Page 47 of Branded

She glances at me and her expression is not frightened, not rattled, not the soft worried expression I might have expected from a woman who just watched a man twice her size shout in the street. It’s assessing, and careful.

“He’s not done,” she says.

“No,” I say. “He’s not.”

She nods once, like she’s filed it, and then she looks at me and says, “You moved in front of me.”

I don’t answer that.

“When he looked at me, you stepped between us.”

I hold her gaze and she holds mine, and the street’s quiet and warm around us, and I’m not going to say what she’s waiting for me to say, which is that the look on Thomas Marshall’s face when he’d clocked her standing next to me put something cold in my chest.

“Can I take you to lunch?” I say instead.

She watches me for another beat.

“Yeah,” she says, finally.

We walk the half block in silence. I hold the door to the diner open and follow her inside into the smell of coffee and the low hum of a lunch crowd and the careful ordinary noise of a town that knows who I am and has already decided not to ask.

This town doesn’t ever change.

16

LENNOX

Another week off the contract, and Sebastian hasn’t taken me anywhere, which is all right as I don’t want to have to answer questions about how we met and what our plans for a family are. I glance at my watch and realize I need to get to Eleanor’s for supper. I can’t imagine living closer; the almost mile walk usually gives me time to school all my emotions.

It’s chaos when I walk into the main house through the conservatory. Out the window, trucks line the circular driveway, ranch hands come and go, and people yell over one another in the main hallway. The formal dining room looks like it has been set up as a command center, with maps of the ranch spread across the table. Walker paces the room with a phone pressed to his ear as he barks orders about property surveys and easement rights.

Caroline stands near the windows, talking into her phone, speaking in the clipped, aggressive tone she probably uses in oil negotiations. “I don’t care what the county records say. Those cattle were on our land, which makes it theft. Get me documentation going back fifty years if you have to.”

Nathaniel appears from somewhere, carrying a folder thick with photographs and witness statements. He nods at Caroline, then disappears into the dining room with Walker.

And Eleanor sits in her living room, perfectly composed despite the controlled chaos around her, sipping tea like this is just another Tuesday at the Drake Ranch.

“Lennox.” She looks up when she sees me.

“What’s happening?” I ask as I walk fully into the room.

Sebastian comes up behind me, puts his arm around my waist. “It looks like someone stole cattle in the night.”

“What?” I turn to look at him.

“Yeah, three bulls, and twenty purebred cows and calves.” He sighs and pulls me closer.

“Sebastian,” Walker yells from the other room, “get in here.”

“Go.” Eleanor waves him off. “I’ll keep Lennox company.”

I watch Sebastian disappear into the dining room, then sink onto the sofa across from Eleanor. My body aches from spending all morning in bed with Sebastian. I thought I’d get used to that feeling, but he seems to have new tricks up his sleeve to make me remember him long after we’re apart.

“You look tired,” Eleanor observes.

“It’s been a long couple of weeks.”

“Yes, I imagine it has been. I remember my first weeks in this place with Walker. I was so out of my league.” She pours me coffee from the service on the table between us. “Sugar? Cream?”