hopefully nothing too intensive.
Bea wedged open a big metal gate that definitely needed some repairs to make it functional, and the two of them entered the field. There was a barn off in the distance, and Beatrix went on ahead of him, her dress blowing up dangerously around her thighs, and he found that he had a difficult time tearing his gaze away, no matter that he should.
She looked at him over her shoulder, just a glance, but it felt like a hit straight to the solar plexus. Not unlike getting stomped on by a bull, now that he thought about it. The whole last twenty minutes of his life were like a strange out-of-body experience.
Or maybe it was the whole of the last eight months and it was all coming to a head right now.
Nothing felt quite like it should, and he didn’t feel half so angry as he expected to feel about it either. Not right now. Not out in this field all alone with a beautiful woman.
But she was Beatrix. She wasn’t just a beautiful woman, that was the problem. She was Beatrix, and no matter how beautiful she was she would remain Beatrix. And he would still be Dane.
“Is this thing even structurally sound?” he asked when they approached the old barn.
“All of the barns were structurally sound when Lindy had them revamped a few years ago. I mean, all the ones that she did revamp. This one she didn’t, for obvious reasons. It’s so far away from the rest of the winery facilities that there just isn’t any point doing anything with it. At least, nothing related to Grassroots.”
“We’re going to need to make a back access into the property,” Dane commented, mostly because he was looking for something to say.
“Yes,” Beatrix agreed. “That would definitely be a good idea.”
She started to pull on the barn door, but it didn’t budge. She looked up at him, those eyes hitting him with that blunt force again. “Would you give me a hand?”
“Am I not too much of an invalid to open a heavy door like that?”
She squished her lips down into a firm line and squinted. “Only you can answer that question, Dane. I can’t answer it for you.”
“Well, I guess the only thing I can do is try.” He made his way over to the barn and gripped the edge of the door, pushing it until it gave, taking deep, sure steps that created a biting pain that ate its way up his thighbone as he did. But he ignored that and kept on pushing, because it would take only a couple of more steps for it to be open all the way.
When he looked up, he found himself standing right in front of Beatrix. Her lips curved into a smile. “I guess you could do it.”
“I reckon,” he said, walking inside the barn and looking around. It was dry inside, and that was a good sign. There was no lingering smell of rot or mildew, or anything like that, which might indicate the roof had leaked or there was water damage. He appreciated that because that meant most of the repairs for the place would be aesthetic.
“It’s in surprisingly good shape, actually,” he said looking around.
“It is,” Beatrix said, moving into the center of the room. “That’s very good news.”
He turned a slow circle, looking at the empty space. “So what exactly are you thinking you’re going to keep in the barn?”
“Horses, maybe. Although, I have a feeling that any horses I get will be quickly moved on to somebody like Gabe Dalton. There’s a lot of help for horses. But you never know. I’m going to need shelters for pigs, sheep, goats. Probably a lot of goats.”
“You think?”
“Yes,” she responded. “Goats are a pain in the ass. They eat everything, and they can be escape artists. I imagine that a lot of people get goats only to find out that they are not quite worth the trouble.”
“But you think they’re worth the trouble,” he said.
She shrugged. “Someone has to.”
All that determination and caring in that slim-built, petite frame, and what he wanted more than anything in that moment was to know why.
“Why is that, Beatrix?”
She paused and turned around in the dim space, a slight crease wrinkling her forehead.
“I guess... You know it started out as a simple thing that I could do. My parents were unhappy. They were unhappy from the first time I can remember. My house felt unhappy. Damien was always angry and difficult. Him running off to manage rodeo riders didn’t exactly thrill my parents. But then, he also earned a lot of money, so that was a bit of a difficult position for my father.”
“And he married Lindy.”
Beatrix nodded. “Yes,” she said. “He did. He married Lindy, and they didn’t approve of that either. And then Sabrina... You know, the whole thing with Liam Donnelly back then. When he left and broke her heart, and Sabrina found out it was because my father had paid for Liam to go away... She lost it. Completely. In public and embarrassed my dad in front of his friends. After that they were barely on speaking terms. Walking through my house was like trying to navigate through a roomful of delicate figurines that would be easy to break. Literally and figuratively, really. And I was... I was not the right person to be thrust into that situation. I never wanted to be at the center of conflict. It scared me, and I felt...so much stress, trying to figure out how to be the person that my father wanted me to be.”
“But you couldn’t be.”
“No,” she said, not sadly. Just simply. “And I didn’t want to be either. I couldn’t fix that house, but sometimes I could fix little birds that had hit the window, or one time a mouse whose leg had been caught in a trap in the kitchen.”
The thought of wild, young Bea with her red curls in a tangle, and her face set to an expression of determination rescuing mice her parents had actively been trying to exterminate made it feel like there was something heavy and large sitting on top of his chest. “You rescued the mice that your parents caught in a trap?”
She nodded. “I did. I didn’t tell them, of course.”
“No, I would imagine not.”
“It just started out as something that I could do. A difference that I could make, however small. And after a while, I started to kind of...identify with those creatures. They were small, and to a great many people they were useless. But I cared. I...I wouldn’t want anything to go through life feeling uncared for.”
There was something vulnerable in those words. But something strong too. That Bea took her pain and turned it outward, turned it into helping.
“Beatrix,” he said her name slowly. “Do you feel uncared for?”
Her eyes widened, the corners of her mouth tilting down, then up again. “No. Not now. I don’t now.” She reiterated. “I feel...like I’ve made a great family. I feel like I found a place where I can be important. Working at the clinic, helping Lindy with the winery. Helping you...”
“Do you always need to be helping someone?”
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” she said.
“I don’t suppose,” he responded. “You can build a sanctuary, Bea, and the fact that you want to is a pretty amazing thing. But you don’t have to be a sanctuary for everyone around you to make them care for you. We all care for you.”
The soft, sweet smile on her face felt electric. Lit up pla
ces inside him that had only been lit up by pain for months.
“Thank you,” she said. It took a breath for the moment to go from sweet to thick. Even with all that space between them, the broad expanse of hay-covered floor, he could feel a change. She shifted and looked down, and he held his ground. Didn’t move forward. Didn’t move back. He figured the best he could do was pretend it wasn’t happening.
“We should go back,” she said softly. “I should look in on the chickens and give them some feed. Plus, maybe we should make sure Joe didn’t eat any of them?”
“Joe doesn’t strike me as a vicious chicken killer.”
“You never know.”
“What we probably really need to do is make sure that Evan hasn’t created any drama.”
“Well, that is probably true,” Beatrix said. She rushed past him, and her sweet floral scent caught on to him and held and it immobilized him for a moment. She was gone, having scampered through the barn door, leaving the broad rectangle empty, the sun shining in like a punch square into the darkness that surrounded him.
And he just stood. For that one brief moment he didn’t feel anything except desire. There was no pain in his entire body for the space of a breath. There was only her scent, and his deep, biting need to go after her. Take hold of her. Do something they would both regret.
He gritted his teeth and took steps that were heavier than were strictly necessary as he went back toward her. Embracing the pain in his body as he went, because it was better than the desire.
Is it?
His fogged-up brain said different.
Bea looked like salvation somehow. Like touching her might make him whole.
But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.
Suddenly the sun didn’t seem quite so bright. Didn’t feel as warm.
Bea was far enough ahead of him now that he couldn’t make out the details of those long pale legs, they were just an impression. So there was that, at least.