AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Heath blinked several times.Thathe had not expected. And he didn’t know how to respond. He was incredibly fond of Ruby. His mind and body wanted her. Needed her. But love? Already? It hadn’t even been a month. He wasn’t ready to say that, especially when she was so angry with him.
Ruby laughed quietly, but nothing about the situation was funny. “Okay, then. This is just like me. To go and fall in love with a man who I thought I knew, only to find out that he’s a stranger. It’s like I lost you, Heath. Just like I lost Lucas.”
“And I’d like a minute to catch up, if that’s okay with you.” He kneaded his forehead. “Plus, isn’t that a little melodramatic? We’re having an argument. I’m not going anywhere.”
“But I am.” She leaned closer and kissed him on the cheek. “Take care of yourself. Please. Promise me that much.” She opened her door.
“What are you saying?”
She hopped out of the truck and turned back to him, holding the door and boring into his soul with those brilliant green eyes of hers. “I can’t do this, Heath. I can’t. I need someone who’s looking ahead to the future, not focused on the past. The past is where all of my hurt is. I need to keep that where it is. Behind me.” She closed the door and headed for her car.
Heath wasn’t ready for this to be over. He couldn’t let her leave. He leaped out of the truck and ran over to her. “You tell me you love me one minute, and in the next, you tell me it’s over?”
She opened her car door and climbed inside, immediately turning on the engine. “And you didn’t say a damn thing back to me. That told me all I needed to know.”
“I need time, Ruby. That’s all. I care about you a lot.”So much. More than anyone. Including myself.
“Now you’ll have all the time you need.” With that, she closed her car door and sped down his driveway, kicking up gravel.
As Ruby disappeared in a cloud of dust, traveling away from his house and from him, it felt like she was dragging his heart behind her car. Part of him was gone now. It might never come back. It sent his mind into a downward spiral of pure chaos. And the one sentiment it kept circling back to was that the only reason he felt like this was that he loved her. He. Loved. Her.Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. Why in the hell is my heart on a ten-minute delay?He wanted to kick himself. If he could have figured out a way to make his boot meet his ass, he would have done it. More than once. He probably wouldn’t have felt it, though. His body was too numb. He’d thought he’d experienced loss before, but this was something entirely different. It was like the earth had been yanked out from under his feet and now he was floating in space, aimless, with nothing or no one to rescue him. He’d been on his own before and he did not want to go back to being that man again. Moving forward? He couldn’t do that if he didn’t have Ruby.
He bent over and rested his hands on his knees, letting the cold work its way through his clothes and wondering what came next. Go inside? What was the point? His whole life had fallen apart, and either he was going to salvage it and piece it back together, or he was going to accept defeat. People had said countless horrible things about him, but one thing no one could dispute was that he was determined.
He climbed back in his truck and wasted no time getting to the main road. When he came to the stop, he had enough presence of mind to carefully look both ways. If he turned left, he’d be headed to Ruby’s. But what could they possibly argue about now? He had to move the needle. He had to prove to her that he was the man she’d fallen in love with, not the man who mindlessly sought vengeance. Which meant he needed to turn right. That direction would eventually lead him to a place he did not want to go. A place he’d once been convinced was where pure evil resided. The instant the idea came into his head, he wanted to bat it away like a fly. But there was no other way. If he wanted to fix his relationship with his brother and convince Ruby that he really was the man she needed him to be, he was going to have to go through hell to do it.
With resignation so deep it registered as a burning ache in his belly, he sucked in a sharp breath, flipped on his turn signal and headed in the direction away from Ruby. He went right. Straight toward the Grandin family ranch.
Eleven
Heath’s meeting with the Grandins never happened. They wouldn’t even let him through the gates. Instead, Vic rode out on a horse and told Heath to get off their property. Thehelloff theirdamnproperty, to be exact.
