“What? Why in the world would we drink to him?”
“Well, if I’m not mistaken, if he hadn’t been such an idiot, you wouldn’t be here now.” He shrugged. “So I have to admit I’m kind of grateful he was such—you know—an idiot. Gave me the chance to meet you.”
“Oh.” She smiled. “That’s actually kind of…nice, though admittedly the strangest toast I might ever do.”
Gunnar lifted his glass. “To The Idiot.”
“To The Idiot.” Lexi laughed and clinked her glass on his, then took a long sip of—wow—really great beer. “Yum. This is good.”
“We do have craft brewers out here, too.” He winked. “Maybe not as many as back East, but good beer does exist west of the Mississippi.”
“Who knew?” She took another sip, her stomach already warming. “Can I help with dinner?”
“Actually, yes.” He looked a little timid as he pointed to a bag on the counter. “I think the water’s almost ready, and I’m pretty sure I might not be able to do the next part.”
Lexi felt her eyebrows furrow. “The next part?”
“Yeah.” He set his mug down and started to open the bag. “I handled the part about getting these here, straight from Maine, but I’m afraid I’m not quite man enough to put them into that pot.”
Lexi peeked into the bag, then felt her eyes widen as she saw what it contained. She stepped back, her mouth dropping open.
“Lobster? You got lobster?”
“Yes.” He looked a little sheepish. “Jasper found me a guy who promised these came out of the Atlantic this morning. I thought maybe you could use a little taste of home.”
Lexi looked away, feeling her eyes tear up. “Aw, dammit, Gunnar.”
“What? Please tell me you actually like lobster, because if you don’t, we are sorely lacking in salt water out here to release them back into.”
“I love lobster.”
“Then why the dammit?”
“Because you’re so—ugh—nice! Why do you have to be so nice?”
He looked taken aback. “I’m…sorry? Wait. No, I’m not. Why am I apologizing for that?”
She sat down at the counter, sighing in frustration. “I’m trying really hard not to fall for you, because the reality is that I’m headed home in three weeks, and you’re obviously staying right here. But then you fly in lobster from Maine? Because you think I might like a little taste of home? What am I supposed to do with that?”
“Um, eat them? After you put them in the pot? Because apparently I can’t?” He grinned, knowing he wasn’t answering the real question, and it just made her like him more.
Dammit.
She looked at the lobsters—at their beady little eyes and their creepy tentacles—and backed up again.
“I—I can’t cook them, Gunnar.”
“What do you mean, you can’t cook them?”
“I can’t! I can eat them, but I can’t, like, kill them. It’s horrible!”
Gunnar stood there with his mouth open for so long he could have caught a mosquito, had one been buzzing around. And then he laughed. Really laughed, like he thought Lexi was the funniest person on Earth at that moment—but in a good way.
He pulled her into his arms, hugging her tight, then kissing her on the top of the head, and again, she felt like her legs might give way. Because a kiss was a kiss, romantic and sexy and all of that…but a kiss on the head? That was affection. That was a man who was amused and intrigued—a man who cared enough to fly lobster from Maine to Montana, even though he was too chicken to cook it.
Gunnar looked at the bag. “What are we going to do?”
“Think Ma might be willing to dump them in for us?”
He shook his head. “God, no. We’d never hear the end of it.”
“How about Jess? Kyla, maybe? Are any of the guys around?”
“I don’t know.” He leaned to peer into the bag. “What if we—I don’t know—do it together?”
Lexi backed up. “I really, really can’t dump a living creature into boiling water. I’d have nightmares for weeks.”
“Well, shit. Neither can I.” He ran a hand through his hair, laughing. “Clearly, I didn’t quite think this through. Aren’t you the one who was waxing all poetic about pulling these things out of the ocean and putting them straight into the pot? On the pier?”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t the one doing the pulling or dumping. Just—you know—the eating.”
Gunnar picked up his phone from the counter and pressed a couple of buttons, then rolled his eyes at her as he lifted it to his ear.
