“Valentine’s Day,” Cade said. “He hates it.”
“I saw that on his calendar in the office. Do you mind if I ask why?”
Cade’s expression sobered. “His ex left him five years ago on Valentine’s Day. Told him the ranch wasn’t enough. That he wasn’t enough. Moved to Denver and married some rich asshole within six months.”
My chest tightened in sympathy.Those words. God, I knew those words. Knew how they burrowed under your skin and made a home there. Knew how they whispered in the back of your mind every time you looked in the mirror.
Not enough. Too much. Wrong.
“That’s awful.”
“Yeah, well. The woman was awful. Honestly, she did him a favor leaving, but Dalton doesn’t see it that way.” Cade finished the sandwich and leaned back in his chair. “He’s been alone ever since. He won’t date. Won’t even look at a woman. Just works himself into the ground and pretends he doesn’t care.”
I thought about the way Dalton had looked at me in the office. The way he’d leaned over my shoulder. The way his voice had gone rough when he’d told me I’d be surprised about the ranch hands.
“He seems…” I trailed off, not sure how to finish that sentence.
“Difficult?” Cade supplied. “Cold? Dead inside?”
“I was going to say guarded.”
Cade’s grin returned. “That’s a nicer way of putting it. But yeah. He is. The woman really did a number on him. And now every February, he turns into even more of a bastard than usual.” He paused. “But he’s a good man, Amber. The best, actually. He’s just…broken.”
The word hung in the air between us.
Broken. I knew broken too. I’d watched my mother break after Dad died, watched her struggle to put herself back together piece by piece. I’d felt my own heart fracture just a little when a relationship didn’t work out.
But Dalton’s kind of broken was different. He’d built walls out of his pieces instead of trying to reassemble them. Turned himself into something hard and cold and untouchable.
And some stupid, self-destructive part of me wanted to scale those walls and find the man underneath all that ice. I wanted to know if those rough hands could be gentle and that cold voice could go warm.
Which was exactly the kind of thinking that would get my heart shattered into pieces too small to put back together. But I couldn’t resist thinking about what would happen if I could make the cold-hearted cowboy burn.
CHAPTER THREE
Dalton
The barbed wire snapped back faster than I could react.
Pain lanced across the back of my hand—sharp and immediate. I yanked my hand back with a curse, blood already welling up.
“Fuck.”
I grabbed a bandana from my back pocket and pressed it against the cut. Blood soaked through almost immediately. I kept pressure on it and headed toward the barn. I was repairing the fence line closest to the house when I should have been out with the men, working the far pastures. But I’d stayed close to the house.
Because of her.
Because for the past week, I’d found excuses to be within eyesight of the kitchen windows. To come in for lunch instead of eating with the crew just to make sure she ate. I checked on things that didn’t need checking just so I could see her at her desk, dark hair falling forward as she worked.
I was pathetic.
And now I was bleeding because I’d been distracted thinking about the curve of her neck instead of paying attention to the damn fence wire.
Pathetic and stupid. A dangerous combination.
I managed to get the bleeding slowed enough to see the damage. It didn’t look like it needed stitches, but at the very least, it needed butterfly bandages and a proper wrap so it wouldn’t pull apart and bleed every time I used my hand.
Which required two hands.
