“Okay?”
“Garret had a meeting with his accountant at the house and—huge coincidence—it was Mae. As in Barringer. Mae Barringer.”
Jed’s face went blank, all expression disappearing behind the wall of taciturn neutrality he was so good at projecting. “That is a coincidence. How is she?”
“Good. Really busy with work. Successful, if being able to afford Louboutins is anything to go by.”
Jed frowned and she realized he probably wasn’t up on the nuances of women’s fashion footwear.
“They’re shoes. Expensive ones,” she explained.
“Sounds like she’s doing really well for herself, then.”
“She asked about you. Wanted to know you were okay. I told her you were great, focusing on the ranch.”
He went very still and she swore she could see the flicker of something behind his eyes.
God, please don’t let it be hope.
Because then she really had made a huge mistake telling him about Mae.
She held her breath, waiting for Jed to ask more, but he turned toward the house.
“Good to know.”
Sierra stared at his retreating back. What the hell? If their positions were reversed, she’d be holding him by the scruff of the neck right now and shaking him until every last tiny detail had been offered up.
But Jed would never reveal himself like that. He was the ultimate poker player, never giving anything away.
She let out a small sigh. Maybe she should have kept it to herself after all. She turned off the lights and shut the barn door, then walked across the yard to the house. Surprise, surprise, there was no sign of Jed when she entered, just the blare of the TV as Casey and Eva watched a music documentary, the two of them tangled together on the couch.
“Hey,” she said, touching Eva’s shoulder to get her attention. “We need to get that short list happening for Operation Hookup. Strike while the iron is hot.”
Eva frowned, confused, and Sierra rolled her eyes.
“Seriously?” Eva was the one who’d come up with the stupid name for their mission to find the perfect date for Jed, after all.
“Oh. Right. A hottie for Jed. I’m with you now,” Eva said, her expression clearing.
“What’s this?” Casey asked, dragging his focus from the TV.
“Jed’s finally going to let Sierra hook him up with one of her friends,” Eva explained.
Casey’s mouth dropped open. “Bullshit.”
“He said it,” Sierra confirmed. “And I’m holding him to it.”
Especially now, after the whole seeing-Mae-and-telling-him-about-it thing.
“Good luck,” Casey said, tone doubtful.
“We don’t need luck. We have feminine cunning,” Eva said, twirling an invisible mustache.
“Sure. But what we don’t have is a short list, so you need to put your thinking cap on, okay? Let’s come up with some more prospects and compare lists,” Sierra said.
“On it,” Eva said, giving Sierra a salute, her gaze already sliding back to the documentary.
Sierra ruffled her short hair fondly before heading for the kitchen to make herself a hot chocolate to take to bed. She had big, decadent plans to finish the book she was reading before falling asleep to dream about Garret doing dirty, beautiful things to her.
It was easier to zap milk in the microwave, but Sierra was old school with her hot chocolate—she liked to make it in a saucepan on the stove, and she liked to use real cocoa and sugar, not some premade packet mix. And if she was feeling super indulgent, there might even be some cream involved.
She collected all the necessary ingredients and was about to pour milk into the pan when she heard the distinctive sound of a motorcycle engine. One of Casey’s bandmates, Danny, rode a motorcycle, and Sierra waited for the engine to switch off and the inevitable knock at the front door. She poured the milk and returned the carton to the fridge but hesitated before lighting the burner beneath the saucepan.
Danny still hadn’t turned off his bike. Which was strange—if it was actually Danny out there.
Instinct drew her to the kitchen window. All she could see was the shape of a man on a motorcycle, his features obscured by his helmet, but the dress shirt and suit pants told her who it was—that, and her the way her pulse leapt.
Garret.
The instinctive thrill of knowing he was close was quickly replaced with alarm. There was no way he’d seek her out like this unless something bad had happened.
Abandoning her hot chocolate, she slipped out of the house through the kitchen door.
Chapter Sixteen
The temperature had dropped in the short time Sierra had been inside, and she crossed her arms over her chest as she walked to where Garret sat on the idling bike. He turned his head when he registered her approach, pushing up the visor on his helmet, and the bleak devastation in his eyes made her heart stutter in her chest.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I shouldn’t have come. Sorry. I just . . . I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he said, lifting a hand to push his visor back down.
Sierra reached out and turned the ignition off. The sudden silence was deafening. “What happened?”
Garret stared at her, then focused on something in the middle distance over her shoulder. “I told my mother about everything. And she—”
He swallowed noisily, his brow furrowed deeply as he struggled to get a grip on his emotions. Sierra reached out and put her hand on his chest, needing to do something to support him, to let him know she was there for him.
“Everything all right out here?”
Sierra looked over her shoulder to find Casey standing in the doorway, Eva at his side.
“Everything’s fine,” Sierra said, waving him off impatiently.
She loved her brothers dearly, but it drove her crazy when they tried to protect her.
“We can do this tomorrow,” Garret said, his hand already on the ignition key, ready to take off.
