It was maddening.
Frustrating.
And confusing as anything in her life had ever been.
“That’d be cool,” Selena was saying. “When will you be able to start riding again?”
Billie tucked her tongue between her teeth. She was more anxious to hear the answer than Selena could possibly be.
“I’d ride right now if I could get myself on the back of a horse, but the crutches tend to get in the way.”
Selena giggled. “I mean rodeo riding.”
Grayson’s grin stayed in place, though Billie thought it looked forced. “Don’t really know, Selena. That’s up to the doctors, still.”
The girl made a face. “Well, I hope it’s soon. You know Max’s head is getting, like, this big.” She held her hands in the air, so wide apart the phone screen couldn’t capture them. “He’s winnin’ every week, seems like.”
“Good for him,” Grayson said smoothly.
“He’ll never be as great as you, though,” Selena assured him, ever loyal despite being related to Max.
“Never say never,” Grayson warned. “Your cousin’s just startin’ out. And I’m...” He shrugged. “Well, I’m laid up with a dang cast on my leg that’s itching me like crazy.”
Selena wrinkled her nose. “My dad had a cast on his arm last year. It got stinky, too, ’cause he kept getting it wet. Billie, you’re not letting Grayson’s cast get wet, are you?”
“Grayson’s a big boy.” Billie ignored the flush in her face. “It’s up to him to keep his cast from getting wet.”
“But I thought you were there helpin’ him.”
“She is,” Grayson answered easily, into Billie’s stymied silence. “In fact, she’s gonna help me out to the barn now because whether I can ride ’em or not, I’ve still got to take care of Vix and Van. So say goodbye to Selena, Billie.”
“Goodbye, Selena,” she said obediently.
Her cousin waved at them, smiling broadly. “Bye, Billie. Bye, Grayson.” A moment later, the screen went black.
Billie set aside the cell phone. “Thanks for not bad-mouthing Max to Selena.” He still wasn’t talking to her, no doubt even more entrenched in his opinion since she’d run to Grayson’s hospital bedside.
Grayson’s lips tightened. “Do you think I’d really do that?”
She handed him his crutches. “I don’t know what I think.” She moved over to the kitchen door and looked out. She could see the barn that Ariana had told her had been damaged the year before during the tornado but now looked in perfect condition. It was going to be hot that afternoon, so the doors were closed to keep in the air-conditioning. But she could still hear the tinkle of the wind chimes hanging near the door that Jayden kept outside to help orient his blind dog, Sugar.
As she watched, she saw the dog and EJ both running across the patch of grass growing on one side of the barn.
Grayson’s new nephew was four. He was a brown-haired ball of energy and Billie wasn’t the least bit surprised when she saw Bianca running after her son a few moments later. Then Nate caught them all, and soon they were tumbling on the ground, rolling in the grass.
The three of them so clearly belonged together, the sight made Billie ache inside. Even though both Ariana and Bianca had been incredibly welcoming to her, Billie still knew that they belonged here in Paseo, in this incredibly charming but modest ranch house, with their husbands.
Billie was just...she didn’t know what.
She looked back at the man responsible for all the uncertainty stirring inside her. If he’d made even a single attempt to kiss her, or to touch her, just once in the last twenty-one days, she wouldn’t have felt so adrift. But he hadn’t. And it wasn’t because he was too unfit with his broken leg.
For heaven’s sake, just yesterday afternoon she’d watched him working alongside his two brothers, tossing bales of hay that outweighed her, keeping pace with both of them. All three men had been shirtless and sweating. The only difference was that Jayden and Nathan each had two good jean-clad legs. Grayson had a casted leg sticking out of the jeans he’d torn up one side to accommodate the bulk, while the crutches he was supposed to be using had been tossed aside.
Ariana, who’d been washing dishes at the sink while Billie dried, had nearly been drooling as she’d watched her husband out the window. “Hard to believe there are three of them, isn’t it?”
Billie hadn’t even been able to articulate agreement.
