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“Is it?” he asked.
“Yes. Everybody knows what that means. It means that I think you might be a serial killer.”
“You don’t really think I’m a serial killer, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“I am pretty desperate.” She lifted her hand and licked off a remnant of jam. “I mean, obviously.”
“There are no Pop-Tarts left,” he said, his tone filled with annoyance.
“You said I could have whatever I wanted. I wanted Pop-Tarts.”
“You ate all of them.”
“Why do you even have Pop-Tarts?” She stood up, crossing her arms, mimicking his stance. “You don’t look like a man who eats Pop-Tarts.”
“I like them. I like to eat them after I work outside.”
“You work outside?”
“Yes,” he said. “I have horses.”
Suddenly, all of her annoyance fell away. Like it had been melted by magic. Equine magic. “You have horses?” She tried to keep the awe out of her voice, but it was nearly impossible.
“Yes,” he said.
“Can I... Can I see them?”
“If you want to.”
She had checked the range on the baby monitor, so depending on how far away from the house the horses were, she could go while Riley was napping.
“Could we see the house from the barn? Or wherever you keep them?”
“Yeah,” he said, “it’s just right across the driveway.”
“Can I see them now?”
“I don’t know. You ate my Pop-Tarts. Actually, more egregious than eating my Pop-Tarts, you threw the last half of one on the ground.”
“Sorry about your Pop-Tarts. But I’m sure that a man who can have an entire nursery outfitted in less than twenty-four hours can certainly acquire Pop-Tarts at a moment’s notice.”
“Or I could just go to the store.”
She had a hard time picturing a man like Joshua Grayson walking through the grocery store. In fact, the image almost made her laugh. He was way too commanding to do something as mundane as pick up a head of lettuce and try to figure out how fresh it was. Far too...masculine to go around squeezing avocados.
“What?” he asked, his eyebrows drawing together.
“I just can’t imagine you going to the grocery store. That’s all.”
“Well, I do. Because I like food. Food like Pop-Tarts.”
“My mom would never buy those for me,” she said. “They were too expensive.”
He huffed out a laugh. “My mom would never buy them for me.”
“This is why being an adult is cool, even when it sucks.”
“Pop-Tarts whenever you want?”
She nodded. “Yep.”
“That seems like a low bar.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Maybe it is, but it’s a tasty one.”
He nodded. “Fair enough. Now, why don’t we go look at the horses.”
* * *
Joshua didn’t know what to expect by taking Danielle outside to see the horses. He had been irritated that she had eaten his preferred afternoon snack, and then, perversely, even more irritated that she had questioned the fact that it was his preferred afternoon snack. Irritated that he was put in the position of explaining to someone what he did with his time and what he put into his body.
He didn’t like explaining himself.
But then she saw the horses. And all his irritation faded as he took in the look on her face. She was filled with...wonder. Absolute wonder over this thing he took for granted.
The fact that he owned horses at all, that he had felt compelled to acquire some once he had moved into this place, was a source of consternation. He had hated doing farm chores when he was a kid. Hadn’t been able to get away from home and to the city fast enough. But in recent years, those feelings had started to change. And he’d found himself seeking out roots. Seeking out home.
For better or worse, this was home. Not just the misty Oregon coast, not just the town of Copper Ridge. But a ranch. Horses. A morning spent riding until the sun rose over the mountains, washing everything in a pale gold.
Yeah, that was home.
He could tell this ranch he loved was something beyond a temporary home for Danielle, who was looking at the horses and the barn like they were magical things.
She wasn’t wearing her beanie today. Her dark brown hair hung limply around her face. She was pale, her chin pointed, her nose slightly pointed, as well. She was elfin, and he wasn’t tempted to call her beautiful, but there was something captivating about her. Something fascinating. Watching her with the large animals was somehow just as entertaining as watching football and he couldn’t quite figure out why.
“You didn’t grow up around horses?”
“No,” she said, taking a timid step toward the paddock. “I grew up in Portland.”
He nodded. “Right.”
“Always in apartments,” she said. Then she frowned. “I think one time we had a house. I can’t really remember it. We moved a lot. But sometimes when we lived with my mom’s boyfriends, we had nicer places. It had its perks.”
“What did?”
“My mom being a codependent hussy,” she said, her voice toneless so it was impossible to say whether or not she was teasing.
“Right.” He had grown up in one house. His family had never moved. His parents were still in that same farmhouse, the one his family had owned for a couple of generations. He had moved away to go to college and then to start the business, but that was different. He had always known he could come back here. He’d always had roots.
“Will you go back to Portland when you’re finished here?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, blinking rapidly. “I’ve never really had a choice before. Of where I wanted to live.”
It struck him then that she was awfully young. And that he didn’t know quite how young. “You’re twenty-two?”
“Yes,” she said, sounding almost defensive. “So I haven’t really had a chance to think about what all I want to do and, like, be. When I grow up and stuff.”
“Right,” he said.
He’d been aimless for a while, but before he’d graduated high school, he’d decided he couldn’t deal with a life of ranching in Copper Ridge. He had decided to get out of town. He had wanted more. He had wanted bigger. He’d gone to school for marketing because he was good at selling ideas. Products. He wasn’t necessarily the one who created them, or the one who dreamed them up, but he was the one who made sure a consumer would see them and realize that product was what their life had been missing up until that point.
