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“Believe me,” he said, “I was under the same impression.”
“It’s dangerous for me to be here,” she pointed out. “You have a family, Darren. If anything happened to you or your girls because of me, I would—”
“You didn’t bring this fight to my doorstep,” he interrupted. “Someone else did and it’s not your fault. Until we know who is behind this, I highly doubt we’ll figure out why it happened. Unless by some miracle, you get your memory back.”
This didn’t seem like a good time to say he was, in fact, the last person she’d wanted to bump into in or near Cider Creek despite the growing part of her that was happy to see him. Even the tiny worry lines creasing his forehead made him look better than he had years ago. She doubted it worked like that for anyone else. Darren was different. Special.
“That may very well be true,” she said, thinking he had a good point. “I could make sure that I’m seen somewhere else. Draw these jerks away from you and your girls instead of toward.”
“Careful, Hayes,” he said, then turned toward the living room. Out of the side of his mouth, he added, “I might actually think you’ve started caring about someone besides yourself.”
Those words stung more than she wanted them to. Was there truth to them? She couldn’t argue that she’d been in self-preservation mode at eighteen years old.
Living at Hayes Cattle had become hell thanks to her grandfather. Reese had watched her mother hang on to a life that didn’t exist anymore. Why she’d stuck around the cattle ranch after her husband’s death was something Reese might never understand.
The real reason her mother was calling everyone home was still a head-scratcher. Even more than that, all four of her brothers were making plans to upend their lives to move home or be around more. It was insanity and they’d lost their minds if they believed she would leave the city to return to a place that never quite felt like home to her in the first place. Then again, work jeans and overalls were the standard-issue clothing for the ranch. No high heels needed.
Camree Lynn had made all the difference. Reese’s best friend had made living on the ranch survivable. The two had been inseparable by freshman year. Reese couldn’t count the number of nights they’d stayed up, dreaming of shaking the dust of their little town off their feet and moving to a big city like Dallas, where people ate more sushi than steak. Fort Worth was where all the cowboys lived. Dallas had businesspeople and fashion designers. It had restaurants and bars.
Camree Lynn had been Reese’s saving grace.
An involuntary shiver rocked her body thinking about the past, about her friend and her unsolved disappearance. There was always something niggling at the back of Reese’s mind that she could never quite reach. It was almost as though she’d blocked out part of her memory. Trauma, she decided. She’d shut down back then, but pretended to be fine after overhearing Duncan trying to convince her mother to send her to a “home for disturbed children,” as he’d put it. Reese learned a valuable lesson in whom she could trust. Her mother put up an argument, but Duncan usually got what he wanted in the end. But not that time.
Immersing herself in her job—a job she loved despite the long hours and hard work—was so much better than thinking about Cider Creek. Reese realized she remembered her mother calling everyone home.
“You coming?” Darren’s voice startled her out of her reverie. There was a cold quality to it that she probably deserved, but didn’t like. Since she couldn’t remember why she’d shown up in the first place, how she got here or who was after her, trying to leave didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Selfishly, she wanted to stay, if only to be in the presence of someone who actually cared if she lived or died. Of course, her family did. Putting them in danger didn’t seem like the best of ideas. When it came to no-win situations, this one took the cake and ate it, too.
“My mom wants us all home.” She tightened the belt on her robe and then followed the voice into the kitchen area, stepping over baby paraphernalia along the way.
“Is that why you’re here?” he asked.
“Has to be part of the reason but something tells me there’s more,” she said.
He nodded.
“What’s it like?” she asked as he leaned a slender hip against the granite countertop.
He shot her a confused look.
“Being a father?” she asked.
“Scary,” he said almost instantly. The quick response was honest. It had been his blink reaction to the question. “Great. The best thing to ever have happened to me. Tiring. Roll every intense emotion you’ve ever had into a ball, and there you go.”
She smiled. His face lit up even when he talked about the tiring part.
“What about you?” he asked. “You change your mind about ever wanting kids?”
“Me?” She twisted up her face. “No. I couldn’t do that to a child.”
“What? You’d be a good mother,” he said.
“Because I had such an amazing example?” she countered.
“Your mom is a sweetheart,” he said without hesitation. He would know better than her now, considering she hadn’t set foot in Cider Creek in ten years. Of course, she texted with her mother and made time for the occasional phone call. She sent flowers on Mother’s Day and Christmas.
“She’s a pushover. She let my grandfather walk all over her while she lived in the shadow of a marriage that didn’t exist,” she said, almost wishing she could take the words back. They sounded harsher when she spoke them out loud.
Darren stood there for a long moment, looking deep in thought. “Doing what’s right for others even if it hurts you isn’t being weak.”