Sierra was aware of Eva encouraging Casey back inside as she reached out and tugged Garret’s helmet off his head. His hair was flattened, and there were red pressure marks on his cheeks where the padding had rested, which she guessed meant he’d been riding around on his bike for a while. His eyes were so sad and he looked so wounded she slipped her arms around him and pressed her cheek against his own. His skin felt cool, and the cotton of his shirt was icy from the night air.
His arms came around her, tight and strong, holding her with an urgency that bordered on desperation. After a long beat, she pulled back. “Come on. It’s too cold to talk out here.”
She waited until he’d dismounted from his bike, then she took his hand and led him through the darkness, past the barn, and around the back to where the old Airstream trailer was situated.
Thirty something years ago, her parents had lived in the streamlined silver trailer while they built the ranch. When it became surplus to requirements, they’d parked it behind the barn and plumbed it in to accommodate guests. Usually no one bothered locking it, but Sierra was still grateful when she felt the latch give beneath her hand—the last thing she wanted to do right now was have to go inside for the key.
Leaning in, she flicked the light on, then climbed the two steps and entered. Garret followed her, his lean, tall frame eating up the space.
“Sit,” Sierra said, pushing him toward the end of the trailer where a bare mattress awaited their next guest.
She turned to rummage in the cupboards, sending up a prayer of thanks when she found a box of tea bags, a leftover—she guessed—from when Eva had been living here when she first came to town. She filled the kettle and set it to boil. Then she went and sat beside Garret on the bed.
“You don’t need to make me tea,” he said.
“You don’t have to drink it either,” she said. “But in case you hadn’t noticed it’s fifty degrees outside and you’ve be riding around like this.” She reached out to pinch the thin fabric of his s
hirt. “Tell me what happened.”
Because something had sent him out in the night in his work clothes.
Garret looked down at his hands. She watched as he flexed them, turning them over to study his palms. He’d done the same thing last night when he was telling her about his father and the accident, and she understood it was his way of buying himself some thinking time, some distance from what he was about to say.
“She already knew about the slush fund.” He glanced up at her.
Her eyes widened. “And she didn’t warn you?”
He shook his head, his expression tight, and she realized she hadn’t heard the worst of it yet.
“There’s more, isn’t there?” she guessed.
He flexed his hands again, then clasped them together. “When I told her about the DA’s investigation, she told me I needed to do everything I could to make this go away and preserve my father’s legacy. Even if it was—direct quote—unpalatable.”
Sierra gasped, pressing a hand to her chest. What. The. Fuck? “She wants you to put yourself on the line to cover for him?”
He gave the briefest of nods and she could see the hurt in him, and the shame.
Because he was their son, he wanted to love and respect them, but they both kept making asshole choices that he couldn’t live with. Unethical, ugly, selfish choices, even if that meant sacrificing his happiness and well-being and—potentially—his freedom.
For a moment Sierra was so filled with rage on his behalf she couldn’t see. Then she blinked and realized it was because her eyes were filled with angry tears. “Garret . . .”
There were no words, so she simply scrambled into his lap and wrapped her arms around him. These people were supposed to love and protect him. That was their one fucking job as parents. “I’m so sorry. And so angry for you. This is bullshit. And you deserve so much better.”
His face was pressed against her neck and she felt him suck in a shuddery breath.
“I just . . . I’m their only kid. And I knew Dad was . . . I had a grip on him. I understood how it was with him, who he was. But Mom’s always been the one—”
His shoulders shuddered again and Sierra cradled the back of his head in her hand, her chest aching for him. She understood what he was dealing with right now was primal parent/child stuff, the kind of connections and beliefs that transcend adulthood, rational thought and experience. His mother had just betrayed him, compounding his father’s earlier betrayal, and he was shattered.
She had no idea what to say. Sure, she could rail against his parents, call them every name under the sun, but at the end of the day they were still his parents. He was bound to them with ties of blood and obligation and love.
Look at the way he’d dropped everything to come to his father’s bedside the moment he’d heard about Gideon’s stroke. He’d abandoned his business start-up, his friends, his whole life so he could support his parents. He’d taken on the burden of a multimillion-dollar business without a blink, wading in to do whatever had to be done, putting in ridiculous hours.
He was a good son—a good man—and they didn’t deserve him, not for a second. But they were stuck with each other. Garret would never walk away in his parents’ hour of need. He simply didn’t have it in him, even though they’d been utterly dismissive of his feelings, his ethics, his happiness.
She could feel herself getting angry all over again and had to take deep breaths and remind herself she could kick something later.
Right now, Garret was all that mattered.
She felt the shift in his body as he pulled back enough to look in her face. Her heart twisted when she saw his spiky lashes and flushed cheeks.
“Told you I shouldn’t have come,” he said, and she knew he was feeling self-conscious and exposed now that the storm had passed.
It killed her to see him so vulnerable, but she understood the trust he’d put in her was a gift, too, and everything in her wanted to be worthy of it. “I’m so glad you did.” She pressed a firm kiss to his mouth. “No, I’m honored you did. Because you’re an amazing human being, Garret Tate. You are thoroughly decent and true and loyal. And you have a huge heart. What your mother asked of you tonight . . .”
