“DAMN IT!” NATHAN cursed as he slammed his hand against the gate, bouncing it from the latch.
Watching Jessie ride off through the pasture made him want to throw something. Jessie had a way of taking his self-control and throwing it out the nearest window. Why the hell was she so angry with him?
Sure, he’d been a bit thrown by the fact that incorporation papers had already been filed, but it didn’t change anything. In fact, it only made him trust Trevor Gray and his son less. The truth was, no matter how much Trevor claimed to have the Harts’ best interests in mind, Nathan wasn’t buying it. Either Brendon was hiding something and was afraid his father would find out, or they were hiding something together. He’d seen enough backstabbing and wheeling-and-dealing in companies far bigger than this ranch to know it was just a part of the game to most people. Business was cutthroat and ruthless. Executives didn’t care who was hurt in the process of a takeover. But Nathan wasn’t about to see Jessie, or her siblings, taken advantage of by those two.
“I’m only trying to help you!” he yelled after her, shaking his head as she kicked the horse into a gallop. Either she hadn’t heard him or she was ignoring him. Damn that woman’s stubborn streak.
Son of a bitch! He pushed open the door of the cabin, throwing his files on the table. They skidded across the smooth surface, some of them falling open and scattering papers across the top.
Jessie made it perfectly clear she’d never wanted him here, never wanted his help, and now she was pissed at something he’d done. Or hadn’t done. He was tired of spinning his wheels trying to figure her out.
“What are you even doing here?” Nathan spun to see Bailey leaning against the doorjamb of the cabin.
“Ever heard of privacy, Bailey?”
She laughed and sauntered into the room, jumping onto the kitchen counter like he’d invited her in. “Ever heard of shutting a door?” She gave him a cocky grin. “Well?”
He sighed, wondering how she managed to ask the very question haunting him. She obviously wasn’t going anywhere until he answered her. “I’m trying to help Jessie get her finances on track. At least, that’s what I thought I was doing.”
“Oh, you are. Or you will,” she clarified. “But I mean, what are you doing here, right now? Why didn’t you follow her?”
“Are you nuts? I have no idea where she rode off to, and she made it pretty clear I wasn’t invited.” He ran a hand through his hair and threw his hands into the air. “I don’t even know why she’s angry at me.”
Bailey hopped off the counter. “For a smart guy, Wall Street, you’re pretty slow on the uptake.” She shook her head. “Come on,” she ordered, heading for the door. When he didn’t follow her, she turned and cocked her hip to the side. “Or are you planning on running back to New York now that your dad wants you there?”
“How do you know about that?”
She held up his phone and wiggled it. “You’d think someone with your smarts would lock their phone with a passcode or something.” Her grin pulled at the corner of her lips. “Now, if you want to catch up to my cousin, you’d better hurry up. You can ride a quad can’t you?”
He snatched his phone from her fingers. “You’re a piece of work, Bailey. Do you know that?”
Her grin spread across her face and her dark eyes glinted mischievously. “Tell me something I haven’t heard a hundred times before.”
“It’s not a compliment.”
He scanned a new message from his father demanding he return to New York, ordering him to be at a meeting with one of his father’s biggest campaign contributors in three days. How many times did he have to tell his father he wasn’t interested in politics? He certainly didn’t want to be connected with his father’s shady dealings. Nathan quickly responded that he was unavailable until after the weekend. Jessie might be angry enough to ask him to leave but he refused to skip out on her when she had guests arriving and he was the one who’d suggested she take them in. He wasn’t going to leave her short-handed, even if he might not be much help.
“Are you coming or what?”
“She doesn’t want to see me.”
“Holy shit, Wall Street! Stop being so dense.” This was the second time he’d seen her lose her temper with him, and frankly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to see it again. If Jessie’s temper was fiery, Bailey’s was downright frightening. “She isn’t mad at you. She’s hurt. Uncle Colton made her a promise before he went on that trip. He was going to hire someone else so she could concentrate on rehabilitating abused horses. Now she finds out that he was taking money from the ranch to go into a new corporation no one knew existed, as if he didn’t think she could make it work. She turned down college to stay and help my aunt and uncle with this place, and now she finds out that he never really thought she’d succeed. Pull your head out of your ass already. How would that make you feel?”
Her tirade was enough to allay his frustration. If Bailey was right and that was how Jess was feeling, he needed to explain a few things to her. She was completely misunderstanding her father’s intentions. “I don’t think that’s what he was doing.”
“Then what in the hell are you waiting for? Go find her and explain it to her,” Bailey huffed, her anger snuffed out.
“I don’t even know where to find her.”
She sighed and shook her head. “Do I have to do everything for you? Take the quad on the path that heads toward The Ridge. She’s probably up there. If you don’t find her there, call me and we’ll go look together.”
He tucked his cell into his pocket. “Any service out there?”
“It’s spotty, but you should have enough to get a call through.”
“I’ll call you when I find her.”
The grin returned to Bailey’s face. “Well, that’s really sweet of you, Wall Street, but I’m hoping when you find her, you’ll have far more important things to do than calling me.”
HE WAS LOST. There was no doubt about it. He’d known it was a stupid idea for him to just head out on a quad, even following a trail. He stopped the machine and pulled the helmet off his head, tapping a finger on the side as he tried to get his bearings. He could see The Ridge from where he was, and he was still on the path Bailey instructed him to follow, but it forked about half a mile behind him and he wasn’t sure he’d gone the right direction. He could hear the river up ahead but he couldn’t quite see it. The path might take him to the top, but nothing looked familiar. Then again, the last time he’d come this way had been at night, and he’d been so focused on the woman with him, he hadn’t really paid much attention.
