It had only taken Gabe fifteen minutes to figure out what Raylene was up to. He’d been sitting at the corner of Ralston and Pine, waiting for the light to turn green, when she’d zoomed by in her F-150. On a lark, he’d decided to follow her. When she turned up Rock and River Road, it didn’t take much to deduce that she was headed for her property. He almost hadn’t come, figuring she was meeting her real estate agent or her buyers.
But after catching her in a lie the day before, curiosity won out. So he trailed her up the road from a distance, parked his SUV on the shoulder, and humped the rest of the way in. There she’d been, digging in those tight Western jeans and turquoise cowboy boots.
Gold. He suppressed an eye roll. Hell, he liked local lore as much as the next person, and these mountains were full of stories. From the Donner Party to the Western Pacific Railroad, there was no shortage. Cannibalism, hangings, people striking it rich. There was a reason the town was named “Nugget.”
But after all this time—after earthquakes, floods, and fires—that gold, if it had existed, would’ve turned up by now. Raylene was wasting her time.
“What are you thinking about?” She reached over Gabe’s console and poked him in the leg.
“Whether I want a burrito or a chimichanga. How ’bout you?”
“A torta, probably. They make really good ones, at least they used to.”
“How long have you been gone exactly?” He turned down the radio, a station out of Reno. He knew she’d moved back a couple of years ago for just long enough to wreak havoc on the town, then returned to Denver to reconcile with Butch. That sure hadn’t lasted long.
“Off and on, seventeen years.” She was quiet for a while, then said, “I left right after high school.”
“You didn’t miss it?”
She sighed. “Not really.” But there was something in her voice that said she had, maybe just a little bit. “A lot happened and it didn’t feel like my town anymore.”
“Like what?” He pulled off the highway and took the road into Clio, heading for the restaurant.
She turned to look at him. “Stuff with my dad, stuff I don’t talk about.”
“Okay, fair enough.” Gabe was surprised she’d even said that much. Ray was usually a forbidden topic, and Raylene usually answered every question with a sarcastic retort. He’d noticed that about her. The truth was he’d noticed too much about her, including the way those Western jeans of hers had molded to her ass when she was shoveling the dirt.
He parked his truck in the dusty parking lot and went around to get her door. She jumped down before he could help her out.
“I’m starved,” she said, and rushed off ahead of him.
The restaurant was more like a taco stand with a drive-through, an inside walk-up counter, concrete floors, and a few tables covered in oilcloths. Bright Mexican tiles and Day of the Dead skulls adorned the walls, and a big sombrero hung over the door. In the corner was a drink station, offering aguas frescas and horchata in big jars. It reminded him of his Navy days in San Diego.
The owner, who’d been in the kitchen, came up to the front and greeted him. “Hola, amigo. Where’s your friend?”
“He couldn’t come today. This is his sister.” Gabe slung his arm around Raylene, mostly because he knew it would annoy her.
“What does such a beautiful woman want with you, amigo?”
“Ah, Victor, I have many hidden charms.”
Victor leaned back and laughed, then pulled two Coronas from the cooler and handed them to Gabe and Raylene. “It’s on the house. Hasta la vista, amigos.”
He disappeared into the kitchen and the young woman at the counter took their orders. Gabe pulled out a chair for Raylene and they waited for their food.
“The place is empty,” Raylene said. “It didn’t used to be.”
“It’s a little late for lunch, and too early for supper.” When he and Logan came, the place was usually packed. “We’re having steak tonight at the rehearsal dinner. Flynn’s beef.”
Raylene pulled a face. “It’s not as good as Rosser beef used to be, but whatever. So his wife doesn’t have the talk show anymore, huh?”
“Gia now runs the Iris Foundation, a charity that helps women who are down on their luck get back on their feet.”
“I know,” she said. “I read about it.” A former celebrity like Gia got her name splashed all over the tabloids.
“Are she and Flynn buying your land?” It made sense that either they or Clay McCreedy would, since it sat between their two respective ranches.
“Nope.” Raylene got up and poured herself a glass of hibiscus agua fresca and came back to the table.
“If not Flynn, who?” he asked.
“No one from around here.”
