In the Rancher's Arms, page 8
She knew why. Sometimes necessity forced you to do things before you were ready.
All she had to do was manage to get off this horse and to her car. She could do that much, right? When she lifted her left leg over the horse, her right one—the one holding all her weight against the stirrup—buckled. She cried out as her foot slid free of the stirrup.
Arden expected to land hard on her back against the packed earth, but Neil had seemingly moved like a flash of lightning and caught her in his strong arms. She gasped again, but this time for an entirely different reason. As Neil set her on her feet, he didn’t release his grip on her. He stood close, so close she felt the heat of his body, smelled the combination of horse, hay and what she could only assume was male pheromones that clung to him.
“Are you okay?”
She glanced up at him and momentarily forgot how to speak. Never in her life had she been struck dumb at the mere sight of a man’s gaze, and she searched frantically for words she knew existed in her brain somewhere because she’d used them before.
“Uh, yeah. I think perhaps my body is telling me I’m done for the day.” She tried to smile and feared it had come out as some sort of half-idiot expression.
“You should sit down and rest.” He said the words but didn’t move from his spot in front of her.
Arden became increasingly aware of the feel of his hands gripping her arms—the warmth, the strength, the slightly rough texture that spoke of hard work at a demanding job. For a moment, she imagined what that roughness would feel like skimming along her skin in sensitive places. As a shiver ran through her, she took a shaky step back.
Neil’s hands slid away from her, but he didn’t immediately lower them. Maybe he thought he’d have to keep her from collapse again.
The heat of embarrassment surged up her neck into her face. She hoped he attributed any outward sign to the heat of the day. The clouds had, at least temporarily, given way to the sun.
She needed to get away from Neil, get her head on straight. Even if he might be interested in her, she couldn’t travel that path. From everything she’d seen, he was a good man but one who had a lot of responsibility and worries. The last thing he needed was to be around someone who had returned home with fear, anxiety and a battered psyche as unwanted passengers.
“Please thank your family for taking time to talk to me, and for lunch. I appreciate it.” She backed up a few steps, seeking the relative sanctuary of her mother’s car.
“Are you sure you should be driving now?”
She attempted to wave off his concern. “I’m fine. Really.” She offered him a quick smile. “Thanks again for everything.”
“No problem. Feel free to come back anytime if you want to go riding.” He motioned to where Hector was nibbling on some grass next to the fence. “I think he likes you.”
She made a noncommittal sound then turned and headed straight for the car, barely keeping herself from running. Why had he invited her back? Or was he just being nice and didn’t think she’d ever take him up on his offer? Of course she wouldn’t, so it was a pretty good guess on his part if that’s what he’d been thinking.
Once in the car, she fumbled the keys, dropping them on the floor.
Come on, get a grip. It wasn’t as if he was about to jump her bones. The idea that she’d been tempted to jump his made her drop the keys a second time.
“Damn it,” she said, then finally managed to insert the appropriate key into the ignition.
When she made the turn onto the road, the sun was once again blocked by dark clouds. As if her mood was connected to that change, her jitteriness about Neil gave way to the familiar anxiety. No one else was in sight. Her hands began to sweat when she thought of how she was all alone on a deserted road. She couldn’t seem to get a deep breath. Totally irrational fears of bad guys appearing from out of nowhere, converging on her car and dragging her off to a cage like an animal caused her heart to race.
She pulled over in front of an abandoned building that had been a country store before she was born. Doing her best to block out everything but the inside of the car, she forced herself to focus on her breathing, to bring it under control. Minutes ticked by, and she’d swear she could hear the slow movement of a clock’s hands in her head. The ticking seemed to go on forever, her breathing still panicked and erratic.
A flash of Neil smiling at her as they’d ridden through the pasture silenced the clock, and she finally took a long, deep breath. Each one after that came a little easier until she was finally breathing normally, and her heart no longer felt as if it was a frantic animal trying to escape the cage of her ribs.
She tried to puzzle out why a man she barely knew seemed to be the only thing that could calm her. It was especially odd since he could also make her quite nervous. When he’d told her she could come back anytime to ride, she’d simultaneously been thrilled and terrified by the prospect. It was as if the past couple of months had totally destroyed her mind’s ability to process emotions correctly.
She leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes, completely drained. She’d be lucky if she had enough energy to drive home. Plus, she’d interviewed only the Hartleys for her article. She might not be writing in-depth pieces for national publication anymore, but she was enough of a professional to want to do a good, thorough job. Thankfully the Gazette was a weekly publication, so she had time. She’d simply tell John she’d go out again tomorrow. Maybe people would have better assessed the damage by then anyway.