“Three, four, five, six,” EJ had chirped from the table, where he and his mom were looking at a picture book.
Ariana and Bianca had laughed. Billie had had to excuse herself to go off and take a walk. It was either that or a cold shower. And she’d figured a walk would draw less interest, considering how many people shared the limited number of bathrooms in the house.
She could still hear EJ’s peals of laughter from outside now as she watched Grayson stand up from the table, fitting the crutches under his arms before heading toward her. Toward the door.
But when she didn’t move out of the way, he raised an eyebrow. “What?”
Her heart suddenly felt like it was beating inside her throat. She reached up and slid her hand behind his neck, pulling his head down to hers, boldly fastening her lips to his.
She felt his surprise.
Then his resistance.
Determined not to quail, she added another arm around him, fitting herself tightly against him.
Then he swore, angled his head a little and kissed her back.
One of his crutches clattered noisily against the kitchen counter and bounced off onto the ground as his hand slid behind her back. It traveled beneath the edge of her T-shirt and splayed hotly against her skin.
He tasted like the coffee Ariana had made that morning. Like the peach-studded pancakes that Bianca had prepared. Like maple syrup and the kind of hope that made Billie long to roll around laughing in the grass with him and a boy of their own.
His other crutch clattered against the tile and his hands grasped her arms.
At first, she thought it was just to keep his balance. But she realized quickly enough that he was pulling her hands away. That he was dragging his mouth from hers. Putting distance between them.
His overlong hair was messed, his dark eyes burning between his thick lashes. But it was her breath that was coming fast, as if she’d been running sprints.
Which pretty much described how she’d felt since meeting him. One breathless sprint after another.
“What am I doing here, Grayson?”
His brows pulled together. Instead of answering, he leaned down, balancing on one leg, and scooped up a crutch, which he stuffed under his arm. Then he reached around her to pull open the door. She knew he wasn’t unaffected by their kiss because she could see the evidence for herself. “Horses need exercising.” His voice sounded gruff.
She opened her mouth to protest, but didn’t know what to say.
Instead, she just watched him clomp out the door, then down the porch steps and toward the barn, seeming to barely even nod an acknowledgment when he crossed paths with Bianca, who was heading for the house.
Billie nudged the door closed and turned away, trying to gather her composure before Bianca could see her.
She might as well have tried jumping over the moon.
As soon as Grayson’s newest sister-in-law floated into the kitchen and saw Billie, her eyebrows pulled together. “Honey! What’s wrong?”
Billie sank down onto a chair, covering her face. “Nothing.” Ever since she’d cried at Grayson’s bedside, her tears came much too easily. “Everything.”
Bianca snatched a napkin from the holder on the table and pressed it into her hand. “You want to talk about it?”
Billie knew that Bianca was only a few years older than she was. That she already had one failed marriage under her belt, and that she was the little sister of Nathan’s best friend, who’d died while he and Nate had been in the military together.
�
�Not really.” Billie swiped at her cheeks, her nose. Then she crumpled the napkin in her fist and proceeded to talk, anyway. “I don’t understand him.” She grabbed another napkin. “At all. People say women are complicated. But our sex has nothing on men.”
Bianca smiled sympathetically. “Particularly Fortune men.”
“At least Nathan made it plain what he wanted from you! You’re married. You and EJ are making a family with him.”
“True, but it wasn’t as if he just arrived at that conclusion all that easily.” Bianca tucked her long hair behind her ear. “At first I didn’t think he wanted me, even though he took EJ and me in when we had nowhere else to turn. We lived here in this house with him, but he never took advantage of it. He was very...old-fashioned about it at first.”
Billie studied the other woman. “Old-fashioned. As in...”
“He didn’t touch me for what seemed the longest time,” Bianca said. “Didn’t matter how much chemistry we had. Not that I was anxious to move too fast, either, but—” She broke off, smiling ruefully.