Their food was up, and Gabe went to the counter to get it. He handed Raylene her torta and took his burrito. He excused himself to go to the head to wash his hands. Raylene had used one of those wet wipes on the ride over. Even in the teams, he’d been a fanatic hand washer. As a result, he rarely got sick, despite the nasty shit they’d breathed and ate during deployments. When he returned to the table, he noticed Raylene had waited for him to eat. Growing up in the Moretti household, you waited to eat, you went hungry. There were too many of them to stand on ceremony. Their table was like a circus, his sibs and steps all talking at the same time, passing food—and gas—fighting over the last dinner roll or strip of bacon, and joshing each other endlessly. It was the best.
He supposed being an only child, Raylene had had a completely different experience. And there was the fact that her father was an asshole. So, yeah, it wasn’t the Moretti house.
“Dig in,” he told her, and took a big bite of his burrito. “Is it as good as you remember it?”
“Uh-huh,” she said around a mouthful. “Maybe better.”
“I didn’t discover Mexican food until the Navy. At home, it was either Italian, Irish, or some combination of both.”
She nodded, pushing a piece of pork back inside her sandwich. “Logan said you guys were like the Brady Bunch…a blended family.”
“Yep. My real old man ran out on us when I was two and died a year later from a stroke. My ma met Tino Moretti a few years later and that’s all she wrote. Bada bing, soulmates. He adopted me and my baby sister, brought his own brood into the mix, and they had a few of their own. Big Italian family.”
“But you’re Irish?”
“Half and half. Biological dad was Italian. After him, Ma swore off Italian men. Obviously it didn’t stick.”
She dredged a tortilla chip through a bowl of salsa. “You’re still close with everyone?”
“Like glue. We’re spread across the country but that doesn’t stop us from Skyping and texting each other every day.”
“Wow. Nice. I wish Logan and I could’ve been like that growing up. Good ol’ Ray made sure that didn’t happen.” She pushed her sandwich at him. “You can have the rest, I’m full.”
He held her gaze until she blinked and turned away. “You tried to screw him out of his inheritance, Raylene.”
In a voice barely above a whisper she said, “And for that I’m eternally sorry.”
He didn’t know how sorry she was, but she had dropped her suit contesting Logan’s share of Ray’s living trust. In the end, Logan had gotten a nice chunk of change. Logan didn’t hold a grudge against Raylene, so why should Gabe? But the thing was, he did.
On the way out of the restaurant he asked her, “What are you planning to do with all that gold when we dig it up?” It wasn’t as if she needed the money, she’d been left a small fortune. But he wanted to know if her so-called eternal remorse extended to splitting her bogus buried treasure with Logan, who was as much a Rosser as she was.
“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you get your share.”
He laughed to himself, because his share of nothing was nothing. “Wrong answer.”
Raylene turned away, swishing that fantastic ass of hers in the air, and got into his SUV without saying a word. As they drove to the farm, she turned on the radio and, to piss him off, flipped the dial from his classic rock station to country music. When Dolly Pardon’s “Jolene” came on, Gabe sang along.
“Raylene, Raylene, Raylene, Raylene, I’m begging of you please don’t take my gold.”
She slugged him in the shoulder and muttered something about him being an idiot. When they pulled up to the house, there were a couple of cars in the driveway that weren’t Logan and Annie’s and Gabe could feel Raylene tense. He shut off the engine and grabbed her by the arm before she could flee.
“Tonight’s just family, so you can relax.”
“Gia and Flynn will be there. Flynn hates me, and I hate him.” That was Raylene, always on the offensive. Gabe knew it was her coping mechanism.
Flynn had been old man Rosser’s estate attorney. He thought Raylene was a spoiled brat and never hesitated to voice that opinion out loud. The fact that he and Gia now owned Rosser Ranch was probably another thing that stuck in Raylene’s craw.
“Gia’s in the wedding, Ray. It only stands to reason that she and her husband would be included in the rehearsal dinner.”
“I know,” she said, trying to sound conciliatory. Yet Gabe saw the same vulnerability that had been there the night of the potluck streak across her face. And damn it, it brought the protector out in him. No matter how much he tried to look at Raylene as an assignment, she got to him. And despite his better judgment, he pulled her over the seat into his lap.
“You’ll be fine, Ray.”
She straightened her spine. “Damned right I’ll be fine.”
He smiled because the woman was as stubborn as he was—and as proud. So damn proud he couldn’t help but admire her. “That’s the old spirit.”
They sat there for a few seconds, her legs awkwardly splayed across the console, and it seemed like the best thing to do in that moment was kiss her. He cupped the back of her head, pulled her in, and claimed her mouth. That was the thing about Ray, she couldn’t resist a dare. And the kiss was definitely a dare. I dare you to kiss me back. And she did, long and slow, exploring his mouth with her lips and her tongue.
