This Time Around Read online

  “Got it.” I pulled out a twenty and handed it to him before sliding out of the car. He met me at the trunk, pulling out two of my suitcases while thanking me for the tip. I grabbed two more duffel bags.

  I packed as light as I could, but three months was a long time, and who knew what could happen. Plus, I grabbed every personal item I could find, because hell if I was going to give Camilla the belief she had a right to anything of mine anymore.

  As he slammed the trunk closed, I shook his hand and wished him well, and when he was back in his car, I spun on my heels, taking in the front porch on the storybook farmhouse.

  “Now what in the hell do I do?” I scrubbed my hand down my face again. The wig caught on my ear and I tore it off along with the hat.

  I used it for security at the airports and in public, but now there wasn’t a need.

  Bending down, I tucked both items into a pocket and as I stood back up, a wooden door slammed closed.

  A woman, much younger than I expected for some reason, walked across the front porch and paused at the top of a set of stairs.

  Her long dark hair billowed in the wind, blowing around her shoulders, creating her own personal shawl as we stared at each other.

  She didn’t look thrilled, but I was Cooper Hawke. I was used to women pretending to be immune to me, Camilla being the perfect case and point.

  There was something about this woman’s hesitance to welcome me that made me pause.

  “Hello,” I finally said when our silence stretched well past awkward. “I’m Cooper. Are you Miss Marx?”

  The name Max gave me of his niece escaped me.

  Her body jolted and she stepped forward. “Splendid. Marx was my maiden name.” She walked down the stairs. She moved with the grace of a woman comfortable in her own skin, a trim woman who clearly took care of herself, based on the slender thighs, and the slight curve of hips obvious in her skin-tight jeans that were tucked into worn, tan cowboy boots.

  I couldn’t hold back a grin. A storybook cowgirl perfectly fit the home.

  And something around me settled. Something released, like the breeze of the Midwest actually had the ability to blow away all my feelings of stress and anger and betrayal.

  I shook off the strange sensation. She was married, based on the diamond on her ring finger.

  I flipped through my conversations with Max but couldn’t recall him mentioning she was married. But who knows? I’d been so baffled at the idea of coming here I probably missed it.

  As she walked closer, it was her eyes that pulled me in. They lacked warmth. There was nothing.

  They weren’t cold or angry. The rich, black pools were void of absolutely anything.

  Much like my own had appeared to me in my mirror’s reflection since I walked out on Camilla.

  “Rebecca Splendid.” She held out her hand as she reached me. “Nice to meet you, Cooper.”

  “Thanks for having me.” I extended my hand, surprised by not only her warmth but the firmness in her handshake. It was so unlike all the women I spent time around who daintily held out their slim and faux-tanned fingers, expecting brushes of lips against them or a gentle wiggle. “I appreciate you letting me hide out here.”

  “Yes, well…” her eyes drifted off to the left before returning to me. “I’m pleased you can be here.”

  She said it sweetly. I didn’t believe her for a second.

  I dropped her hand and grabbed two handles of my luggage, my duffel bags already slung over my shoulders. “So, is there somewhere I can put these?”

  I moved to head toward the house in front of me, not even thinking before now that for next three months this woman and I were expected to live together, when she stepped in front of me, abruptly blocking my way.

  “There’s a guesthouse. It’s out back. I’ve prepared it for you.”

  “Oh.” My eyes jumped to the small little home and back to her. “Of course.”

  Because she was married. Obviously, I wasn’t going to be living in their home, and while a small burst of disappointment pinged in my chest at the thought of not living in the beautiful home, the guesthouse was a much better idea.

  Privacy. It was exactly what I needed and what I hadn’t had in months. “Great. Thank you.”

  Three

  Rebecca

  Cooper looked ridiculous with four suitcases, two of them flung over his shoulders and two in his hands trailing behind him on wheels.

  For a moment, I was impressed. This was a man, from what I’d recently read, who had personal assistants and housekeepers. He had an agent and a public relations team as well as a personal shopper on-call for all manner of clothing needs.

  I expected him to get out of his car, sneer at the modest home and wrinkle his nose at the scent of ranch life lingering in the air.

  I was expecting a diva.

  Assuming he wasn’t because he carried his own luggage was stupid. I’d see if he was a diva when I had him muck out the horse stalls. Or gather the eggs from the chicken coop. Or help a struggling heifer birth her first calf.

  Suddenly, all the tasks I had to do, all the upcoming, unending work, grew slightly less daunting with this man walking in front of me.

  Which meant I had to hurry to get around him to unlock the door.

  My boots clip-clopped on the rock path, something Joseph built the summer before he died, and I brushed away the grief that hit whenever I saw something he made.

  I moved quickly, my long legs having to hustle double-time to reach the door before Cooper, and I pulled out a key from my back pocket right as we reached the door at the same time.

  I unlocked the door, pushed it open and before either of us entered, handed him the key. “This is yours. In all honesty, we rarely lock our doors around here, but I thought you’d like the privacy.”

  His light green eyes hit mine as he slid the key out of my grasp. “Thank you. Did Max tell you much about why I’m here?”

