“I’m … I’m sorry, Eli. I’ve leased that land.”
“What?”
“I’ve rented—”
“I know what a lease is. To who?”
“The McDougals.”
He swore loudly, glanced back at the map, and took his finger away from the wall. “All of these x’s?”
“Leased.”
It was as if someone had left a door open in the room, letting in an ice-cold draft—that was the power of his anger. He turned on her, every muscle in his lean body tensed, his hands in fists at his sides.
She tried not to shake in the face of his emotion, at being the unholy focus of all that anger. But it was impossible. So that she wouldn’t look like the coward she actually was, she lifted her chin. Which for some reason seemed to make him more angry.
“Is this a joke?”
“You tied my hands, Eli. When you sold that herd you took half the value—”
“I know what I did.”
Of course he did. He’d set out to ruin her family. Ruin her. A brush fire eradicated any sympathy that might have lingered in the tiny vessels of her heart. And it definitely took care of her fear. Now she felt nothing but the strength born of righteousness.
“I have no intention of leaving this ranch.” Her anger inflated her body. She was three times her size, towering over him. “I told you that.”
“I just never thought you’d screw me like this.”
She could only gape at him. Was every man so blind, so stupid? “Likewise, Eli.”
He stared at her, right into her, and for a second she couldn’t breathe for the pain of it, the intimacy. And as much as she wanted to look away, she didn’t. She stared right back, right into him where he’d shown her his secrets. His disappointments.
Which were not so different from hers, if he could just see that. They both wanted to be useful, do the right thing. They could bury the grudges between their families right now. Right here. If he could understand that, then maybe they could move on from here. As friends. Co-workers.
And if the skin of her wrist burned for more, that was her problem.
“You don’t belong here!” he said, and she leaned back against the desk, slightly light-headed with hurt. She should stop being surprised by the malice of men. Of this man.
“And it’s not your place to decide.”
He looked back at the map, the skin of his neck red, the muscles in his jaw practically bouncing against his skin.
“We’re not done here, you know that, right?”
“Yes, we are, Eli. You just need some time to see it.”
Thunder shook the room as he walked out, his long legs in dark denim eating up the distance between her and the door. He didn’t glance back, didn’t even pause, and he threw open the door so hard it ricocheted back and closed behind him as he stepped into the shadows of the hallway.
She collapsed backwards into the chair, feeling like a popped balloon. The grilled cheese didn’t seem half so inviting and she pushed it away.
What was done was done, she thought, spinning to look up at the map. She imagined, all things considered, that her father would be proud of her in some way. She’d made a strong business decision, thwarted an enemy’s plan, and in essence had done exactly what he would have done.
Somehow, the thought didn’t make her feel any better.
chapter
5
Celeste was in crisis. Or rather, that old woman staring back at her in the mirror was in crisis. Sixty-three. Yesterday. Using her fingers she lifted her eyebrow practically up to her hairline, pulling the crepey skin of her eyelids as taut as she could.
In the mirror, they still looked crepey.
And her neck. Good Lord, don’t get a woman started on her neck.
The facials and acid peels, the Botox injections and oxygen treatments just weren’t cutting it.
She was getting old.
This week’s facials had taken care of the dry skin, the sunburn across the edge of her nose, and the giant gaping caverns of her pores. But it hadn’t, as promised, turned back time.
She would not panic. Honestly, panic was for younger women. And gerbils. But neither was she going to be resigned.
A floorboard squeaked and the dining room door thumped just as Jacob’s laughter burbled through the house. For a second she nearly closed her eyes to better hear it. Longing was a tender ache in the back of her throat.
But then the door opened with a bang and Jacob was screaming through the room, howling with laughter as he made a lap around the dining room table.
“Jacob.” She turned away from the black lacquered mirror over the sideboard. “I don’t think your mother—”
“Where’d you go, varmint?”
