Her smile drops all the way, and the closest thing I’ve ever seen to a scowl forms on Maisey Spencer’s face.
I momentarily feel like a heel.
But Tony used to worship this woman, while she never made the time—ever, not in the six years that I’ve been back in Hell’s Bells—to get out here and see him. And calling him?
Nope.
I’d ask on occasion while we were watching that damn show, usually after she tried to hammer something with the wrong end of the hammer or dropped an open bucket of paint on original hardwood floors in an early 1900s fixer-upper.Talk to her lately?
And it was always the same answer.Nah. She’s too busy for a crazy uncle like me.
Shocked the hell out of me when he left her the ranch. Always wondered if he’d known his time was short, if he would’ve changed that and left it to the town and the school like he always said he should.
Considering how much he hosted for the town out here and how much he let the school use the land, it was honestly shocking that he hadn’t left it to us.
Too late to know now.
“What’s your plan?” I ask her with a nod at Gingersnap.
Maisey straightens and looks around, tucking her tape measure in her back pocket before she squints up at me. “Not sure yet. It was such an impulsive decision to move out here, I haven’t had a chance to really think about what I want to do with the ranch yet. I’m sure I’ll figure it out in time. Or the universe will give me a little nudge in the right direction.”
I make a noise, startle Parsnip, and have to remind myself to breathe as I calm the horse again. Jesus Christ. “The universe gonna tell you how to prepare for a hard Wyoming winter too?”
She blinks.
And my brain goes blank.
Completely, totally blank in the face of that very wounded, very taken aback blink.
“I know it’s a little different from city living in Iowa, but I have faith we can figure it out,” she says, not nearly as confident as she was a minute ago.
Good.
Underestimating life out here is a good recipe for trouble.
But that waver in her voice?
It’s doing something to me that I donotlike.
I grit my teeth. Last thing I need is the world’s most unknown and inept reality TV star getting under my skin with wounded blue eyes and a waver in her voice.
Parsnip whinnies, and I get a grip on her again. “I meant, what’s your plan with the cow?” I say.
“Oh.” She swipes her forehead and looks down at the animal baking in the sun amid the scraggly brown grass.
Need rain.
Probably won’t get it.
She shifts a glance at me like she’s judging my mood—fuck, I hate being the asshole—and then returns her attention to the carcass. “Once Junie got over the bear, she got upset that we weren’t here in time to save the cow from his—her—its fate. So we’re having a cow funeral this afternoon.”
“A ... cow ... funeral.”
“Have you ever ruined a teenager’s life, Flint?”
The question would amuse me if it came from any other person. “Few dozen times every school year.”
The woman doesnothide her feelings. I see it the minute everything clicks into place. “You’restilla high school teacher. When Uncle Tony would talk about you—”
