by Natalie Dean
And yet he was pulling up in front of her cabin, still in that overly large truck. Checking her hair in the mirror one more time, she hurried out to greet him.
Of course, he was already out by the time she reached him, opening her door for her. A gentleman, and not in that creepy, patronizing way that some guys had about them.
“You look beautiful,” he said, almost breathlessly.
And if that just didn’t make her toes curl in her black slippers.
“Thanks,” she murmured, taking him in. He was wearing a cornflower blue dress shirt and nice slacks, his hair brushed back and clean. “You don’t look half bad yourself.”
“Well, I have a very pretty date and didn’t want to underdress.”
“Oh, so I’m very pretty now?”
“I’ve thought that from the moment I met you. Guess it took me time to work up the courage to say that to your face.”
She flushed even harder at that. It wasn’t often that she got to dress up, or even felt the need to, but she’d definitely thought about her outfit long and hard for the night. It was a little blue dress she didn’t get to wear very often. Fitted to her body in that classic sort of pin-up way. Some would call it too revealing, but those were the same folks who called her trashy for wearing jeans and a tank top.
There was red and white trim along the collar line, shoulders, and hem, giving it a feel somewhere between the fourth of July and a comic book superhero, which inspired her to tame her normal riot of curls into a classic victory roll-esque style. It was far from perfect, but that with her shiny lip gloss and red nail polish had her feeling like something out of a vintage magazine.
“Didn’t realize I was so scary.”
He let out a dry chuckle that made her heart do things in her chest. “Are we going to pretend that you don’t know exactly how intimidating you are?”
She let out a loud chuckle at that. “Fair enough. But you don’t seem to mind.”
“No, I don’t mind at all.”
He shut her door, and she allowed herself a moment to be all fluttering and blushing over his words. For someone who seemed to usually be taciturn, a little stuttery, he sure was laying it on smooth now. Had he practiced, or was he just that much more comfortable with her?
She hoped it was the latter. She liked the idea of him trusting her. Confiding in her. It was obvious that he had a burden on his shoulders—even if he didn’t talk about it. Was it so wrong to want to help him with it?
“So, what’s life like back in Texas?” she asked after the quiet had stretched on a little too long. It was so easy to be quiet with Samuel. To just sit in the moment and take everything in and let her thoughts turn one right after the other. But, as much as she felt drawn to the guy, the truth was that he was only around on a limited basis. Soon he would be heading home and so would the mystery that had been occupying her for the last week.
What a shame.
She didn’t miss how he tensed, and she laid a gentle hand on his arm, feeling his muscles tense at her touch. “You don’t have to tell me about your family. Just, you know, life in general. What do you do?”
“Honestly, not much different than what I’m doing now. I fix simple things that our maintenance men don’t need to be bothered with. I fill in for my brothers if they’re sick, workers if we have too many call outs, and drive errands. You know, general work.”
“Huh, strange work for the eldest son of a Texan empire.”
He shrugged, and she felt that same tension mount up again. Alright, so no mentioning of family or station at all. Good to know.
“I guess you could say that I’m not exactly vital to my family’s day-to-day business.”
Oh. Ouch.
“Any sort of business that doesn’t have a place for you isn’t a business that I want anything to do with,” she said, perhaps a bit more forcefully than she should have.
“Hah, I don’t know about that. It’s nothing personal. It’s just I’ve never had the head for it, you know?”
“No, not really. Because all I’ve seen you do is be thoughtful and kind and maybe a little painfully shy. Not to mention reliable. Good with your hands. Strong. I can’t imagine that none of that is useful on a mega-ranch, even if it is all modern and mostly automated.”
“You make me sound a lot more useful than I am.”
“Nah, I just think you have an off-kilter sense of self-worth.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly so.”
He chuckled lightly, and it was such a nice sound. Low, rumbling but easy going. It made goosebumps rise along her arms.
“And I suppose you’re an expert?” he said.
“Oh yeah. The whole world has been telling me how I should be or what I should think about myself since I was old enough to understand ’em. And I’ve been telling them where to shove it about just as long.”
“That easy, huh?”
“Oh, I never said it was easy. And some days are definitely harder than others, but the way I look at it, it’s a choice. I can wake up and choose to listen to all those nasty whispers, or I can get up and be whatever I want to be.”
“That’s… that’s quite an outlook.”
“It gets me by pretty well.”
“I imagine.”
From anybody else, it might have been condescending. But Samuel was so earnest that she knew he meant it. He had a look on his face like he was digesting her words, examining them, turning them this way and that.
The conversation tapered off, but it was more of that warm, comfortable calm than anything awkward. They arrived in town soon enough as it was, and then he was parking and walking around his truck to let her out.
But this time he did something different, offering her his hand as she stepped onto solid ground. She hesitated a moment, looking at his broad, calloused palm, before slipping her hand into his.
