by Lucy Gilmore
This time, it was Zeke who kicked his chair, and he was much more violent about it. The chair tipped sideways on two legs. Charlie had to catch himself by gripping the table with both hands. There was no way Adam didn’t feel it—either the table shaking or the reverberations of Charlie’s chair—but he gave no sign of noticing.
Charlie did, though. As soon as his chair was righted again, he leapt up from the table and turned to face Zeke. They were of a level height and build, but Zeke bore the same look of determination that had been on his face the entire time he’d been competing in the triathlon.
“Sorry,” Zeke said as he crossed his arms. “I tripped too. There must be a loose board right here.”
“There is something seriously wrong with your family, you know that?” Charlie replied. He looked around at the three Dearborns—Adam coloring up with anger, Phoebe smiling sweetly, Zeke scowling at him—and threw up his hands. “I don’t know why I came over here today. I should have known this was a trap. You guys can’t do anything honorably.”
“It’s no trap,” Dawn replied. She cast a pointed look down at the chair until he took the hint and lowered himself into it. “In fact, I’m doing you a favor. You and I can either sit here for a few more hours while Adam eventually demolishes you, or we can end things right here and now. What do you say? You have anything in that hand that’s better than my straight flush?”
“She doesn’t have a straight flush,” Adam said with a stubborn jut of his chin. “She’s only saying that to get to me.”
Dawn ignored him. “If you win this hand, you get bragging rights, the opportunity to buy Bea’s property, and a beautiful golden retriever puppy,” she said to Charlie. “What’s there to lose?”
“You are not staking my dog,” Adam said.
“She’s my dog, and I can stake whatever I want.” Dawn turned to Charlie with a smile. “Well? What do you say? Just think how much fun you can have if you win. You can take Gigi for long walks along the edge of your new property every day.”
The underhanded side of this plan must have made its way through to Charlie, because he stopped long enough to consider what Dawn was offering him—not a plot of land, and not a puppy, but a chance to annoy Adam in ways that would rankle him for the rest of his life.
“What the hell,” he said and picked up his cards again. “I’m in. But you’d better not actually have a straight flush, because what I’m holding doesn’t even come close.”
Dawn turned to Adam. Her smile was still fixed in place, so she allowed it to drip into her voice. “That just leaves you, Adam. What do you say? How sure are you that I’m bluffing? How much do you really know about me?”
There were two people—maybe three, if you counted Zeke—in that room who could tell Adam exactly what to do. Her sisters knew her well enough to realize that Dawn would never stake something or someone she cared about unless she was absolutely sure of her win. No matter how much she wanted to shake Adam out of his apathy and his obstinacy, she loved that little puppy far too much to let her go without a fight.
She loved Adam far too much to let him go without a fight, too. She wouldn’t be here—pushing him, poking him, prodding him—otherwise.
“How much do I know about you?” Adam echoed. He tilted his head her direction. “Are you sure you want to ask me that? Right now? In front of all these people?”
She nodded. It was a silly thing to do, but it was all she could manage. Her throat had suddenly gone thick and dry, blocking off everything except the rush of blood through her veins. Since she had to say something, she fortified herself with a sip of his disgusting liquor. It was far too sweet and much too cloying, but it had the effect of loosening her tongue enough to say, “Go ahead, Adam. Do your worst.”
Dawn had no way of knowing when everyone else in the room disappeared, but she suspected it was only a few seconds after Adam opened his mouth to speak. After months of hiding their relationship, of pretending that their feelings didn’t factor into things as long as they maintained a cloak of invisibility, it was the height of irony that they’d do this in front of an audience.
And that the audience didn’t matter to them one tiny bit.
“You are, without a doubt, the most difficult woman I’ve ever had the misfortune to know,” Adam said. He spoke without anger but with plenty of heat, as though the words burned on his tongue but he’d say them even if it pained him. “Which is funny, because when I first met you, you made it seem like everything was going to be easy. You laugh easily. You live easily. You love easily.”
She wanted to point out that there was nothing easy about loving Adam Dearborn, but he wasn’t done speaking. In fact, from the way his voice had taken on a rhythmic quality, it seemed as though he planned to keep going for hours.
“You sweep into people’s lives and take over without being aware of how much havoc you wreak,” he said, still with his head tilted toward her. “And why would you? No one ever stops you. They’re either too hesitant to step up or, as is more often the case, have no idea how to do it. They just let you in to do your worst, and you do it every time. To Zeke. To Bea. To poor Charlie here. And Lord knows Murphy Jones would have something to say about all the pain you’ve caused him.”
She held herself stiff, waiting for him to add himself to the list of her victims, but he didn’t.
“You think nothing of facing down half-ton cows. You think even less of facing down the men who wrangle them. In fact, I can’t think of a single thing that scares you. People chasing you with guns mean as little to you as the laws governing human society. In your twenty-nine years on this planet, you’ve managed to live the kind of life most people only dream of, and you have decades more of it to look forward to.”
At this, his jaw tightened and he paused, almost as though he was wrestling with some unseen ghost. “You will have decades more of it to look forward to,” he repeated, more forcefully this time. “And you’ll have hundreds more lives to change. That’s the one thing—the only thing—I can promise.”