“Hey. It’s Gunnar. Any chance you have a minute?” He paused. “Yeah. My cabin. Don’t even ask, all right?”
He put down the phone. “Cole will be right down. And, in case it isn’t already obvious, we are never going to live this down.”
“Noted.” Lexi smiled. “So before he gets here and harasses us both to death, can I just say that this might be the most thoughtful thing anyone’s ever done for me?”
Gunnar looked at her for a long moment, and she wasn’t sure whether she read compassion or pity in his eyes. Then he lifted his beer and clinked it against hers.
“Well, then this’d better be damned good lobster.”
Five minutes later, Cole knocked on the screen, smiling like the flipping Cheshire cat. “I’m here. What’s the emergency?”
Gunnar opened the door for him, pointing toward the kitchen. “The stuff in that bag needs to go in that pot.”
Cole stopped midway through the door, eyebrows pulled together. “You called me down here for—that?”
“Yep. Don’t ask, I said.”
Cole stepped into the kitchen area and opened the bag, then jumped backward. “What the hell is in there?”
“They’re lobsters,” Gunnar said.
“They’re moving.”
“We know.”
Cole looked at the two of them. “They’re alive.”
“We know that, too.” Gunnar laughed. “But they need to get dead so we can eat them.”
“And that means—this pot?” Cole’s eyebrows went upward.
“Exactly.”
“Oh, hell, no.” Cole backed up further. “Did you see those beady little eyes? They saw me. They’ll damn me to hell if I put them in there.”
Gunnar held up a finger toward Lexi, like he was putting her on pause, though she wasn’t actually speaking. Then he leaned closer to Cole.
“Have you ever heard of a romantic gesture, Cole?”
“Yeah. And I’m not doing one for you by killing two innocent crustaceans. Love ya and all, but I have limits, buddy.”
Lexi laughed, picturing the home page of the Whisper Creek website, where Decker, Cole, and Gunnar sat astride their horses, absolutely oozing testosterone. If the thousands of women who had that site bookmarked could see these two men in this kitchen right now, they’d never believe it.
Gunnar sighed. “Is there anyone at this ranch who might have the fortitude to cook lobsters?”
“Sounds like a job for Ma.” Cole backed further toward the door, then turned around and opened it to head out. “I’ll send her down.”
Gunnar dropped his head back, a smile at the edge of his lips, even in his frustration. “Just so you know, this is not the vision I had for this evening.”
“Which honestly makes it all the more fun, I have to admit.” Lexi smiled, loving this version of Gunnar, undone by shellfish.
A few minutes later, there was another knock on the door, but it wasn’t really needed, since they’d heard Ma’s giggle from three cabins away as she’d come down the pathway.
Gunnar let her in, and she went straight to the kitchen. “Cole said you have a situation?” She tried to make her voice serious but failed miserably.
“We do.” Gunnar pointed at the bag. “It appears that cooking lobster is actually harder than it looks.”
“You mean because they’re alive?” Ma winked as she reached into the bag, coming out with a lo
bster in her hand. “You want to watch? Or do you need to leave the room?”
Gunnar paused. “I’ll be on the porch.”
Ma laughed, waiting till he was out the door before she unceremoniously dumped the first lobster into the pot, then the second. She washed her hands, then dried them on a dishtowel as she stood on tiptoes to peer under the lid.
“They don’t feel a thing. Brains are cooked before they have time to sense the pain.”
Lexi smiled. “That’s comforting. Thank you, Ma.”
“Sure.” Ma winked as Gunnar came back through the door. “Gunnar? You think you can take ’em out when they’re done? Or you need me to stick around?”
“I think we can do that part. They’re dead now. And you killed them, so it’s on your conscience instead of mine.” He gave Ma a quick hug. “Thanks for the rescue. I was about to look like a big wimp in front of Lexi.”
“Well, we can’t have that now, can we?” Ma glanced around, looking like she was seeing the candles, Lexi’s dress, Gunnar’s dress clothes for the first time. Lexi saw her try to hide a smile. “All righty, then. You two have a nice dinner. If you’ve got any rogue brownies that need taming later, just let me know.”
