Page 76 of Tormented Hearts

Surely Sinead was being silly, worrying about Hawk being away from the ranch.

She moved around the room they’d shared for days while he healed and she rested. She tidied up. She made the bed. She took a long, hot shower, luxuriating in the feel of being clean and the sweet, familiar smell of her shampoo.

After that…she didn’t have a plan.

She wasn’t feeling up to being around people, so she drew a chair up to the window and watched the world go on as she tried to come to terms with all that had happened.

She wasn’t a person to sit around, so her idleness didn’t last very long. She cast a glower at her laptop. Winthrop Holdings could go on without her input for months, but she just knew her inbox was overflowing with emails.

She grabbed her laptop and sat on the bed, propped up by pillows, and opened her email.

As soon as she saw the astronomical number of unread messages, she groaned. Her dismay grew after seeing dozens of messages from her lawyers still untangling her father’s estate.

She scrolled past most of it, scanning with a practiced eye for any that took precedence.

One subject line stopped her cold.

Wyoming Plot Survey—Ready for Pickup.

Before the treasure hunt. Before the mercenaries. Before Hawk.

She clamped off the memories that flooded in, especially the image of him hitting the ground, bleeding.

At the time, she’d only wanted to know exactly where her family’s property began and ended before she started exploring it. It had seemed like the sensible thing to do.

Now it might be the piece that finally helped them make sense of the coordinates—and if it included that mine.

Her pulse quickened.

If they were going back out there, she was going armed with more knowledge. She’d pull her weight beside Hawk, watch his back the way he watched hers.

It struck her, sitting there in the quiet of their room, how wild it was that she was even thinking this way. She’d spent a lifetime feeling alone. She’d never been part of a team before, and now she couldn’t imagine not having Hawk’s back.

Without ever knowing what she was getting into when she ventured into the Wyoming wilderness with him, they’d become a team of two.

She got up, pulled on real clothes instead of pajamas for the first time in days, and headed out into the ranch in search of a ride to the municipal office.

She found Shiloh near the barn, and the woman’s face lit with easy warmth the second she spotted her.

“Heading somewhere?”

“The municipal office, if I can find a ride. Some paperwork I requested is ready for pickup.”

Shiloh hesitated, searching Sinead’s face for a long beat. Finally, she nodded. “I’ll take you. Give me a minute to grab my keys.”

They settled into Shiloh’s SUV a few minutes later and rolled down the long ranch road.

“Thanks for driving me. I’m sorry to be a bother.”

She threw her a gentle smile. “You’re not a bother.”

“Of course you’d say that. I’m a client. The client’s always right.”

Shiloh laughed, shaking her head. Blonde hair swished over her shoulder in a heavy wave. “That’s not even close to true. You’re not a client to us anymore, Sinead. You’re—you’re one of us. We all love you. You were so strong when Hawk got shot. I would have been a complete puddle if that had been Oaks.”

“You would do whatever needed doing.” Sinead’s voice came out quiet, and she folded her fingers in her lap, trying to erase the feel of Hawk’s frigid skin. “You’d do anything for Oaks, even keep it together when you can’t.”

“I would.” Her voice caught, and she blinked hard at the road ahead. “Sorry. Ignore me.”