“That was sweet,” Nora agreed. Easton had always been thoughtful that way, and she’d often thought that whatever girl he settled down with would be lucky to have him. He’d be a good boyfriend—to someone else. She just hadn’t been attracted to him. And it wasn’t because of his acne—that wasn’t his fault, and she wasn’t that shallow. He was a good friend, but she couldn’t make the leap to something more.
“And when you broke up with whatever guy you were dating, who was there to talk you through it?”
“I get it, I get it.” Nora shrugged weakly. “He was a decent guy—more than decent. I just wasn’t interested back then.”
“And now?” Kaitlyn asked.
“Now?” Nora shook head. “He isn’t interested anymore, either. That’s all in the past.”
“Oh. That’s too bad, because he most certainly grew up.” She shot Nora a meaningful look.
Nora wasn’t oblivious to how ruggedly good-looking Easton had turned out to be, but she chuckled. “He’s not the same guy willing to do anything to make me happy anymore. So you can rest easy on that. He’s willing to tell me what he really thinks of me now, and frankly...it’s better this way.”
Spoiled. That had been his descriptor. She’d been rather shocked to have Easton talk to her like that, but it was better than leading him on. The last thing she needed was to be pussyfooting around Easton’s feelings. She had enough to worry about with the babies, with her mom...
“That would be better,” Kaitlyn agreed. “For him, at least.”
“Besides,” Nora said. “He came out on top. He’s walked away with three acres and my family’s history.”
“Did he know your father was changing his will?” Kaitlyn took a sip of her latte. “He was getting a lot of job offers at bigger ranches. He’s good, you know. Your dad must have kept him around by putting him into the will.”
That would actually make sense. Maybe her father hadn’t signed it over because of tender feelings—it was possible he’d been negotiating with his ranch manager. That would make everything different...including her view of Easton. Her father had kept secrets—why not one more? Could it really come down to something as common as holding on to a skilled employee?
If that were the case, then Easton would be a whole lot less innocent than he appeared. Could he have actually been angling for that land? He’d said he wasn’t, but he wouldn’t be the first man to lie to her, either.
“You might be onto something,” Nora said. “I’ve been going over this in my head repeatedly, trying to figure out why my dad would do that... It’s like I never knew him.”
“You know as well as I do that a good ranch manager is worth his weight in gold,” Kaitlyn replied. “Easton is honest. He works like a horse. He’s smart, too. My dad has said more than once that if he could afford Easton, he’d try to lure him over to our ranch.”
“He wouldn’t.” Nora frowned.
“My dad?” Kaitlyn shrugged. “Maybe.”
Mr. Harp was a jovial guy—but he was also a shrewd rancher. There was a strange balance with the Hope ranches—they were neighbors who supported each other and helped each other out, but they were also in competition for the best employees. The ranch would one day be hers, and it affected the way she’d looked at their land—including the three acres her father had left to Easton.
Easton could take another job if he wanted to. But another possibility made her stomach sink: maybe Easton was less of a nice guy than she’d always assumed. Just because he’d had a rough childhood didn’t make him some kind of saint. Easton had some negotiation room, and he may have taken advantage of that.
“Who was trying to get Easton?” she asked.
“Not us,” Kaitlyn said with a shake of her head. “But rumor around town was that some larger ranches out of state were putting their feelers out for experienced managers. A lot of people were mad. It’s not nice to poach someone’s manager after they’ve spent years grooming him.”
Nora had no idea. Was it possible that she’d been duped by more than just her father?
* * *
EASTON SAT IN the easy chair in the living room, listening to the sounds of Nora putting the babies to bed. Her voice was soft, the gentle tones carrying through the floorboards, but the words were muffled. It didn’t matter what she was saying, of course. It was the comforting lilt that the babies would respond to.
His mom had never been that way—not that he could remember, and certainly not according to the stories his father had told him.
The stairs creaked as Nora made her way down and Easton looked away. He liked having her here, but he was getting increasingly aware of her presence. She was his guest and in his home, yet he still felt like he shouldn’t be listening to the soft rustle of her moving around his home—like that was overstepping somehow. He certainly shouldn’t be enjoying it.
“They’re almost asleep,” Nora said, emerging into the living room. She tapped her watch. “Three hours and counting.”
She’d been distant all evening—polite, but closed off.
“You tired?” he asked.
“Always.” She smiled wryly.
He’d been debating how much he should tell Nora, if anything, all afternoon. Was it his place? What would Cliff have wanted? And how could he possibly know? He shouldn’t be in the middle of all this family drama—but maybe he should have seen complications coming.
“I went through the attic today,” he said.
Nora sank into the recliner kitty corner to the couch and stifled a yawn. “Was there anything up there?”
He couldn’t shoulder Cliff’s secrets alone. He wasn’t even sure it was fair of him to keep the letters to himself. Cliff wasn’t his father, and Nora was the one who would live with a lifetime of questions.