He tugged her in closer and took charge, letting his hands wander a little. Even through her jacket, he could feel firm breasts and the curve of her waist. If she wasn’t such a pain in the ass, he’d say she was near perfect. And a phenomenal kisser. She tasted good, too, like Mexican food, hibiscus, and her own brand of sass.
He moved over her, taking the kiss deeper, sifting his fingers through her hair. It was soft and fine and smelled like lavender. Her lips were also soft, and he liked the way she gripped his shoulders, clutching him as if she never wanted to let him go. He continued to devour her mouth and heard Raylene whimper. It took all his willpower not to take her right there, in the front of his SUV. But he heard a little voice reminding him that they were in Logan’s driveway, and that Raylene was his best friend’s sister, and he managed to pull away.
“We should probably go inside,” he said, adjusting himself.
She scrambled back to her side and opened the door before nudging her head pointedly toward his crotch, where he was so hard it hurt. “That’s for your moronic version of ‘Jolene.’ Jeez, Moretti, you know how many times I had to put up with that in junior high?” She slid out of the passenger seat, gave his package one more glance, and smirked. “Consider us even.”
He wanted to shout that he was the one who’d put the brakes on, that if it wasn’t for him she’d be on her back right now with him inside her. Sweet relief. But that would’ve been even more junior high school than his rendition of the song, so he suffered in silence.
* * * *
Raylene got through the rehearsal dinner without a drink, which was a staggering achievement. She thought Wednesday’s potluck had drained every ounce of her willpower. That night in the bathroom, she’d gone as far as to touch her mouth to the edge of the glass until wine lapped at her lips. The taste had been sweet with the promise of escape. Or better yet, oblivion. But a voice inside her head had reminded her how awful she and alcohol mixed, and the last thing she wanted to do was get drunk, make a fool out of herself, and ruin Logan and Annie’s big week. So, she’d forced herself to dump the wine down the toilet just in time for Gabe to come banging on the door.
Ninety days sober.
She wiggled her toes, hitting the iron footboard, and let her eyes adjust to the light. According to the clock on the side table, it was a hair past six o’clock. Despite growing up on a ranch, she’d never been an early riser, languishing in bed sometimes well past nine. That’s what happened when you didn’t have a job or much of a reason to get up in the morning.
She gazed around the room. The walls were a cornflower blue, the curtains a tattered sunny yellow. Rag rugs covered the floor and a chipped white French provincial dresser flanked a black salvaged fireplace mantel. Old, empty picture frames had been glued to the door. Though a hodgepodge, it somehow worked, wrapping Raylene in a great big bear hug every time she entered the room. It was all Annie. Everything her brother’s fiancée did was done with love. Raylene had never known anyone like her.
Growing up, Raylene’s mother had hired a legion of decorators in their mammoth log home on the ranch. Custom cabinetry, marble countertops, handmade linens, museum-quality Navajo rugs, and Olaf Wieghorst paintings. Everything top-of-the-line, because Ray had to have the best.
If I wanted cheap I would’ve married a whore, then at least the sex would be good.
Her father had been a real class act. Raylene’s mother should’ve told him to go to hell and back, but she was Ray’s personal servant. Raylene couldn’t blame her, because she’d also done Ray’s bidding no matter how morally bankrupt it was. Whatever Ray wanted, Ray got. She’d once seen a documentary about Jim Jones, and icy fingers had crawled up her spine because she understood with such frightening clarity why all those people had blindly taken their own lives in his name. She understood because for her entire life she’d belonged to the cult of Ray Rosser.
And when it came time for her to build her own house with Butch in Denver, she’d followed the same philosophy. Bigger is better, glitzy is glamorous.
In the end, both houses had been soulless mausoleums, so cold and loveless they made you feel frozen inside. All the money in the world couldn’t buy what Annie had accomplished with a full heart and few trips to a thrift store. A real home.
Raylene stretched, threw her legs over the side of the bed, and padded to the window. The sun had barely risen, but it looked like a promising day. Not the summer wedding Annie had wanted, but clear and breathtakingly beautiful. Even as an indulged girl who thought she was too good for a railroad town in the middle of nowhere, Raylene had known these mountains were special. Even magical.
Pressed against the glass, she wished Gunner was here and she could take him for a ride across the fields and up the hills. But Gunner was in Colorado and Raylene had a wedding to attend. A wedding that started in less than eight hours.