“Is it a family trait, then?” Billie scrubbed her cheeks. “Or is it just that Grayson likes the chase better than the actual catch?”
“I can’t speak for Grayson, obviously. I’d barely even met him before he was injured. Nathan and I had some stuff to work through. With my brother’s death. Then my ex-husband. Ariana and Jayden, too, had to find a way through the fact that she was planning to write about them being the latest secret sons of Gerald Robinson. But the point is, we all found our way.”
“How?” Billie pushed to her feet and paced the length of the kitchen and back. “I don’t know how to reach him if he won’t talk. Or touch.”
“The only thing I know is you can’t give up when something really matters.” Bianca pulled a few juice boxes from the refrigerator. “Does Grayson really matter?”
Billie exhaled. “More than I want him to.”
“There’s your answer.” Bianca held up the juices. “Nathan and EJ want to go for a walk. You’re welcome to join us.”
Billie managed a smile. “Thanks, but you guys go.” She knew it wasn’t all that often that Nathan or Jayden had any downtime around the ranch. “Enjoy.”
Bianca gave her an encouraging smile. “Keep your chin up, Billie. When things are meant to work out, they seem to do just that.”
And when they weren’t meant to?
She kept the thought to herself as the other woman left, then nearly jumped out of her skin when the wall phone rang shrilly.
There was no one in the house besides her. Deborah had gone into town before breakfast. Ariana and Jayden had gone off after breakfast to visit some people who lived nearby. “Nearby,” Billie had learned, was a relative term, since nothing was really nearby in this remote area of the world. The only reason Billie’s cell phone had worked since coming to Paseo was because the town had recently bowed to pressure from some of its residents to put up a cell tower. Until then, the area had been a landline-only sort of place.
The phone kept ringing and she finally reached out, plucking the old-fashioned receiver off the hook. “Fortune residence.”
“May I speak with Grayson, please?” The voice was feminine. Throaty. “This is Bethany Belmont.”
Billie’s fingers tightened on the hard plastic receiver. “He’s not in the house right at the moment. Do you want to hold on while I get him?”
“No, that’s okay. Is this Deborah?”
“No. She’s out, too.”
“Oh, well. Would you be able to take down a message for me?”
Billie’s jaw felt so stiff it was hard to speak. “Sure.”
“Tell him it’s going to be a boy. And I, uh, I’ve thought about what he told me and decided he’s right. He’ll know what I mean. Have you got that?”
Just what she wanted to do. Deliver messages with inside meanings. “I’ve got it.”
“Thanks. And tell him thanks, too, will you please?”
Billie twisted the coiled cord in her fist. It was wrong to imagine it was Bethany’s hair she was pulling, but she did so, anyway. And she wondered what Bethany would say if Billie told her she was Max Vargas’s cousin.
“I’ll tell him. G’bye.” She quickly hung up before her baser instincts took control. Grayson was right—whatever had gone on between Max and the pregnant barrel racer was their business.
Billie exhaled and went outside to deal with her and Grayson’s business.
When she reached the barn, it was pretty obvious that he’d had no intention of waiting for her or anyone else to help him with the horses. Because there he was, leaning on one crutch while still managing to wield a pitchfork to spread straw across a stall. Nearby was a wheelbarrow full of the manure and straw he’d obviously already mucked out.
She went over and took the pitchfork from his hand. “You’re getting your cast filthy. What if you get an infection or something?”
“We’ll never know, ’cause I’m gonna saw the damn thing off if it doesn’t stop itching me.”
“Maybe your skin wouldn’t itch so much if you didn’t insist on being Mr. Ranch Man right alongside your able-bodied brothers! You’re a terrible patient, you know. Your mom warned me before we left the hospital, and she was right.”
Billie finished spreading the straw and turned to the next stall. She grabbed the shovel and scraped it along the floor, dragging out the mess that needed to be cleared first. “Bethany called to tell you that it’s a boy.” Scrape, scrape. “That she thought about what you said and you’re right.” Muck, muck. “You’d know what that meant. And thanks.” She pitched the crap into the wheelbarrow and went back for another shovelful.
