“I am,” Cara said, “but also very thankful. I know that everyone is so impressed with the Grayson family in Mustang River. What you’ve done with Painted Ridge is just extraordinary, and everyone has been so complimentary of you whenever we talk.”
Cody frowned, feeling strangely stung. “I have a hard time believing that.”
“It’s true,” Cara insisted. “Whenever I go into town, I always talk about how I run the bakery at Painted Ridge, and then everybody tells me how proud they are of you. A hometown boy who’s made so much of himself. And Walker, too. You guys are like… symbols of grit and determination. It’s all very wild west.”
“Interesting,” Cody said, feeling a strange, frozen sensation at the center of his chest.
So now that he had some money, now that he had done all these good things, people talked like they had always been rooting for him.
He knew that things had shifted, but he had no idea if people were so full of shit as to talk to a stranger about him like that.
People whose kids had bullied him in high school, women who had probably sucked his dick in the back of his pickup truck and then not spoken to him in public.
And had sure as hell never told their husbands that once upon a time, she’d taken the town bad boy for a ride.
No, now apparently, they spoke about him like he was some kind of folk hero.
“Glad it’s helping out the bakery,” he said.
“Your reputation precedes you,” Cara said brightly, clearly unaware of just how angry her words had made him.
His reputation preceded him. Never in all his life had that ever been a positive thing.
Never in all his life had anyone ever said that to him with a smile on their face that wasn’t actually quite nasty.
“I hear that the trail ride I had Marlowe on was her first horse ride,” Nolan said.
“Yeah. She’d never been before.”
Nolan looked at Cara. “Have you ever ridden a horse?”
“No,” Cara said. “I’m a small-town girl, but I’m not one for the wilderness. Or wilderness activities. Or large animals. I’m outsidey. Not outdoorsy.”
“Horses are better than most people,” Zane said, his words full of gravitas.
“Seems like you haven’t known very many of the right people,” Cara said, smiling, and then turning away from the group.
“Or you just haven’t known the right horses,” Zane said.
Cody glanced at Zane and saw that he wasn’t the only one, but no one said anything.
So he chose not to, either.
They chatted about business, but Cody’s mind kept wandering back to the memory of his mother and what Cara had just said.
The town saw him as some kind of a hero. A bad boy made good.
And it made him want to set the whole goddamn place on fire.
Chapter Twenty-One
Marlowe could feel something shift in the air and she looked up at Cody, who was gazing off toward the mountains, a thunderous expression on his face.
“Wait till you try Cody’s barbecue, if you haven’t already,” Lila said. “He’s always been a really good cook.”
Marlowe allowed her attention to be pulled back to Lila. “Has he?”
“Yeah.” Lila sat down in a folding chair out on the lawn and grabbed a can of Coke and opened it up. She flinched when it popped and fizzed, then took a long sip. “He used to make us the best stuff. We would sneak into the neighbor’s yard, they were next to the apartment complex, and they had a garden in the back. And we would collect green onions and spinach leaves, some really good things, and take them back to the apartment, and he would put them in a special ramen that he made for us.”
