exactly that.
Well, not the meeting so much as the ice-cold gusts rolling off Mackenzie. The ones giving him frostbite despite the sunny, seventy-degree weather outside.
“Jace will be helping out this summer.” Mackenzie spoke to the staff, who had gathered. The first full-week summer guests arrived tomorrow, and the group had been wrapping up last-minute details. “Especially with Luc and Cate expecting the babies. We’re not sure how all of that will go. So...” Mackenzie swallowed. Took about twenty years to continue. “Let’s welcome him.”
Let’s. Meaning everyone except for her. Mackenzie might be spouting one thing, but her body language said, Pack up and get out of here.
Jace had hoped that she’d calm down overnight and accept that he was planning to stick around for a bit. He’d thought maybe they could actually forget the past and get along for the summer. But if anything, Mackenzie was even chillier than she’d first been. At least yesterday she’d showed some emotion, asking him not to stay. But now? It was like she’d built a wall between them.
She’d offered him a clipped “good morning” earlier, when she’d told him which room in the guys’ lodging would be his and tossed him a key, but other than that, she’d avoided him as if he were a pest or a varmint or some kind of beauty product that she wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.
And really, Jace didn’t expect anything else from her. He’d been a jerk leaving the way he had. Yes, he’d loved her. But he’d also had to go. The pull had been so strong, it hadn’t been a real choice. Not when his brother’s dream had become unattainable for him. Not when he’d told Jace to go, to live it for him.
Mackenzie dismissed the meeting, and the staff dispersed, their conversations light.
“I’m Boone. Good to have you here.” A young man offered his hand, and Jace shook it. The staffer didn’t look a day over sixteen. Was it even legal for him to work here at that age? Or perhaps he was still growing into his body. Either way, Jace didn’t plan to ask for details. When Luc had said they were low on veteran staff this summer, he hadn’t been exaggerating. Everyone seemed so young. Like puppies. No wonder they’d wanted to hire a lead. Jace might not have experience working a dude ranch, but he knew horses and livestock and pieces of ranching from working one during the summers in high school. People, he could do—he’d always had a way with the human species. So maybe this whole idea wasn’t so crazy after all.
“I follow bull riding. Saw a clip of the Widow Maker ride.”
Just the name of the bull caused Jace to break out in a flu-like sweat.
He’d watched the ride after the fact... He’d had to see it to know what had happened to him, because he didn’t remember any of it. His body had been tossed and trampled like a rag doll in a terrorizing toddler’s hands.
It was amazing he’d survived the ordeal. He’d only watched the video once, and that had been enough.
“That was quite the ride.”
“You can say that again. You ride?”
“No. Did some mutton busting when I was younger, but nothing since.”
“You could always get back to it.” Possibly. Maybe. Though the kid was scrawny. “Let me know if you ever need any lessons.”
Boone grinned. “Not sure I’m willing to risk my life like that, but I’ll keep it in mind.” After a nod, he took off.
A girl—maybe around nineteen or twenty—was talking to Mackenzie, and their conversation was quiet. Everything about the girl was thin. Her body. The hair barely filling out her ponytail. Was she okay? It looked like the world had chewed her up and spit her back out. In contrast, Mackenzie glowed with health and strength.
Jace wasn’t trying to overhear, but their chat filtered in his direction. The girl was asking for an advance on her paycheck.
Mackenzie nodded, listening. “I’ll talk to Luc and Emma, and we’ll let you know.” She squeezed the girl’s arm in a reassuring gesture, and then the little mouse scampered off.
Mackenzie was supposed to train him today. At least that was what Luc had said. Jace wasn’t sure how that would work when she was treating him like a rat in the gutter, but he was game if she was.
The day was sure to be a barrel of fun. Especially since his head was teetering on the edge of a cliff, deciding, without his input, whether to calm down or throw a fit.
Which could be because he’d had a hard time falling asleep last night. Jace wasn’t sure which had caused that symptom—the concussion or the woman in front of him. It was a toss-up. Thoughts of Mackenzie—of the relationship they’d once had—had been resurrected like vivid movies. To the point that he’d finally slept and dreamed about her. Dreamed that he’d stayed in Westbend. That she didn’t hate him.
Things that had consumed his mind when he’d first left to ride bulls and had holed up in an apartment with a few other guys in Billings. And then the rodeo had fully distracted him. And finally, finally the part of him that had been screaming that he’d made a mistake had lightened up. Quieted.
Until now—until seeing Mackenzie again. The need to work, to not spend his days lazing around, might not be worth this headache. And yet the challenge of something new, of helping out Luc and Mackenzie and Emma, still pulled at him.
Jace wasn’t ready to give up a qualified ride yet, even though that was probably exactly what Mackenzie hoped and prayed he would do.
But since Jace’s prayers were the opposite, that left them in a spiritual tug-of-war. Because, as far as Jace knew, God didn’t pick sides. He loved both of them. And the Man upstairs was going to have to work this out. Because Jace didn’t see Mackenzie calling a truce anytime soon.
“Well.” Mackenzie shuffled papers on the table, which held her attention like her favorite pair of boots. Finally she glanced up, regarding him with as much contempt as she might a door-to-door salesman peddling high-priced skin-care products. “I should show you the trails. You might lead some rides, and either way you’ll need to know where the groups are in case of an emergency.”
“Don’t I already know them?” They’d been all over this land together in high school. Had ridden more times than he could count.
Jace had preferred time with Mackenzie over the agony of watching his brother try to figure out how to live after losing part of his leg. It had been pretty awful around his house for a while. When Jace had been eleven, their father had been killed in a bar brawl. Drinking had always been his most important relationship, and his presence in their lives before that had been sporadic. Four years later Evan’s foot and part of his leg had been amputated because of a lawn-mower accident. Mom had struggled—working constantly to support them and pay for Evan’s medical bills.
Jace had escaped to Wilder Ranch all of the time in high school. Kenzie Rae had been his escape. The truth of that made every bruised, broken and sprained muscle or bone he’d experienced riding bulls roar back into existence.
“You’ll know some. But a few are new.” She strode to the door and then paused inside the frame, tapping the toe of her boot with impatience when he didn’t immediately sprint after her. “You coming?”
“Right behind you.”
And that was how it was on the trail, too. Mackenzie led. Jace followed. There was no riding next to each other. No conversation.
Only him trying—and failing—not to notice everything about her. Being relegated to the back seat on the ride gave him the chance to drink her in, to catalog the slight changes that had come with time. Jace had left a girl behind and had come back to find a woman. One who didn’t need him. Didn’t want him. Didn’t know why he’d done what he’d done.
With her dark blond hair slipped through the back of a baseball cap, and wearing a simple gray V-necked T-shirt, jeans and boots, Mackenzie turned casual into a heap of trouble.