“Your dad had put a box of personal effects up there,” Easton said. “I saw it when I moved in but then forgot about it. I remembered it today, and I thought I’d take a look through it.”
“My dad did?” She shot him a sharp look. “Why would he do that?”
Easton pushed himself to his feet and retrieved the box from the other side of the sofa. The contents would answer her questions better than he could.
“I don’t know, exactly,” he said. “But he did.”
“That isn’t true, though, is it?” She put a hand on top of the box but didn’t look at it. Her gaze was fixed icily on him.
“What do you want from me?” he demanded. “Nora, this is awkward. I’m not supposed to be in the middle of your family issues. I found a box with your dad’s things in it, and I’m handing it over.”
“I had coffee with Kaitlyn Mason today.”
That was supposed to mean something to him? Kaitlyn and Nora had been friends since school days. “Great. Glad you got out.”
He was frustrated. He was a private man who had been sharing his personal space for a week now with a woman he used to love, and having her here with him, sleeping in the next room and sharing his living space... He was liable to start feeling things he shouldn’t all over again if he let down his guard.
“She told me that you had job offers from bigger ranches,” Nora went on. “And she suspected that you negotiated for this land in exchange for staying.”
Easton blinked. She made it sound sordid, somehow, but it wasn’t. “Why is it so surprising that I’d be in demand?” he asked. “I run a tight ship. I had offers, that’s true. But I didn’t strong-arm your dad into changing his will in exchange for sticking around.”
“It didn’t factor in at all?” Her tone made it clear she wasn’t buying that.
“I was offered a position in Idaho for almost twice what I was making here,” he said. “I mentioned it to your dad, but I hadn’t even decided if the extra money would be worth it. But that had nothing to do with this house. He said t
hat the house should be lived in, not just sitting there like a relic to days gone by.”
“A relic. This is my great-grandparents’ house!”
“I wasn’t supposed to own it,” he retorted. “He wanted me to live in it. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.”
“And he decided to just leave it to you in the will?” She shook her head. “These three acres are more precious than the other five hundred ninety-seven. This is where it all started.”
And this was the problem—family versus staff. She felt a connection to this land through blood, but for some reason that didn’t evolve into actually doing anything. He was an employee here, and he could stay as long as he did his job. Family belonged in a whole different way, but ranches didn’t run on sentimental feelings or rightful inheritances—they ran on hard work.
“If you cared about it so much, why didn’t you tell him?” Easton retorted. “It isn’t my fault you weren’t helping out around here. If you showed the least bit of interest in your family’s land—and this house—your dad might have done something differently.”
“And you’re just some innocent bystander who accidentally got some land.” Her sarcasm was thick, and his patience was spent.
“All of a sudden I’m some thug, waiting to rob your family of three acres?” he demanded. “I’m the same guy I always was, Nora! You knew me! Have I ever been the kind of guy who would manipulate and lie? Cut me some slack!”
“I thought I knew my dad, too!” Her voice quivered and she shook her head, looking away. So that was it—she didn’t know what to trust anymore, who was telling her truth. And he couldn’t help her. Those were personal issues she’d have to sort out on her own.
“That’s the box,” he said instead. “I’m not hiding things from you, Nora.”
A kind gesture from his boss had turned ugly fast. Her guess was as good as his when it came to why Cliff had done what he did, but he wasn’t accepting the blame.
Nora sighed and pulled at the flaps. The boots were on top, and she put them on the floor.
“My mom kept trying to throw these out. They were worn through, and they had no more ankle support...”
She looked at the jacket and put it aside then pulled out the envelope. He knew this was the difficult part. She removed the letters one by one, fanned out the pictures on the floor in front of her. She opened the first letter, read it through, then the second. Easton just watched her.
“He knew about Mia,” she said, looking up at Easton.
“Yeah.” He wasn’t sure what to say to that. This version of his boss—the secretive cheater—didn’t sit right with him.
“It doesn’t look like Dad and Angela were involved for long.”
“That’s good news, isn’t it?”
“I think so.” She pulled a hand through her hair. “I’m taking what I can get at this point. This is not the dad I remember.”
“You’d know better than I would,” he replied. He might have worked with Cliff, but the man had doted on his daughter. If anyone would have known that softer side of him, it would be Nora.
“He lied to me, too,” she said woodenly.
He understood her anger at being lied to, but she didn’t understand what utter honesty could get you. His mother had walked out and never once tried to contact him again—that had been honest. His dad had drunk himself into a stupor—that had been a pretty honest reaction, too. He’d have settled for some insincere security from his own parents any day, if it had meant that they’d actually stuck around and been there for him.
“Whatever the fallout,” Easton said, “he made his choice—and you won.”
Nora was silent for a couple of beats, then she sighed and began to gather the letters and photos back together into one stack.
“You’re going to be okay,” he said after a moment.
“Do you know that you’re the first person to tell me that?” Her expression didn’t look convinced. How could anyone comfort Nora in this? She’d lost her dad twice over, and nothing anyone said could make it better.
