No.Not him.That lovely man had given Aurelie his old loveseat and dining table when she’d moved into Brad and Sophie’s apartment, only to pass away six months later.Was his legacy as one of the oldest ranching properties in the Valley going to end with a monstrous eyesore of a hotel?Right next to Brad and Sophie?
That was it.Aurelie left everything where it lay in the dirt.Thoughts about anything else evaporated as she pinned her clenched fists to her side and marched forward, her mission singular and all-encompassing.
She was going to give that piss-poor driving, land-stealing, arrogant asshole a piece of her mind.If she had it her way, by the time she finished with him, he’d wish he’d never laid eyes on Banberry, Montana.
CHAPTER TWO
The Porsche’s wheelslocked just as Jace noticed the stunning woman on the side of the road.He skidded, then swerved, narrowly missing her with the back end of the ridiculous vehicle, and her bags spilled into the ditch beside the road.He took his foot completely off the gas and pressed down on the brake pedal as lightly as if he was nudging a puppy awake with the toe of his loafers.
All of this happened in the blink of an eye and rattled Jace’s nerves.
Shit.He’d been driving way the hell too fast, too trapped in his own thoughts to take a good, hard look at where he was, an error that could have seriously hurt someone, and on his first day back in town.Cammie, his agent, had called the car one of the “perks” of his celebrity, even though the last thing he wanted was to cash in on that.
Not here, not ever.
Not that she or the studio knew the real reason for his trip.If they had, they’d have given him a pickup and marching orders.But how could he tell them what he didn’t know himself?Sure, he’d felt done with Hollywood for some time now, or at least with the stereotyped cowboy roles he kept landing, but how was he supposed to turn his back on something that had given him the kind of life he had?
Ha.You’ve done it before; you can do it again.
He shut his snarky subconscious up with prejudice.It’s not like he wasn’t aware of the life he’d left to head to Hollywood in the first place.
He’d been thinking through that particular conundrum when he’d taken the last corner by his father’s house, which is why he’d been going way too fast.It was hard to hide from his past when it was staring at him through expensive glass.
Then there was the woman.
His hands shook from the near miss, as well as the image she’d seared into his vision.She was an aberration, a ghost on the hilly, almost-dirt road in the middle of the country, but a gorgeous one at that.Her hair was dark as the black coffee he drank, and hung nearly to her hips, both of which swayed in the light breeze.Surely, she couldn’t be real?
The scowl she shot him said otherwise.Heat spread to his chest when he registered her lips pressed into a thin line directed at him.
But none of that answered the question.What was she doing walking alone on an all-but-deserted road, with shopping bags to boot?Didn’t she give a shit about her safety, not just as a pedestrian, but as a woman around all these farmers?She’d be eaten alive in the city, and that thought turned the heat kindling in his chest into a raging inferno.
Not my problem.
The loaner car’s GPS spoke in the female, British voice he’d downloaded that it was time for him to turn left.Like his body could forget his path home for the first eighteen years of his life.
He slowed down to almost a crawl, noting theFor Salesign outside the property.At least the realtor had gotten started, even if he had work to do to make the place sellable.He cringed as the bottom of the car scraped the edge of a pothole he hadn’t seen.
Yeah, he’d be trading this sucker out for a truck, even if he was just here for the week to wrap up his dad’s estate.
One week.You can do this.Then you can decide what comes next.Acting?Working on different roles?Travel?Retirement?It doesn’t matter… Just get through this damned week.
A whisper of anxiety coursed through his veins as his childhood home came into view.His dad had sent photos through the years, small nuggets designed to entice Jace to come back home and take on his “birthright.”Didn’t his father get it?The termbirthrightmeant someone else’s dreams hoisted on his shoulders.
Had he played a cowboy on TV and in films?Of course.All too often, unfortunately.Directors claimed he was as authentic as they came, and the roles fell into his lap.Hell, Cammie barely had to reach out anymore.Butbeingone was another matter entirely.Sure, it was romantic—working the land, caring for something bigger than yourself—but his dad had never understood that it was also stifling.
The same job, same land, same viewseveryday.Jace had wantedmore.And he shouldn’t feel bad for that, right?
Anyway, the photos had shown Jace enough.He was well aware what kind of shape his dad’s place was in; it wasn’t good.Which is why Jace had the top architects and decorators out of LA working together to execute plans to incorporate the landscape more, make the home more functional for a buyer’s needs.They’d be in tomorrow to demolish the old house, and for the first time since his dad passed away—since Jace had gotten the paperwork with the deed to the ranch—an electric bolt of excitement coursed through him.
He’d raze the place that had held him back, that had tried to make him into someone he wasn’t, and then he’d move on.He might’ve been a rancher’s son, born into a role that had him tied to the land, but now that the legacy had died with his father, there was nothing pulsing in his chest anymore, nothing beating to get out.
Further proof that it was his father’s magnetism that had called to him, not the ranch.Not this life.As if in mutiny against this idea, his heart clenched, but it didn’t take much to figure out why.
Even with photos of the home every year since he’d left it behind, nothing could have prepared him for what his gaze settled on as he crested the drive.He expected the worn pine siding, cracked along its borders.He expected the chipped paint on the deck, the gentle slope where his father had tried to remedy a broken post himself one spring.He even expected the overgrown grasses and dogwoods along the perimeter.
What he hadn’t expected?To be floored by the kind of beauty usually CGI-ed into his films or enhanced in postproduction.But this wasnatural.Live.
Dammit, it was breathtaking.