He climbed back on the quad and decided to try following the path he was on a little longer before giving up and calling Bailey. Nathan could hear her scolding him now for being such a “city boy.” He was getting sick and tired of everyone assuming he was somehow incompetent because he’d grown up privileged. He might not know how to rope a steer, but he’d love to see any one of them try to navigate getting a cab in New York on an opening night. He suddenly realized how pretentious the idea sounded. In actuality, he had no doubt any of the three women could handle it, probably better than he or Justin could. He slowed the quad, wondering again if he shouldn’t just turn back when he heard a horse whinny.
That had to be Jess. There was nothing else out here as far as he could see.
Nathan rode a little farther up the trail and could just make out Jessie’s mare through the trees and brush surrounding a clearing near the water. He didn’t want to get the quad too close in case it scared the animal, so he parked it under a tree and walked the rest of the way on foot. The mare raised her head and whinnied another greeting as he approached, but he still didn’t see Jess nearby. Worry chilled the breath in his lungs. Anything could have happened to her out here alone. He glanced toward the water. If she’d tried to go swimming . . .
He dragged his mind back from the morbid thoughts. “Jess,” he called. “Are you here?”
“Down here.” Relief settled in as he walked a few feet down the riverbank and saw her sitting at the edge of the water on a log. “I should’ve known you wouldn’t listen and leave me alone.”
“Yeah, well, I guess you don’t know me as well as you thought.” He made his way down the slight graded slope and sat beside her.
Her eyes were filled with sadness as she gave him a sideways glance. “I don’t really know you at all, Nathan.”
She wasn’t wrong, yet she was. Deep down, he knew they understood one another, or at least a part of each other that no one else seemed to. She’d reached into his chest and grabbed ahold of a part of his soul, showing him what was lacking in his life. She was driving him crazy trying to get her to realize she filled that void. He, on the other hand, was trying to make her see she wasn’t a failure. She blamed herself for everything that went wrong but never took any credit for what she was doing right, and she was doing so much right.
He shrugged. “I’m not that hard to figure out, Jess. What you see is what you get.” She didn’t reply, just continued watching the water break over itself as it crashed downstream, lulling them with a ballet of white foam over the rocks. He moved to sit on the ground and leaned back on the log with his head at her thigh. “Why don’t we talk about what has you so upset?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing or you’d still be at the house. You’re angry.”
She looked down at him in surprise, hope filling her eyes, but it only took her a moment to squash the emotion. “I just need some quiet to figure out what to do now.”
“What’s to figure out? Your father already started the incorporation process. Now we know where the money was going and have it stopped. I’m not sure I see the problem.”
“The problem is that everyone thinks they know what’s best for me and this ranch.” She got up and walked to the edge of the water. She was talking to him, but nothing she said was really directed at him. Her voice rose and broke. “What if I don’t want to run a dude ranch? What if I just want to rehab abused horses like my dad promised? I can’t even do that now without approval from Julia and Justin. I still can’t make any of my own decisions. I’m stuck doing what everyone else decides. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Dad was supposed to run the dude ranch, and I was going to focus on the horses.” She hit her fists against her thighs. “He promised me we would take care of it when he got back. Now I find out he’d already had all of this in the works. That he had to put a backup plan in place because he expected me to fail.”
Nathan could hear the anguish in her voice; her shoulders shook as she tried to control the grief coursing through her. He wasn’t about to sit here and watch her go through this alone. He rose from the ground as she spun on him.
“He lied to me. Why? Why didn’t he just tell me the truth? That he didn’t think I could hack it.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Nathan moved toward her, reaching for her shoulders, but she jerked away from his touch. “Jess, calm down. He didn’t lie.”
She looked up at him and the hope he could read in her eyes made his stomach do a flip. He suddenly knew exactly how a superhero must feel, saving the day. Suddenly, in her eyes, he’d just offered her something more precious than gold. Her expression darkened almost as quickly.
“Of course he lied. Why else would he have hidden the money?” She turned away from him.
Nathan slid his hands over the back of her shoulders. “No, he didn’t. That transfer was set up before he died, so, while we don’t know why the money was being transferred, we can assume it was to be used in some way by the corporation as a whole. If he was going to continue running the dude ranch, it’s highly likely that money was being set aside to help fund your rescue until it was operating independently.” He turned her so she faced him again and brushed a stray curl back from her cheek. “As far as the corporation, he did the right thing. If he told you he was going to help you set something up, I’m sure he was.” His thumb traced her cheekbone. “But circumstances changed before that happened.”
His voice was quietly insistent, and her gaze jumped to meet his. She looked up at him, tears glistening in her eyes, and he realized there wasn’t a power on earth that could stop him from kissing Jessie right now.
He didn’t mean to dip his head, didn’t mean to brush his lips against hers, but when her hands gripped at his forearms, when her fingers curled against him and she let out a little moan, his sanity and self-control were lost. His hands found her waist and circled her back, pulling her to him, ridding them of any space between their bodies. What started as the barest of caresses, a mere touch, quickly ignited into a raging, wild storm of hunger. Her hands slid to the back of his neck, into his hair as his lips found the curve of her ear, the indentation of her neck, and the column of her throat.
This was not what he came out here to do, but he had as much control to stop this now as he would to stop a tornado heading straight toward him. And being with Jessie felt exactly like that—an uncontrollable storm of emotion that left him yearning for more.