Twenty minutes later, they sat down at the table, lobsters and slaw and little cups of drawn butter on their plates, and Lexi sighed in pleasure.
“This. Is. Awesome.”
Gunnar smiled. “I’m glad you approve.” He looked down at his lobster. “Now, remind me—where do you start?”
Lexi laughed, pointing at the claws. “I start there. But it doesn’t matter.” She broke her shell apart, amused when he subtly mimicked her moves. Clearly, it’d been awhile since his last lobster.
After they’d each eaten a few bites, she looked up. “So did you always know you wanted to be a horse trainer?”
“Nope.” He leaned his head toward hers. “I was actually going to be an astronaut.”
She laughed. “What happened?”
“An exhibit at a space museum. Turns out I suck at the whole no-gravity thing. Then I was going to be a jockey.”
“But?”
He pointed down at his body. “I grew.”
“Definite problem.” She laughed. “So then you went the trainer route?”
“No.” He shook his head. “First came the rock-god phase, then the brilliant surgeon month, and then the attorney-to-the-stars thing.”
“Ah, you were one of those grounded-in-reality teens?”
“Absolutely.” He shrugged. “But when those kind of fizzled, I went with the horse thing. They’re a hell of a lot easier than people, most days.”
“Even when they’re broken?” She asked the question quietly, but she’d been watching him with Duke for weeks now. She wanted to know.
“Especially when they’re broken.”
“Do you ever give up on one? Are they ever—you know—too broken?”
He shook his head again. “I hope I never would. And I hope someday I can have my own operation and hire my own guys. I’ll train them the way I got trained, and hopefully we can grow to a point where there won’t be any more horses lingering in stalls, growing old and bitter because nobody knows what to do with them.”
“Who trained you?”
Gunnar pulled back, and she sensed she’d inadvertently hit a sensitive spot. He was silent for a full minute, then took a breath.
“I worked at a big operation in Kentucky, after we moved there…after San Antonio. Their mainstay was their racehorses, but after shoveling shit and sawdust for a month, I was lucky enough to get hired by a guy who worked with horses nobody else could handle. He’d been at the farm forever, and the owner didn’t necessarily want those kinds of animals on his property, but he couldn’t say no to McNally. He okayed a few at a time, and I guess McNally saw me hanging over the fences enough times that he figured he might as well put me to work.”
“And you loved it.”
Gunnar paused. “Well, first it scared the shit out of me. I’d never dealt with horses like these. The usual tricks were useless. But I watched and listened, and after I got my feet stomped to smithereens enough times, I eventually learned.” He shrugged. “And the rest is history. Here I am, still training them, still getting my feet stomped—but just not as much these days.”
Lexi heard an undercurrent of tension in his glib summary, but she couldn’t put her finger on what might have caused it.
“How long did you live in Kentucky?”
He turned away, staring across the stream at the field that stretched toward the mountains. “Couple of years. A year in, McNally had just given me my first horse to handle myself when my father got new papers. Anchorage this time.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yep. I begged my mother not to follow him, but…she didn’t know any other way, really. Not by that point.”
Lexi felt her forehead crease. “Follow him? Weren’t they married?”
“No.” Gunnar let out a short, bitter laugh, then took a deep breath. “He was.”
Chapter 18
Gunnar broke off, feeling like he’d suddenly headed down a road he hadn’t meant to travel with Lexi. Christ, it wasn’t actually a road he traversed with anyone. The story of his parents’ relationship was so screwed up that even now, twelve years after he’d separated himself from both of them, it still made him itch with discomfort when he thought about them.
Yeah, he’d begged his mother, all right.
Enough, he’d said. He’s not coming back to you. He’s never coming back to you.
And then she’d slapped him.
As the sting had settled in his cheek, he’d known it wasn’t about him. He’d known she’d immediately regret lashing out at the one person who’d stood by her all those pathetic years. He’d known she’d cry and beg forgiveness and say This is it. Last move. I promise. Like she’d done so many times before.