And it was just like that, hand in hand, that they walked into the diner together. Apparently, Dani had had a bad time there some years back, but the whole place had been bought out and renovated a little over a year ago.
It had finally reopened about two months prior, and Virginia had been excited to try it out but hadn’t made the time with her work schedule. At least Samuel gave her a good reason to get off the couch in her spare time and do something fun for once.
They were seated relatively quickly, and the server came to take their drink order. Virginia ordered a water—her mouth was surprisingly dry—while Samuel got himself one of those dark draft beers from Germany or something.
“Do you not drink?” he asked, eyeing her water.
“I do occasionally, but I usually prefer to in the privacy of my own home.”
“There a reason for that? Or just a habit?”
Normally she would brush someone off with a quip or comeback, but she liked that he was interested in her day-to-day life. All the little quirks that made her tick. “I guess a habit. My first party in college I caught some guy messing with my drink. Maybe he did something, maybe he didn’t, but it was… a pretty memorable situation to be in. After that, I decided it wasn’t worth the risk to drink in public and that I’d just stick to water.”
“Someone… someone tried to drug you?” He was staring at her with that same intense look again. One that she couldn’t tell if it was anger, horror, shock, or concern.
“Someone maybe tried to drug me. Hard to say. But GHB and a lot of other drugs taste salty, so I figured water was just the way to go. And I know that I’m safe now, nobody in this restaurant is going to roofie me, but the habit’s already there so I’ll just stick with my H2O.”
She could read the tension lines in his shoulder and neck as he was quiet for a long moment. When he finally spoke, he said, “I’ve never wanted to punch someone I’ve never met more in my entire life.”
“Aw, well, thanks for taking him up on young little Ginny’s account. I assure you; she’d be beside herself at the thought of that.”
“T
hat so?”
“Oh, most certainly.”
He blushed again, and it was still just as cute as ever. What time warp had the man clambered out of? “I don’t know quite what to say to that.”
“That’s alright. Wouldn’t be the first time I left someone speechless,” she stated.
“You know, I don’t doubt that one bit.”
She grinned at him, feeling all sorts of mischievous and quippy, only for the server to return and ask their order. She was barely paying attention as she picked something at random from the menu, and she was pretty sure Samuel did the same. Then the two of them were alone again.
“So what are your dreams?” she asked, leaning in, resting her elbows on the table. Maybe it was bad manners, but she wanted to be close to him. To be in his presence and drink up everything about him. His scent, the way his thick brows furrowed when he thought, that look he sometimes got in his vibrantly green eyes. All of it.
She’d never been so viscerally attracted to a man before. And it wasn’t due to some sort of scarcity. She’d had plenty to pick from, that was for sure. She remembered the first time a guy hit on her at the ripe old age of thirteen, asking her where she was going, if she was on summer break and if she needed a ride back to the city. He hadn’t been a towner, some guy just passing through, but it was burned into her brain like a brand. It’d pretty much been a non-stop parade since. Not a single one of them interested her like Samuel did, though.
Maybe it was how he treated her like a person. Maybe it was how he responded to her like she was immensely attractive, but that was his problem, not hers. Maybe it was just the way he seemed to hold onto her every word.
Who knew? She certainly didn’t. But the fact was she felt inexplicably drawn to the man in front of her.
“My dreams?”
“Yeah, what do you want out of life? What do you look forward to? You know, big goals?” Maybe it was a stupid question to ask. He was already rich as sin and probably could just buy or do anything he wanted.
“I… I want to be useful.”
“Useful?” That was just about the last thing she expected.
“Yeah.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and she could almost see as he imagined it. “To be needed, or a part of a whole. To know that someone or someones would miss me if I was gone, be happy when I came back. I suppose… I suppose I just want to feel like I’m a part of something bigger than myself. That I make other people’s lives better by being a part of them.”
“Oh.”
For a moment she felt silly about her dreams of owning an RV to go traveling in and visiting a dozen or so different countries. What Samuel wanted was so much… so much more. And yet so simple. She had a place where she was welcome. A haven in the storm of life. A place full of people and connections and welcoming hugs. She couldn’t imagine where she would be without it. Couldn’t imagine forcing herself to weather college and the cold world without her ranch family. And yet, from his tone, his posture, and pretty much everything else about him, Samuel was basically telling her that he’d had to do exactly that.
What kind of life could that possibly be? Feeling that he didn’t belong. That he wasn’t a part of a whole? Just a broken spoke on the edge of a wheel, useless and unneeded. No wonder his sense of self-worth was off-kilter. She wanted to march right up to that mansion she’d Googled in Texas and slap the lot of his family silly. For being Millers, that was an awfully cruel thing to do to their son.
“I suppose that sounds pretty lame,” he said hurriedly, which made Virginia act before she thought.
She reached across the table, her hands over his. It wasn’t the first time they had touched, not by far, but there was something different about it. Something intoxicating, with more meaning.
