Chapter Five
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“It’s me,” Marlon said curtly when Hunter answered his phone four days later. “I’m fine. Later.”
“Hey—wait a minute!” Hunter paced the small guest bedroom, his phone jammed against his ear. “Tell me how you’re doing.” Marlon’s bitter tone grated on him, and so did the way he was acting—like he was doing Hunter a big favor by calling.
“What the hell do you care?”
“You know I care.” He was the one who’d done the favor—one that would cost him for the rest of his life if he didn’t convince Jo to marry him. Seeing as how Jo hadn’t said a word to him since their argument, that didn’t seem likely.
“I’m doing the same as yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that. How am I supposed to be doing? My life is over—”
“No, it’s not.” Hunter had learned to put an end to this line of talk, fast, when Marlon got going on it. “You want to leave that legacy to your kids? You want them carrying the burden of your suicide the rest of their lives?” That was harsh, but at one time Marlon had thought about taking that path, and Hunter had risked his career to stop him. Marlon was past that, and he needed to stay there.
Silence greeted his blunt question. “Hell, no,” Marlon said finally. “Of course I don’t. I just don’t know what to do. I left twenty messages yesterday—”
“Jesus.” It was the worst thing Marlon could have done. As far as Hunter could see, May wanted an amicable divorce. She wanted to share custody over the kids, but if Marlon kept pushing her, she might change her mind.
“She finally called and said she’d sic the cops on me if I didn’t stop,” Marlon said bitterly. “Can you believe that?”
Hunter’s patience was wearing thin. “I put my career on the line—”
“I never asked you to!”
Marlon hung up. Hunter debated calling May, but what could he say to her she didn’t already know? He knew what she’d tell him; that Marlon was a big boy and had to fight his own battles. Did she realize how far Marlon had crashed when she’d asked for the divorce?
Should he tell her?
He didn’t think it was his place. Marlon would never forgive him; he knew that much. He always said Hunter interfered too much. That he thought he had far too many of the answers, even when no one was asking him questions.
All Hunter knew was Marlon might not be alive if he hadn’t followed Marlon the night May announced she wanted a divorce.
Hunter shoved his phone in his pocket and headed downstairs to grab some breakfast, still mulling the matter over. When he caught sight of Jo in the kitchen, he took in the stiffness of her posture and realized she was still angry with him, too—even after four days. Would she agree with Marlon that he was too bossy—too interfering?
Probably. He had bossed Jo around, and she’d hated it as much as Marlon did. Hunter had taken pride in all the research he’d done about building her house, but he supposed the world wouldn’t end if he did things Jo’s way—as long as certain specifications were met to keep it all to code. The layout she’d created might not be as efficient. She hadn’t even noticed the way he’d built in so much storage.
But it was her house.
Time to remember that and keep his big mouth shut. He’d keep his mouth shut when it came to May, too. Let Marlon work things out with her. He just hoped his friend didn’t let his emotions ruin his future.
“Morning,” he said as he crossed the kitchen.
“Morning,” she said stiffly.
“Look, I think we should talk—”
Jo jumped, held a finger up to stop him, pulled her phone from the pocket of her jeans and lifted it to her ear.
“Lena? What’s wrong?” She listened a moment, then stiffened. “Bright Star? Got it. Be right there.”
“What’s going on?” Hunter demanded as she tried to push past him.
Jo hesitated, and he could see her weigh her options. She still didn’t want to speak to him, but evidently the information was too important to keep to herself.
“Something must have spooked the horses last night. One of them got tangled in the barbed wire fence. My mare, Bright Star. Lena needs help getting her out.”
“I’m coming, too.”
She didn’t answer but she didn’t stop him from following, either, although she didn’t speak another word to him on the way down the dirt track to the pasture behind the stables. As they approached, Hunter took in the mare tangled in the pasture’s barbed wire fence and immediately saw Lena’s predicament. Bright Star was in pain, and if Lena had tried to free the horse herself, the mare could easily have lashed out with her hooves and done Lena an injury.
“I’ll try to calm her down,” Jo said. “You help Lena.”
He was about to say of course he was going to help Lena, but he realized he and Jo weren’t in a competition to run this operation. They were on the same side. Jo moved around to approach Bright Star from where the mare could see her, murmuring comforting noises as she approached. The mare huffed and nickered, but she didn’t rear, and Hunter let out a breath when Jo was able to stroke Bright Star’s throat.
“That’s a good girl. We’re going to get you out of this.”