Even though Dawn knew that Adam couldn’t see her—not literally, anyway—she’d never felt more exposed. He had to know about the hot tears building up in her eyes, how fierce her grip on the poker table had become. The things he was saying about her were hard and stark and one hundred percent honest. They were also deeply, painfully kind.
“You turn every room you walk into upside down,” he said, his voice as raw as her emotions. “But you also turn them into somewhere everyone wants to be. You make the entire fucking world a better place just by being in it. You’ve made my world something I never thought it could be.”
Dawn’s breath caught and her heart took flight. I knew it. There was no way Adam would let her walk out of his life without a word, no way he’d reduce their time together to a meaningless fling. This thing of theirs meant something, even if he wanted to fight it with every ounce of strength he had.
“Adam—” she began.
He flung his hand up to stop her, that firm set of his jaw even more apparent this time. “Which is why I’m calling your bluff. You and I both know that you don’t really want Bea’s house. You don’t really want to live out here in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by nothing but cattle and hard work.” His voice dropped so much that Dawn could practically feel the entire room leaning close to hear the rest. “You don’t really want to live out here with me. And even if I’m wrong, even if it costs me everything—Gigi, the extra acreage, you—I won’t ask you to do it.”
Dawn reared back, her entire body suddenly grown cold. Even with all the windows in Bea’s house open and a few fans blowing in the background, it was well over eighty degrees in here, the summer night refusing to cool. It could have been over a hundred degrees, and Dawn would still have broken out in goose bumps.
He’s calling my real bluff. He’s saying no.
She had no idea where she found the str
ength to keep standing, let alone reach out and flip her cards. This wasn’t even close to how poker games were supposed to go, and a stickler for the rules would point out that there was still a round of cards to pass out before the game was over, but she didn’t care. Like Adam had pointed out, she never had much use for the rules.
“Well, you’re wrong,” she said. “It’s a straight flush, sparkling diamonds and all. Sorry, Adam. Sorry, Charlie. It looks like you’re both out a prime piece of real estate. Bea’s property is mine.”
Adam grew as white as she felt. “No.”
Even though it was the last thing Dawn felt like doing, she smiled. “I guess you don’t know me nearly as well as you think,” she said and snapped her fingers to bring Gigi to attention. It didn’t work, of course. The puppy lifted one lazy ear and decided to pretend she hadn’t heard. “Come on, Gigi,” she said anyway. “Our work here is done. The winner is taking all.”
Chapter 18
“Goddammit, not again!” Adam heard the jangle of dog tags in time to stop his ax midswing. He lifted the blade well out of puppy range and wiped the sweat dripping down his brow. “Would it kill that woman to invest in a decent fence?”
His answer came as a twenty-pound puppy running into his legs with full force. It was a good thing he’d anticipated Gigi’s exuberance ahead of time, because she knocked him to the ground. Only by turning the ax head down was he able to save them both from a Lizzie Borden incident.
Sensing a reunion, Uncle bounded over to join the fun. He’d have happily and obediently sat there in shade for hours while Adam made dents in the woodpile, but the presence of Gigi was a cause for celebration.
Considering she’d managed to find her way over to this house every day for the past month, Adam felt Uncle’s excitement was a little misplaced, but what he could he do? He was covered in dogs.
“I’m not the one who needs a better fence” came a cool, detached voice from somewhere above his head. Dawn gave a low whistle, but Gigi failed to heel or come or do any of those things a puppy was supposed to do when called. “I come bearing gifts. Or gift, rather.”
Adam released a soft curse. “Don’t tell me.”
“I managed to round her up before she ate all the flowers I just planted, but you owe me fifty bucks for the rosebushes. I was going to use them to start my essential-oil scented-candle business.”
He ignored the first half of this remark, since there was no need for elaboration. Just as Gigi managed to find her way over to his house every day, so too did Dawn the cow visit Dawn the human with regularity.
“You’re starting an essential-oil scented-candle business now?” he asked instead.
“I make very nice scented candles, thank you. It’s something of a hobby of mine. The only problem is that they have a tendency to rub off on my hands, which means I no longer walk around with a nonsmell.” She paused. “That must be why you didn’t know I was coming.”
Oh, he knew she was coming. She was always coming. Bea Benson had lived alone in that house for all thirty-three years of his life, and he’d seen her maybe once a month. Dawn had moved in four weeks ago, and he’d already lost track of how many times they’d run into each other. She’d even volunteered to help organize the annual town-hall fund-raiser this year—a thing he always took part in and now had to pretend he was too busy for.
“It must be tough, finding things to fill your time out here,” he said, aiming for the right balance of sympathy and bland disinterest. From the way Gigi licked mournfully at his hand, he must have sounded a lot closer to pathetic. “I guess roses are one way to do it.”
“Oh, I’m finding plenty to do. Don’t you worry about me. I could find ways to—how did you put it?—wreak havoc even if I lived all by myself on the moon. It’s a gift, really.”
Adam bit back a short laugh. He wouldn’t call that particular talent a gift. It was his curse, plain and simple.