“No. No, it’s not lame at all. That’s a… a really reasonable thing to want, Samuel. And I really, really hope you get that. If I could grant wishes, that would be the first one I’d grant.”
And if he didn’t just flush right up to his ears. Maybe some would have thought it was embarrassing, but she only felt her heartbeat pick up. He was just so incredibly handsome… and sweet.
“That… that means a lot to hear that. Coming from someone like you.”
She blinked at him. “Someone like me?”
But he just nodded, seemingly completely unaware that usually when people used those specific words that they weren’t being complimentary. “Yeah. Confident. Smart. Competent. You don’t strike me as the type to gas someone up with false flattery.”
She sat back at that, feeling her own face flush. “You really think all that of me?”
His brows furrowed as if he didn’t understand her confusion. “I… of course. Don’t you?”
She had to swallow a dry chuckle. “I mean, of course I think I’m awesome, but plenty of people have told me that they disagree. That I’m overconfident. Cocky.”
He frowned, pausing to sip at his drink. “I don’t agree. And I think usually the people who say that are the same people who think that a woman showing any confidence at all is somehow unattractive.”
“I think you may be on to something there.”
He nodded. “People like that frustrate me.”
“Do they?” she asked. Normally rich folks like him didn’t care about anything but profit. And yet when she looked at Samuel, she didn’t see dollar signs in his eyes. She saw so much, but not just the cold, hard lust for money.
He nodded. “I know we all have biases. Things we can’t help just because of how we were raised. Like… like my reaction to your house. I didn’t mean anything by it, but my brain couldn’t help but identify it as… wrong.
“But when people don’t check themselves, ask them why they think the way they do, it’s just so… frustrating. When they don’t understand why they call their female supervisor unmentionable words while their male supervisor is a go-getter. An alpha. How they use slurs around their black coworkers, knowing it makes them uncomfortable but not caring. How they dismiss other people’s views and feelings and experiences.
“We’re all different, I get that. But I feel like so many of the reasons we don’t understand each other is because we refuse to just sit down and listen to each other.”
She swallowed, letting herself look at him for a long moment. “You’re… you’re really something else, aren’t you, Samuel?”
“Am I?”
She nodded. “I can safely say that when I heard about the eldest son of the Texas Millers coming up to help out, you were the farthest thing from what I envisioned.”
“And is that a good thing, or a bad thing?”
“Good. Very, very good.”
He ducked his head, and if he wasn’t so earnest, she would think that he was playing up the aw-shucks-ma’am vibe he had going on. Except she knew exactly how earnest he was. And once more her toes were curling inside her shoes.
“I feel like you think more highly of me than I deserve, but the thought of telling you that you’re thinkin’ wrong kind of makes me want to punch myself before you have to,” he said.
“Good call. I do hate to be told I’m wrong when I know I’m right.”
“I’m sure.”
They shared a laugh, and she was so at ease it felt like she’d known the man her entire life. Which was impossible. They’d met less than two full weeks ago.
But it didn’t feel that way.
Their food came not too long after that and both of them sat up straight. Virginia hadn’t realized how they’d both leaned across the table towards each other, bringing them as close as they could be without climbing onto the actual furniture. It was so easy to get wrapped up in a little bubble with him, the rest of the world dropping away to leave only them.
Unsurprisingly, the rest of the meal went just as well, with the conversation flowing and those moments of strangely acute connection. Perhaps it was too fast to say, but by the time they were reluctantly heading out, she could see herself falling in love with the man.
It seemed cruel almost, in a way. Life dangling them in front of each other only to yank them apart. And perhaps she was foolish for ever prompting him to take her on a date. But she’d expected the date to be a fun experience where she got to unravel the rest of the mystery of her shy, millionaire cowboy, not the intense rush of feelings that were swamping her. The burning connection she felt tying her center to his.
They walked out to his truck arm in arm, his body feeling so solid and right next to hers. From there, it was back onto the road.
A slow song was playing on the radio, the windows were rolled down, and the onyx sky was littered with those perfect spots of light. It was perfect. Beautiful. Soothing in a way she hadn’t taken the time to appreciate in so long.
Even with her relatively simple life, it was so easy to get caught up in the day to day and not appreciate the beauty she was lucky enough to be surrounded by. But with Samuel at her side, calm and quiet and sure, she was reminded of just how precious something as simple as belonging could be.
“I’m glad you came here,” she said when they pulled into the ranch and he started to turn onto the trail that led to her cabin. “I mean, I’m glad you came to the ranch.”
He looked to her, and once more there was so much in that gaze of his. “Me too. Best decision I ever made.”
Goodness, when he just laid out a compliment like that, it made her heart just about stop right in her chest. He had no idea what he did to her, did he? Probably not. He was sweet like that and her thoughts kept trying to skitter to things they shouldn’t focus on.
They reached her house far too soon, the cul-de-sac seeming to come up more quickly than it normally did. It was late into the night, well past her bedtime, but she found herself wishing that they could spend more time together.