Victoria came in through the door, pretending to be some kind of Wild West sheriff. Celeste had been gone for only a week, seeking the fountain of youth in deluxe spas and resorts across northern Texas, but the woman in the doorway, with the messy hair and pink cheeks—that woman was a stranger.
Certainly not her husband’s daughter.
At least not a version she’d ever seen.
“Oh, hey, Celeste.” Victoria pulled herself up short and all that lovely spark in her eyes—the liveliness of her entire body—dimmed. It didn’t go out, not the way it used to. The few times she’d seen Victoria as a girl, all Celeste had to do was step into a room and the kid would shut down as if her plug had been pulled.
And it was terrible—an awful truth that sat in her stomach like a walnut shell—but for a few years there, Celeste had relished that power. She couldn’t hurt her ex-husband, who had wounded her over and over again, but she could take all of her spite out on that little girl who flinched whenever Celeste looked at her.
So much to feel guilty for. So much.
“When did you get back?” Victoria asked.
“A few minutes ago.”
“Well, you certainly look well rested. I guess it was a good trip to the spa?”
“No, to be honest. It was the worst one yet. Every meal was terrible. Ruby is a better cook than the chef they’re paying a fortune. As if mushrooms were the only facet of spa cuisine he cared about.”
“Ewww,” Jacob cried and she turned to him, her heart aflame with love for the little guy. At some point in her distant past, she’d wanted more kids. A dozen of them.
“I know,” Celeste agreed. “Mushrooms are gross.”
“Well, my heart bleeds for you and your subpar spa week.” Victoria’s sarcasm was new and different, and Celeste laughed.
“Even the mud was bad.”
Victoria pulled a face.
“You look well,” Celeste said. “You’ve gained some weight.”
The moment she said it, she knew it was the wrong thing to say. Victoria put a hand to her still flat tummy and her eyes slid over to Jacob, who had stopped paying attention and was climbing under the table.
“It’s a good thing,” Celeste said, trying to dig herself out of the hole her mouth had put her in. Funny how she didn’t have this problem with anyone else in the world. Just her ex-husband’s bastard daughter. “You were way too skinny before.”
Oh God, she thought. That was worse.
It was as if she wanted to undo the weeks she’d spent trying to get Victoria to eat.
“Yes,” Victoria finally said with a laugh. “You’re right. I was.”
Celeste attempted a smile, and her sand-blasted skin pulled at the effort.
“How is the ranching business going?”
“Well, I’m in the land-leasing business now.”
Celeste tried to lift an eyebrow, but the Botox made it impossible.
“You all right?” Victoria asked, and Celeste waved off her concern.
“Yeah, you look funny,” Jacob said, his head poking out from between two ladderback dining chairs.
First old. Now funny. Aging was an abomination.
She excused herself so she could go back to her room and panic like a gerb
il.
Wednesday morning, the skies opened up again and Eli brought the horses in from the paddock through sheets of cold, miserable rain. Rain plunked onto the wide brim of his hat, dripping off onto his yellow slicker. September had come in like a bitch and stayed that way, but the land could use it, so no one complained.
“Let’s go, girls,” he told the two ponies who balked at being led. They were nervous in the rain and he had to stroke their necks. Hum in their ears.
And the two big stallions ran in tense circles in their pens until he came and tucked them back into their stalls.
Lucky and Patience followed on their own.
“No, wait—” he said, just as Lucky shook her mane, spraying Eli with horse-scented water. He ducked as best he could, but he still got it all over his face.
“Perfect,” he muttered. “Just perfect.” He shrugged out of his slicker and hung it up on the hook outside the tack room, tearing the lining in his haste and frustration.
Angry, he shoveled feed into the bags hanging outside the horses’ stall doors.
They all got hungry in the rain.
The orange tabby curled around his boots and he scratched her between the ears before shooing her into Phineas’s stall, where she’d keep the big bay from freaking out during the thunder.