Lena moved closer to where the mare’s right leg was tangled in the barbed wire. Hunter approached, too, and as Jo kept whispering to the animal, he kept her leg steady while Lena snipped away the wire with wire cutters.
“I’ve got the vet coming to look her over,” Lena said in a low voice. “We’ll have to repair this fence, too. I called Brian…”
“I see him now. He and I can take care of that.”
Jo was still murmuring to the mare. Hunter stood up, but when he caught sight of a strange, pebbled roughness to the animal’s flank, he bent closer. “Lena, come take a look at this.” He kept his voice calm, not wanting to spook the horse. As Brian reached their little group, he waved him over, too.
“Buckshot.” Lena balled her hands into fists. “Someone did this deliberately.”
Jo ducked around the horse, still making calming noises, and her eyes widened when she took in the damage.
“The vet’s coming,” Lena told her.
“Who would do this?” There were tears in Jo’s eyes, and Hunter’s heart contracted in sympathy. At the same time, he fought the urge to track down the perpetrators of this heinous act and deal out some rough country justice on their asses.
“Who else? Those men who want our ranch,” Lena said.
“We don’t know that for sure,” Brian cautioned.
“Are you kidding me? Playing dumb won’t change anything; they’re coming at us again.”
“Maybe. Maybe not, but we’ll definitely keep watch for them,” Brian said. Hunter could see his calm tone was riling Lena. She opened her mouth to issue a furious retort, but Jo stepped in.
“We’d better stable the horses at night, at least for the time being,” she said practically, all traces of the tears shining in her eyes a moment ago gone. She was hardening her heart.
Holding in her pain.
Hunter wondered what other hurts she was keeping to herself.
“That’s a good idea,” Lena said. She looked over Hunter’s shoulder. “The vet’s here.”
They all watched as a battered truck pulled up and a woman got out.
“Good morning, Lena. Morning, Jo. Heard you got an injured critter. What’s the problem? My brother will be out when he can, but he’s got a case on the other side of town. I told him I’d check in with you.”
“Thanks for coming, Bella. You know Brian, I think, but this is Hunter Powell. Hunter, Bella Mortimer. She’s one of our local vets.”
“My brother deals with livestock. My specialty is pets, but we help each other when necessary,” Bella explained, putting out her hand.
Hunter shook it. “Good to meet you.” He stepped back to let Lena and Jo tell Bella what had happened.
“We’d better fix that fence,” Brian said to him. “I’ll get what we need.”
“Sure thing.” He filed away his questions for Jo later, watching her deal with the vet and her mare with respect. Jo felt things deeply, but she kept her head when the chips were down. She could sum up a situation in a moment and create a plan to deal with it a moment later. Maybe he had been overbearing about the house plans. If she approached everything with this kind of thoroughness—and from what he’d seen, she did—then she didn’t need him to tell her what to do.
The military had lost out if the General had really discouraged his daughters from joining up, he thought.
Hunter joined Brian at the fence, doubly determined to win Jo’s heart.
When would this end?
As Lena answered Bella’s questions, Jo fought against a rising panic as she thought about the shoot-out at the ranch, Grant’s attempted kidnapping of her and the way she’d had to fight him.
She needed this to be over. Wanted to feel safe at Two Willows.
Wanted life to get back to normal.
She couldn’t say for sure what the buckshot meant. Had some stupid teenagers tried to scare her horse for a lark? Or was something more sinister happening?
“She’ll heal up just fine,” Bella was saying when Jo forced herself to focus again. “We’ll wait for my brother to get here, though. I’m not used to treating an animal this big. He’ll get the pellets out and clean the wounds—and treat the cuts on her leg, as well. Nothing looks too bad. Bright Star will be back to herself in no time.”
Jo touched Bright Star again and willed the horse to know how much she loved her—and how hard they were working to get her fixed up. The mare was already more comfortable now that the barbed wire wasn’t tangled around her leg.
“What about the rest of the horses? Anyone else get hit?” Bella asked.
“I don’t think so, but we haven’t checked yet,” Jo told her. While she waited with Bright Star, Lena and Bella did their best to examine the other horses, but none seemed worse for wear. Brian and Hunter got the barbed wire fence restrung. She was glad she wouldn’t have to tackle the job when she was done with Bright Star.
“You all have been having some trouble here at Two Willows, haven’t you?” Bella was asking when another truck pulled in.
Jo closed her eyes, fighting off defeat. Two Willows had gained a reputation—and not a good one. It was so unfair, and ultimately it could damage their ability to do business as a ranch.