He was the one who took the straw and made it into gold.
He had always enjoyed his job, but it would have been especially satisfying if he’d been able to start his career by building a business with his brother and sister. To be able to market Faith’s extraordinary talent to the world, as he did now. But he wasn’t sure that he’d started out with a passion for what he did so much as a passion for wealth and success, and that had meant leaving behind his sister and brother too, at first. But his career had certainly grown into a passion. And he’d learned that he was the practical piece. The part that everybody needed.
A lot of people had ideas, but less than half of them had the follow-through to complete what they started. And less than half of those people knew how to get to the consumer. That was where he came in.
He’d had his first corporate internship at the age of twenty. He couldn’t imagine being aimless at twenty-two.
But then, Danielle had a baby and he couldn’t imagine having a baby at that age either.
A hollow pang struck him in the chest.
He didn’t like thinking of babies at all.
“You’re judging me,” she said, taking a step back from the paddock.
“No, I’m not. Also, you can get closer. You can pet them.”
Her head whipped around to look at the horses, then back to him, her eyes round and almost comically hopeful. “I can?”
“Of course you can. They don’t bite. Well, they might bite, just don’t stick your fingers in their mouths.”
“I don’t know,” she said, stuffing her hands in her pockets. Except he could tell she really wanted to. She was just afraid.
“Danielle,” he said, earning himself a shocked look when he used her name. “Pet the horses.”
She tugged her hand out of her pocket again, then took a tentative step forward, reaching out, then drawing her hand back just as quickly.
He couldn’t stand it. Between her not knowing what she wanted to be when she grew up and watching her struggle with touching a horse, he just couldn’t deal with it. He stepped forward, wrapped his fingers around her wrist and drew her closer to the paddock. “It’s fine,” he said.
A moment after he said the words, his body registered what he had done. More than that, it registered the fact that she was very warm. That her skin was smooth.
And that she was way, way too thin.
A strange combination of feelings tightened his whole body. Compassion tightened his heart; lust tightened his groin.
He gritted his teeth. “Come on,” he said.
He noticed the color rise in her face, and he wondered if she was angry, or if she was feeling the same flash of awareness rocking through him. He supposed it didn’t matter either way. “Come on,” he said, drawing her hand closer to the opening of the paddock. “There you go, hold your hand flat like that.”
She complied, and he released his hold on her, taking a step back. He did his best to ignore the fact that he could still feel the impression of her skin against his palm.
One of his horses—a gray mare named Blue—walked up to the bars and pressed her nose against Danielle’s outstretched hand. Danielle made a sharp, shocked sound, drew her hand back, then giggled. “Her whiskers are soft.”
“Yeah,” he said, a smile tugging at his lips. “And she is about as gentle as they come, so you don’t have to be afraid of her.”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” Danielle said, sticking her hand back in, letting the horse sniff her.
He didn’t believe that she wasn’t afraid of anything. She was definitely tough. But she was brittle. Like one of those people who might withstand a beating, but if something ever hit a fragile spot, she would shatter entirely.
“Would you like to go riding sometime?” he asked.
She drew her hand back again, her expression... Well, he couldn’t quite read it. There was a softness to it, but also an edge of fear and suspicion.
“I don’t know. Why?”
“You seem to like the horses.”
“I do. But I don’t know how to ride.”
“I can teach you.”
“I don’t know. I have to watch Riley.” She began to withdraw, both from him and from the paddock.
“I’m going to hire somebody to help watch Riley,” he said, making that decision right as the words exited his mouth.
There was that look again. Suspicion. “Why?”
“In case I need you for something that isn’t baby friendly. Which will probably happen. We have over a month ahead of us with you living with me, and one never knows what kinds of situations we might run into. I wasn’t expecting you to come with a baby, and while I agree that it will definitely help make the case that you’re not suitable for me, I also think we’ll need to be able to go out without him.”
She looked very hesitant about that idea. And he could understand why. She clung to that baby like he was a life preserver. Like if she let go of him, she might sink and be in over her head completely.
“And I would get to ride the horses?” she asked, her eyes narrowed, full of suspicion still.
“I said so.”
“Sure. But that doesn’t mean a lot to me, Mr. Grayson,” she said. “I don’t accept people at their word. I like legal documents.”
“Well, I’m not going to draw up a legal document about giving you horse-riding lessons. So you’re going to have to trust me.”
“You want me to trust the sketchy rich dude who put an ad in the paper looking for a fake wife?”
“He’s the devil you made the deal with, Ms. Kelly. I would say it’s in your best interest to trust him.”
“We shake on it at least.”
She stuck her hand out, and he could see she was completely sincere. So he stuck his out in kind, wrapping his fingers around hers, marveling at her delicate bone structure. Feeling guilty now about getting angry over her eating his Pop-Tarts. The woman needed him to hire a gourmet chef too. Needed him to make sure she was getting three meals a day. He wondered how long it had been since she’d eaten regularly. She certainly didn’t have the look of a woman who had recently given birth. There was no extra weight on her to speak of. He wondered how she had survived something so taxing as labor and delivery. But those were questions he was not going to ask. They weren’t his business.