So Heath shifted to plan B, which was to convince Albert to meet him on his day off, so they could discuss their options for getting Nelson Redfield to back off. They arranged a call with the man, and that was when Heath met his second roadblock—the county attorney was not playing around. He’d seen the original survey and he’d seen a copy of the oil rights, and although he refused to divulge his source, he wanted Heath to know that he agreed with him. The Grandins and the Lattimores had purposely deceived his mother, and his sister had been denied her birthright.
“You should be happy,” he’d said to Heath. “They’re finally going to pay for what they did.”
To which Heath replied, “Except that I’m not. I don’t want the Grandins or the Lattimores to get into trouble over this. What’s done is done. It’s water under the bridge.” He could hardly believe those words had come out of his mouth, but it was his determination, and stubbornness, talking. He would do anything to fix this, all so he had a chance of fixing his relationship with Nolan and getting Ruby back.
“It’s an election year, Mr. Thurston,” Nelson said. “I can’t drop it now. My constituents need to know I’m tough on crime. Any chance you’d be interested in a donation? We can always stand to print more yard signs when the time comes.”
“I’m going to forget that you asked my client for money,” Albert said right before he ended the call. Then he turned to Heath. “He wants a high-profile case to campaign on. That’s all this is. Nelson Redfield cares about justice about as much as I care about losing weight and exercising more.”
That gave Heath an idea. “Who’s his opponent?”
“You want to dabble in local politics? That’s a dangerous game.”
Heath shrugged it off. Nothing could make his predicament worse. “I’ve been playing with fire this whole time.”
That had been a week ago, which meant it had been that long since Heath had seen Ruby. Every day had been a test of his mental toughness. It was so hard not to see her, especially knowing that she was so nearby. He’d left a few messages for her, all of which hadn’t been returned. He missed her so desperately that it felt like his entire body was hollow. He was a shell of a man, fueled by nothing other than tenacity and a refusal to fail. He would not let the actions of the old Heath steal the future the new Heath wanted, which was to be with Ruby. Forever.
As for that part, although he had left her those messages, he hadn’t divulged the full breadth of his feelings. It didn’t feel right to say it over the phone. He wanted to say it to her beautiful face. He needed to witness her reaction, if only to know that all of this had been worthwhile. He did manage to gather one piece of intel as to what she was up to—he’d gone to the hardware store to get a new latch for Lucky’s stall door, and the woman working the register, who apparently had seen Ruby and Heath together at the Royal Diner, told him that he’d just missed her. She’d been in for some paint and drywall mud. It was nice to know what she was doing, but it also made him incredibly sad. She worked on her house when she was feeling down and lost. He hated the thought of her being unhappy. He knew that he could make things better for her, but the key to that was repairing the damage he’d done.
The real work of that was going to happen today, more than a week after the awful news of the criminal case had broken. He was about to do one more thing he’d nevereverthought he would do. He was about to welcome the Grandins and the Lattimores to his home. This was not going to be a social visit, but he still felt as though he had to offer refreshments, so he was putting out tea and a cheese board with crackers. Also a bottle of bourbon because he was certainly going to need it. The hospitality was all his mother’s doing. She might have struggled her whole life, but she was a Southern woman through and through, and she always offered guests a beverage and a snack of some sort. Always.
Heath hoped to hell this was going to work. No, he hadn’t been successful in reaching Ruby and inviting her to come to this event, but he had at least convinced his brother and Chelsea. Although, to be fair, Nolan hadn’t needed much persuading. He was desperate for all of this to go away. During the most recent phone conversation they’d had, Nolan had even expressed to Heath that he believed him. Nolan said he’d been angry when they were at the Rancher’s Daughter, but it had subsided, which gave Heath something to cling to. Someone was on his side, and that person was immensely important to him—his twin brother.
Chelsea and Nolan were the first to arrive. Nolan offered a handshake rather than a hug, but Heath knew it was going to take time for their brotherly relationship to get fully back on the right track.
“I hope this works,” Chelsea said, casting Heath a doubtful look.
