Page 35 of Her Boss, Her Rancher: Sunrise On The Ranch

With a little contortionist-like maneuvering, she managed to squat in front of the almost floor-to-ceiling window, the screen’s frame held gently in her palms. She hoped the conversation between the men was a short one. If it wasn’t? If her muscles cramped? The screen would crash. Discovery loomed, imminent, immense and inevitable.

Busy contemplating the probability that one could, in fact, die of mortification, it took her a moment to realize the conversation had stopped with the sound of skin hitting skin. Hard. Then heavy breathing.

“Cut it out, little brother.”Eli.

“Thanks for the reminder on the official rank and order.”Cade.“What are you doing out here?”

“Came out here to ask you the same thing. All the lights went out but you never made it to the house. Wanted to make sure you didn’t lose your way.”

“Unless you decided to wear ruby slippers, clicked your heels together, whispered ‘There’s no place like home’ and dropped the house on some unsuspecting soul somewhere else, I’m good, thanks.”Cade.That voice—normally smooth, now gravelly with emotion—carried across the night air. It held in it a whispered promise of violence, a rough assertion to Eli that he should get out of Cade’s personal space. There was nothing ambiguous or benign in the statement or, apparently, between the brothers.

Eli had clearly come down to check up on Cade and stage a little intervention, which meant he had to have suspected his younger brother would deviate from the straight line that ran from barn to house. And Emma was right in between the two buildings, representing that deviation. Cade had been at her door.

He’d come to her.

Her stomach did an involuntary gymnastics routine. She sucked in a breath. Cade wasn’t a man to waste words, and Emma wasn’t stupid. He’d have laid things out in black-and-white, explained how things between them were going to go. She’d have argued, negotiating the finer points as a matter of self-respect, and he’d have ended up in her bed tonight. That he’d shown up meant he wanted her. It was only a small skip and a hop from his wanting her to her mattering to him, and that was likely the reason he sounded so irritated at having been caught sneaking around by none other than Eli.

“What are you, Graystone? Fourteen? Act like a woman, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered. Stuck as she was, still half crouched, half squatting with a large window screen in her hands and hiding half behind the curtains, she realized she had two choices—if Cade had, indeed, come to her, she could set the screen down, thus announcing her presence before opening the front door as a normal person would. Or she could continue as she was and eavesdrop on a conversation she surely wasn’t meant to hear. Her cheeks heated with humiliation. Cade deserved better than this from her.

Emma opened her mouth to announce her presence when she heard retreating footsteps. The conversation must have wrapped up as she held her internal ethics summit. So much for opening the door and being the one to ride to her cowboy’s rescue.

Her cowboy.She grinned. Juvenile, yes. Impossible, even more so. Still, she liked the way that sounded. Standing, she let the screen slide through her hands. It hit the ground just as Cade’s voice, tormented with embattled senses of ageless despair and immediate fury, tore across the still night air and obliterated the distance between Eli and him.

He shouted at his older brother, his voice—and her heart—breaking over the things he’d obviously longed to say to Eli for more than a decade. Words that revealed a bond that had been broken by one’s dreams and another’s desperation. And none of it mattered but that Cade had suffered, still suffered, from a history neither he, nor the brother he held responsible, could change.

A fierce desire to protect him rose in her, to pull him close and put herself between him and that history, to somehow change or erase the things that had hurt him and still haunted him. But life didn’t offer do-overs.

The hardships Cade laid bare were paired with the isolation that had followed him into adulthood, and they combined to break her. Emma wrapped her arms around herself and moved toward the front door as if pulled by some invisible rope, some intangiblethingshe didn’t understand. All she understood right then was that she had to get to Cade.

She pulled the front door open to find nothing but silence and a sky full of millions of stars—any of which might have been those wished on by the boy Cade had been.

CADESTORMEDTHROUGHthe house, boots on, and went straight to his room. He wasn’t in the mood to play the role of perfect middle child, the brother who fell in line with the returning elder brother’s brilliant plans to save the day and be grateful for the handouts. Screw. That.

Stripping down to his boxers, he pulled on a pair of nylon training pants and sneakers, grabbed a towel and climbed up the stairs. Ignoring Reagan’s curious stare, he grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and wordlessly brushed by both Tyson and Eli on his way to the front door.

Tyson started to say something, but Eli cut him off with a low comment.

“Stay the hell out of this, Ty,” Cade barked. “And you keep your damn mouth shut, Eli.”

He slammed out of the house and broke into a jog, heading to the barn. Passing Emma’s cabin, he noticed that one of the screens had come off the window and almost stopped to fix it, but it could wait until tomorrow. Right now he needed to unleash some of the violence surfing his temper’s high tide.

He opened the barn’s breaker box and flipped the appropriate switch, lighting up the massive building. Horses shuffled and snorted in protest, some sticking their heads over stall doors to figure out what the late-night fuss was about. Unimpressed when Cade threw his hat Frisbee-style across the alley and bounced it off a vacant stall, most of them withdrew.

Cade went into the tack room and hoisted the aged canvas punching bag over his shoulder. He pulled down the large hanging scales and hung the punching bag. He should have brought the tape, wrapped his hands and taken care of his body, but the truth was he didn’t care. He let loose.

Punches flew, the solid thud of each impact muffled in the barn’s wide alleyway. The bag swung wildly. Support chains creaked in protest as they took the brunt of each blow and brought the bag back for more. One knuckle split, then another. He just kept whaling on the bag with everything he had.

Sweat ran into his face and blinded him. He began to crave the water he’d brought with him, but his rage, his raw hurt, ran too hot to stop. Not yet. God save him, maybe not ever.

“Cade.”

The soft entreaty had him whipping around, the bag swinging into him and knocking him forward. Toward the voice. Toward— “Emma.”

She wore cowboy boots with a short, silky sundress that flowed around her as she walked toward him with slow deliberation. Something in her seemed off, troubled even, when she paused.

“You left.” The accusation slipped out between his heavy breaths. She was close, too close.

“I’ve been within your reach since the moment we met in Amarillo. You’ve only had to reach out, Cade. Then...and now.”