Page 93 of Paper Horses

I shrugged. “Bought on a whim by a nosy brother who was trying to do good. I won’t fault him for it, and I happen to think it’s a really good investment.”

“And why is that?” he asked as he pulled me into his arms.

“Because we have you running it.”

His eyes were misty when he brought his forehead to mine. “You really think I can do this?”

“Yeah, I do.”

His inhale sounded like he was savoring my presence, and with his exhale, the tension faded from his frame.

“Then so do I. Now grab those boots and let’s go for a ride. The weather’s shifting, so grab my coat, too.”

He kissed my head and was across the kitchen before I even steadied myself from the loss of his touch.

“Hudson.”

He threw a glance over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“I love you.”

A cocky smirk preceded a confident, “I know. What’s not to love?”

I was still laughing when we walked out of the house, his big hand pressing his cowboy hat onto my head before it wrapped around my shoulder and guided me to the barn.

Chapter 22

Hudson

It’s funny what years of hearing my mother’s words replayed in my head, telling me I would fail, did to me and my confidence. When I’d put the ranch up for sale, it had reached its bottom, and only when Victoria Hent, who I now knew was Tori Icinda, had offered a deal that sounded too good to be real, did it begin to return.

With Olivia’s words and her belief in me, it seemed secure again…as long as I didn’t think about that nagging in the back of my head, the same I suspected was behind her mood shifts. The ceaseless deadline that hung over us. As much as I reassured her that we would make it work, I wasn’t entirely sure how to. Not when our lives were so different, so separate.

“Have you seen your neighbors since you declined their offer?” Olivia’s smooth tone brought my thoughts back. She had moved a few paces ahead of me, and I took the moment to take her in. She looked beautiful with the sun shimmering in her auburn curls, strands of which had fallen loose from where she had them piled on her head. Relaxed and free, her body swayed in the saddle. So opposed from the first day she’d been here. It seemed like months ago, yet it had been mere days. So much had happened in that small time that I almost believed I would wake up from a dream and return to my solitary life where I buried my emotions in brooding and grumpiness.

“No,” I answered, loving how the sun lit her eyes to a dusty green hue when she turned to me. “They keep to themselves. Don’t even go into town.” I swiped at a gnat and stopped my horse.

“They don’t?” she asked, bringing her horse to where I had stopped.

“Nah, not very social. Prickly people. A bit like you now that I think about it.”

“I’m not prickly,” she snapped.

“You can be.”

“Says the bossy one.”

“Don’t disagree with you there.”

She looked over toward the edge of the ranch, the long tree line that cut my property from theirs.

“Do you know what they did before they bought here?”

Scratching my chin, I thought about the few interactions I’d had with them. They’d been cordial at first, but by the end of my first year, they’d stopped interacting with me. Never thought much of it until now. “I remember Carl telling me once they had some kind of mattress business somewhere.”

That piqued her curiosity. I could see her mind working, a fascinating series of shifts in her mouth and brow. “Good to know,” she muttered, giving her horse a pat. “You ready to head back?”

“Are you?” I asked, drawn to the shimmer of gold in her curls where the sun hit them.