“Daisy, I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but it isn’t safe for us all to run to the ranch and leave our homes unprotected. The fire department and police are already there. So is Angus. I’ve been in touch with Cal, and he’s staying home with Charlie and the baby. I also talked to the officers at the scene, and both fires are already out. It’s under control.”
She’s quiet for a moment, her mind working through everything I’ve told her in the last two minutes. “What if Mom had been home?”
“I know, baby, but thank God she wasn’t.” I open my arms to her. “Come here.”
She doesn’t hesitate to walk into my embrace. “You think it’s all connected, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“You think it was Dusty and the assholes from the bar?”
As if on cue, my phone pings, and when I open the text there’s a black-and-white picture of Dusty Armstrong with a canister in his hand, picked up by one of the many surveillancecameras set up around the ranch. I hold it out for her to see the confirmation of my suspicions.
“What a fucker!”
I tuck the phone into my back pocket and pull her back into my arms. We stand in the middle of the room wrapped up in each other for several minutes.
“You hungry? Neither of us will be able to sleep anytime soon. I can make us something.”
“Not really, but I’ll sit with you while you eat.”
The three of us head downstairs. Daisy sits at the kitchen island while I pull out the ingredients for grilled cheese sandwiches. I’m making two because I know Daisy. She’ll take a bite of mine and then want her own.
I’ve just turned on the stove when she speaks. “I’m sorry about tonight at the bar.”
“We don’t have to talk about it.”
What I should say is, I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want a reminder of how it felt to be her embarrassing secret again. I want to stay in the little bubble of here and now with the two of us and our dog, safe and sound.
“Then how about I say I’m sorry for hurting you after our week in Hawaii. Or that I’m sorry for letting my fears get in the way of what the two of us could be. I’m sorry for all the wasted years. I’m sorry for everything.”
The spatula in my hand shakes as I attempt to flip the grilled cheese sizzling in the pan in front of me, waiting to see if this is the conversation I hope it is. I’m frightened to get my hopes up. It was only 24 hours ago that she told me pretty words only to let me down once we were out in the world.
Clearing her throat, she continues. “I would say New York changed everything, but what it really did was bring everything I’d always felt to the surface. Yet, I still tried to convince myselfwe could never work. I’ve let my experiences with other men — well, boys, really — get in our way. I’ve been a coward.”
Finally daring to look her in the eye, I see hers are glassy with unshed tears. My heart thunders, because I know this conversation is about to change the course of my life. As much as I want to go to her, I don’t dare. Not until she’s said all she needs to say.
“You’ve put yourself out there for years now, only for me to push you away. I don’t deserve you, but if you’ll still have me, I’d like to be yours. And I’d like you to be mine, and for the world to know it.”
I turn the stove off and round the counter, gently taking her still tender face in my hands and kiss her senseless. “I’m all yours, baby.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Daisy
After our middle of the night make-out session, we ate our grilled cheeses, then lay in bed and talked as updates from local police came in. Eventually, we fell asleep in each other's arms.
This morning has been full of touches and small kisses. No more hiding. No more pretending we don’t want the same things.
Aside from the constant niggling fear in the back of my mind, it’s been a perfect day.
Until an hour ago when we got to the ranch.
Cal, Charlie, Angus, Mia, and the kids beat us here. The sight of them switched something in Owen. He helped me out of his truck and has kept his distance since. If I go one way, he goes another. I’ve wanted to reach for his hand as we surveyed the damage done to the land I grew up on, but he's kept so much space between us that isn’t an option.
The hay barn is gone, but luckily the bunkhouse isn’t a total loss. The fire started in the back, and our ranch hands kept the flames at bay until the fire department arrived.
“Knox went to the Shelton’s and the Robles’ this afternoon to ask if anyone had contacted them about selling their properties,” Angus says as we set up dinner in Mom's kitchen. “They’ve both been approached. Which we figured. The Robles family refused. Two nights later, someone cut their fence line, and their bison got out. Sound familiar?”
