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I gaped at him, and he grimaced, pursing his lips as he reached up to tap the cowboy hat he wasn’t wearing before, sticking his hands in his pockets.
“I’m rich.”
“Obviously,” I chuckled, looking around once more before turning to face him. “I’m not.”
He gave me a tight smile, chuckling under his breath as he looked around. “Well, let me show you my office then, so you can see how rich I really am.”
I snorted as I followed after him, “You must get all the ladies if you parade around town saying how rich you are.”
“I don’t, mostly because no one particularly likes me in town. Yet.”
“Why not?”
Grant opened the door to his office and ushered me inside, motioning to a chair on the other side of his desk. I took a seat.
“Because they think I’m just some rich west-coast playboy who wanted to play cowboy,” he mused, sitting down in his desk chair and reaching for a stack of paperwork on the side of his desk.
“Well, are you those things?’
“Maybe at one point,” he replied with a wry smile. “I grew up on a ranch in Oklahoma, lived there until I was fourteen or so, then my family lost everything, and I had to scrape by until I broke into tech and…” He waved a hand around his office, and I looked up to notice several degrees and patents framed on the walls.
I stared, shifting in my seat to look around at each of the frames.
Grant’s achievements lined the walls, showing me exactly who he was, and how he got here. I was stunned into silence, and he noticed, drawing in a breath and letting it out in a whoosh.
“So, you left all of this behind and bought a ranch?” I waved my hand toward the patents for some really high-tech stuff.
“I retired five years ago and traveled for a while,” he said, still organizing files on the desk. “That’s what I thought I was going to do with the rest of my life, I guess. Bounce from place to place forever.” He pulled out a map, making a very male noise of approval deep in his throat. My heart quickened at the way the corner of his mouth twitched into a smile, his cheek dimpling.
I would’ve been a puddle on the floor had I not already been sitting.
“Traveling your whole life, huh? How old are you, anyway?”
“Thirty-seven,” he replied, a glimmer of what I can only call mischief in his eyes.
“I thought you were older—”
“Oh, do I look so old?” he teased.
I rolled my eyes, crossing my legs as I leaned forward to look at the map.
“That’s just a lot of life left, you know, to spend drifting from one place to another.” I ran my fingertip over the map, which showed his property lines clearly. My finger drifted toward the ravine I’d inspected earlier, and gently brushed against his hand, which was lying flat on the map.
“I bought this place because I wanted to put down roots, and I plan to… once I make sure this place can’t be taken from me because of something I didn’t do.”
“It’s obvious a creek or something used to run through that ravine, something large. It’s pretty steep.”
Grant rolled his lower lip between his teeth, then shrugged, trailing his finger further up the map. “There’s a large, dry area here, nothing much is growing. I’ve walked from the ravine back to it, thought it was strange.”
I sighed, giving him a look. “What do you mean by large, dry area where nothing grows?”
“I think I should just show you,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Let’s go for a ride.”
ChapterSeven
Grant
“Holliday, you look me in the eyes and tell me you’re going to behave yourself,” Moira said sternly, crouching so she was eye to eye with Day. He had one hand on Jenny, who was sitting stoically next to him, leaning forward to sniff Moira’s face.
