Page 38 of The Last Dance You Saved
Even when things had been tight growing up, even when there’d been the threat of having to sell off the land lingering over our heads, my parents had never argued about it at our kitchen table. We’d always been a family at mealtimes—siblings razzing each other, and Mama and Daddy asking about our day. We’d had all of their attention. Their kids had always been their priority, even over the ranch, and we’d known it.
I finished helping Lauren clean because I felt like I had to after I’d started, but I made quick work of it. I ran upstairs and got all the documents Ryder had sent with me and left them in the office on Adam’s desk before heading back out to the outbuildings.
I found Fallon cleaning water troughs. She’d exchanged her vibrant pink hat and boots for worn tan ones that look like they’d seen better days.
I dove in without asking, filling feedbags and mucking stalls.
“You shouldn’t have to help,” Fallon finally said. “You’re our guest.”
I leaned on the handle of the pitchfork I was using, tipped my hat back, and smiled at her. “The good thing about opening a dude ranch was finding some people actuallywantto experience the work firsthand. You’re charging them to clean stalls for you.”
Fallon’s mouth dropped. “No one really signs up to do the work, do they?”
“Not a lot. And even less now that we’ve built a reputation for having plenty of first-rate outdoor experiences, but you’d be surprised.”
We worked in silence for a few minutes before Fallon asked with an almost breathless hope, “Do you think it would work here? Do you really think we’d be able to keep the ranch if we made it a resort?”
I wanted to tell her yes, just because she seemed so desperate, but instead I told her the truth. “I don’t know. It saved us, but every ranch has a different cost base, and I’d say things are a lot more expensive here in California than where we’re at. It also means you might be able to charge more though. In truth, my brother worked all the numbers and figured out just what we could afford to invest in order to make it profitable. I just did some of the grunt work. And now, I’m pretty hands-off as I spend most of my time running the family bar.”
Fallon snorted. “Is that how you met Dad? Because you’re both in the bar business?”
“Is he? I mean, I know he owns The Fortress, but I guess I don’t know much else about his business.”
“You knew enough to be in the penthouse Sunday night. I saw you leave.”
She was staring at me, and I met her gaze with my own, trying not to blush, wondering what I’d looked like storming out with my tail between my legs and fury trailing behind me.
“I didn’t know you saw me.”
“I wasn’t sure it was you yesterday, and I didn’t get why Dad was freaking out. But this morning, when I saw him next to you at the corral, it clicked. Did you have a fight before I got there?”
Definitely not fighting, but I willed myself not to blush. As I teased Gemma all the time, there was nothing wrong with sex, engaging in it, enjoying it. Nothing wrong with talking about it, but not with a teenager who wasn’t mine.
“No. We’d just started to get to know each other, and when you showed up, he wanted you to be his focus.” Her eyes went wide. “Then, there was a misunderstanding when he saw me the next day.”
“Dad can be cold and hard at times, but I’ve never seen him as icy as he was with you when we got here, so I thought you’d fought. But then this morning…” She trailed off, and it was her turn to be embarrassed. Her cheeks, already flushed from working hard in a barn that was nearing eighty degrees, turned even more heated. “He seemed to like you.”
“It’s complicated,” I told her.
“I’ve never seen Dad with anyone,” she said with a careless shrug, turning back to her task. “I actually thought maybe his heart was made of stone.”
That hit me solid in the gut. Not only the fact he’d never brought another woman around her but that she wasn’t sure he could love at all. Feel anything. I’d been on the receiving end of multiple emotions with Rafe. Passion. Anger. Disappointment. Even charm and laughter.
“I can see he loves you,” I said softly.
She looked up and then away. “Yeah. It’s easy to pretend when you only see someone for a few days here and there.”
“I don’t think it’s a pretense.”
She shrugged. “If he really loved me, he’d do whatever he could to let me stay here. He wouldn’t threaten to sell my home out from under my feet. What am I supposed to do with Daisy if I have to move to the Hurly house? Or worse, if I have to go live with him in Las Vegas?” She threw a hand toward the buckskin’s stall. “He wants to sell all the horses. I can’t lose her too...” her voice cracked, but she caught herself. Anger took over, pushing away the threat of tears. “And all my friends are here. Everything I love is right here in Rivers. The last thing I want is to go live in some cold penthouse in a casino and go to school with a thousand other kids whose parents work in Sin City.”
I didn’t miss the fact she’d said everything she loved was here, but that her dad didn’t live in Rivers. And I felt sorry for Rafe all over again, for all of them, but especially this girl who’d been raised in the middle of some strange-ass dynamic that included an uncle as a father and a dad as a weekend-warrior parent.
It wasn’t my place to fix any of it. I was here for a handful of days, and then I’d be gone, but I found myself wanting to. I wanted to leave them in better shape than I’d found them. Wanted to soothe and heal and somehow see them wind up as a family again.
I had the means in my hands of giving them some of what they needed to turn their lives around. I could hand over the jewels without telling the insurance company, or even my family, that I’d done it. If anyone ever asked about the costume jewelry again, I could just say I’d sent it off to Goodwill with the rest of Great-grandma Carolyn’s movie props. Someone might be disappointed, but they’d never miss it. The money could help the Harringtons turn things around. It would give this girl what she said she wanted most. But I had this uneasy feeling that until I learned more, I shouldn’t make any rash decisions. And the truth was, handing over the jewels wouldn’t give Fallon what she really needed, which was to feel loved and wanted. She needed a place in the family that wasn’t the crack breaking it apart but the one welding it together.
Chapter Fourteen