  He hitched his shoulder, readjusting one of his duffel bags. His eyes seemed to be inspecting mine.

  There was no point in lying. I’d already done it once and I hated lying. I also wasn’t very good at it. “He told me you’re going through a divorce, it’s getting ugly, and you needed time to hide out.”

  “That it?” His head tilted to the side.

  The way he captured my gaze was unnerving and I blinked. I looked over his shoulder. “I don’t really know what Max told you about me,” I said. “But I can tell you that I don’t watch much television, and I have even less time for movies. I know who you are because my uncle told me, but I’ve never seen your movies. Ranch work is hard work and that’s all I care about.”

  His eyes moved from mine, finally, and I took the moment of silence to slide past him and into the guesthouse, explaining while I moved. “This isn’t much, but there are two bedrooms. Only one bath. The kitchen area is small, but it should have everything you need.”

  His suitcases clattered inside and the wheels moved along the wood floors before the duffel bags dropped to the floor.

  I headed in the direction of the kitchen, a small L-shape, with a mahogany dinner table for four to separate the kitchen space from the living space. The entire guesthouse was less than a thousand square feet, and most likely smaller than anything this man had ever spent the night in.

  I’d always loved this house. My grandpa and dad built it when I was barely old enough to hold a hammer. That still didn’t stop my dad from handing me the tool and teaching me how to use it.

  I opened the fridge and gestured to the food I’d stocked for him. “I didn’t know how you’d feel about going into town while you’re here, or what your plans were, so I stocked your cupboards with snacks and the fridge with some basics. If there’s something you need, you can let me know and I’ll get it when I go back into town next week.”

  Town was only ten minutes away, but I limited my trips. Joseph and I used to go all the time, especially on weekends, to the bar or out to eat, but Carlton w
as small, even if it’d grown in the last decade. People knew me, and the looks they gave me were unsettling.

  Brooke, one of my closest friends since high school, kept telling me it was because I’d become a stubborn recluse and if I came out more, people would stop looking at me like I needed a hug all the darn time.

  I didn’t believe her. She didn’t know everything and I was intent on keeping it that way. One run-in with the wrong person and all my hidden shame would come to light.

  “Is there something you need?” I asked. He hadn’t moved from just inside the front door and his focus on me was unnerving.

  “No, but thank you. And since Max tells me I’m supposed to help you while I’m here, perhaps I should be asking you that.”

  I hadn’t expected him to want to dive right into work. “I thought you’d want to take the day to relax.”

  “I don’t do well with relaxing these days. To be honest with you, being left alone with my thoughts isn’t the best for me.”

  He should have stayed in the city then. The quiet nights on the ranch were the worst. There was nothing around except stillness and the music of cows and crickets. I didn’t bother bursting his bubble.

  There was a section of fencing I noticed the other day that needed to be repaired out on the far edge of our two-hundred acres, but it wouldn’t take me more than a couple hours to get out there and fix it. I wanted to do it alone, though.

  I might have agreed to let him come, but that didn’t mean I wanted him here.

  “I have some things to do this afternoon. Why don’t you unpack and get settled and you can come find me in the horse barn when you’re done.”

  “The horse barn?”

  “Yeah. Big red building. Can’t really miss it.”

  His lips lifted, and I’d say it was a grin, but it didn’t reach his eyes or alter his expression in any way. Great. Was he terrified of horses?

  “Okay. I’ll meet you at the horse barn later.” His lips lifted again, and this time it was definitely a grin.

  I didn’t ask him what was so funny about a barn.

  I skedaddled past him and hurried back to the main house—not realizing until I reached the back door of my patio that my stomach started feeling funny when he smiled.

  I didn’t like it.

  Not one little bit.

  * * *

  The strange sensation in my belly evaporated while I re-wrapped wire and hammered in a couple new posts. With the fencing fixed, I did a quick ride on Gray before heading back to the barn. I’d only been gone two hours, the fence not taking as much time as I’d anticipated, and wasn’t nearly as damaged as I saw the other day.

  This wasn’t exactly a surprise. Farmers were helpful people and our land edged up a creek, but across the creek was the Whitman place. They grew corn, not cows, but over the last year they’d taken to surprising me with help, whether or not I asked for it.

  Seeing the damaged fence line had already been repaired, replaced that warm feeling in my stomach with irritation as I followed the fence, found a different area that hadn’t been fixed and set in handling that one.

  It’d be polite to call Gloria Whitman and thank her and her husband, Peter, for helping, but I’d told them time and again I had it handled.

  To which she usually replied, “Sweet thing, you accept the help from folk and the Lord when it’s needed so you’ve got the energy and time to give when it’s needed of you. This is just us, you know that.”

  The problem was I did, because Gloria and Peter Whitman were close enough to my family to be family, considering her family had worked their land even longer than my family had worked ours. I understood both her words and her implication. Fifteen years ago their original house burned down in a fire from a lightning strike, and it was my family who’d helped them rebuild and harvest their crops that summer and fall. We’d had this conversation so often that now, whenever I found something they mended, I didn’t bother calling.

