Page 29 of When The Dust Settles

“Rand wants his whole family on the Red, and you’re the one who’s missing that he could have right now.”

“I don’t—”

“Take this off,” he prodded, working open the buttons on my shirt. “We all hoped, me included, when you started out with the restaurant that it wouldn’t go well so you—”

“Oh?” I bristled, trying to move him.

“Stop wigglin’, you ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

“I—”

“We wanted The Bronc to go up in flames so you’d come back to the ranch.”

“You did?”

“We all did,” he assured me. “But now we see the success you’ve made of it, and we’re all real happy for you because it seems like, when you’re there, that you’re in your element.”

“Oh?” His words were designed to give me heart failure, as good as that sounded.

“You’re real good with people.”

I was, as long as they weren’t related to me or foremen on ranches.

“You have a way of gettin’ folks to follow you, just like Rand does.”

It was a really nice compliment, and one I had thought myself, that Rand and I were more alike than I’d ever thought. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome,” he said, smiling at me. “But that leads us right back to what Rand wants, and that’s you on the Red.”

What he was saying was good, but more than that, to me, for me, was the way he was gazing at me with the softest expression I’d ever seen. It felt quiet and connected, like we had moved from somewhere apart to something closer with just new moments between us. It was like every second something was changing right there in front of me, and I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he was fond of me, into me, wanting to spend time learning things and being around. Now that I was certain what I was seeing, could distinguish what true interest looked like on him, I’d never miss the possessiveness on his face or the heat in his eyes or the arrogant smile on his lips, ever again.

“He wants you to move your restaurant onto the Red.”

“What?” I asked, lost in cataloging the signs of wanting on Mac.

“Rand wants The Bronc on the ranch,” he reiterated distractedly, helping me out of my button-down and the T-shirt underneath. “But barring that, he’d at least like you living there.”

“But I—”

“Zach wants that, too, you right there, accessible as well, and me.”

“You?”

“Yes, me,” he growled, running a hand down my abdomen, tracing over the ridges of the six pack I’d worked hard to achieve. “Because unlike the others, I can insist that you come stay with me.”

“Are you drunk? Is that what all this is?”

He scoffed and his slow smile made those eyes of his glitter like mercury poured into a glass. “No, sir. I just want what I want and I’m fixin’ to have it.”

“Oh? What is it you want?”

“That’d be you, Glenn Holloway. Just you.”

Chapter 5

I COULDN’T breathe. He was trying to kill me with naked confessions.

“Maclain, you—God.”