“She said something interesting, actually.” He walks up to the truck and rests his forearms on my open window.
“What?”
“She said something about leaving being best. That she’d be complicating things for you if she stayed, and you don’t deserve that.” He frowns. “Any idea what that’s about?”
I frown too. “No clue. Hopefully, everything’s okay. She seemed to have her shit together.”
He slaps the truck door and steps back. “Let me know if I can help.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, Brayden and Leleila are coming by tomorrow with the girls. They want to do a family dinner. You’ll join us, right?”
Brayden is Luke’s youngest brother. Their parents—my Aunt Edna and Uncle William—gave Wild Ranch to all five of their kids, but only Luke and his twin brothers, Cooper and Chase, live here. Their sister, Stella, and her husband bought a smaller property in town, and Brayden decided to run his own ranch in Mountainview, a town over. Then, he married Leleila, and they and their twin girls made Mountainview their permanent home.
“Will do.”
I’ve just started getting used to this. Having family around at all times, driving me fucking nuts, and also offering to help out whenever and wherever. While I got to come to Montana for visits, the rest of the time, my brother, Cam, and I grew up with just our parents. And since I’m ten years older than Cam, he and I weren’t ever doing anything at the same time.
I spent a lot of time alone as a kid. Not lonely exactly, but not looked after either, the way my cousins were raised at Wild Ranch.
When my dad realized I had a natural talent for ice hockey, he sent me away to camps and for private training at every opportunity. And when I was home, I was on travel teams and up at dawn for practice. I loved to play hockey. I begged to play. And it was great, but it was isolating too. I was always competing and pushing to make it at every level. You don’t grow up like a regular kid when the endgame is the pros.
And my dad, well, he never let me lose sight of the endgame. Did he want to make sure I enjoyed being a kid? Sometimes it was hard to tell.
Chapter Eight
Mia
My uncle calls me in the morning, asking me to come to his office.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” I say, already grabbing my purse.
I make good time getting to Uncle Ned’s suite, and when I arrive, he greets me at the back of the building.
“You look tired,” he says observantly.
“I didn’t sleep much,” I say.
“Stressed?”
“Yes.”That, or I was having mind-blowing sex with a guy I just met.
Uncle Ned gestures down the hallway. “Let’s go sit down in my office. I think I may have a solution you’ll like.”
I’m curious, and a little anxious, to see how my uncle found a solution to my marriage problem so quickly.
I don’t know what I thought I’d find when we entered his office.
But as I stare into the gray eyes of the man I slept with less than fifteen hours ago, I’m sure as hell that this wasn’t it.
Declan, dressed in a light blue t-shirt and a pair of well-worn jeans that fit him like a glove, is sitting on my uncle’s office couch.
He stands when we walk into the room and doesn’t take his eyes off of me. I flush under the heat of his stare. The irony of my goodbye note hangs between us as my uncle puts his arm around me.
“This is my niece, Mia Carroll.”
“Hi,” I say awkwardly.