Her first week out here had been a given, since Dawn had been busy with moving trucks and trying to get Bea to throw out enough stuff to carve out her own space in the house they now shared. The second week hadn’t been too hard to swallow, either, since she’d been fueled by her perverse determination to prove to Adam wrong.
Then week three had come and gone.
And now there was this. Neighborly greetings and friendly chats in the fields. Chance run-ins at the store and community events into which Dawn gave herself heart and soul. She’d even thrown a barbecue a few days ago for her friends and family. The sounds of loud music and laughter had carried over the fields so well that Adam halfway suspected her of faking the whole thing just to get to him.
But of course that was preposterous. He’d been invited to the damn thing. Zeke and Phoebe had done their best to lure him out, but he’d refused to cross the threshold. A man had his limits. Attending a carefree, see-I-don’t-need-you party thrown by the love of his life was that limit.
“Look, Dawn,” he said and ran a hand through his hair. He was sweaty and dirty, and he left a trail of wood chips behind, but he couldn’t find it in him to care. There had to be an end to this torture, to this plan she had of punishing him for loving her too much to tie her down. He couldn’t live the rest of his life knowing she was only a short walk away, aware that she might be curled up in bed and dreaming of a world where the two of them made sense. “We really need to sit down and discuss—”
“I thought I heard barking out here!” The sound of Zeke’s voice came as an unwelcome interruption. “And talking, but that’s not as uncommon as you might think these days. Adam has taken to having long, rambling conversations with Uncle at all hours of the day. Poor Uncle always casts me the most pleading glances, but what can I do? He’s stuck in this life of servitude now.”
Dawn laughed and smacked a pair of loud kisses that Adam assumed landed on both of Zeke’s cheeks. “I can’t judge. You should hear some of the conversations I have with Gigi. She’s rapidly becoming the best friend I ever had. She even helped me pick out my outfit this morning. You like?”
“No,” Zeke said baldly. “I’ve told you a hundred times that you need to start wearing jeans and boots out here. A dress that short and flimsy is only going to cause trouble. As soon as you come across your first patch of poison oak, you’ll see what I mean.”
Adam could easily imagine the sensation of her dress under his fingertips. There were any number of short and flimsy dresses Dawn might wear, but all the ones he’d encountered had been very similar in makeup. They slid over her skin and bunched under his fingertips, rustled like silk and fell to the ground in slinky heaps. He’d risked asking Zeke once, back when he and Dawn had first started sleeping together, to describe how she looked. Zeke’s answer had been short and far more descriptive than Adam could have asked for.
“I don’t know how it is, but some women wear clothes in a way that makes you aware, from every angle, that they’re naked underneath.”
Phoebe had been in the room at the time and snorted, saying, “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. All women are naked underneath their clothes.”
“Yes,” Zeke admitted. “But when Dawn walks into a room, you know it.”
Adam did know it. He’d never have the privilege—or the pain—of seeing Dawn the way other people did, but when she walked into a room, he was always aware of how naked she was underneath her clothes.
“I’ll take my chances on a rash, thanks,” she said now. “A lady likes to look her best, even when she’s relocated out to the boonies. Speaking of, I put Dawn in the cow barn for you, but you might want to go nail boards across the windows or put an arc of salt around the baseboards. Burning some sage might help, too.”
“We tried that,” Zeke admitted with a laugh. “Not even a hex will keep that animal where she’s supposed to be.”
Adam didn’t contribute anything to the conversation. There was nothing he could say, so
why bother? He didn’t know how to make cows do what he wanted them to, he didn’t know how to make women do what he wanted them to, and he definitely didn’t know how to make his heart do what he wanted it to.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” Dawn agreed. “It’s almost like you can’t control either animals or people. Like they have wills and agendas of their own, and nothing you do can change that.”
Even though Dawn had basically just said the exact same thing he was thinking, Adam pressed his lips in a flat line and scooped Gigi up. Wordlessly, he held the puppy out. “Sorry about your rosebushes,” he said. “I’ll send a check.”
She didn’t respond for a painfully long time, forcing him to stand there holding out a wriggling animal like an idiot. When she did eventually come forward to take Gigi, she acted as though nothing had ever been amiss between them. “Thanks. Although it might be better if we just wait until the end of the month and make a full tally then. I’d hate for you to waste all those stamps.”
Adam continued to feel like an idiot as Dawn’s footsteps crunched in the distance, accompanied by Gigi’s happy barking. He knew Zeke was still there, waiting until she was far enough away before saying what was on his mind.
“Don’t worry,” Adam said in an attempt to preclude him. “I give it two more weeks, tops. Either she’ll get tired of playing Farmer John by then, or Bea will get tired of having a roommate and kick her out. It’s only a matter of time before we’re back to negotiations for the land.”
“Adam, you are one hell of an expert on cows, but you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to women.”
Adam halted, taken aback by the forcefulness of Zeke’s outburst. His brother was the most easygoing person he knew. Nothing ruffled him—not Dawn asking him to steal puppies, not the idea of running twenty miles at a time, and not even the poker game that had led to this disaster in the first place.