She smiles at me. “Nice to meet you, Declan.”
“Same here.”
And then she shocks the hell out of me when she says in nearly a whisper…
“Do you want to get out of here?”
I throw some bills down on the table. “Absolutely.”
Chapter Six
Declan
I don’t bring women back to my place, but this feels different somehow.
I drive us through the bar parking lot as Mia directs me to where her motorcycle is parked.
“I love riding a bike. I’m not supposed to with my contract, though.” One of the many things I’m looking forward to doing when I retire.
“I love it, too,” Mia says with feeling. “After I stopped horseback riding, I needed an outlet. My best friend and I were bored one weekend, and we ended up at a vintage motorcycle fair. I decided then and there that my first big purchase would be a bike.”
“Was it everything you thought it would be?” I ask her.
Her voice drops. “Somewhat,” she says cryptically. “You know…not everything heals the soul like you want it to.”
I give her a second look, but she doesn’t say anything more.
I hop out, and together we roll her motorcycle up onto the back of my truck using some planks lying in the rear bed. And then, we drive through the quiet streets until we reach the outskirts of Wilcox.
“I thought of moving to this town,” Mia says as we pull through the back gates of Wild Ranch.
The sign to the ranch is only at the front gate, and Mia doesn’t ask me anything. I’m still trying to figure out how to tell her who I am, and I’m wondering if she’d even recognize my full name. She certainly wasn’t impressed much by the fact that I’m an athlete. She didn’t even ask me what sport I play. And I found that so refreshing that I didn’t say more. As much as I love it, sometimes talking about hockey all the time gets tiring.
“It’s so close to Missoula. And it has beautiful views of the mountains,” she says.
“That’s one of the reasons why I love it,” I agree.
“God, this ranch is amazing,” she says as we roll through the long tree-lined drive and past the main house. “I miss living on one. I loved having all that land, especially riding my horse every day.”
“Do you still have your horse?” I ask curiously.
“She’s retired from riding, but she’s still in the family.” She sounds wistful when she adds, “My aunt and uncle live on the ranch now. They have someone do most of the work, though. What about you? Is this ranch yours?”
“No, my cousins run it,” I say. “Their parents ran it before them, and now that they’ve retired and are traveling a lot, it’s been passed down to their three sons.”
“So you have three cousins?”
I chuckle. “I’ve got a lot more than that. In this family alone, there’s another son and a daughter, but they live elsewhere in town. My dad had five brothers, and all of them had kids. Not all are here in Montana, but most at least come to visit.”
“You’re not from here, though, are you? Your accent sounds Southern.”
“I grew up in Louisiana, but I spent time in the summers in Montana. Between this ranch and my other uncle and aunt’s home, the whole town was like a second home to me.”
I pull up outside my log cabin and kill the engine. Then, I take Mia’s bike off my truck. I walk it up next to the cabin and drop the kickstand.
As soon as we step inside, I lift Mia up by the hips. She wraps her legs around me, her skirt riding up to her waist.
I groan and rock into her as I flick the lights.
