Page 12 of Slow Burn

“I’d love to learn,” I offer instead. “And I think Wade’s right. Part of why ranches are struggling is because of their negative impact on the environment, and there’s a lot of incentive to start doing things differently. I’d love to look into how the ranch could be more sustainable.”

The words come tumbling out, because I can never fucking hold my tongue. Beck quirks an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth lifting with it. A sneer.

“Ranching has been around for centuries, and I don’t believe in fixing something that ain’t broke.”

“Clearly, it is broke,” I retort before I can stop myself.

Shut up, shut up, shut up.

I need to make this work, whether Beck wants my help or not. Evidently, my job prospects are slim, and since I didn’t exactly leave the last place on the best of terms, it would help to not piss off my only viable reference.

I school my features, plastering on a demure, placating smile, the one I use when dealing with difficult clients. “Listen, I don’t know a lot about ranching, but I do know business. And I think I could offer some assistance.”

Beck stares at me for an excruciating moment, his heavy gaze making me want to sink into the floor. He doesn’t respond, he just sets his glass down with a clink, lets out a huff of breath through his nose, and walks straight out of the kitchen.

Wade and I exchange a cringe when the front door slams shut behind him on his way out of the house.

You know what? Fuck him. If he doesn’t want my help, then I don’t have to be here.

Except I do.

I don’t have another option.

“Give him time,” Wade says, snapping me out of my thoughts. He stands up and hobbles over to the sink to rinse out his glass. I do the same, before making my way to the door to see myself out.

“He’ll come around, he usually does,” Wade says. “Stubborn as a mule, that one. But of course, you know that.”

I pull Wade in for a hug, catching him off guard, and he lets out a soft chuckle.

“Always were such a sweetheart,” he says. “I’ll give him hell for being an ass.”

Beck is standing in the yard when I go outside, looking off into the field, forearms resting on the gnarled old fence lining the area of cut grass around the house.

Something about his posture is… heavy. Contemplative. Morose.

But I can’t help someone who doesn’t want it. So, I blow out a breath through pursed lips to let go of some tension, and storm down the front steps towards my car waiting for me in the drive.

Chapter 6

Beck

Lyla fucking Morgan.

Sitting in my kitchen, talking to my dad about how she wants to come in and fix the ranch. I was an asshole about it–there’s no other way to say it–marching out of the kitchen like I wanted nothing to do with her. I know I owe her an apology for it. Hell, I owe her an apology for all the years I was a dick to her for no good reason other than I was afraid of the feelings she stirred in me, of the consequences of acting on them.

But that’s not the issue I’m mulling over as I stand out in the yard, gazing up at the stars. The problem is, I had finally stopped thinking about her. Finally, after years of being plagued by her, I started to think I’d moved on.

Then she showed up here, looking like that.

She’d changed out of her vegans taste better t-shirt in favour of something a bit more business meeting appropriate, though I think my dad would have gotten a kick out of it. He has an off-colour sense of humour under his gruff exterior.

Somehow the tight, dark jeans she was wearing had me struggling to avoid looking at her. She had her feet up on the chair across from her, ankles hooked around each other, you'd swear I had some kind of foot fetish by the way I couldn’t stop looking at them. But in all honesty, Lyla has exceptionally nice feet. City girl feet. Feet that look soft and pedicured, not calloused and dry like my own.

Fuck.

I can’t be thinking about Lyla. Fucking. Morgan.

Not that way.