Page 13 of Hero for the Holidays

“You should come out and do some work on the barn tomorrow,” he said. “You know, all this... If you choose to stay with me, to let me adopt you, it’s going to be yours.”

She blanched. “What am I going to do with the ranch?”

“At least the money that it generates will be yours. I’m doing what I can to make it better for you.”

“Oh.” She looked down. “I have money. In a trust. From my parents.”

“Good. That’s good.” He tried to feel supported by that, and not undermined.

“It’s not a lot or anything. They weren’t rich.”

“Neither mine. But I’m going to leave you something. I promise you that.”

“Don’t talk about that,” she said, suddenly looking upset.

“What?”

“What you’re going to leave me. It’s just... I already have an inheritance. And no parents.”

He felt like he’d been poleaxed. The kid was letting him know, even if not emphatically, that she didn’t want to lose him. His throat went tight. He thought of all the things he had left to say to her. But he just didn’t want to disrupt this. This little pocket of happiness that they’d found. Because there would be time for deeper conversations later. He was going to have to hurt her again. He didn’t want that.

So he was just going to enjoy this.For now, he was just going to enjoy this. He wanted to tell her that he loved her. It was the strangest thing. He couldn’t recall ever saying those words in his life. He was sure he had. To his mother, probably. Sometime before she left.

He never said them to his father. He never said them to his brothers, or even to his sister, which made him feel bad a little bit.

But he wanted to say it to Lila. He was also just terrified of breaking this thing they were building.

And he just needed time. Time healed wounds, and he supposed time was maybe the only thing that built a strong foundation. So he was just going to keep giving it time until he was sure it wasn’t going to crumble.

CHAPTER THREE

FIAWASUPEARLY, and ready to go take on Landry.

Fucking Landry.

She told herself that it was not vanity that had her paying a little more attention to her red curls this morning, or putting on some emerald green eye shadow that she knew highlighted the intensity of her eyes. She also told herself that red lipstick in the morning on a ranch was perfectly appropriate.

She tried never to think about the time that she first wore red lipstick, and where she had left it behind on his body.

She gritted her teeth.

No. She didn’t need to go there. She didn’t know why it was such a struggle sometimes. Why it was so difficult to let all that go.

She felt tangled up in it more than usual right now, and she couldn’t explain that. But maybe it was because it had been years since she’d gone to King’s Crest. And not by accident.

Andmaybeshe wore kind of a short dress over her woolen tights, which was going to make her feel a little bit cold, but she also knew she looked cute.

So whatever.

She drove out to the ranch, and she did feel just a tiny bit bad as she headed toward King territory.

It was funny, to have lived on this ranch her entire life and have deleted this whole portion of the collective from her mind.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d driven up this road, and yet she knew it by heart.

It looked familiar and foreign all at once.

The way that her heart shimmered in her chest was the same.

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