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She shouldn’t be tied up in this.
I’ve wanted her freed of it from the first moment I learned who she was and why she was here, but the past week with this woman has cemented that I need to figure out a way to end it.
Fast.
Coming to a stop in front of the case with the glass covering the books, Callista turns back toward me. “These are the oldest?”
I nod slowly. “Yes.”
Some of them are hundreds of years old, handwritten by my ancestors, the Barkers before me, who brought the family across the vast ocean and unforgiving land to read in what would become Montana.
“Have you ever read them?” The true awe and wonder in her voice continue to tug at my chest. “There are so many.”
“Some. Others are so degraded that I’m afraid to take them out, to touch them, terrified I’ll cause more damage. And I doubt there’s anything I could learn from them that would be of benefit, anyway.”
Just old family stories, some so ancient they’re impossible to even read anymore. And they have little to offer aside from proof that all of us have been cursed from the beginning, cursed since we set foot in this country with our sights set on doing whatever it took to ensure we thrived.
We took it too far.
All the Barkers have.
Twisted a dream into a nightmare.
And I’ve made my mistakes and my bed; now I have to lie in it. And it includes having Callista Fox lying in mine every night. Which is why I will never be there, why I’ve spent my nights sitting at these tables, poring over the Barker ledgers and books I’ve meticulously maintained for years, looking for an answer, a sign, some sort of direction I can take that might lead me away from the current path, one that terrifies the fuck out of me.
I haven’t been afraid of anything in thirty years, but the moment this little blonde looked up at me with so much fear in her eyes as she scrambled away from me on that porch, I somehow knew deep down that my life was going to change forever.
Seeing her like this only further ingrains that knowledge.
Beauty presses her hands reverently against the glass, nose almost to it. “I could help you preserve them.” She turns her head to look over at me, hope in her gaze. “That’s one of my specialties. Preservation.”
Of course it is.
Why wouldn’t it be?
Send me the perfect damn woman—beautiful, feisty, intelligent, caring, and kind, someone willing to sacrifice herself for her father, yet she stands here, offering help to the man who holds her against her will. A woman with a very special skill set that only a handful of people in the entire country could offer.
Very calculated.
I swallow thickly. The idea of her digging through Barker archives sours my stomach. All our sins laid out on the pages of those books, no matter how old, will color her view of us.
But maybe that isn’t a bad thing.
Just like taking her to the gorge, if she sees the real history, learns how far back the corruption, manipulation, death, and destruction go, she’ll close herself off from me, maybe even fear me the way she should.
I force a neutral expression. “That would be great. Let me know if you need anything I don’t have.”
That has her spinning to face me fully, and she approaches the table slowly. “And you’ll what? Order it online?”
The humor in her voice and twitch of her lips almost makes me smirk.
“I have my sources.”
She narrows her eyes on me. “How do you get things up here? I know you didn’t have all those extra clothes, the bathroom items, and everything else you’ve left for me just lying around in hopes that a woman would appear one day.”
Shit.
I certainly didn’t.