  I didn’t need her Sunday School lessons on graciousness. God had taught me enough on His own by ripping away everything valuable I had.

  It wasn’t only their lessons or their help that made my blood boil. It was mostly because it was usually given to me with a look a pity in their eyes as well as the whispered, “That poor little thang,” behind my back. As if no one around actually believed I could manage this place.

  Perhaps Brooke was right and I was stubborn, but I was a single woman, a widow, working a two-hundred acre cattle ranch.

  I could do it, I knew I could. I just needed more time to prove it.

  “Come on, Gray,” I whispered, tugging on his lead and guiding him back to the barn. “Let’s get you some food and a good rub down.”

  He snorted, and I ran my hand down his side. I guided him into the barn only to come to an abrupt stop when I saw Cooper.

  He was at Stormy’s door, running his hand down the side of her neck, and talking so softly to the girl I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but whatever it was, the girl liked it. She nuzzled Cooper’s hand just like she’d always done to Joseph.

  My irritation with the Whitmans dwindled.

  I had a new target for my anger.

  Freaking Max.

  Four

  Cooper

  “That’s my husband’s horse.”

  Rebecca's voice startled me, not only in her surprise arrival but in the cold snappish tone. I dropped my hand from the horse I was trying to get acclimated with.

  “Is it a problem I’m here?”

  Something dark flashed in her already dark brown eyes as she stared at the horse, whose name I didn’t know. I’d been foolishly trying to coax it out of the horse like it would speak to me in a language I understood.

  “I thought you told me to meet you here,” I said lamely when Rebecca was still rooted in spot barely inside the barn. Next to her, another beautiful horse pressed against her temple, almost as if it was comforting her.

  “Stormy.”

  She tugged on the horse’s reins and I contemplated the strange word she spoke. I didn’t know if she was talking about the beautiful gray horse she was leading to a stall or the jet black one in front of me.

  Since it felt like a storm was brewing in the barn from whatever was going on in Rebecca's mind, she might have been thinking out loud.

  I stepped away from the stalls to give her room, but there was no need.

  She pulled open a sliding door and the horse with her walked right in. Rebecca followed the horse and slammed the door behind her. The walls came up so high only the top of her head was visible over them, but she made no effort to speak to me.

  What the hell? The last thing I expected when I stepped foot into the barn earlier was to get my head bitten off and then ignored by a five-foot-two pretty little cowgirl.

  I shook the unwelcome thought from my head. Yeah, she was pretty, but she was Max’s niece and I didn’t need to think about her that way. My head was still too screwed up with another woman.

  “Rebecca?” I asked. “Is there something I can do to help?”

  She pushed out of the stall with her horse’s saddle in her arms barely sparing me a glance. The quick flash of her narrowed eyes in my direction said enough. They swam with tears and the way she bit her lip, fighting back those tears stunned me.

  What the hell?

  Clearly, I was missing something, something important, but when she disappeared around a corner and slammed down the saddle, I figured I wasn’t going to be given a list of chores to do, and she would probably bite my hand off if I offered her comfort or company.

  I swung around and headed out of the barn, staring at my boots. I needed something more substantial for working on a ranch. Mine were too damn fancy for this life, but they were all I had and I didn’t want to waste time shopping before I snuck out of L.A.

  I headed back to the guesthouse and pulled up my internet browser on my laptop. Fortunately, the available Wi-Fi didn’t require a password.

  Then I pulle
d up my email and found the address of where I was.

  In less than an hour, I’d outfitted myself with boots I wouldn’t care got ruined and a few pairs of thick leather work gloves.

  * * *

  I stayed in my room until the sun had set, and by then I’d run out of shows to waste time watching on Netflix, streaming them from my laptop because the television in the guesthouse only got four stations and none of them were showing anything except local weather and news. I was losing my mind with boredom, and me and bored did not mix.

  My mom always said I wasn’t happy unless I was moving, and it was true. I was a busy, active toddler, constantly jumping off furniture which escalated to a boy who played sports all year round and then transitioned to a high schooler who played sports all year round, sprinkled in with acting classes. Sports kept me busy growing up, kept me out of trouble surrounded with good friends, and taught me discipline and focus.

  But acting was always in my veins, a pulsing need, an itch beneath my skin I couldn’t quell unless I was on stage or in front of cameras. Being someone else was fun and challenging.

  Being alone with my thoughts was detrimental to my health. By the time night fell, that now familiar sensation of walls pressing in on me was making me claustrophobic, a needling headache digging in at my temples.

  “Screw this,” I muttered and slammed my computer closed. I tugged on my boots and grabbed a sweater from the closet. Then I took off out of the house.

  I needed air and space. If Max was wrong and his niece didn’t want help and refused to put me to work, I’d go insane. I needed movement and action. I needed the adrenaline rush of a challenge completed. I needed to work until my fingers ached and my back hurt and the only thought in my head was falling asleep in what looked like a surprisingly comfortable, king-sized bed so I wasn’t plagued with nightmares of Camilla, my marriage when I thought it was the best thing in my life, everything I’d lost since realizing it was all a sham, and most importantly, visions of her being bent over our damn kitchen counter.