Her blond hair is in two braids coming out of the pink stocking cap on her head, and it has a big ball of fluff on the top.
I take a step toward her. “Come here.” I hold my arms out and pull her in for a hug.
She squeezes my ribcage and chuckles. “What’s this for?”
“Just felt like giving my little sister a hug.”
“Orrr, you just needed a hug? What happened?” She doesn’t loosen her grip around my ribs, her voice is muffled in the front of my coat.
As I’m about to set my chin on her head, the fluff on top of her cap gets tangled in my beard, so I shift my head. My eyes land on Jax standing on the other side of the stable, leaning on a tree.
Surely Mason has told him she doesn’t like to be around men she doesn’t know. But I know Mason trusts him as much as he trusts me or Tucker, so I know he wouldn’t do anything he shouldn’t. I narrow my eyes a bit as we stare at each other.
Is he interested in Marley? Alarms ding in my head. He seems to be anywhere she is, and she’s starting to relax around him some. I think of all the trips he’s suddenly made tothe ranch in the past year, and the constant offers to help when he is here. The overprotective ass everyone always accuses me of being wants to wrap her up in some kind of safety blanket and position myself between them.
He doesn’t break eye contact with me, but he also doesn’t act like some kind of macho dick head. I’m used to men backing down when I look at them, but he doesn’t do that either. He’s simply observing.
Marley tilts her head back with a smile, her blue eyes the same color as Mason’s, and says, “So? What happened that made my big, overprotective, softy of a brother need a hug?”
Letting go of her, I push her stocking cap up her forehead and plant a kiss on her hairline before pulling it back down. “Nothing I wanna talk about. Where do you want this feed?”
She pats my back before she lets go of me and points inside. “On the pallet in the tack room.”
The rest of the afternoon is spent unhooking the generators and resuming normal activities with the electric back on. But no matter how much I focus on what I’m doing, my thoughts keep going back to Elly. To seeing that man in her room. Part of me feels like an ass for leaving her there with him, but I had to get out of there.
Part of the anger and hurt that keeps swirling in my head and chest is that she wasn’t surprised he was in her room. She wasn’t surprised by the situation. The things he said about her keep playing on repeat in my mind. As much as I don’t want to believe it, I think she played me.
And it fucking hurts.
The ache in my chest has its claws in me so deep that it’s hard to breathe and if I keep moving, keep focused on the work, I don’t have to think about it.
That’s a lie.
All I can think about is her.
When I stomp into the mudroom and start hanging mycoat and hat, I hear Sloane yell from the kitchen.
“Gray, is that you?”
“Yeah.” I walk around the corner as she’s checking the temperature of the roast she has in the oven.
It’s so nice to see overhead lights again.
She looks over her shoulder from her bent-over position in front of the oven. “I’m dedicating tomorrow to washing the mounds of clothes that have piled up over the past week, make sure you put everything in your hamper.”
“That smells good.” I look over her shoulder at the giant piece of meat in a pan full of its juices. “Do I have time for a shower before dinner?”
I have to get her smell off me.
“Yep.”
“Where’s Hallie?” I look around, but it looks like Sloane is the only one here.
Tossing her oven mitts on the counter, she winces a little as she looks toward the back stairs. “She got a phone call from the department of corrections. It sounds like her ex is going to be released in the next few weeks, she got pretty worked up, so I told her to take the rest of the day off.”
Halie’s ex live-in boyfriend went to jail for beating up on her. Since he put her in the hospital the last time, the police got involved and she could finally press charges hoping he would go to jail and not be able to come after her in retaliation.
Keeping my voice low, I say, “I thought he was going to be away for a few years or something?”