With the money from the sale of the herd he’d gone on a shopping spree, and yesterday he had bought two studs from Los Carillos. Along with Patience and Darling, they would be the backbone of his new business. He’d ordered supplies to repair his barn, splurging on some new tools even.
But it hadn’t been enough to lift the dark edges of his terminally bad mood.
Victoria Schulman was a blight.
Worse, he would venture a guess, than all the other Bakers who had screwed over all the other Turnbulls—because she did it in stupid clothes. And she felt bad about it. It was so obvious she regretted leasing out that land and if he were a smarter man he might have exploited that little fact, but instead he just got pissed off and insulted her.
The rain kept on and the barn was as dark as midnight, so he ducked back into the tack room to flip on the lights. He’d put a desk and a landline in here years ago, and he sat down in the hard chair and pulled out his calendar.
The day’s work waited for him. The endless care and management of land and animals that weren’t his, that would never be his. For years he’d worked this job thinking of the future when it would all be his. And that had made the sting of being a Baker employee bearable.
But looking down at that calendar, with all the same notes on it—he needed to make sure the stone wall behind the house held, last time it had rained like this the old fence had melted and mud had flooded the kitchen—he felt empty. Useless. Victoria had robbed him of the land and his pride in it. His pride in himself.
And that really pissed him off.
Wallowing in his anger and misery, he didn’t hear the commotion out in the stalls until he heard the laughter.
Jacob was out with the horses. Again.
Usually he ignored the kid when he snuck into the barn early before school, but today Eli was so frustrated, he stood up from his desk and stepped out of the tack room. Lucky, the sweetest mare he’d ever worked with, was gumming the boy’s hand. Jacob fished in his pocket and grabbed another slice of apple, which Lucky hoovered up quick as a wink, and the boy chortled with delight.
The sound was so foreign in this barn, among the animals and the silence, that everyone came out to investigate. The cats were roaming the long hallway, the horses hung their heads over their doors. Jerry stood in the entrance to the riding arena.
“Does your mom know you’re in here?” Eli asked, shattering the mood. Jacob jerked away from the horse, dropping the rest of the apple slices into the dirt.
“Ah … no.”
Eli nodded but didn’t tell the kid to leave. He pointed to the horse sniffing Jacob’s hair for more apples. “You like Lucky?”
“That’s her name?”
“Yep.” Eli stepped forward and patted the horse’s soft muzzle. “When she was just a foal she got struck by lightning—”
“Noooo.”
“Yep. And see here?” He pulled on Lucky’s bridle and the horse turned her head, showing off the gray hair in her mane. “She’s been gray ever since.”
“Are you telling the truth?” Jacob’s eyes were narrowed as if he could see a lie if he just looked hard enough.
“Swear to God.” He crossed his fingers over his chest for good measure. “She got hurt not too long ago, stepped in a groundhog hole and twisted her ankle.”
“You gonna shoot her?”
Eli started and Lucky spooked at the motion. He whistled low and soft and curled his hand over her ears as if to prevent her from hearing.
“Why would you think that?”
“My dad told me you have to kill animals that are hurt.”
“Well, not here,” Eli said, thinking that the man’s suicide suddenly made more sense. “Here we make sure they get better.”
“That’s good. Are you like a hospital?”
“No. I just really like Lucky.”
The boy’s smile was like a lightbulb in the dim barn, and Eli found himself smiling in kind. “Me too.”
“Well, you should meet her properly.” Eli had a pretty good gut feeling that Victoria would hate him showing Jacob the barn and the animals. Doing it to spite her made the sourness of losing to a Baker every damn time he tried to get his life started very sweet.
Lucky’s stall door creaked open and he led her out into the hallway. “Careful,” he murmured, and the boy leapt back.
Jacob dug around in his pocket again and Eli thought he was going to pull out another apple, but instead it was an inhaler. The boy shook it and then took a puff. Waited a second and took another puff.
