Page 24 of The Fugitive Cowboy's Baby
She looked up from her cards. “What do you mean,a little bit Houston?”
He shrugged. “Just the way it’s put together, decorated and all that. From the outside, I expected a rustic sort of cabin. But in here, it looks pretty modern for a cabin on a ranch, don’t you think?”
She glanced around her own place as though seeing it for the first time. “I guess so,” she concluded. “I never really thought of ‘Houston’ as a decorating style, but I agree it’s more modern than you’d expect in a place like this. I guess… I just like it.”
“Homesick for Houston?” He cocked his head and hit her with a more straightforward question. “What made you decide to leave the city anyway?”
Her eyes went back to her cards, which Cole felt was more a way for her to avoid eye contact than her really needing to see her hand. “My uncle left me a ranch to run, so I came here to run it.”
“Calling your bluff on that one,” Cole said. “You could have sold it off. Your uncle can’t force you to run the place. You could have given it to one of your brothers if you wanted, and they could have run it. There were so many ways to get out of this obligation. As far as I know, you didn’t even try. I’m curious why you gave up Houston for a place like this.”
Her smile dropped as she considered his question again. It was a shame, but he realized this meant he was about to hear a much more honest answer from her. “It was strange,” she said in a quiet voice. “Houston had everything I ever wanted. It was the big city with the perfect job, the perfect apartment, and perfect friends. I should have been so happy there. But I wasn’t.” Her eyes found him for a second and dropped back down to her cards again. “I never felt like I belonged there. Nothing came naturally to me. I didn’t really fit in.”
“So you came back home.” Another quick glance told him he’d gotten it right.
“I hadn’t planned to stay,” she admitted. “But my uncle left the ranch to me, and my boss just happened to be a jerk right after,and so I quit my job. I was sure I could do this instead. I mean, I was raised here, wasn’t I? We visited Uncle Roy all the time, and he loved showing the ranch off to me. I loved it here. I think that’s part of why he left it to me. He thought I’d feel at home here.”
The way she worded that was strange, so Cole pressed her. “And was he right?”
Kat frowned and laid her cards face down on the table. “No. I think I lost something while I was in Houston. I forgot how to belong here, too. The town seemed so different to me, even though I knew where everything was. Even talking to my brothers, I felt like a visiting stranger. It… didn’t feel like coming home at all.”
Cole’s heart sank when he heard that. All he could think about was how he may have contributed to that feeling of being a stranger in her own hometown. He hadn’t thought about how his words might have affected her. He’d only thought about how keeping her at a distance would inevitably protect both of them. Now, there was a less than zero percent chance he felt differently. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “I think you fit in beautifully.”
She didn’t respond verbally, but her expression, her wide eyes and slightly parted lips, let him know he was making an impact.
“Look,” he went on without waiting. “I may not know a lot about the hospitality industry, or social media, or marketing, or whatever else it is you’re trying to do here. But I do know a bit about ranching. My father was a rancher, and he taught me everything he knew. I’ve been paying attention to your progress.” He paused, realizing how he was coming across. “Not in a creepy way, I swear.”
She laughed at that, and he was glad she was in a place where she could laugh. It meant she could be cheered up, if only he could find the right words to say in the right order.
“The truth is, I’m impressed with how quickly you’re learning,” he said. “You work hard, and you have some amazing ideas. I may not understand them, and they may be the opposite of what I’ve been taught about ranching. But I can see how they might bring in more people, more revenue. You’ve been moving so fast, bringing your vision to life.” He paused and glanced across the table to see her watching him, examining his face for any sincerity. He didn’t even try to hide his feelings because, for once, he meant every word he had spoken. He was sincere as he concluded, too. “I can see why your uncle chose you, over everyone else, to revive his ranch.”
She was clearly touched but doubtful. “But you hardly even know me.”
He shrugged. “I feel like I’ve known you my whole life. You’re an open book, kitten.”
At first, she looked pleasantly overwhelmed, and then she was skeptical again. When she finally responded, he realized he wasn’t wrong about her doubt. What he was wrong about was what she was doubtful about. “So, why areyouclosed and chained and locked in a safe?”
He knit his brow, unsure how to respond to that. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know anything about you. This is the first time I’ve heard that your father was a rancher. So how long did you live on a ranch?”
She wanted to know about his past, and that was usually a sign that it was well past time to move on.
CHAPTER 12
KAT
“Ithink I’m getting much better at poker,” Kat said, eyeballing the sweat that had just broken out on Cole’s brow and the way the hand holding his cards had started to tremble. “I can see your tells.”
From across the table, Cole forced a laugh. “Don’t get too cocky, kitten. My hand is looking better than you think.”
“I’m not talking about your hand,” Kat said, grinning. “I’m talking about the fact that you don’t want to think about your past. There’s something you don’t want to tell me, right? Why don’t you just skip that part and tell me the rest? Or is it all traumatic? Is the ranch you grew up on a bad memory? I won’t make you talk about it if it’s a bad memory.”
Cole laid down his cards and shook his head. “It’s not a bad memory. On the contrary?—”
“Then tell me about it.” She smiled to show him she wasn’t going to pry further than he was willing to go. “But only the good parts.” Kat was new at a lot of things, but reading people was not one of them. She could tell all this talk was making him deeplyuncomfortable. And she could tell that, if she pried too much, he would abandon more than just the conversation.
If she was right about nothing else, Kat knew one thing for sure. Cole was a man always on the edge of disappearing. He was like a wild animal, easily spooked, and the last thing she wanted to do was spook him. So, like she would with any wild animal, she waited quietly for him to move first.
