Page 24 of Her Saltwater Cowboy

Willow’s breath caught. Of all the things he could’ve said … “I think I feel that way every day.”

He turned to look at her then, vulnerability in his eyes. “I’m up before dawn most mornings. I know every line of the ranch’s irrigation map, the fenceposts that lean when the wind shifts from the north, which hay bales are best for which horses. I’m the guy folks come to when something’s broken, or busted, or in need of fixing, but still?—”

“You’re not the foreman,” she finished for him.

Chance’s mouth was grim. “Don’t care about that.”

“But?”

“Rafael shows up, and Ace throws him a welcome party and hands him a title. I’ve been here for years. And somehow, I’m still just … here.”

“You want to know your place.”

“Didn’t say that.” His voice turned gruff.

“You didn’t have to.”

A silence stretched between them. The sun pushed a little higher from the east, painting the edges of the sea in gold. Somewhere in the distance a gull called out once, then again.

“I’m not just a hand. I’m not the boss. I’m not the new blood or the old guard. I’m just one of the sons who left.” Chance kept his gaze out to sea. “And has never been forgiven for it.”

Willow stood still, feeling the heat radiating from him. Her voice was quiet, steady, though she didn’t know what to fully make of what he’d just confessed. “Maybe they don’t know what to call you because you don’t know either.”

He turned his head slowly toward her, droplets of water cascading down his forehead. For a moment, neither of them moved.

“You trying to say something, Willow?”

She shrugged, though her throat tightened. “I’m just saying maybe what matters isn’t what they call you. It’s what you answer to.”

He watched her, as if weighing her words against some unspoken ache.

Then, slowly, he stepped around to stand in front of her. His bare toes bumped hers, and when he stopped, he stood so close she could see a faint bruise forming beneath his jaw where he must’ve caught an elbow or the corner of a metal tray in the rush to escape last night’s storm.

“You know what I’d like to be called?” His voice turned low and rough like gravel.

Willow’s heart pounded. “What?”

He leveled his gaze on her, but made no move forward. He didn’t touch her, but the tension between them made her think, for just an instant, that he wanted to.

“Trusted.”

The word landed like a soft knock on a heavy wooden door. Willow searched his face. Not because she didn’t believe him, but because she did—and it undid something inside her.

She wanted to reach for his hand, to let her fingertips say what her voice couldn’t. But she knew her place. He was the boss’s son, and though she might give him grief in her kitchen, tell him not to keep slamming her fridge door, she was not about to cross the unmistakable, invisible line between them.

Instead, she said something she felt down deep. “You already are, Chance. I know it.”

He ran a hand across his chin, but he didn’t step back.

Neither did she.

The silence between them landed differently now, like the moment right before dawn breaks over a foggy hill, when you’re not sure if the sun is coming, but you think it could.

A salty breeze stirred the air between them, warmer than when she had arrived. The burdens she’d brought with her this morning seemed lighter too.

* * *

The glass doors of the Topa Mountain Care Home needed cleaning. Always her first thought each time she pushed her way into the lobby of the small facility.

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