“We’re taking care of it,” Hunter assured Bella from where he was working on the fence. Jo noticed Bella’s curious glance travel between her and Hunter. If she thought there was a connection between them, she could think again. The Navy SEAL was attractive, and she’d enjoyed spending time with him at first, but he’d shown his true colors with the house plans.
Even if he was being awfully helpful today.
“Hey, sis. Hey, Jo, Lena…” Bella’s brother approached, a rangy man whose dusty clothes made it obvious he’d already done a peck of work that day.
Bella and Jo made the introductions and showed him the damage to Bright Star’s leg and flank. The horse seemed to know this was when things would get serious. She sidestepped a little, and Jo moved in to calm her again as Craig made his inspection.
“We’ll need to bring her in to the clinic to do this right,” Craig said a few minutes later. “If you can bring her over now, I’ll get right to work and we can have her back home this afternoon.”
“Okay.” Jo was relieved that Bright Star was on her way to health again. It would be a long day, but she felt better already knowing her mare would be home in her stall tonight. “I’ll be sleeping in the stables for the foreseeable future,” she warned Lena.
“Me, too,” Hunter said quickly.
“Sounds cozy.” Lena rolled her eyes.
In his room that evening, prepping for a night out in the stables, Hunter thought about the plans Jo had drawn by hand and wished he’d looked at them more carefully. He wondered if they were they still on her table. Out in the hall, he saw her door was partially open. When he nudged it, he saw all was spic and span in her room—bed made, no clothing on the floor. The card table still sat in the middle of the room, however, and on it was the large sheet of paper she’d used to make her drawing. Jo herself was downstairs talking to her sisters. He figured he had a few minutes before she’d make her way upstairs.
He bent over the drawing, hoping there were one or two places where their vision might match. Hoping her numbers weren’t too far off, either—he knew she’d take it as a personal affront if he told her he needed to change the plans.
After a moment or two, Hunter pulled out the folding chair, sat down and propped his elbows on the table.
Wrong again.
Jo had been as diligent about researching the rules as he had. Her drawing wasn’t as sophisticated as his computer-generated one was, but her doorways were sized correctly, as were her windows. She had the proper number and spacing of outlets per room, and had situated the various plumbed fixtures in a way that their lines could be tied efficiently together.
He hadn’t even bothered to look at what she’d done before he’d hopped to twenty conclusions about the quality of her work.
Hunter heaved a sigh. There were still one or two ideas he’d like to discuss with her, but overall he had to admit her plan was as good as his was. Different—but not in a bad way.
This was her house, after all.
What about the next one, though? Would they grow close enough over the intervening months to share it? Would they fight over details until they found common ground—and make up for any rancor between them in bed?
He couldn’t pretend it was the first time he’d thought about the possibility. Jo had intrigued him right from the start.
Did he intrigue her?
He glanced at the window. Time to go round up Jo and head to the stables. He’d bring up the house later tonight—when it got dark, maybe. See if they could agree on those one or two places he thought there might be problems.
But first he’d better tell her how impressed he was.
And maybe angle for another kiss.
By the time darkness fell, Jo was exhausted. It had been a long and emotionally wrenching day. Bright Star was like a member of her family, and the mare’s fear and confusion at being taken to the clinic and treated had entered Jo every time she’d laid a hand on the horse to calm her.
Brian and Lena had joined Hunter in a circuit of the pasture where the cattle herd was enclosed for the night, looking for any signs of trouble, before they headed up to the house. They’d already corralled all the horses safely in their stalls in the stable. Jo and Hunter now sat on the large stone doorsill, their sleeping gear piled inside.
“I’ll be back around eleven to do another patrol,” Brian said. “But I don’t expect trouble tonight.”
“I’ll come, too,” Lena said. “Cass and Alice offered to lend a hand, but I told them we didn’t really need them.”
“I don’t want Cass any part of this. Not when she’s pregnant,” Brian said. Lena exchanged a look with Jo that said she wouldn’t want a husband making decisions for her like that.
Jo knew what she meant. Alone with Hunter after they left, she searched for something to say, aware he was as apt as Brian to think he had all the answers. Her desire to spend the night in the stables with Bright Star was born of a genuine anxiety about her favorite horse. She hadn’t suggested it as a ruse to get Hunter alone, but she worried he might think so.
Of course, he was the one who’d angled to join her. Demanded to join her, more like it. If anyone should feel sheepish, it was him.
He didn’t look sheepish.
He looked pleased.
And her body reacted to that in a way that dismayed her. “Bet you’ve spent a lot of nights in the open air,” she said to distract herself. Did he think she’d put out just because they were alone together? If so, he was wrong. Maybe he’d proved he could get under her skin, but that was before he’d called her house plans scribbles. He couldn’t charm her now.
