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Which was fine with her, of course. The less she saw of him, the better. Still, she couldn’t help wondering where he went. To Chase’s ranch? Maybe. Running a ranch that large could easily eat up your weekends, too.
But she couldn’t help wondering whether he might be going somewhere…softer.
To someone softer.
After all, he’d done it before.
She forced the image out of her mind. As long as he satisfied the will’s requirements by spending the nights under her roof, she didn’t give a damn about his days. And if she kept letting him disrupt her concentration, she was going to be in even bigger trouble than she was already.
Her gaze drifted to the other workers, who were still moving toward them, following the machine’s path, hand-thinning the small branches that hadn’t let go of their bounty.
So much to do…so many people to pay.
Her mind began performing calculations at warp speed. If this was a big repair, and it sure smelled that way, it would eat into the payroll, and then she’d be behind on the—
“Die, you bastard! Die!”
Her heart pounding, she wheeled quickly, just in time to see that Eli had grabbed a shovel and was violently slashing at the ground, just a couple of yards away from the shaker’s cab.
For a split second, as he jumped and hollered, she wondered whether Zander and Trent been right about Eli all along. Had she hired a madman?
But then she saw the rubbery-looking, writhing coils at Eli’s feet. A shiver sped down her spine.
He was killing a very large rattlesnake.
Though it seemed to be happening in slow motion, it probably was over in less than ten seconds, and the poor creature lay mangled in the dirt, thoroughly destroyed. Several other workers, including Zander, gathered to get a better look.
Eli’s cocky smile was gone, and his cheeks were pale beneath the sunburn. He stared down at his palms, bloodied by the pitted metal on the old shovel’s handle.
Then he raised a stricken face and glanced over at Susannah, as if he feared he might have done the wrong thing.
“I’m sorry,” he said, in a voice that belonged to a much younger boy. “I just saw him there, and I panicked.”
If she hadn’t been his employer, she would have put her arm around his shoulder, the same way she might have comforted Nikki after a bad day at school. She settled for offering a reassuring smile.
“You did great. Come on, let’s go back and get that blood cleaned up. Zander will take care of all this.”
She ignored the older man’s look of irritation. The boy’s hands needed tending. Besides, it was her fault he was hurt. That shovel should have been replaced years ago, like so many other things on this spread.
She sighed as she started the truck, hearing the hesitation of a battery about to go dead.
How many problems could she handle at once?
* * *
FIVE YEARS AGO, when Trent had accepted Chase’s offer to be the ranch manager at the Double C, he had worked twenty-hour days for more than a year, sleeping on a cot in the office, determined not to let Chase down.
He’d had so much to prove. He knew what everyone had thought when he’d left town six years earlier, after the fire, while Paul still lay dying in that hospital bed.
They’d thought he was a bad-tempered son of a bitch, who had been playing out of his league for years and finally got exposed as the loser he really was. He knew that’s what they’d thought, because that was what he’d thought, too.
So he’d run. He hadn’t known what else to do. The whole tragedy had been too much to stand. He was only nineteen, and he’d messed up everything he cared about in the whole stinking world. He’d cheated on Susannah, and then, in a fit of pique, he’d punched his best friend, and somehow rained disaster down on them all.
Sometimes, now, he could hardly remember how it happened. But sometimes it played over in his head, as if it were a videotape caught in a slow-motion loop.
He had been in a rotten mood that night, furious with himself for succumbing to Missy Snowdon’s cheap charms, and praying Susannah would never find out. They’d all gone to a bar for dinner, and he had unwisely let himself drink too much. Susannah and Paul had been flirting, and by the third beer, courtesy of friends older than the legal limit, Trent hadn’t been able to pretend he didn’t care.
He’d said some things, and Paul had said some things, and before he knew what was happening, his fist had been flying. That was when the nightmare took over. He’d expected Paul to punch him back. He even wanted him to. Somehow he felt that a little pain might make him feel less guilty for what he’d done with Missy.
Instead, Paul tilted back, his jaw hanging open. He waved his arms, trying to catch his balance, but he was already falling, falling, slamming into the bar’s picnic table seats, his arms still windmilling like a cartoon.
When he hit the ground, so did the kerosene lantern that had looked so kitschy and cute on the table.
