Page 12 of Trails of Temptation

I couldn’t stop imaging what it would have been like to keep kissing her, where it would have gone. My bed felt cold and empty, the house too quiet.

Eventually, I did fall asleep, but it was fitful. My dreams spun from image to image, my time overseas broken up with my visions of Keely dancing at the barbeque a few years back, of the way the sun made her glacier blue eyes shine when it kissed her skin.

I woke up in the early morning before the sun. I didn’t feel like I’d slept at all.

I couldn’t do more than get ready for another day of work, and another night spent alone. I had to dig in my heels on this one. I couldn’t do this to Keely.

I couldn’t do it to myself.

* * *

“How come you didn’t come up to the house this morning?” Grant asked from the other side of the paddock, the railing a barrier between us.

I gingerly walked around the bull I was examining after its long journey to the ranch. It was a mellow thing, thankfully, and didn’t mind me walking a circle around it with a hand grazing over its back and shoulders.

“I was busy,” I replied flatly. I’d been working and living in close quarters with Grant for some time now. I knew he knew something was up, but neither of us were men of many words.

“You good?”

“Fine and dandy.” I smirked, patting the bull on the shoulder before whistling high and loud for the ranch hands to come over and send him out into the lower pasture where he could quarantine for a while, away from the rest of our herd.

Grant, seeing right through my bullshit, no pun intended, leaned against the railing with a smug look on his face. “What’s up with you and Keely Greenway?”

“Nothin’.”

“Bullshit.” He chuckled, his eyes flicking to where young Ben and Archie were now struggling to get the bull to do what they wanted it to do. It bucked, sending Ben flying a few feet backward into the paddock, landing right on his ass. “You wanna tell me why my wife has been in a goddamn fit about the prospect of the two of you getting together, then?”

“I wouldn’t know anything about it.”

Grant eyed me, and for a moment there was a flash of sympathy behind his eyes. “You really think her brother is going to fuck with you if you make a move on her?”

I wrapped my hands around the railing, leaning down and stretching my shoulders as I sighed, “Nobody on this ranch is touching Keely Greenway, especially me.” I looked over my shoulder at Archie, who was doing his best to rein in the situation with the bull. “What happened two summers ago was… Nothing.”

“Sure seemed like something—”

“You know I prefer to be alone,” I said, standing upright. “I mean to keep it that way. I’m sorry Moira won’t be hosting another wedding here anytime soon.”

“You know she’s just looking out for you. She worries about you alone in that house.”

“I’m fine,” I replied with finality. I didn’t feel very fine. After decades of drinking nothing but the occasional beer, I’d wanted nothing more in the last week than to sit on my porch with a bottle of fine whiskey and drink until I couldn’t remember Keely’s name.

“Pete and Keely,” Grant began, squinting into the sun. “What’s up with them?”

“What do you mean?”

I wasn’t sure Grant knew the history of those siblings—half siblings, the town scandal back in the day. But he could tell something was up, and if I was going to continue lying to him and coming up with excuses as to why I wasn’t going to be taking our morning meetings at his house or coming over for dinner anymore, I could at least give him some shred of the truth.

“Keely and Pete share a father. Two different mothers. Keely’s mother was from out of town, young, from what I understand. Rich Greenway had no idea he’d fathered another kid until the girl showed up at his doorstep. He and his wife, Pete’s mom, had been trying to have another kid for years.”

“I didn’t know that,” Grant said on an exhale, his eyes drifting past the paddock to look out over the pasture. “That doesn’t explain his behavior when it comes to her. She’s in her thirties, for Christ’s sake.”

“I know,” I replied, grinding my teeth. “I’m under the impression it’s because they’re the only family they’ve got left. Pete’s parents raised her like their own but the town never forgot about it. Rich was lucky Anna was such a God-fearing, forgiving woman, I’ll say that much. Keely grew up in this town with a brand on her that said she was a bastard. She ran like the hell the day she turned eighteen.” I didn’t blame her for it, either. What I didn’t understand was how a girl with a history like that could grow up to be the angel she was now.

Keely took care of people. She was sunshine on a rainy day, a warm hug and a smile when everything else felt like it was going wrong.

I didn’t deserve her.

But neither did Pete.

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