Page 9 of One Night Rancher

And she only ever did it on nights when she was really exhausted, and good sense had deserted her and...

Whatever... She supposed that she could justify that all she wanted, and the end result would still be the same. It was sort of shitty to think about your best friend like that.

And here she was, thinking about her best friend like that. Again. While he was standing right there. She cleared her throat and aggressively undid the padlock that contained the key, typing the code in with a lot more force than was strictly necessary. And then she pushed the door open and exhaled.

It was beautiful in here. She had come inside one time when she was a kid, and her grandfather had been looking at the property. It had been a pipe dream to buy it then. There had been absolutely no way. There wasn’t enough tourism in town to make it worth it, and they had been financially strapped as it was.

But it had been his dream. And ever since then, it had been hers. Other than the one time they had gone inside to look at the place, she had only ever seen it from the outside looking in, and in pictures. But even now, dusty and in a bit of disrepair, it was the most beautiful place she had ever seen.

The floors were real wood, the drapes might be full of dust and mites and God knew what else, but they were beautiful.

They would just need some cleaning.

A deep rich red, with velvet damask. The wallpaper was lovely, but would definitely need to be replaced with something authentic. It was too water-stained to be restored, she had a feeling, and anyway, it would be less expensive to simply replace it all. But the original front desk was still there, a beautiful oak that needed to be oiled—she knew all about that, because the original bar from the 1800s was still in The Thirsty Mule, and she had ample experience at taking care of it.

There was a big crystal chandelier that hung in the center of the room, and it was the thing that gave her the biggest thrill.

The entire hotel had been outfitted with electricity and indoor plumbing by the 1920s, and it was currently such a glorious mix of all the errors that had come after and the original foundation. She loved each and every layer of history.

Enough that for a moment, it had knocked her out of her Jace haze. But only for a moment.

She turned and realized that he hadn’t followed her inside. And then a moment later, there he was, holding both sleeping bags, the space heater and the bag of groceries that she had brought, so that they would be able to eat something tonight.

“I like it,” he said, looking inside. “Slumber party snacks.”

They weren’t just snacks—she had a whole charcuterie situation in there, but she couldn’t find any wit rolling around in her head right now.

For some reason the wordsslumber partymade her fidgety.

“You know me. I don’t like to be hungry.”

“Who does?”

“Well, no one I assume, but not everybody will launch a feudal war over hunger pangs. But you know I will.”

“That is true.”

“Anyway. This is it. Isn’t it great?”

“It is a lot of space. Just this room is a lot of space. Empty space.”

“I’m not destitute, Jace. I pretty obsessively squirrel money away, actually. Anyway, Grandpa had a life insurance policy, and I’ve got that socked away in savings too. I’ve been living with my belt tightened so that I can get this place. But I have it all planned.”

“Yeah, and you’re secretive too.”

“I haven’t talked to you about it because I knew that you would be... This,” she said, gesturing toward him.

And then he did something that shocked her. He reached out, wrapped his hand around her wrist and made that same gesture but practically up against his chest, all over again. “What is... All this?”

The way that his calloused fingers felt against her wrists sucked all the air out of her body. She felt like she was gasping. She felt like she was losing her mind. And she couldn’t remember what she had been about to say. Because he had touched her, and she hadn’t been expecting it. It wasn’t that they didn’t touch. They did, casually enough on occasion. But there was usually a flow to it, or something that felt slightly mutual. This was combined with her fantasies last night, and the fact that they were in the hotel now...

“You’re a skeptic,” she said quickly, suddenly finding the words and retrieving them from deep inside of her brain. “About everything. And I needed to be able to dream about this. If I wanted skepticism, I would ask for skepticism. But I don’t want skepticism. I wanted to be able to believe that something magical could happen. That I could fulfill this long-held wish that my grandfather had... And you know what, I needed to be able to believe wholly in it and in myself in order to make it happen.”

“You are perilously close to sounding like one of those self-help gurus that I hate. You were practical. You worked hard. It’s hardly manifesting.”

“You know what, I don’t see what harm manifesting does?” She was getting irritated at him, and that felt welcome. Necessary even. “You’re so skeptical about everything—this is my point. There is no way that thinking negative thoughts is actually better than thinking positive ones. And I didn’t need any doubt to creep in. Yes, I did have to do the work, and I acknowledged that. But I also needed to believe in order to stay motivated to do it. And you...” She decided that since he had touched her, touching him was fair game. She put her fingertips on his chest and gave him a slight shove. “You are nothing more than a Debbie Downer.”

Her fingertips felt like they were burning from where they had made contact with his well-muscled chest, and she realized that it was something that had definitely punished her more than it punished him.

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