The hay on the floor went up like a magician’s trick. Paul caught fire, too, rolling at first, trying to get to his feet, then toppling over like a fireplace log. Trent still heard him scream sometimes, and not just in his dreams. The echo of Paul’s pain could come out of nowhere, using the voice of everyday things. The cry of owls, the squeal of children playing. A rusty hinge on an old screen door, or the screech of tires on a dangerous road.
The doctors had tried. Paul clung to life for months, mostly because his parents wouldn’t disconnect the machines that kept him breathing. But everyone knew he was gone.
And everyone knew who had killed him. Trent might as well have put a gun to Paul’s head and pulled the trigger. In fact, it would have been a more merciful death.
So, as soon as he realized it was hopeless, he’d run as far and as long as his college savings would take him. He’d run until he’d hit the Pacific Ocean, chased by the memories of Paul’s mutilated body and the curse in Susannah’s cold eyes.
He’d run into another woman’s arms, and then another’s, and then another’s. He’d even married one of them, though thank God she was a smart, cheerful woman, who came to her senses before too long.
When Ginny realized her new husband was little more than a cardboard cutout, a shell of a man, she divorced him as cheerfully as she’d married him.
On his twenty-fifth birthday, he had decided to come home. To face all the ghosts, both the living and the dead. To make amends and, maybe, finally, make something of himself.
But that was five years ago, and he was through proving things. Maybe he could never completely silence Paul’s screams, but he had finally learned his own worth. Anyone else who was still unconvinced could just remain that way.
Which was why, when he found himself yawning at work and realized he’d put in about forty hours at this desk in the past two days, he decided that enough was enough.
He was going home. He didn’t care whether Susannah was hanging around or not. He was too damn tired to get all hot and bothered, not even if she was dancing on the kitchen table wearing a whipped-cream G-string.
He almost made it back to Everly without getting snagged by work—it was the next spread over, no more than fifteen minutes away—but at the last minute his phone buzzed with a text message from Zander, something about a broken shaker. He was tempted to ignore it, but the old guy sounded stressed, so he made some calls.
By the time he rolled into the Everly drive, he had Chase’s extra machine lined up for the next two weeks. Still yawning, he walked to the stables, one end of which had been converted into the foreman’s office, to tell Zander the good news.
But Zander wasn’t there. Instead, Trent opened the door onto a cozy domestic scene, with Susannah and Eli Breslin sitting knee to knee on Zander’s guest chairs. The kid was half-naked and sweaty. Susannah was holding his hand.
Trent frowned, but then it made sense. The moron had managed to get hurt on his very first day.
Susannah was bent over Eli’s outstretched fingers, utterly focused on wrapping a bandage around his palm, and her braid fell over her shoulder. She had no idea that Trent had arrived.
But Eli did.
He gave Trent a small smile, which spread across his dirty face until it was a downright nasty grin. Everything Eli had probably heard from gossips about Susannah’s new marriage was written in that leer. Trent might have been able to fire Eli from the Double C, but Eli clearly knew that the “husband of convenience” had no power at Everly. He knew that Trent was as much a temporary employee here as Eli himself.
And he wanted Trent to know that he knew.
“Ouch,” Eli moaned softly as Susannah worked on the bandage. She murmured an apology for hurting him. The boy smirked down at her, then turned to Trent and slowly winked.
Obnoxious little bastard…
“There. That should hold.” Susannah held Eli’s hand up for him to inspect. “It looked worse than it was.”
Eli bent in close, so that his face was only inches from Susannah’s. “Thank you, Ms. Everly. You have mighty gentle hands.”
Clearing his throat, Trent moved into the small office, dodging a trophy that teetered on a bookcase, proclaiming Alexander Hobbin to be the 1978 Men’s Bowling Champ. If it had fallen over and beaned Eli on the head, that would have been fine with Trent.
“So,” he said. “You think your new hire will live to work another day?”
Susannah looked up. If she felt any embarrassment at being caught holding hands with a bare-chested teenage peach picker, she covered it well.
“Yes,” she said as she began to store her first aid supplies neatly away. “It was just a little mishap. Minor abrasions.”
“I killed a rattler,” Eli put in, stretching out his legs and leaning back in his chair nonchalantly, as if he performed such feats every day. “Nasty, big one. Five feet, at least.”
“Taller than you are, then?” Trent smiled. “Impressive.”
“No.” Eli flushed angrily. “I’m five ten and a half.”
“And a half!” Trent raised his eyebrow. “Also impressive. I wouldn’t have guessed.”
