Page 28 of Last Chance for Her Rancher Boss

It was a decent drive to get to the actual town of Fordswell from the ranch, and Meg was anxious the entire way. She tried to pass it off as motion sickness from sitting in the passenger’s seat but wasn’t very successful in deluding herself. Add in the fact that Nash wasn’t the talkative sort and most of the drive being filled with companionable silence, it gave her far too much time to overthink. Despite coming all the way back to Wyoming, coming back to the Fordswell area of all places, she hadn’t yet visited the old town that she grew up in. Frankly, she’d been intent on avoiding it for as long as humanly possible.

It was inconvenient to get there, for one thing, a half-hour drive made slower because of the unkept country roads. Not to mention she had everything she could possibly need at Nash’s ranch. But if they were going to renovate and decorate the barn and empty buildings on the hill, they were going to need supplies that weren’t just lying around the place. They had hammers and nails aplenty and tools for days, but they needed paint if they were going to make it all look brand new. A lot of paint. A lot of cleaning products, too.

The list they’d compiled had Meg worried that maybe the task really was too big to take on. Was Nash only going along with it because he didn’t want to back out now? Like some weird sort of macho pride thing? Or was it really a good idea that was going to be worth all this work? Having slept on it, the fever of the fresh idea dying down, doubts were starting to worm themselves in. It wasn’therranch. She really didn’t need to be this invested in it. She was literally just staying here tolookat the place, to pass judgment on whether it was worth buying or not. Constructing a last-ditch plan to save the place wasn’t part of her job description. Quite the opposite, really.

And it wasn’t like her and Nash were close, not anymore. Though Meg wasn’t sure if that was even true, because the last couple of days there’d been a flicker of something old coming back to life. Something familiar and warm. Meg wanted to hang onto the feeling with all of her strength. So here she was, driving back to a place she thought she’d never go back to, just to buy some paint and curtains.

Eventually the trees and pastures thinned out, slowly replaced by houses and infrastructure that were jammed closer together the further in they drove. The town had expanded in the last decade, not a whole lot, but enough that Meg could spend the time marveling at the changes. There was a new bus stop in the outer suburbs and street lights now, too. Though the pothole that had been on the corner of Marsh and Wayside Street was still there, like an open wound. Some things never change…

“You’re being quiet,” Nash said as she stared out the window, thinking about bus stops and potholes. He was looking sideways at her. Meg pretended not to notice his scrutiny.

“Thought I’d give you a break from my yammering,” she said.

“This is way more unsettling than any yammering. When you’re not saying every thought that comes through your head, it means the thoughts aren’t good ones.”

She tore her gaze away from the window, looking at Nash, who was still side-eyeing her in between looking at the road.

“What makes you think I’m not havinggreatthoughts? I could be having the best thoughts ever.”

“Call it a hunch. Besides, from what I’ve gathered, it’s not like you come back here on the regular.”

“I visit Mom and Dad.”

“Yeah? When was the last time you did that?”

Meg contemplated not answering, but Nash wasn’t going to let her get away with that.

“Hmm. Four years? Or maybe, like, three.”

To his credit, Nash kept any sort of smug look off his face.

“Stop stressing yourself out,” he said, making a turn towards the main street. “It’s not like you’re coming here alone. You can even hold my hand if you want to.”

He said it with a smile, making it a joke, and Meg snorted, brushing off the barb. At the same time, she brushed off the feeling that holding Nash’s hand really would make the world a better place.

While the houses around town had multiplied, the suburbs shifting into something slightly more modern (even with thepotholes), the main street was still exactly the same. It felt like walking backwards in time. Meg felt like she was sixteen again, walking to the bus stop before or after school, vision focused on the cracks in the sidewalk. When Nash parked the truck and they made their way down the block to the hardware store, it was like déjà vu on steroids. Meg jumped a little bit when Nash reached out and touched her shoulder with light fingers.

“Sorry,” he said. “I really will hold your hand if you want. You okay?”

It started off as a joke again, but Nash’s voice turned more serious with every word. Meg shrugged but didn’t bother faking a smile. What would be the point?

“I’m not sure. I shouldn’t be so anxious to be back. It’s stupid.”

Nash offered a shrug of his own. “It was like a different life, being a teenager. The last time you were living here, you were stressed out of your mind, like, all the time. You had no control over anything. Life was hard. It’s not all that surprising that you’re anxious about being back. I don’t blame you for it. Besides, anxiety never makes much sense anyway. People get anxious about all sorts of weird stuff. So try not to feel bad about it. Okay?”

Meg stopped and looked up at Nash with her eyebrows raised. He came to a halt beside her.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re very philosophical in your old age, you know that?”

“Old age…” he huffed.

“You have gray in your hair.”

“I do not,” he said, on the verge of pouting while walking off. Meg knew he was fighting off the urge to reach up and touch his hair.

“Do you look at the back of your head very often?” she said. “Because I can see at least three gray hairs from this angle.”

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