She opened her eyes and lifted her head. When she placed her hands on the steering wheel, she noticed the sleeve of the shirt she was wearing. Angel’s shirt. She’d been so out of sorts when she’d left, she’d run off without retrieving her dried clothing and returning Angel’s to her. She’d have to do it another day because there was no way she could make herself go back to the ranch now. Plus, she’d look like a fool, and she feared Neil might figure out he had something, a very big something, to do with why she’d fled in such a hurry.
After taking one more deep, slow breath, she pulled onto the road and made her way to the newspaper office. When she stepped through the door a few minutes later, however, she felt as if she’d exchanged one tempest for another.
A man in an expensive-looking suit was standing opposite John, whose tight facial features told Arden he was trying hard not to explode. Neither of them even noticed her entry into the building.
“You should be interviewing her, getting her story before someone else does, instead of sending her out to take pictures of broken windows. It’s hard enough to sell papers these days without our editors actively working against us. Do you want to keep your job, John? If so, the Wilkes story will be on the front page of the next issue.”
Fury rose and burned hot within Arden. It eclipsed every other feeling she’d been wrestling with all day. The kind of fury she’d experienced when covering the horrible aftermath of elephant poachers, genocidal warlords and those damned human traffickers—the kind of people who cared only about themselves and what others could give them. Just like the jackass across the room.
Feeling more like herself than she had in weeks, she slammed the camera on the front counter. Both men jumped and finally noticed her standing there.
“Arden,” John said, his eyes widening.
Suit guy, no doubt the owner of the paper or a representative of said owner, turned toward her. “Miss Wilkes, I—”
She held up her hand, cutting him off. “I don’t know who you are and I frankly don’t care to know, but I can tell you one thing. There will be ice fishing in hell before I give my story to this paper.”
“I’m sure we can work something out,” he said.
Her skin crawled. He wasn’t the first suit she’d met who’d do whatever was necessary to sell papers, ethics and consideration be damned.
“That’s where you’re wrong.” She held his gaze. “My captivity isn’t going to line your pockets any more than it did those of the men who abducted me.” She shifted her attention to John. “Thank you for the opportunity. I’ll get the storm aftermath story to you by tomorrow.”
He simply nodded. Hoping no one would notice how much she was shaking, she turned and strode out the door.
As she drove through downtown, her frustration and anger came out in a string of curse words that would likely shock the locals if she had her windows down. She’d managed to find and quit a job within a matter of a few hours. That had to be some sort of record. But she’d be damned if she let the horror she’d gone through benefit that leech of a man one iota. She just hoped her actions didn’t hurt John’s position in any way. He was a good guy, had been a reporter when she did her student reporting for the Gazette.
As the fury began to ebb the farther she drove, the extreme fatigue she’d felt following her ride with Neil came back and entwined itself with strands of sadness that had tears pooling in her eyes. Unable to stop them from falling, she once again pulled off the road. She felt raw, as if all the different emotions whirling inside her were scraping away at her heart and nerves.
How was she supposed to help her family pay the mounting bills if she couldn’t keep a job for more than a day? If word got around about how she’d spoken to the man she assumed owned the paper, would anyone else hire her? Were there even jobs to be had?
A wave of hopelessness washed over her much as it had during the darkest moments of her captivity. She hated giving in to it, especially now that she was free, but she wasn’t able to prevent the sobs that took over her body. Felt as if they took over her very soul. Not even a fleeting thought of Neil Hartley’s smile helped this time.
Chapter Six
“Did Arden leave?” Neil’s mom asked as she stepped into the barn where he was taking the saddles off Hector and Bosco, his mount.
“Yeah, had to get back to the paper.” At least he assumed that’s where she was heading in such a hurry. He still wondered if he should have insisted on driving her wherever she’d needed to go, despite the fact that the storm had dumped an entire boatload of to-dos on top of him. Even so, he couldn’t stop worrying about Arden, about how unsteady she’d been.
“She forgot her clothes.”
It took him a moment to understand his mother’s words.
“Guess she got so caught up in her work that it slipped her mind.”
“You sure work is what was occupying the girl’s mind?”
He didn’t make the mistake of making eye contact with his mother. Best to play dumb.
“I think she overestimated how much she could do without tiring out.”
His mom leaned against one of the stalls. “It’s curious why she would go back to work so quickly after something so traumatizing. Poor girl looked as if she needed a solid month of rest and eating properly before she even tried working again.”
Neil led Bosco into his stall. “Maybe she just wanted something to feel normal again.”
“She say that?”
He shook his head. “No, but it makes sense after going through what she did.”
“Did she tell you anything about what happened?”
“No.” But he’d gotten the feeling every time he was around her that the memory of whatever had happened was never very far from her thoughts. Though he didn’t know her well, he nevertheless found himself wanting to do whatever he could to help her, to keep the bad memories at bay.
“We should have her and her parents over for dinner. Lord knows they’ve all been through a trial and might enjoy it,” his mom said.