The boy’s face was a thundercloud. “Yeah, well, I hear that you—”
“Trent.” Susannah snapped the first aid kit shut and gave Trent a look that said enough already.
She was right, of course. It was ridiculous to get into an ego-tussle with a nineteen-year-old. But apparently, where Susannah was concerned, a part of Trent would always be nineteen. Ready to lock horns with any other young buck who tried to trespass on his turf.
“Did you need something, Trent? Were you looking for Zander? He’s still out in the orchard, finishing up the thinning.”
“He messaged me about the shaker. I wanted to let him know we’ve rearranged things at the Double C so that you can use Chase’s machine for the next couple of weeks.”
“You don’t need to borrow one,” Eli broke in eagerly, like the smarmy teacher’s pet everyone had hated in high school. “I’m good with machines. I bet I could fix ours.”
Ours? The kid had worked here one half of one day, and already he owned the equipment? Trent turned toward the brat, ready to let loose, but Susannah put out her hand and touched Trent’s forearm lightly.
“Thanks, Eli,” she said, “but unless you can actually raise the dead, I’m afraid it’s no use. We’ll be fine with the loaner. Please go let Mr. Hobbin know it’s arranged, okay?”
Eli was caught for a moment, wedged between his desire to avenge himself with Trent and his determination to impress Susannah.
Self-preservation won the day. He bobbed his head deferentially. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”
After he was gone, the silence in the office was fraught with tension.
Susannah put the kit away, locked the cabinet and then finally turned to Trent. “Please tell Chase thanks. I appreciate the loan of the shaker.”
For some inexplicable reason, Trent was suddenly irritated. For one thing, Chase didn’t even know about the loan. Trent was in charge of all such details at the Double C. It was Trent who had made it possible.
But clearly there’d be snowball fights in Hell before Susannah would ever thank Trent for anything.
She lifted her chin. “Was there anything else you needed?”
That ice-cold tone was the last straw. “Yeah,” he said. “One other thing. I thought I’d just mention what a colossally bad idea it is to flirt with teenage boys who happen to be on your payroll.”
Her eyebrows dived together. “I wasn’t flirting with him.”
“Really? Are you sure he knows that?”
“I’m quite sure.” She stood ramrod straight, clearly offended. “Is that why you were being such an ass to him? Because you thought we were…flirting?”
Trent sat on the corner of Zander’s desk, the only spot not covered in files and papers and junk. “No, I was being an ass to him because he is a cocky little loser who hasn’t ever done an honest day’s work in his life, and I can’t believe you were dumb enough to hire him.”
She’d gone slightly pale, which he knew from long experience was a sign of fury. He braced himself for the storm, and as he did he realized that, in some strange way, he welcomed the fight.
At least it would be real emotion. A real connection.
And, God help him, he still craved that. All that crap about being too exhausted to desire her? He’d been sunk the minute he saw the curve of her back as she’d bent over Eli’s hand, and the way the sunlight created a halo around her head.
It had been enough to send the hunger raging through him all over again. He wouldn’t get what he really wanted, of course. But a good, rousing battle might at least siphon off some of this tension.
She took a couple of deep breaths, obviously determined to hold on to her temper. She placed herself behind the desk, as if she thought its scarred oak surface could provide the buffer zone she clearly needed.
But it wasn’t a very big desk.
“How I run Everly is none of your business.” She straightened some papers on the desk, a ridiculously futile gesture. “That wasn’t part of our deal.”
Her fingers trembled as they nudged another sheet of paper into line. The pause stretched until it shimmered in the room like ectoplasm.
“Oh, yes,” he said slowly. “The deal.”
She didn’t look up. But her grip tightened, crumpling the edge of the file she held.
“The deal,” he repeated. He reached out and took her wrist between his fingers. “We did have one, didn’t we?”
She tensed, though she didn’t try to pull back her hand. “Trent, I don’t think we should—”
“I do.”
She lifted her chin. “Look, I know you’re angry.”
He ran his thumb across the inside of her wrist, until he found the pulse, jumping and skittering between the delicate bones. “Am I?”
“Well, you’ve been gone all weekend. I’m not a fool, Trent. I know what that means.”
He thought of Peggy, of the secret trips he’d been making to Darlonsville for five years now. He hadn’t wanted anyone to know. He hadn’t wanted to look as if he did it only for the good public relations it might bring.
“And what do you think it means?”