She showered, dressed, and made her way downstairs. Logan’s truck was gone and Raylene figured he and Annie were already at the Lumber Baron in town, making sure everything was in order for the ceremony. Chad and Annie’s parents appeared to still be sleeping and the Winnebago was dark.
Perfect. She could slip out without being noticed. Five minutes later, she was cruising down the highway with Carrie Underwood singing about bashing out her cheating man’s headlights with a Louisville slugger and hummed along. It had been a while, but she found Donner Road without any trouble and climbed the steep grade. A recollection of her and Lucky parked up here in the woods, the windshield of his old rusty truck fogged from their make-out sessions, flitted through her head. Their adolescent kisses had been sweet and clumsy—nothing like Gabe’s. The man was too practiced for his own good and had gotten her hot and bothered. She wouldn’t let that happen again. As far as reminiscing about Lucky, she quickly shut it down. She didn’t deserve a walk down memory lane.
She deserved nothing.
The driveway was a craggy mess from last week’s snow and she slowly nosed down, careful not to get stuck in a rut. There was a spot next to Gabe’s SUV and she slid in, surprised to find him awake, lifting weights on his front porch. She sat awhile, watching his muscles bunch as he hefted what had to be at least three hundred pounds. His skin glistened with sweat and a picture of him kissing her, the way his hands had deftly moved over her breasts, popped into her head. Stop it!
She hadn’t been with a man since Butch, who never made it past the eight-second bell anyway, and she told herself that was the only reason Gabe had affected her like he did. With abstinence from sex and alcohol, she was simply hard up. Then she took another look at Gabe, shirtless, muscles flexing under all that golden skin, and knew she was a big fat liar.
He put the barbell down and came over to her truck and motioned for her to unroll the window, which she did. “Hey, Ray, here for a booty call?”
For a second, she feared that he’d read her mind. “I came for coffee. You better have some, Moretti.”
He eyed her for a second, opened the door, and waved his arm for her to get out. “I could probably make that happen.”
She skipped down from the running board and felt the morning chill bite through her jeans. “Aren’t you freezing?”
“Nope.”
The man thought he was a superhero, working out in twenty-degree weather.
“Come in and I’ll put a pot on before I shower.”
She followed him into his tiny duplex apartment, surprised to find that it was quite tidy. Other than a sixty-inch flat screen that made the small room appear even smaller and a black leather couch, there weren’t a whole lot of furnishings. A couple of cheap posters and a hideous Nagel print of a short-haired woman with sunglasses hung on the wall.
“Where’d you get that?” She took a closer look and shuddered. “A nail salon?”
“A mobbed-up Russian gave it to me. It’s my most prized possession.”
She shook her head, because she didn’t know if he was being sarcastic or not, and trailed him into the kitchen “I don’t even want to know.”
He flicked a switch on a Mr. Coffee and pulled down a couple of mugs from the cupboard, handing her the one that said, “A fun thing to do in the morning is not talk to me.”
“I’ll be out in twenty,” he said, and disappeared behind a door Raylene assumed was his bathroom. Right off the kitchen was a funny place to have it. But the duplex was an old railroad apartment that was designed like a mid-century rail car. There were a number of them in Nugget. The town harkened back to the Gold Rush, but later became a hub for the Western Pacific Railroad. Now, it was a crew-change site for the Union Pacific.
She took the opportunity to snoop, first taking in the kitchen, which was even more sparse than the living room. Other than a few boxes of cereal, a container of protein powder, and a six-pack of beer, Gabe didn’t have much food. He had even fewer pots and pans. His dishes were an assortment of mismatched pieces that reminded Raylene of dime-toss prizes from the county fair. Again, everything was spotless.
His bedroom showed more promise. Pine log furniture, reminiscent of the rustic pieces at Rosser Ranch, filled the room. The bed was neatly made with a crisp plaid duvet, which had been turned under the mattress to form perfect hospital corners. A seaman’s chest with Gabe’s initials carved in the wood sat at the foot of the bed. At least a dozen framed photographs of what Raylene presumed was his family lined his dresser. She examined each picture individually. Pretty people smiled back, and Gabe’s parents looked so in love it took her breath away. The photograph was nothing like the Rosser family portraits her mother paid a high-priced San Francisco photographer to take. The sessions had been comical—and not in a good way. The three of them would dress in their Sunday Western attire and stand stiffly while the photographer snapped their pictures. Halfway through the ordeal, Ray would start complaining that he didn’t have time for “this bullshit.” One of the pictures, which Raylene liked to call American Gothic II because she and her parents looked equally as unhappy as the couple in the painting, hung above the fireplace until Ray was forced to sell the house to pay his dream team of lawyers. Raylene had no idea where the photograph was now.
