“Lanie. Look at me.” I keep my voice low and soft, rubbing circles on the back of her hand until she flicks her gaze back to me, and then offer a gentle smile. “You don’t need to be sorry for standing up for what you care about. That jerk enraged me, too. He’s the asshole. Not you.” My fingers curl beneath her chin as her gaze sharpens, lancing right through me, leaving me on edge.
Damn, I need this woman in my arms, back at Coyote Falls. In my bed. But the little I know of her tells me she’ll run if I push her too hard, too fast. I haven’t had to play by anyone else’s rules for a long time—the benefit of my past financial successes haunting me. Lanie seems to have her own code. If I want her, I have to learn what she needs and put my own cravings aside.
For now.
“I’m not usually outspoken with people I don’t know. Actually, it’s only around Winnie, and maybe you.” She studies me curiously.
“He hascon artistwritten all over him,” I agree, draining the cup.
The corner of her mouth flickers up. “Something like that.”
I press down on the lip of my mug hard enough for the ceramic to creak in protest. “Do you want to see Coyote Falls now?” I ask abruptly, the risk of her pending rejection pushing the words from my throat too fast.
Her eyes rise to meet mine as I preempt hernothat will slap me straight in the face and fuck up myweek. “Yes.”
I consider leaving Lanie’s car in town, but she’s parked across from Jenkins’s house of horrors and I refuse to give the asshole another reason to discover a vindictive streak. In the end, she follows me back to the Coyote Falls, her tiny car buzzing along behind my truck.
Billy and Tripp rest against the corral opposite the house when we pull in. A young rider I recognize as Jesse Duke slides off one of the training bulls in spectacular fashion to land in a patch of sawdust. Puffs of dust billow around him as the irate bull kicks about, refusing to head back to the chute. Billy jumps down beside him to play the rodeo clown, giving the kid enough time to collect his battered ego and get the hell out of the way.
West’s watchful eye takes in the whole show from where he sits on the top of the railing with his arms crossed over his chest. Shaking his head, he picks out Jesse’s weaknesses, giving the kid the best advice he’ll hear anywhere as he climbs down and holds out a hand to pull the young rider out of the dirt.
“You really built this all by yourself?” Lanie absorbs the action and sweeps her gaze around the homestead with wide eyes.
It’s probably a lot compared to the sparse, end-of-day stuff she didn’t really get to see when she collected Sally a few days ago. Paint-spotted cows aren’t really what Coyote Falls is about, but what she sees now… the boys helping each other out, teaching Jesse what they know? This is the heart of what makes Coyote Falls work.
She studies the house’s broad, exposed beams, the frosted glass laid into the tall double doors that depict the coyotes that visited me personally when I first found the stunning scene the property is named for deep in the forest. Maybe I’ll take her to the waterfalls later. The stables and guest wing curve around the back of the big house in a u-shape that’s just visible from where we pull in.
Watching her take it all in from here, she looks kinda perfect in her jeans and fleece, her hair all wild and loose, cute moose tee peeking out. I’m glad I got her to follow me out. My chest aches atthe thought of sending her home, but it’s too soon to be begging her for more.
Right?
“You really live here on your own?” Her soft voice brings me out of the fantasy I shouldn’t indulge in, at least not yet.
I shrug the vision away. “The boys keep me company while we work. Thought I might fill the place with a family someday.”
But I haven’t, not when everyone who mattered in my life left. Winnie reached out a few years ago, and it’s good having her and Sally back in my life. However much I want to have them live here with me, I know Winnie needs her independence. But letting other people into my tiny piece of serenity at Coyote Falls is…torture. Instead, I took the easier path and filled it with men I respect. Men I can work beside.
Until now.
Looking at the woman standing before me, maybe that dream isn’t so impossible after all.
I clear my throat that tightens with every breath. “Can I give you a real tour?”
She nods shyly as I lead her onto the veranda, away from the cowboys whose hooting I assume means Jesse has finally stayed on his bull for more than two seconds. They’d be louder if he made West’s eight-second bell.
Lanie steps beyond the threshold of the homestead, sliding off her boots in an unconscious gesture beside the door that I don’t try to stop, and her soft footfalls fill the hall. I let her lead the way she already knows for this part, her cinnamon-and-sugar scent already permeating the place, cementing the ghost of her presence I experienced long after she left the first time.
“How long ago did you build it?” Lanie reaches out to touch the wall and hesitates.
When I say nothing, she trails her fingers along the rough-sawn timber. West and I chose to leave some of the details that way for character. Other sections have become smoother with handling over time.
“Nine years.” The number pops straight out of my mouth.
Dammit. I have been keeping count.
My gaze drifts back to Lanie, tracing the full lips she let me kiss earlier, lingering on her cheery dark halo. This woman is worth the risk I’ve never taken with anyone else. I know that. It’s why she’s here.
“Nine years is a long time.” Lanie hovers next to the kitchen island, an enormous slab of oak that took me, West, and another hand a full week to cut and lug in from the woodlands surrounding Coyote Falls to install.
