Page 6 of Hearts at War

Are you nuts?

She looked down her nose at us all. Eric, Gavin, and lastly, me.

The idea of a woman at the ranch’s rental cabins was a joke. They weren’t rustic or charming on a good day, and if any of them had been empty for a while, they were downright filthy.

I smiled, relishing the thought that a high-maintenance brat like this woman wouldn’t last there for a single night.

At least I won’t have to worry about this one bothering me.

She wouldn’t last.

Chapter 3

Heather

“A rental at the ranch?”

Please no. Fuck no.

The Grand River Ranch was Burton’s largest employer. Sprawling over thousands of acres, the ranch and farm business did well enough to survive all the ups and downs of the agriculture economy.

It was a big place, and I was familiar with the rental cabins that many of the ranch hands stayed at. They stood near the side of the property, on the border near the woods. Eric used to live in one for a long while until he wanted to move into a small house and fix it up.

Eric and Gavin both worked there, but even they had higher standards than wanting to rent those dinky cabins.

“Yeah. You know the ones I’m talking about,” Gavin said.

I weakly nodded at my former classmate. Gavin and I were never close. He was older than me, a senior when I was a freshman, but even then, he was so clearly besotted and monopolized by his girlfriend, who was still his probably pregnant-again wife.

I was familiar with those cabins. They were small, old, and I swore half of them had their roofs caving in from years of neglect. All the priority lay on the herds and crops at Grand River, not the employee housing.

Too easily, my mind wandered, and I did not care for the vision that I imagined. Those tiny shacks would be so filthy. Grimy and full of nothing but centipedes and spiders. Cobwebs and rotten mold would cover the walls. They couldn’t be more than studio-sized spaces, seeming so diminutive that a bedroom would be farfetched. Claustrophobia wasn’t a great sensation, and that was saying something since I was coming from a small but outrageously expensive rental in Chicago. Stuck surrounded by four walls in a ramshackle hut would be oppressively daunting.

“Yeah, I know,” I replied, hating how exhausted I sounded. A long drive and now this.

Instead of feeling a modicum of safety and security here, back in my old stomping grounds, so to speak, I felt more untethered. I didn’t belong. How could I when I didn’t fit in all my life? But I was hoping that having a place to settle into would make me feel...well, settled. More secure than I did in Chicago when David was near.

“No good?” Gavin guessed.

I cringed, debating how to answer.

No, renting one of those cabins was not a good idea.

“Do they...” I couldn’t shake off this image of a spooky, derelict shack. The roof would drop on me in the middle of the night. The walls could cave in and give way at the slightest closure of a door.

Is it furnished? This place upstairs on Main Street was supposed to have furniture, but since walking through with Eric while we waited for Jerry to show up, “furnished” was a stretch of the imagination. A ratty futon and a rickety chair didn’t count as “furnished,” and that wasn’t because I thought I was some sort of so-called fancy city woman with special requirements.

Having a bed was a basic human need. Preferably sans stains and bed bugs.

Hell, having running water was a simple essential.

“Do those cabins even have utilities turned on?” I asked, glancing from Gavin to Eric. Neither rented those little huts anymore, but they’d rented them before.

“Afraid of a little well water?” the older stranger asked.

I clamped my mouth shut and narrowed my eyes at him again. This tall, bearded man wasn’t from around here, not from what I could tell. If I’d met this smirking asshole, I’d remember enough to recognize those bright green eyes glittering with annoyance.

The mere implication that I’d be terrified of something as banal as water was insulting. I’d faced a lot of fears recently, and I wasn’t in the mindset to tolerate some stranger ridiculing me, mocking that I could be scared or that it was a crime to ever feel frightened.