He nodded. “This is pretty cushy.”
“I can imagine.” She wondered about Hunter’s past. What he’d faced before he came here. As much as his attitude toward her had pissed her off, she had to respect who he was. She knew what it took to be a Navy SEAL and could only imagine what he’d been through as a sniper. This wasn’t a man who shirked duty, obviously. He was just bossy.
Although he’d been less so today. Instead, he’d acted like he respected her. He’d made sure to keep nearby in case she needed him, but there’d been none of the take-charge gruffness of the night he’d dismissed her plans as worthless.
Maybe he’d had time to regret that.
“You going to be okay down here?” he asked, not like he thought she was weak, but like he cared about the answer.
“Yes.” She thought she would be. Especially since he’d be here, although she wouldn’t tell him that. In the past she wouldn’t have thought twice about sleeping in the stable, or out under the stars, but that was before she’d been attacked. “Don’t see how it’s any different than sleeping in the house,” she added with as much bravado as she could. She didn’t like feeling scared, and she liked it even less that Hunter’s presence made her feel better. She’d learned long ago that when you depended on a man, bad things happened.
“No bed,” Hunter pointed out.
“I’ll manage.” Jo worked up the courage to ask something she’d been wondering about. “Are you armed?”
He nodded again. “You?”
“Yes.” Now that it was dark, she was glad she was.
“You know how to shoot—obviously.”
“The General made sure we all know. After he left, he had the overseers he sent keep us up to snuff.” She was proud of her ability to fire weapons of all kinds. Like her sisters, she practiced regularly, although not nearly as often as Lena did.
“Good man.”
She couldn’t help the sound that escaped her. The General was a lot of things, but good wasn’t one of them.
Hunter chuckled. “What is it between you all and the General? Back at USSOCOM he’s pretty respected, you know that?”
“He’s a…” She’d been about to say coward, but of course he wasn’t really. “He left us alone, when he shouldn’t have,” she finally said. “Can you imagine taking off after your wife’s funeral—not even going to the reception—and sending strangers to watch five children who’d just lost their mother?”
They’d all been devastated back then, and Jo didn’t want to overstate her feelings, but sometimes she thought that was what had sent her life astray. When she was little, she’d followed the General around like he was a hero. He had been to her. She’d been his little soldier.
Then he’d simply stopped coming home at all.
“I’ve got a theory about that, actually. Don’t know if you want to hear it.”
“Shoot.” She’d listen, even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know what this SEAL thought about her father. It galled her that he probably knew the General better than she did. He’d certainly spent far more time with him these past few months than she had.
“PTSD. From losing his wife, not from any incident in the service, although I imagine there’s some of that, too. From everything I gathered back there at USSOCOM, she means as much to him today as she ever did.”
Jo digested this. “What makes you think so?”
“The photographs, for one thing. Amelia’s everywhere. So are you.”
She looked up at that. “Me?” She could barely credit it. Why would a man who couldn’t even visit his children keep photographs of them? In her imagination he simply erased them all from his mind whenever he wasn’t forced to deal with them.
“All of you. Everywhere you look in his office the man’s got photos of his family. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out he was estranged from you. I’d have never guessed.”
That was hard to fathom. “We lost her, too. Doesn’t he understand that?”
“I’m sure he does, and maybe that’s the worst of it. Men like him will move heaven and hell to solve a problem. But if they can’t solve it—”
“They don’t know what to do,” she finished for him. “That’s supposed to excuse him for staying away for eleven years?”
“No. It’s not. Bungling the funeral is one thing. Abandoning you—for good? That’s a whole other issue.” Hunter shifted position. “Problem is with men, sometimes we set ourselves on a course and don’t know how to change it, even if we want to.”
In her head she heard the logic of Hunter’s statements, but her heart refused to forgive the General. She’d been the closest to him of all her sisters, but that had meant nothing to him when he’d gone away.
“Thank you,” she said finally.
“For what.”
“For being honest. For treating me like… an equal. Like just any other man you might share an evening with.”
He nodded gravely. “I have a lot of respect for the way you protected your family. I’d be honored to have you by my side if trouble broke out.”
Pride swelled her heart, although she tried to squash it. She might not like it that the General sent him, but Hunter was a warrior and she respected him.
“But if you think I see you as any man I might share an evening with,” Hunter went on in his honey-smooth Southern drawl. “Well, Jo Reed, you’re mighty mistaken.”