He was looking at her warily. “That’s it?”
She dumped the second shovelful, as well. “Are you expecting another meltdown from me?”
“I’m not sure what to expect from you.”
She smiled humorlessly. “That makes two of us, then.” She went back for a third shovel, scraping the ground meticulously clean before considering it ready for fresh straw. Doing exactly what she’d learned all those years ago when she’d worked at Rodeo Austin, hoping for a glimpse of the Big G. The Great Grayson.
“You know,” she said, as she dumped the last shovelful and grabbed the pitchfork, “I still have a calendar that you signed for me when I was sixteen. I remember everything about that day as clearly as if it were yesterday.”
“I’m glad I don’t remember.”
She winced. “Well. Thanks for that.”
“It would just remind me how young you are.”
She propped her arm on top of the pitchfork handle and eyed him. “I’m no younger now than I was a month ago when you were trying seduction by shoe. Pretty effectively, too, except that I didn’t want to get my butt fired from my new job. The job I’ve now basically put on hold for you, anyway. Do you want me here or don’t you, Grayson? Because I honestly don’t know!”
He grabbed the pitchfork, looking impatient. “If I hadn’t wanted you here, I would’ve said so.”
“But I have no purpose here!” She waved her hand at him. “You’re clearly not in need of a nursemaid. Even if you were, you’d blow it off because you’re The Grayson. Gotta prove you’re all manly-man, even when you’ve still got bruises from being trampled by two horses and a steer. And you’re clearly not in need of a bedmate, or you wouldn’t have put me in a separate bedroom!”
“For Christ’s sake, Billie. My mother lives in this house, too. What do you want us to do? Get down and dirty right on the kitchen table? I’ve never let another woman come here with me. Not like this.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “You know I want you. But I also don’t want to make a mistake that’ll end up hurting you!”
She stared at him. “You think I’m not afraid of making a mistake?”
“You’ve got a normal family, Billie. You don’t have to worry that you’ll turn out like your bastard of a father!”
“Grayson!”
&nb
sp; At the sound of a new voice, they both whirled, to find Deborah standing in the doorway of the barn. She looked pale. But no more so than the tall, commanding-looking man with a head of thick gray hair and Grayson’s brown eyes standing there with her.
Billie’s stomach fell to her toes as she looked from Gerald Robinson’s face to Grayson’s.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded.
Gerald looked at Deborah.
She lifted her chin slightly. “I invited him,” she said clearly.
Grayson’s knuckles were white where he was clenching the pitchfork. So white that Billie took a concerned step toward him. Whether because she was afraid he’d pitch the thing across the barn at his father, or because he was still recovering from surgery he’d had less than a month ago, she didn’t know.
But it didn’t matter.
Because the second she took that step, his head swiveled toward her. “Don’t,” he gritted.
She froze. “Don’t what? Don’t touch you? Don’t worry for you? Don’t love you?” Her eyes flooded with tears and she spread her hands. “Too late for that mistake. Too bad that you asked for me in the hospital. All of this could have been avoided.” She’d still be wishing for things that would never be, but at least she’d have never fallen in love with Paseo and the rest of his family, too.
“You’re the one who came to the hospital,” he said through his teeth. “I woke up and there you were. Strange, but I thought that meant something.”
She heard a rushing sound in her head. The only other time she’d experienced it was when she’d been watching the replay of his rodeo accident on television. “You didn’t ask for me...” A part of her was aware of Deborah walking toward them.
“Grayson, honey, you had a concussion. They said you might not remember everything that happened that day. But you most certainly did ask for Billie.”
He glared at Robinson, who’d followed Deborah. “I remember he was in the grandstands. Just like you were in Reno,” he said to the man. “Weren’t you?”
Gerald inclined his head slightly. “I was there.”
Fortune's Homecoming Page 17