“And you can’t forgive him?” Easton asked.
“I believed in him, Easton.”
That seemed to be the part that cut her the deepest—she’d been fooled. And now she thought Easton had fooled her, too. But Easton knew he was the one man who hadn’t been lying to her. He never had.
Nora pushed herself to her feet and stood there in the lamplight, her eyes clouded with sadness. He wished he could do something, say something, hold her, even, and make this hurt less. He could have been the teenage Easton again, looking at the girl he longed to comfort, knowing that she didn’t really want what he had to offer. She wouldn’t accept platitudes: You deserve better.
And she did deserve better—she always had. She deserved more than a sullied memory of the father she’d adored. She deserved more than the broken, scarred, albeit loyal heart of a man whose own mother hadn’t wanted him.
“I’m going to go up to bed,” she said after a moment of silence. “I have a doctor’s appointment for the babies in the morning, so I’d better get some rest.”
“Okay, sure.”
She turned and left the room, and he watched her go. The scent of her perfume still hung in the air, as subtle as a memory. The creak of the stairs dissipated overhead. He had some evening chores to check up on, and he was grateful for the excuse to get out, plunge into the fresh air and get away from all of this for a little while. Work—it was cheaper than therapy.
Chapter Seven
The next morning Nora sat in the driver’s seat of her truck. The babies were all in their car seats behind her, diapers changed, tummies full. She felt like she’d achieved something, just getting this far. There had been two spit-ups just before leaving, one leaked diaper, Rosie had wanted nothing more than to be cuddled and Bobbie decided that she hated her car seat and didn’t want to be strapped in. By the time Nora got them all into the truck, her nerves were frazzled. Now it felt good to just sit in relative silence—the soft sucking of pacifiers soothing her.
Nora had been angry the night before, and that hadn’t exactly changed. He said he hadn’t used his job offers as any kind of leverage with her dad...was she stupid to believe that? Apparently, she’d lived a lifetime of being altogether too trusting. And when she returned to Hope she’d trusted that Easton would be the same...to never be someone who would hurt her. Someone harmless.
He’d always been quiet, eager to please, willing to step aside for her. Now that she was an adult, she knew she didn’t want him constantly giving in to her, but it was possible that she’d still expected it of him. But Easton had grown into a man—strong, resilient, with his own goals and objectives, and he was certainly not harmless anymore. She’d been comfortable feeling a little sorry for him, but she didn’t like this new power he seemed to wield around here. And yet, mixed in with all that resentment, she missed him...or what they used to have...the guy who used to sit with her in haylofts and lean against fences as they talked.
Nora turned the key, and the engine moaned and coughed, but didn’t turn over. She stopped, frowned then tried again. Nothing.
“Great!” she muttered. This was exactly what she needed. This doctor’s appointment was important, and if she couldn’t even manage this... She leaned her head against the headrest then heaved a sigh and tried to start the truck again. It ground for a few seconds but didn’t start.
The rumble of an engine pulled up behind her, and she looked in the rearview mirror to see Easton. He must be done with his morning work and was back for some coffee. She’d been hoping to be gone by the time he returned. She unrolled her window as he hopped out of his truck and came up beside her.
“Morning,” he said. “Everything all right?”
“Not really,” she admitted. “I can’t start the truck.”
&nb
sp; “Want me to take a look?”
Even if he got the truck to start, would she make the appointment? She glanced at her watch. “I guess I’ll call the doctor’s office and say we can’t make it.”
It was like everything was against her succeeding in one small parenting task this morning. This was the goal for the entire day—go to an appointment. There was nothing else scheduled. Why did it have to be so hard? Was it like this for every mom, or just the wildly inexperienced ones?
Easton crossed his arms and looked away for a moment then nodded toward his vehicle. “Would you rather have a ride into town?”
Right now she didn’t really feel like spending any extra time with Easton, but his offer would solve her problem.
“You probably need to eat, and I don’t really have time, and if I’m not going to be late, we’d have to leave now,” she rambled.
“Let me just clear out the backseat of my cab, and then we can get the car seats moved over,” he said.
A kind offer wasn’t going to make her trust him again. Regardless, she needed this favor, and she wasn’t about to turn it down. Not this morning. If anything, he owed her after whatever he’d done to secure that land—this and so much more.
Ten minutes later they were bumping down the gravel road, past the barn and toward the main drive.
“Thank you,” she said as they turned onto the highway. “I appreciate this.”
“Sure,” he said.
They fell into silence, the only sound the soft sucking of pacifiers from the backseat. It was a forty-minute drive into town, and Nora leaned her head back, watching the looping telephone wires zipping past outside the window.
“Remember that time we rode out past the fields and along the edge of the forest?” Easton asked.
Nora glanced at him. She did. It had been early spring, and she’d asked Easton to go with her. He hadn’t wanted to at first because he still had work to do, but then she’d threatened to go alone, and he’d caved in.
“It was fun,” she said. “Dad was furious when we got back.”
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