“You haven’t been here, Archer,” she whispered, searching my face. “You have no idea what this year has been like.” Dark lashes surrounded burnt cinnamon eyes that drew me in. A bead of a tear clung to one.
Very slowly, terrified of widening the abyss between us, I lifted my hand to brush the tear away. Eve blinked at me with an innocence shadowed by something I couldn’t quite identify. A breath passed between us, a fragile peace offering. My hand dropped to squeeze her shoulder, rubbing my thumb over the curve of it, and she jerked back like she’d been whipped.
She had.
I cursed myself for my stupidity as she whirled away, and was in the passenger seat of my truck before I could take five steps to follow her.
Pressing my lips together a myriad of images flooded my mind, but I pushed them all aside to focus on the breathing woman before me. I threw the wire into the bed of my truck and swung up into the cab, starting the engine as I cursed myself and the man who hurt her both.
The ride back to the ranch house was silent.
Four black pickups, all similar to the ones I’d seen trailing through Black Hill land earlier in the day were parked in the yard outside the ranch house.
Jude stood on the veranda steps, his arms folded across his barrel chest. New lines I didn’t remember feathered the tanned skin around his eyes, his face shuttered as he watched us pull in.
I glanced across at Eve, my hand raised to take hers. The trip back across Red Hart was nothing like what I planned. She’d shut down on me completely, and the months we’d been apart and everything that happened between us in the last year spread thin on the ground that my tires ate until neither of us ended up saying anything at all.
I ached to hold her, kiss her, promise her everything would be alright. But I did none of those things, believing that a shower, a meal and time before the fire would give us what we needed to start again.
And again, as we pulled into the yard before the big house, I realized that I’d given her far too little far too late.
“Evie,” I murmured, reaching for her, but she shot out of my truck, slamming the door behind her.
I winced, climbing out slower. Watched as she approached Jude and spoke to him quietly. And moved on.
A man dressed in a black shirt and blue jeans took off his hat as Eve approached him on the veranda, a broad grin that didn't suit him splitting his face.
A face I recognized from Beanies.
Eve trotted up to him, giving the man a hug, greeting him warmly.
“Hi, Joe.”
Joe Brunel bent to return her embrace, his words warm as he stared at me over her head with a challenge lighting his gaze.
“Hi, Eve.”
Chapter 5
Archer
Joe caught Eve’s hand, tugging her up the steps to the ranch house. She looked over her shoulder at me with wide eyes. Something that I couldn’t identify in them made me hesitate.
At the top of the veranda steps, Jude stared down at the ranch hand, his arms still folded across his broad chest. Joe said something I couldn’t hear, and Jude nodded, shifting side to allow the taller man entry.
I turned away Jude started down the stairs toward me, my hand on the door to my truck by the time he reached me.
“You must need a pit stop after driving all that way,” he said behind me in the quiet, reserved way I’d always associated with him. Absent Natalie, he’d reverted to the foreman’s personality I remembered. If this was what I’d been greeted with when I turned up at Red Hart, I might have had less concerns.
Burt it wasn’t.
The man I used to know had been then and this was… Now. What I thought I’d find in Montana looked nothing like what I remembered.
I didn’t turn away from watching Eve embrace another man like they were intimate. For all I knew, they were. “Before I saddle up and head back home?” I asked Jude, not bothering to remove the bitter edge that tainted my words.
“It’s not like that. She’s missed you. Damnit, Archer. She’s talked of nothingbut yousince you both started talking about you coming back.”
“But you didn’t know I was coming for Christmas. This week. She didn’t say anything.”Did she?I held my breath, but Jude’s silence behind me said everything I needed to hear. But I still needed to pick a fight with someone, anyone who got in my path. “Well?” I demanded, swinging around.
