Page 5 of Roads Behind Us
I thought I loved Lincoln once upon a time. That had to count for something. And after we’d dug Daddy’s company out of its hole and sold all the equipment to pay off debts, I’d tried to make it work. I tried my hardest to be the wife my husband had thought he wanted.
It took way too long for me to realize I’d never be that woman, and finally, after ten years, I walked away. Lincoln and his family had been paid back in full, plus I’d left him some cash to ease his ego.
My ex was another reason I had been so surprised when Brand offered me a job. Lincoln hadn’t wanted me to do anything besides waitress or stay home and clean, so technically, when I met Brand, I hadn’t been on a build site since I was nineteen and didn’t exactly have the credentials he’d been looking for.
I guess Brand had seen something in me. He must have since he paid for me to get recertified in a handful of skills I needed to freshen up, and then he set me loose. He watched me work, watched how I interacted with the rest of the crew, and six months later, he’d titled me his number one, his foreman. Two of the leads I’d met when I first started had threatened to quit because of my promotion, but Brand showed them the door. He didn’t care that I was a woman. He wouldn’t have cared if I was from Venus. He only cared that I did the job right.
“Forewoman?” I nodded to myself in the rearview. “Yeah, I like that better.”
How was it possible that Brand was so kind and accepting, but his older brother Bax, who incidentally, I’d be living with for who knew how long, was a snarky pain in the ass?
Technically, I wouldn’t be living with him because Brand had hurried to finish and set up the smallest of the new cabins for me on his family’s property. I’d never been there before, but I’d seen the blueprints when Brand had his architect draft them, so I knew the cabins were less than a mile from the main house where Bax and his daughter lived.
I wasn’t all that excited to see Bax every day until Brand finished dealing with the bullshit court case he’d been plagued with back in Sheridan, but I was a little excited to get to know Brand’s niece. When I met her on a Zoom call last week, Athena reminded me of myself when I was her age.
Too bad her dad was an annoying, poker-losing fuck twaddle. A sexy fuck twaddle, but still. I’d only met him the one time, when I demolished his ass in a game of Texas Hold ’Em, but he was pretty drunk and, to be fair, no one beat me at Texas Hold ’Em. I’d become too good at reading men’s faces. They all thought they hid their tells so well, but excitement about winning anything, including poker and women, was so goddamn evident. It was like a bright, flashing red light every single time.
Bax had a somewhat interesting tell; he licked and then bit his bottom lip when he had a good hand, and when he didn’t, he pursed those lips and swallowed. I’d had a hard time looking at anything besides his neck muscles flexing, Adam’s apple bobbing.
Still to this day, my reaction to the tall, annoyingly handsome single dad pissed me off.
But none of that mattered. He’d never apologized to me for the “sweet little ass” comment, and two years later, it still pinched under my skin, like a splinter you could see but couldn’t remove.
Back then, I knew Bax had been struggling with the loss of his wife, and it was the only reason the words “I’m sorry” had passed my lips.
Despite the playboy air he’d tried to give off the night we met, I understood where he’d been emotionally. I saw a lot of my own dad in him, the aura of his loss of love and direction. When Mama died, Daddy had tried to figure out how to raise a thirteen-year-old on his own at first, but he’d been just as adrift. He’d lost the love of his life. Nowhere to go from there.
But Bax still tanked every hand we’d played at his brother’s house that night. It wasn’t in me to give up the goods. And then Brand had taken a very drunk Bax to pass out in his guest room, and I hadn’t seen Bax Lee again till a week ago on my computer screen, when Brand begged me to make the trek to Wisper to finish all the projects he’d committed Lee Construction to.
Bax had looked different somehow on that laptop screen. Granted, I didn’t know him well, apart from what his brother had told me, but he seemed… tamer—quieter—than he had the night I’d beat him at poker. The same night I’d had a hard time keeping my cards straight because the color of Bax’s eyes had mesmerized me and the shine on his lip left there by his tongue had me sawing my legs together beneath Brand’s kitchen table.
Whatever had changed for Bax Lee or the wetness level of his full lip, it didn’t really matter. For the next couple weeks, he was nothing more to me than a landlord and my boss’s older brother. Brand had appointed me project lead for all the builds on his family’s property; he expected excellence and efficiency, and I intended to do the job justice. Bax couldn’t help because the idiot had gotten his leg broken by a cow. Or a bull? Whatever. If it went “moo” and shit where it ate, it was a cow.
My phone rang. Speak of the devil.
“What’s up, boss? You make it home yet?”
“Yeah, been home for an hour or so,” Brand said. He sounded exhausted.
Tapping the speaker button, I set the phone on my dash.
“Are you close to Wisper yet?”
“An hour out, I think,” I said. “I’m glad you called. I just wanna reiterate that I’m not goin’ to your brother’s place to be his nursemaid. You know that, right? It’s not my job.”
“And I wouldn’t ask it of you,” Brand assured me. “All I need you to do is supervise the crew finishin’ the houses. They shouldn’t need too much of your energy. All three houses are almost done. What I really need you to do is use your motivational services to whip the cabin crew into shape. If those don’t get finished before the snow hits, Bax and Rye’s whole business plan might go up in smoke.”
I snorted. Right. Me, motivational?
“You know what I mean.”
“I do,” I said, “and it’ll be done.”
“Thanks. I better go. I need to unpack and grab a shower. The lawyers estimate that the case will take two or three weeks. We’re meetin’ tomorrow to go over everything. They want me to settle with this guy, but I’m not sure I can do that. To me, a settlement means admittin’ fault, but it wasn’t our damn fault.”
“Okay,” I said, “but Brand, listen to the lawyers. At least hear them out, and then you do what’s best for you and your company. To hell with everyone else.”
“I will. Thanks, Sweetie, and listen, go easy on Bax. I know the two of you didn’t exactly hit it off when you met, but he’s been through a lot. You’re gonna be seein’ a lot of him. Might as well make the best of it. And Athena will be there. She’s a great kid. She’ll have you bustin’ a gut in no time, but be careful where you step. She has a habit of adoptin’ abandoned animals and they crap everywhere.”
