Maisey Yates – Snowed in with the Cowboy (страница 3)
If you went bold, and you went crazy, and laughable, then you knew that you were never going to get your way at all.
She’d heard it said that you should shoot for the moon, so that even if you missed you landed among the stars.
As far as Chloe was concerned, it was better to fantasize about the moon, knowing there was no way in the world you could jump that high, than try to jump over a small fence and land on your face. Or something. It was maybe a clumsy metaphor. But it made enough sense to her.
“I just need to make sure the horses are squared away. I know that Jacob Dalton is going to do a decent job taking care of them, but I want everything in order.”
“They’re horses,” Savannah said, laughing. “Not children.”
“Well, they’re all I have,” she pointed out.
Savannah cringed. “I didn’t mean to say it like that or make it seem like I thought they didn’t matter.”
“I didn’t think you were,” Chloe said, gently.
Savannah was so sweet, and such a wonderful addition to Jackson’s life. When he had unexpectedly found out he was a father, and had ended up raising his infant daughter on his own, he’d hired Savannah as a live-in nanny, and the two of them had fallen in love. As far as Chloe was concerned it was something out of a fairy tale. The kind she would have said didn’t exist if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes.
“Well, we’ll see you up there then. Calder, Lauren and the girls are already on the road. He didn’t have any confidence in their ability to get there quickly. Apparently there will be a lot of stopping. Shopping, views and bathrooms.”
Chloe laughed. “I’ll see you there.”
Jackson came out of the house then, cradling his daughter, Lily, in his arms. He shifted the little girl and waved. Lily copied him, waving a chubby hand until he set her in the car and began to buckle her into her car seat.
Chloe stood and watched as they drove off of the ranch property and headed down the highway.
She took a deep breath, trying to do something to ease the strange heaviness that she felt in her chest. She didn’t know why her more melancholy Christmas feelings were surfacing. Well, she wasn’t sure why particularly this year more than any other year. Unless she was really so small and petty that it was about everyone being paired off in a way that she wasn’t.
She hoped she wasn’t that small and petty. She really did.
She took a fortifying breath and turned, heading toward the barn, where the horses were. The horses were her pride and joy, the ultimate gift that her stepfather had given to her. A love of horses, and a knowledge of how to handle them. Something she never would have had if Jim Reid had never come into her life.
He had been imperfect, and she knew that. He was gruff, and it was difficult for him to show emotion. But she had always felt like he showed it with what he had. By giving out responsibility on the ranch that he loved, and entrusting his children, his sons and his stepdaughter, with the care of it.
She’d found her purpose on this ranch. Her calling.
Sure, it wasn’t the most lucrative career, giving riding lessons—mostly to children—but it was rewarding, and the ranch was set up in such a way that it was possible for all of the siblings to live there if they wanted to.
Of course, Calder had moved into his wife’s house, their brood of children too large for the cabin he once lived in.
And really, Chloe was supposed to be moving into his old place on the property so that she didn’t have to be in the main house with Tanner, who had that place simply because he was the oldest. But she just... Hadn’t. She had stayed, because while coexisting with Tanner wasn’t comfortable per se it was also...
She just liked to be near him. And as pathetic as that was, it was also undeniable.
She went over the detailed list of instructions that she was leaving behind for Jacob. She had already walked him around the place and given him a good look at the facility, but she had also made sure to leave as much direction behind as possible.
He would be taking care of the horses, but also the cattle that lived on the ranch. It was a rare and strange thing for the entire family to leave the property. In fact, they had never done it. Not in all the time that Chloe had lived there. It was a big thing. A marker of the changes that had occurred recently. And she wondered if perhaps that was partly why she was feeling a little bit strange.
Like things were moving faster than usual. Like it was all getting away from her, with everyone moving forward, and her standing still.
Maybe not.
She sighed heavily. She needed some time to clear her head. She ignored the gathering clouds in the sky and decided to get her horse out of her stall. All of these strange emotions were nothing that a ride through the countryside wouldn’t fix.
She would do that and then she would head up and be as festive as anyone could possibly ask her to be.
And hopefully no one would realize that she was grappling with any kind of weird emotion.
Least of all the stepbrother who was causing them.
* * *
WHEN TANNER SAW that Chloe’s car was still parked in front of the ranch house he swore. He was hoping that Chloe would have already taken off. Hours ago, preferably, because if his much younger stepsister had, then none of this would be his problem. But he had just gotten a call from his brother Calder, who was already at the cabin a couple of hours away, and he’d informed him that the roads were ice covered. There was no way that Chloe was going to get up there in her little car.
And that meant that she had to ride with Tanner.
Of course, he lived with her, it wasn’t like he wasn’t exposed to her all the time. But that didn’t seem to help with the inappropriate attraction to her he’d been dealing with since she was about eighteen, and way too young for him to be looking at her that way.
He didn’t know when it had started, not exactly. It wasn’t as if he’d been struck with lightning one moment, but somehow she had gone from being something not quite a sister, but certainly not eligible, to being...a woman.
No. A lightning strike would have been easier.
He’d have been able to go back to the scene of that crime and do something about it. He’d have been able to get to the damn root of it all and tear it out, if it had been that simple.
It hadn’t been a moment. It had been a subtle build. Something about the way the light would catch her short, curly dark hair sometimes. Or a mischievous grin she would give him.
The way that her laugh rolled through his body and landed with that kind of exhilarating feel that he got when he rode horses and a strong breeze came through and took his breath away.
He’d done his best to ignore it. He really had. And then, one day she had bent over and he had looked. He had seen the way that her jeans cupped her perfectly rounded ass, and he hadn’t ever been able to lie to himself again about what those breathless moments between them were.
For years it had been like this, and over the past few months it had been even worse. A damned torturous slog. Like the buildup of a dam about full to bursting.
Being in an enclosed truck cab with her for the next couple of hours did not sound good. It sounded like it might put a crack in the dam, and that was something he couldn’t afford.
The last thing he needed to do was breathe the same air that Chloe was breathing, before he had gotten his libido under control. That was the real issue with why it had been getting so bad lately, he was sure.
He had
Well, he could remember. It was just that it didn’t do anything for him. He had tried. He had tried in the dead of night to imagine his last partner, a woman named Alex who worked at the tattoo parlor down in Tolowa.
She had a lot of ink, and piercings in interesting places.
She was so different from Chloe. And as much as it pained him to admit it, that had been the primary attraction to most women he’d been with over the past few years.
Not Chloe.
Alex fit that bill, and nicely. And he’d had a good time with her when they’d been together. But now?
The memory did absolutely nothing for him. For some reason, imagining her thick eyeliner and pouty lips didn’t fire his blood at all. No, it was fresh-faced Chloe that kept imprinting herself on his mind. And he didn’t like it at all.
A man’s life had cornerstones. And his had a few. This ranch. His brothers.
Chloe.
Chloe had been the key to him deciding that the ranch mattered. Seeing it through her eyes had been a revelation, and it had stirred something in him he hadn’t imagined was there. Teaching her to ride, and how to perform chores around the property, had breathed new life into all of it.