But this time he’d finally been old enough to see the situation for what it was. His father had knocked her up, but had never once claimed responsibility for the child he’d left her with. He was a military man, but in Gunnar’s mind, he didn’t embody the least of the qualities of one.
And for sixteen years, she’d followed him to every new post, finding a crappy apartment and a crappier job just outside the base gates, living for the once-a-month visits when he’d show up with some stupid toy or game that Gunnar never wanted. He’d stay the night, and in the morning he’d be in the kitchen making pancakes and sausage, whistling like he was there every Sunday morning…like neither of them could see the mark from his wedding ring on his left hand.
Gunnar would choke down those pancakes, knowing Mom would spend the next two days in a delirious, happy fog…and then come crashing back to reality.
After his mother had lashed out that last morning, he’d gone straight to the barn, found his horse, and had him doing circles before dawn. And then McNally had arrived, looked side-eyed at the mark still on his cheek, and without much more than a couple of words, showed him a tiny little apartment in the stable. Two hundred bucks a month, payable only in training hours, he’d said, and Gunnar had shaken his hand in gratitude.
When he’d told his mother he wasn’t going with her, she’d nodded sadly, like she’d expected it. But she’d still gone, leaving her sixteen-year-old son to fend for himself while she tried yet again to mold herself into some ideal version of the perfect woman so that his father would eventually come back to her.
Gunnar shook his head, trying to knock the memories loose. “So, short answer. I stayed in Kentucky until I felt like I had enough training chops to come back out here and make a case for Ma giving me a job. I worked for her back when I was fourteen, and I always knew this is where I wanted to eventually land. I made my case, she hired me, and the rest is history. So, here I am, and I’m not leaving till I’m dead. I moved around so much as a kid that I didn’t even bother unpacking the last couple of times. And once I move out of this cabin into my own place, on my own land,
built by my own hands, I’m unpacking for the last time.”
Lexi smiled, but he saw a tightness in her face. What had he said?
“Whisper Creek must have made quite an impression on you back then.”
“It did. The place, the horses, and the people. Ma took me in like I was one of her own, even though I was a fourteen-year-old punk. She made me do my homework, help with chores, and clean up the dishes, just like Decker and Cole had to do.” He sobered. “And at night, she’d drive me back into town after Mom got off her shift at the diner, and she’d hand me a paper bag that smelled like Heaven. For lunch tomorrow, she’d say. We can’t eat all the leftovers ourselves.”
Then he took a deep breath. “But enough about me. Did you always dream of being a nurse? Or did your astronaut dreams go down in a bout of vertigo, too?”
Lexi laughed, and he loved the warm, rich sound of it—like a deep red wine over river rocks.
“No astronaut dreams, no, but I did have a couple of years where I was sure I was going to be the first female firefighter in York.”
“Big dreams, you.”
“I know!” She smiled. “I went through the typical teacher-doctor-lawyer-actress phases, but my mom isn’t…well. I think at some point I decided maybe if I went into medicine, I’d be able to make her better. Or at least have a clue what was wrong with her.”
“What is wrong with her?”
Lexi rolled her eyes. “It’s hard to know, most days. She had a cardiac incident a few years ago, and since then, she’s made sure my sister and I are brutally aware any moment could be her last. She truly believes she’s really sick.”
“Is she?”
“No. I wouldn’t be here if she were. I never would have left. Really, her biggest problem is her need to be surrounded by drama, so if there isn’t enough in her close vicinity, she creates it.”
“And you chose to spend the summer two thousand miles away from her?” He smiled. “I don’t understand.”
“I know.” Lexi laughed. “I left my poor younger sister to deal with her.”
“Is this sister still speaking to you?”
“So far, yes. But she’s gotten off easy for a long time, playing the wild, crazy, irresponsible one. Half the time, I think she does it just so Mom won’t dare to rely on her for anything.” Lexi shrugged. “Which leaves me.”
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