She shook her head, biting back a string of four-letter words, stalling once again because she still didn’t know what to say, how to help him make sense of his mother’s selfishness.
“Yeah. It’s a little bit fucked up.”
“Just a little,” she said, smiling faintly at his understatement. She brushed a hand gently over his hair. “What are you going to do?”
He shrugged a shoulder. “What I was always going to do. Keep working with Mae, and when I know what I’m dealing with, I’ll get the best legal advice my father’s money can buy and see if I can pull this thing out of the fire. Or not.”
She nodded, noting how tired he suddenly looked.
“How long have you been riding around?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Couple of hours, I guess. Didn’t even realize I was coming here until I turned into the driveway.”
He gave her a sheepish look and she kissed him again. “I’m going to keep saying it till you believe me—I’m glad you’re here. I wouldn’t have it any other way. The thought of you driving around out there, hurting like that . . . Yeah. That doesn’t work for me.”
He lifted a hand to cup her jaw, his thumb sweeping across her cheekbone. “I got so fucking lucky the day you became my pilot.”
“We both did,” she said.
He pulled her close, his mouth soft on hers as he kissed her with a sweet tenderness that made her breath catch for completely noncarnal reasons.
This man was very quickly becoming the center of her universe. The way he looked at her, the way he made her feel, the ache she felt for him . . . She was so far gone, so committed, it was scary.
But also not, because she knew she wasn’t alone in this. She knew in her bones that Garret was falling just as hard as she was. This wasn’t one of those mismatched situations where one of them was about to get a cold bucket of reality and rejection straight to the face.
This was real and big and brave. And they were in it together.
Garret lifted his head and she could see he was more himself now, the shock of his mother’s betrayal having worn off a little. She smiled at him, then frowned as something occurred to her.
“I don’t want you going back there tonight,” she said.
He shrugged, a resigned heaviness coming into his face. “Unavoidable. Unfortunately.”
“Not necessarily.” She slipped off his lap. “Don’t go anywhere, okay? Promise I won’t be long.”
His brow wrinkled with bemusement but he gave her a small nod and she let herself out of the trailer. She jogged back to the house, letting herself in through the kitchen door and heading straight to the laundry room to find some clean sheets. She was adding a couple of pillowcases to her haul when she became aware of Casey standing in the doorway.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Garret’s staying the night,” she said.
“Are you two . . . ?”
“Yep. And if you’ve got a problem with it, you’re going to have to suck it up because I don’t have time to argue with you tonight,” she said, her chin coming up.
Casey held up a hand. “Cool your jets, Feisty McFeisty. I was just asking.”
She narrowed her eyes, waiting for the sting in the tail. When it didn’t come, she shook her head and picked up the stack of bedlinen. “Do you mind?” she asked, shooing him out of the way.
He moved back into the kitchen and watched as she dumped the sheets on the table before turning to the stove. She set the milk she’d poured earlier onto heat, then added more to the saucepan before whirling toward the pantry to extract a loaf of bread.
“You’re feeding him too?” Casey asked.
“Yep,” Sierra said as she pulled slices of cheese and deli meat from the fridge.
“So this is serious,
then?” he asked, a small furrow between his brows.
“Did I hassle you about how you felt about Eva?” she asked as she made two cheese and ham sandwiches with brisk efficiency. “Could I have a little privacy?”
Casey let out a bark of laughter. “Come on, Sierra. You were so far up in my business it wasn’t funny, giving me lectures about her not sticking around and whatnot.”
Sierra tossed her hair over her shoulder. “What’s your point?”
“My point is that privacy is thin on the ground around here since we all live in each other’s pockets. And I care about your happiness just as much as you care about mine.”
She froze, shamed by the sincerity in his voice. She flicked him an apologetic look. “Sorry. I’m just . . . He’s got some heavy stuff weighing on him and I’m worried. And I know you hate even hearing the word Tate.”
“I get it. I didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet when you told me you were going to work for them. But Garret is a good guy. He used to be, anyway.”
“He still is,” Sierra said, and she could hear the ring of fervency in her own voice. Just a little bit revealing.
To his credit, Casey simply nodded. “All right. Me and Eva are going to turn in if everything is good here.”
“It is. Thanks.”
Casey gave her a one of his sweet smiles and stopped to give her an affectionate squeeze on the shoulder on his way out the door.
Sierra smiled to herself. Sometimes they drove her crazy, but she loved her brothers with everything she had.
It took her another five minutes to make the hot chocolate and pour it into a thermos. Then she tucked it under her arm, grabbed the rest of her supplies, and hotfooted it back to the trailer.
“Sorry it took so long—” Sierra ran out of words as she pushed open the door and registered the empty trailer.
Then she heard the toilet flush, followed by the sound of the tap running. Seconds later Garret emerged from the bathroom at the far end of the trailer.
“Hey. I made sandwiches and hot chocolate, in case you were hungry,” she said.
More Than a Cowboy (The Carmody Brothers Book 3) Page 20