“Or they might just want to be alone as a family to recover.”
“Maybe.” She didn’t sound convinced, and he felt selfish for hoping that maybe Arden would come to dinner or to the ranch to go riding with him again.
But selfish or not, he couldn’t stop the thoughts from forming. Even after the day was over and his family had come together to discuss the extent of the storm damage, his thoughts strayed to Arden more than they should.
When he finally headed to his room for the night, he sank onto the side of his bed feeling as tired as Arden had looked when she’d nearly fallen off Hector. He ran his hand over his hair, still wet from his shower, then lay back on the bed and listened to yet more rain hitting the window.
He ought to be figuring out ways to mitigate the damage they’d sustained so their finances suffered the least, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Arden, wondering if she’d gotten home safely. Though she wasn’t his responsibility, he still felt somehow responsible for her safety, especially when he’d witnessed how fatigued and shaky she was. He wished she’d left her number so he could at least text her, verify she was home safe. She might think him crazy, but he honestly didn’t care as long as he knew she was all right.
A knock on his door pulled him out of his thoughts.
“Yeah.”
Sloane stuck her head in. “Got a minute?”
“Yeah.” He spun to a sitting position, and Sloane sank onto the chair opposite. “What’s up?”
“I know I should be thinking about the ranch and fixing what’s broken, but I can’t get Arden out of my head. She’s not like how I remember her.”
“She’s likely gone through hell.”
“I know. I can’t imagine.” Sloane leaned forward. “But here’s the thing—there were moments when she seemed more okay.”
He nodded. “When she was doing the interviews.”
Sloane shook her head. “Well, maybe some, but that’s not what I’m talking about. She seems, I don’t know, calmer when she’s with you.”
Neil leaned back on his hands. “Did Mom put you up to this?”
“What?”
He could tell from the look on Sloane’s face that she wasn’t feigning surprise. “Never mind.”
“No, why did you think Mom sent me in here?”
He rubbed his hand over his face. “Seemed as if she was urging me toward Arden.”
Sloane’s forehead wrinkled. “Like romantically?”
He nodded.
“Huh, interesting. You two do seem to get along well. You found something to talk about during the entire rodeo and I’m guessing this afternoon, as well.”
“Don’t you think that even if I was interested in her that now would be the worst time ever to act on that?”
“Maybe. Or maybe she needs a good friend right now.”
He motioned toward Sloane. “You two were friends in high school, right?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think our friendship is going to build into something more.”
Neil stared at his sister. “And you think ours will?”
She kept her gaze locked on his for a long moment. “Something in my gut is telling me yes. But even if it never goes that far, be her friend.”
“Why me? She barely knows me.”
“And yet you continue to cross paths and you keep saving her.”
“I haven’t saved her.”
“I think she might disagree.”
“Did she say that?”
Sloane smiled, the same type of teasing smile she had given him at the end of the rodeo.
He pointed at her. “What’s that look supposed to mean?”
“I think you like her more than you’re willing to admit.”
“You’re imagining things.” She was right, but he’d be damned if he told her that. Chances were he was feeling sorry for Arden, that his “attraction” would go away once she got her feet under her and returned to normal.
Could someone return to normal after what she’d been through?
“Listen,” Sloane said. “All teasing aside, I think you might be the perfect person for her to lean on as she works her way through recovery.”
“Why, because I went through crap as a kid?” He motioned to the house around them. “So did everyone else. I’m no different.”
“But something keeps putting you and Arden in the same places. What do you think the odds are that of all the spots she could have been today she ended up next to our ranch while the cows were blocking the road?”
Feeling suddenly unable to sit still, Neil stood and strode to the window. “It’s a small town.”
“We’re not in town. There are dozens of roads crisscrossing the county, hundreds of miles, and yet Arden was at the end of our driveway right at the time when you showed up.”
“What, you think this is fate or something? Since when do you believe in fate?”
Sloane crossed her arms. “How else do you explain how we all ended up here with Mom and Dad?”
“Luck.”
“Then call it luck. I’d say Arden could use a little luck right about now.”
“Careful, you’re close to sounding as if you think highly of me.”
Sloane gave a little snort. “Don’t get carried away.”
A moment passed before she got to her feet and came to stand next to him.
“It’s up to you, but I just have this feeling you two could be good for each other.”
He looked over at her, confused by half of her statement.
“You take a lot of responsibility for this place,” she said, pointing out the window. “Even with lots of us to share the load, you seem to feel you have to carry more than your share.”
“I’ve never wanted anything else more than to make sure this ranch stays in the family.” And to prove to his parents that they’d not made a mistake adopting him.
“I know. We all feel that way.”
But they all had other interests, and he...well, he lived and breathed this ranch. It had saved him, and he would fight for it until there was no fight left in him.
