Only one person ever had—my big brother, Hoyt—and he was long gone, off riding bulls and chasing some version of freedom that had never been meant for me. What was I going to do, call him, after all this time? There’d been one text in all these years, just one: me telling him Barrett had died and him not replying. He’d left the ranch when I was a toddler, leaving me here to grow up fast and quiet, and nothing about that had changed. I shoved the thought down hard. I wasn’t calling Hoyt. I’d learned a long time ago not to wait for people who didn’t come back.
I need coffee.
Lots of coffee.
Or whiskey.
Lucas appeared, though, as if he’d been conjured out of nothing. One second, I was numb, phone loose in my hand, the next, he was in front of me, jaw tight, spitting mad about something. I noticed, impassively, how cute he was anyway, all flashing fire and curls, and hated myself for clocking it when I should have been worrying about my dad, or the ranch, or my future if Lucas ever got his way.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he snapped, raising himself up on tiptoes. “You let the guest cabins rot.”
The words hit, but they didn’t land properly. Lucas’s anger was a louder thing to deal with than anything I’d felt about my dad putting his truck in a ditch, and that told me more than I wanted to know. I couldn’t switch gears. Couldn’t go from having no reaction at all to my dad to the spitting fury from a man who wanted to fuck with the ranch.
Lucas didn’t stop. “It’s money wasted! Opportunity wasted!” He climbed two steps, so he was as tall as me, and leaned onto my space. I didn’t know if it was residual panic, adrenaline, or anger, but I did know that City and his citrus scent were too close. His anger dragged my attention straight to his sapphire gaze, and the reaction it sparked wasn’t desire so much as shock, the kind that left me off balance and pissed off at myself for feeling it at all. He poked at my chest, and the contact short-circuited everything. I didn’t know what I was feeling—too many things stacked wrong, none of them lining up—and that confusion curdled fast. Heat flashed at being prodded, challenged, and handled.
“Back the fuck off, City,” I snarled, but he didn’t move back, and he poked me again.
“Those cabins aren’t worth anything now, you idiot.” His voice was pitched higher. “They’re dead weight. Anyone with sense would’ve fixed them years ago. I don’t know what kind of ranch you think you’re running, but every day you leave them like that, you’re bleeding my money.”
“Our money!”
No, not money, this is my land, this is my life, this isn’t about money.
“Do you have any idea what they’d be worth on a balance sheet if you’d bothered to work on them?” he shot back.
The noise piled up until it snapped, my jaw locking and my hands curling into fists before I even realized I’d stopped breathing.
“I built them,” I shouted right in his face. “I can let them rot!”
He froze, surprise flashing across his face, but I was already shoving him out of the way and heading for safety before I did something stupid, like hit him or kill him. He followed me, still talking, and I quickened my pace, past the dining hall, straight into my office, slamming the door shut and locking it, the click loud in the sudden quiet.
“We need to talk!” Lucas tried to open the door, was thwarted, then cursed, and I could hear his curses.
“I’m busy!”
“I expect you to find me when you’re done hiding your head in the sand!” His footsteps retreated down the hall. He could call it hiding if he wanted. I knew the truth—I’d just hit my limit. There was only so much noise, pressure, and accusation I could take before something broke, and locking that door had been the only way to stop it being me. I doubthe was done for the day, but whatever, I was in there for now, and he could take his anger and shove it where the sun didn’t shine.
Blessed silence.
The radio crackled in my pocket, then crackled again, louder this time. Five minutes is all I wanted.
“Boss?” Jake’s voice cut through the static. “Hey, you copy?”
I ignored it for a second. “Copy.”
“You still want us to keep looking?”
Shit, I hadn’t even called Jake off from looking for Dad. “No, he’s okay. Deputy got him. Pass it around.”
“Will do. Also, how many head we got in the south pasture? Miguel’s saying fourteen, I’m counting fifteen, and the east fence by the creek’s down again.”
I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead to the office door.
“Fifteen,” I said. “Flag the fence with Gunner to start. I’ll be out there in thirty.”
There was a beat of silence.
“Okay,” Jake said. “Feed orders are running low, too. You want me to?—”
