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Ma’s truck was gone. I figured she must have been in town running errands. Kane was nowhere to be seen. He was likely at his little place on the edge of our property. I had been surprised when he’d gone back. He hadn’t hurt himself there, but I had wondered if it symbolized the prison he’d felt like he’d been in all his adult life.
I parked the car in front of the house so Archer could walk right in and leave after he cleaned up.
Archer waited with Target by the entrance of the barn. As I approached, he swung down. He’d made riding full of mud with no shoes look as hot as when he donned a felt Stetson, crisp black jeans, and his Frye Austin boots. Only with the mud on him, I almost believed he’d done more than play on the ranch he claimed his family had once run.
I hadn’t seen that side of him. The corporate gig, the expensive condo, and the premium vehicle, yes. Dirty, hardworking cowboy, no.
I made him stand in his wet socks as I led Target into the barn. I took my time taking her saddle off and brushing her down. I needed a moment. I’d poured my heart out to Kennedy, Aspen, and Lyric. Weathered their stunned expressions, soaked in their worry over how I was taking this, and then had planned to ride home and be on my own to figure out what I was going to do. None of that had included my husband acting the hero for a helpless calf that wasn’t his.
After I released Target into the pasture, I strode out of the barn and past Archer without a word. Maybe I should’ve spent more time with Target.
He rounded the gravel driveway, staying in the grass as much as possible. I waited by the front door, dying inside with each step he grew closer. He was coming into the house.
I’d grown up here. I knew it wasn’t some rustic lodge. It wasn’t from this century and had seen quite a bit of the last. Not much different from many of the other homes in the county. Starkly different from a two-million-dollar condo.
“This isn’t some fancy house in a gated neighborhood.” As if it wasn’t obvious, the only gates were between the pastures.
Archer glanced at the house and frowned. I bristled. Was he noticing the peeling Masonite siding he’d missed the first time he’d been here? Or the way the porch creaked when I took the first step? The overgrown flower beds Ma gave up on weeding by early June, if she tried in the first place? Papa would do it sometimes to get out of some other work, but he hadn’t this year, and each tall blade of quack grass was like a tie-dyed flag calling for the eye’s attention.
“I don’t need it to be,” he said.
I clenched my jaw. His place overlooked downtown. The walk-in closet was bigger than the room I was currently sleeping in, and his shower had six heads. In a few minutes, he’d enter a bathroom with one showerhead that had several clogged nozzles. “Are you sure about that?”
“Delaney, I grew up in a small house too. Doing chores and working cattle.”
“Not like this.”
“More like this than you know,” he muttered as he went up the stairs.
“Doubt it.” Had I claimed I wasn’t childish only this morning?
He sighed, his arms hanging at his sides. “I wasn’t the most open about my life either. The house I grew up in was better than a shack, but it wasn’t…” He took in the weathered wood of the porch, the screen door with the half-ripped screen, and the crack in the living room picture window. “It wasn’t much different than this. Worse, really.”
The last part had come out reluctantly, like he hadn’t wanted to admit it. I tried to picture Archer in a run-down house in the middle of Texas. The Archer I had married with his expensive suits and his thousand-dollar shoes would’ve helped buyers plan the demolition of old houses like this when they purchased the land they sat on. Muddy Archer, who had rescued a calf that wasn’t his, looked like he might be more familiar with my lifestyle. Still, it was hard to believe.
“Sure.” I turned to the door.
He reached for me but saw the mud on his hand. Clenching a fist, he pulled his arm away. “My dad’s boss refused to put money into the house, and he’d only fork over for repairs on the barns and the shops if Dad couldn’t fix them first. The year Mama died, he was going to dock our family’s pay permanently until Ansen and I started doing her housekeeping duties at the main lodge.” He pushed a hand over his hair and winced when it caught on dried mud. “When I was born, we owned everything. Then there were some bad years—Mama got sick and Dad lost the ranch. The new owner kept him on as ranch manager while Mama cleaned for the main lodge that used to be our home. We had to move to the piece-of-shit hunting cabin where no one could see us.”
This was the most relatable I’d ever seen him. Pain was carved into his face, as if recounting how he was raised physically flayed him. “I didn’t know. But it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
He opened his mouth like he was going to say more but then shut it. Instead, he shook his head and said, “I was ashamed, for different reasons, and I sure as hell wasn’t goin’ to stay there. I know you hated that I kept a housekeeper, but I was over cleanin’ toilets by that point.”
The heat in his tone wasn’t because he thought he was above it and therefore better than those who did it for a living. It wasn’t the cleaning. It was how someone had made him feel about it. “People can be assholes, Archer. But it reflects on them, not us.”
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t proud of where I came from, and I wasn’t going to stay there.”
Didn’t he see that was the big issue between us? “My surroundings don’t dictate my worth.” Neither did who I was with.
“I never said they did.”
But in his mind, they determined his worth. I had been turning myself inside out because Archer didn’t know the real me. Did I know the real him? “No, you let the Truitts decide.”
His hard gaze pinned me in place as easily as his body. He kept enough distance between us that no mud got on me, but his body heat was more effective at increasing my discomfort. “Norville Truitt pulled a kid out of the gutter and made him think he could do something with his life.”
Norville Truitt. The guy was as seedy as the cornfield down the road. “Did Norville tell you that before or after you kept his son from failing out of college? Because from what I saw, his help had conditions, and his help benefited him more than you.”
Archer’s brow furrowed. “Norville gave me my career. Everything I have is because of him.”
