Page 14 of Cold Case Discovery

Chloe stepped very carefully behind him, but once she looked up from her feet, she stopped short.

“Jack,” she breathed.

She’d seen a lot of pretty views. Sunrise and Bent County were full of them. She’d spent summers enjoying everything the Tetons and Yellowstone had to offer. She’d even gone up to Glacier with a friend from the police academy one summer. All those places had been awe-inspiring, gorgeous. It was amazing what the natural world could be.

But this was... She couldn’t explain it. Not just the natural beauty of mountain and sky and land stretched out as far as the eye could see. There was something like a peaceful settling inside her. Like all her life, she’d been looking for this exact view, and now she’d finally found it.

The sun was sinking in the sky, but it wasn’t sunset just yet. The world had taken on a softer, pinker hue, though. And Jack Hudson stood there, at the edge of this little outcropping, holding hercat, and she knew she’d just...never get over him. Not in a million years.

One-handed, he spread out the blanket until she crouched to help him. Then they both sat down on it. The cat stayed curled in Jack’s lap, definitely not about to give up comfort for the wild world around them.

This time she didn’t resist the urge. She smoothed her hand down his jaw. He didn’t relax, but he did turn to her. And when she wrapped her arms around him, all comfort, he accepted.

And finally,someof that tension left him.

Maybe when all was said and done, it wasn’t the fantastic sex; it wasn’t that he was so handsome or so good. It was this.

She seemed to be the only one who could comfort Jack Hudson. To ease that tension, to release some of those burdens he’d been perfecting carrying for so long.Shehad that power, and for all the ways this relationship was messed up and messy, she couldn’t walk away from that.

When she pulled away, she didn’t pull far. She leaned her head against his shoulder, and he rested his head atop hers while they both looked out at the sun’s slow descent.

JACKDIDN’TREALLYknow what he was doing. In so many different ways. He couldn’t keep getting more and more mixed up with Chloe when he couldn’t offer her anything except complications He didn’t have time to just besittinghere, enjoying the feel of her head on his shoulder. There were things to do—ranch things, sheriff things, family things.

And still he sat, soaking in this moment in one of his favorite places on the ranch. The terms of his parents’ will had been that he inherited the main house. The other kids had their pick of equal parcels of land once they reached eighteen, and Palmer had already staked out his. Grant was looking at one closer to the main road since Dahlia worked in town as the librarian. Mary and Anna seemed content to stay put in the main house and have their portions of land dedicated to the ranch, and Jack hoped they would always. Cash was still deciding what to do next after his cabin had been destroyed.

Jack had been in the main-floor bedroom since his parents had disappeared, and part of him figured he’d stay there till he croaked.

But he’d always secretly wanted to build a little house right here and wake up to that view every morning.

He shouldn’t have brought Chloe here. She’d be part of that fantasy now too. And it was a fantasy neither of them could really afford.

Speaking of fantasies. “They’re not going to listen to me, are they?”

She was quiet for a long while, and he wondered if he’d have to explain. He didn’t want to. He already wished he hadn’t said anything.

“I think you’d be surprised how much they’d listen to you if you were honest with them.”

It made him think of Mary’s little speech about love and protection. He didn’t fully agree with her, but he understood a certain level of detachment in trying to hold everyone together, in trying to raise his siblings, had led to them thinking he was something of a benevolent dictator.

He didn’t mind that. Maybe he even relished it a little bit since it made things easier. But it meant he’d lost the ability to know how to explain to them this was important. That hisprotectiondid come from love, no matter what Mary said.

“Then again, once they think about it, they’ll probably figure out what you’re actually doing.”

“What’s that?”

“Protecting them. It’s what you’re always doing. Everyone knows it. Sometimes you just irritate them enough with it, they can’t see the forest through the trees.”

“And what’s the forest?”

“Love, Jack.”

The word landed hard, right there at the center of his chest. He even tensed against it, and wished he hadn’t because she’d no doubt feel it. But she didn’t lift her head or scoot away. They sat there together. That silence wrapping around him like a cocoon, like a soft place to land.

Like the one place he could let his guard down enough to speak the truth. “I didn’t realize that I still had this ridiculous hope they were still alive.”

She rubbed a hand up and down his back, and he thought maybe he’d survive all this crushing weight if she kept doing that.

“Hope is the human condition,” she said, a little too philosophically for his taste. But she shrugged and kept going. “No matter how many times he proves me wrong, I hopethistime will be the time Ry gets clean, gets his life together. Sometimes I have this awful daydream that my mother comes back and wants to bake Christmas cookies together.”

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