“You heard all that, huh?” I flex my jaw. No better time to start on that road to forgiveness than right now. Unclenching my teeth cracks, and she winces. I exhale slowly, wishing I’d been the one to go inside and mangle a plate of food to offer up to her. Maybe that should be my next magic trick. “D’you want to go for a drive?”
Lanie nods again, setting the plate of food down near Billy, who takes a sandwich without looking while he works.
I don’t know what music to play while we drive this time, so in the end, I don’t play anything. Lanie stares at the passing landscape, either counting cows or lost in her own head. The chasm between us deepens as the afternoon sun covers the grasslands in burnished gold.
When I turn the truck up a steep incline beyond where the forest begins, Lanie finally faces me, a question blazing in her eyes.
I preempt her curiosity. “There’s a place I want to show you.” A place I promised myself I’d show her, knowing I want Lanie to fill the house that never got to be a home until she walked into it.
I remember the last time I said that, but I have no expectations that this afternoon will end anything like that one did. Maybe, if she lets me, I’ll get to hold her again, but I flat out refuse to push her. Last night was a gift. I know that. Anything more… That she’s with me now offers a fragment of hope I cling to like a bull rider with a single second left on the clock.
The track grows rockier, and my concentration drifts to focus on the terrain beneath my tires. The changes since the last time I used this path remind me how long it has been since I spent time on the property I gambled.
Losing Coyote Falls will ruin me like little else can. But as I briefly study Lanie tucked into my passenger seat—her usually energetic, positive outlook set on mute—I know the land alone isn’t what I value most.
“You tried to tell me it’s not about the place.” I grip the steering wheel tight under the pretense of navigating a challenging precipice. “That it’s about the people on the land. And you’re right. I’m sorry it took me so damn long to come around and see it through your eyes and theirs, Lanie.”
“I want to say it’s okay.” She stares out the windshield, her hands pressed between her knees.
I don’t reach for her, strangling the steering wheel instead. “It’s not okay. Don’t say it.” A large rock skitters out from beneath the truck, and I swear liberally. “Hold on, okay? This section gets a little rough.” I promise myself the track was never this bad before. Just how long have I let myself be tucked away from the place that I love, distracted with other work? Now, when I stand on the eve of losing it all, it matters more that anything.
Like her.
A proverb rattles about in the back of my mind about destruction and a fall. Lanie grips the edge of her seat, but her hands relax as the windshield levels out.
“Cord?” A glimmer of her old energy flares in her eyes as she takes in the vista presenting before us.
“You wanted to see Coyote Falls.” I let a smile form across my face, the first real one since last night.
Because when I first found this piece of land and scouted it alone, this was the spot I came to.
And stopped.
Lanie glances across at me, holding my gaze for a single second. A second long enough to take in the change in my expression, my demeanor. Then her seat belt slides off before she flies out of my truck, the door swinging shut behind her. Her steps are sure as she pads across the rocky flats to the edge of the pool.
Water flows down the granite mountainside in a steep deluge that collects into a shallow basin before it tips over the edge a second time. The view from here delves deep into the Rockies, where white-tipped caps cover the mountains. Lanie’s silhouette is cast against them, her hair blazing in the last of the day’s light, lifting in the breeze before the sun sets.
I turn the truck around, park, and open the tailgate. Lanie looks back at me once and then returns to soaking in the incredible vista.
“The house should be here,” she says in a definite tone. “You could wake up to this every morning.”
I smile. Strange that her thoughts now echo my own past ones. “I used to. Before I built the house, I used to sleep here in a bedrollevery night. Back then, I woke up to a nose in my face and the fright of my life. A band of coyotes milled around, calling to each other. It was odd. I expected to be dinner for six different mouths, but they loitered around me for a while, with me too scared out of my mind to move. Then they wandered off.” I shrug, like being accosted by a mini mafia of coyotes and living to tell the tale happens every day.Except here it kind of does.“I bought the land, named the place, and West helped me to draw up plans the next day. He’s a qualified architect, more than a foreman. God only knows why he puts up with me.”
She doesn’t turn her head, even when I brush the backs of my finger against hers. “You know why.”
I press my lips together. “Come here?”
Every word is still so tentative, so new. I swallow hard as Lanie backs up the few steps to the tailgate and hefts herself onto the cold metal. My hands hover behind her, but I don’t dare to touch her again until I’m sure of what she wants.
She tucks her knees beneath her chin, wrapping her arms around her legs. Goose bumps speckle the tiny amount of exposed skin at her wrists. I grab her wolf blanket from the toolbox where I stowed it earlier in the hope she would come out here with me.
The soft material drapes around her and she lets me tuck it across her shoulders with a gentle “thanks.” It suits her, the handmade throw, and the fact that I want to stop her from returning to Alaska, where she belongs, hits me in full.
Guilt swamps me as I risk resting my hand against her lower back, tracing circles there over the blanket.I’m a selfish bastard to keep her here.But I don’t want her to leave, either.
After a moment she nods, and, given permission, I gently tug her luscious hair free to flow across her back. Lanie releases a long sigh, leaning back into me. Breath shudders from her even though she still won’t look at me, but it’s more than I ever hoped for from today.
I swallow painfully, my heart slamming in my chest as I absorb her heat, the shape of her resting against me. Deep garnet hairtumbles over her exposed wrists, tangling around us.Cinnamon and sugar and…something that reminds me of Coyote Falls, as though she belongs here now. With me. Hell, I can’t let her leave. Not that it’s my choice if she does, but then it’s not really in me to takenoas an answer. I stroke my fingers through the silky locks as she sighs, even though she seems as distant as the surrounding mountains.