“You don’t mess around, do you Ray?” Gabe entered with a towel wrapped around his waist and a second one slung around his neck and blew a catcall. “Straight to the bedroom without even buying me a cup of coffee.”
She eyed him, trying to act unaffected by his bulging biceps and his six-pack abs. “It’s coffee, not cawfee.”
“That’s what I said.” He removed the towel from his neck and snapped it at her, then pointed at the picture she was holding in her hand. “That’s my stepsister, Marie. She’s a bigwig at Morgan Stanley. You go through my underwear drawer, too?”
She would’ve if he hadn’t walked in when he did. Raylene put the picture down, squeezed by him, and went back in the kitchen to fill her mug with coffee. She filled his too and checked the fridge, hoping she’d missed the milk on her first pass. No such luck.
Not long after, he came strolling in, dressed, droplets of water still clinging to his light-brown hair. He leaned against the counter, dripping on the linoleum floor, making the kitchen shrink before Raylene’s eyes.
“So you want me to lug this thing all the way to the farm?”
“You said you would.”
“And I will.” He reached for the cup of coffee she’d poured him and took a sip. “I’ll install it too but I’m putting my name on the card.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine, take half the credit, even though I did all the work.” It had taken her a month to come up with the right design. Nothing too flashy but with just enough zing. She’d had to consider Logan’s more conservative taste with Annie’s quirky sensibility and find a happy medium. And then there was the question of a name. After the Rossers sold the property to Lila Stone years ago, the property had become known as the Stone place. Since Logan and Annie bought it, everyone called it The Farm. So that’s what Raylene went with. The Farm. She’d worked hand in hand with a metal artist to get the gate and sign just right, incorporating Annie’s logo into the motif. The gift had cost an arm and a leg, depleting much of Raylene’s reserves, but it had been worth it.
“I’m okay with that.” He winked and something in her chest fluttered.
“We better get going then. I want them to have their present before the wedding.”
“Let me at least finish my coffee.” He continued to lean against the counter, holding and blowing on his cup.
She noted the size of his hands. Large, like the rest of him. Butch and her father, they’d had large hands, too. Raylene remembered feeling the sting of them across her face too many times to count.
“Hurry up.” She took her mug to the sink, washed it, and set it on the drainboard. “I still have to get ready.”
“You’ve got hours still.”
Annie had hired a local stylist to come to the house at eleven-thirty to do her, her mother’s, Maisy’s, Gia’s, and Raylene’s hair. There was a time when Raylene would’ve spent hours in front of a mirror, primping for an event like this. As the reigning Plumas County rodeo queen three years in a row, she had a reputation to uphold. And Ray liked her to make an impression. It wasn’t enough for her to be smart or pretty or an accomplished equestrian; she had to be the girl all the other girls wanted to be and all the boys wanted to bed. Unless that boy was Lucky Rodriguez.
Gabe put down his cup and grabbed his jacket. “Let’s do it then.”
Together, they went to Gabe’s storage shed where they loaded the framework, gate, and sign into both their trucks.
“Thanks for storing it here for me.” She’d arranged to have it shipped to his house.
“You’re welcome.” Gabe tied everything down in the bed of Raylene’s Ford while she dragged a bag of quick-set concrete out of the storage shed.
“You sure this will dry in time?”
Gabe grabbed the sack from her, his hands brushing hers, sending a shiver down her spine. She told herself it was the cold.
“Yep,” he said. “I’ll follow you.”
“Hey, King of Covert, how do we do this without getting caught? I want it to be a surprise.”
He opened her driver’s door and shooed her in. “We’ve got an hour.”
“What do you mean an hour?”
“I’ve got Chad diverting them at the Lumber Baron while we get this sucker up.”
“So all this time we were drinking coffee we could’ve been installing the gate?” She scooted into the cab and started her engine to move him along.
“I like living on the edge.” He hung his hands off the roof of her pickup, leaned in, and pecked her on the lips. “Chillax, Ray.”
She slugged him in the arm, reversed out of the driveway, and smiled all the way back to the farm. If she didn’t hate all men, she might’ve actually liked him.