“Are you sure you should be in here?” he asked, watching the kid’s thin little rib cage lift and expand.
“I’m okay,” he said. “I have some allergies, but it’s no big deal.”
He wondered if Victoria thought it was no big deal. The boy had been through a lot lately. That night two months ago when Tara Jean’s old boyfriend had shown up drunk and with a gun, he’d scared the bejesus out of everyone when he’d tried to hold Jacob hostage.
Victoria tended to watch over her son like a hawk. And he hadn’t known the kid had asthma and allergies.
“Can I ride her?” Jacob asked, which wasn’t unexpected.
“Have you ever ridden before?”
“No.” Points to the kid for telling the truth.
“Would your mom be mad?”
He could see the boy wrestling with his instincts and finally his shoulders slumped. “Yeah. She’d be really mad.”
Perfect.
“You can’t ride Lucky,” he said, and the kid nodded as if he’d expected that. “On account of her leg. But you can ride Patience.”
“Really?” The boy was all hope and eagerness. A youthful mix of everything Eli hadn’t felt in a long, long time. The boy was in no danger, not with Patience, and Eli would be walking right beside him. And suddenly it wasn’t just about pissing Victoria off, though that was a bonus.
Jacob was a seven-year-old boy on a Texas ranch. He should ride a horse. In fact, the more Eli thought about it, all he was doing was righting a very big wrong.
“Really.”
He shuffled Lucky back into her stall and brought Patience out, then led her and the boy—who leapt and jumped beside him—into the riding arena, where the rain pattered against the roof and the swallows made their homes in the rafters, and his fight with Victoria got personal.
Victoria stood on the back verandah and watched the rain drip off the roof. She blamed Celeste and the constant rain for the fact that she couldn’t stop thinking about a mud bath.
If Crooked Creek were a spa, she’d put the baths right here. She’d dig them right into the cement floor of this porch, in the open air, but protected by the roof. The view
of the rolling green and beige hills, the poplars down there by the creek—it would be dramatic and different.
Perfect.
She took another bite of the yogurt and grapes Celeste had pushed into her hands this morning. Ruby had stirred lime zest and honey into the yogurt and it was so freaking delicious. Like candy.
She started to take another bite but stopped herself. She was looking for Jacob so she could give it to him, but the boy was nowhere to be found.
“Have you seen Jacob?” she asked Ruby, back in the kitchen, where it smelled like coffee and toast.
“No,” she said. “He’s probably in the barn again.”
The bowl screeched across the tiles of the countertop.
“How many times do I have to tell him to not go in there by himself?”
“He’s a boy.” Ruby shrugged. “And there are horses in there.”
“That’s the problem!” Horses with giant hooves that could crush his little bones with no trouble at all. Dust that could clog his compromised lungs.
“Eli’s in there,” Ruby said, and that did not allay her fears one bit.
In fact, the memory of all that anger on his face quickened her steps. When she reached the front door, she threw on a slicker and the cracked black rain boots she’d claimed as her own.
Leaping over puddles, her head bent to better deflect the rain from her eyes, she ran across the lawn to the closest door—to the riding arena—which was connected to the barn.
Using both hands and all her strength she threw open the door and hopped inside, shaking the rain from her jacket and hair. Wiping her eyes she looked up, and her heart stopped.
Past her brother’s workout equipment, which had been shoved toward the sloping walls of the building, was a big black beast and on top of that big black beast, looking so tiny, looking as fragile as a tender green seedling pushing out of black dirt, sat her son.
His eyes wide in terrified wonder.
And beside him, clucking softly at the horse, smiling up at her son, was the devil.
Eli Turnbull.
She ran across the dirt floor, the sound of the rain pounding on the roof camouflaging her steps until she was right next to them, and the horse shied away at her sudden movement. Eli lunged forward, following the horse’s skitter. Jacob gasped and clutched tighter to the saddle in front of him.
Can't Hurry Love Page 5