Slow Burn Cowboy

And being treated to her total and complete ambivalence when before his very existence had made him as unto a god.

He supposed he didn’t really have a right to feel much about that either way. It wasn’t like he had been very involved in her life.

Though in fairness to Finn, Cain hadn’t made much of an effort to involve him.

“Hi, Uncle Finn,” Violet said, not looking up from her phone. “My, how you’ve grown.”

Her response stopped him short. “I wasn’t going to say that,” he said.

“Sure.”

“I wasn’t,” he returned.

Finally, Violet looked up, a long-suffering expression on her face. “They all do.”

Not him. He was thirty-four years old. He wasn’t somebody’s elderly relative.

“Do I have a room or something?” Violet asked, directing the question at her dad.

Finn could tell that Cain was about to lecture her for being rude, but as far as Finn was concerned getting rid of the teenager as quickly as possible was optimal. “Up the stairs. First room on the left,” he said.

It had always struck Finn as odd that his grandfather had designed the house to hold so many people, when the old man had few friends and little contact with his family in the broad sense. But the place was big enough to house a small army.

Most of the bedrooms had gone unused since the house had been built five years ago. And when Finn had gotten a look at the will after the old man had died, he’d wondered if they’d been put there for this purpose.

Which had made him feel like a damned idiot. Thinking any of this was for him. Was for a job well done. Hell no.

He’d busted his ass, worked his fingers to the bone—literally in some cases—and they would reap the rewards.

“Thanks.” She shoved her phone back in her pocket and tried to force something that looked vaguely like a smile before walking up the stairs. It was strange to see somebody come into the house for the first time and not be completely awed by the sheer scope of it.

The custom-built cabin, with its high beam-crossed ceilings and breathtaking views of the misty green wilderness, was usually enough to stop people in their tracks.

Apparently, that reaction did not extend to surly teenagers.

After Violet disappeared, Finn turned to his brother. “Well,” he said, “she’s gotten—”

“Impossible?”

“Not what I was going to say. But, you’re the expert.”

Cain pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m not an expert on anything, just ask Violet. But that’s not really relevant to why we’re here.”

“Okay,” Finn said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “You’re here because?”

“Why do you think? It’s not like this is some random appearance you weren’t expecting. Our grandfather died.”

“And per his wishes there was no service. He wanted his money to go back into the ranch, and his body to go back to the mountains. I spread his ashes and didn’t make a deal out of it, just like he said to do.”

Cain set his jaw. “Grandpa left part of the ranch to me, and I’m here because I want it.”

Tension crept up Finn’s spine. He’d known his brothers would come for their inheritance. Hell, who wouldn’t? But he’d imagined they would be discussing money. Finn had been prepared to issue payouts—or make arrangements for them anyway.

What he hadn’t thought was that anyone might want their share of the ranch itself.

“In what capacity, Cain? Because you’ve never paid much attention to the ranch or what goes on here before. In fact, you never even came to visit in the past eight years. It has to have been that long. The last time I saw Violet she was a kid, now she’s...that.”

“I’d apologize to you about that, Finn, but I was kind of in the middle of dealing with my life, which hasn’t been easy for the past few years.”

Finn knew that his brother had been going through a hard time. With the divorce and all of that, but he’d also figured if Cain was having trouble handling it, he would have said something.

He wasn’t sure why he’d figured that, since he would rather die than go to one of his half brothers for help.

Which made him feel like a jackass. He resented that something fierce. Feeling like a jackass in his own damn living room when he was the one being invaded.

“Right,” Finn said, unable to make his tone anything other than hard.

It wasn’t that he didn’t care about Cain’s issues. It wasn’t that he didn’t have some sympathy. It was just that it was all buried beneath the mountain of resentment he felt over this situation.

Cain shrugged. “Now I figure I’m going to deal with it here.”

The sound of a feminine throat clearing caused both men to turn. “Hi,” Lane said, a sheepish smile on her face. She was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, her hands clasped behind her back.

“Cain,” Finn said, doing his best to school his voice into an even tone, “this is Lane.”

“Is she your...”

“Oh, no,” Lane said, a note of incredulity running through the denial. “I’m just his friend. I came to bring casserole, because I knew that you would be coming. At least, I assume you’re the person that I thought would be coming. You’re his brother, right? You do look like him,” she said, rambling now at that full-tilt pace that he had only ever seen Lane accomplish.

Cain looked slightly surprised by the avalanche of words he had just been subjected to, but then he seemed to recover quickly enough. “Hi,” he said, “I’m Cain.”

Lane looked at Finn as if she was waiting for additional information. Well, Finn didn’t have any. At least any he felt like giving. The silence stretched on, and he could sense Lane getting increasingly twitchy, since silence was an enemy she typically made it her mission to defeat.

“Cain and Lane,” she burst out. “That’s funny. And you probably won’t forget my name.”

She stood there, looking no less uncomfortable. As uncomfortable as Finn was starting to feel.

“How long are you staying for?” Finn asked.

Cain glanced around the room, studying the surroundings intently. And then his blue eyes fell back to Finn, looking far too serious for Finn’s liking.

“Well,” he said slowly, “I figured we would be staying for good.”

CHAPTER TWO

MAYBE SHE HAD demonstrated a little bit of cowardice in leaving Finn alone with his invading family. But Lane hadn’t really seen what she could contribute to the scene. She loved Finn to pieces, and he was her best friend in the world. But he was gruff and he didn’t share his feelings easily. He was the kind of guy who led with angry, then made up for it with grand gestures, like the time he’d come to her house and built a deerproof fence for her new garden. Or the time he’d spent an entire day clearing away all the thick brush around the cabin, and forging a path for her that led into the woods so she could more easily access the berry bushes that grew around her property. Or when he’d rebuilt the dock at the lake by her home so that it was larger and didn’t have any soft, damaged boards.

Yeah, Finn was more hammer and nails than hearts and flowers. He had a soul of gold beneath his general cranky exterior.

That didn’t mean she wanted to hang out and witness the ensuing crankiness, though.

And anyway, she had standing plans to meet up with her friends Rebecca Bear and Alison Davis.

She was just going a little earlier than necessary. And if they could make it at the new time, all the better. If not, she would just sit there and eat French fries while she waited. Since she hadn’t stayed for dinner at Finn’s, she was officially starving to death.

And here she had given him a hard time about his palate. But she, Lane Jensen, known foodie, also had a soft spot for really greasy food. And when she wanted that, Ace’s bar was the place to go.

“Hi, Lane,” Ace Thompson said from his position behind the bar. “French fries?”

Ace had made women swoon across town for years. And he still did, but the wedding ring on his left hand put a damper on things. He was lumbersexual hot. But he was also a one-woman man since marrying Sierra West and starting a family with her.

“You’re like my dealer. And yes. Regular, not sweet potato. I’m not in the market to pretend that there’s any nutritional value involved in this.”

She breezed through the dining room and took her place at the counter-height table that she and her friends typically occupied on their nights at the bar.

She sighed, picking up a menu and examining the dinner column, even though she knew exactly what was served at Ace’s. Just in case he’d added something new.

Ultimately, she decided that she was going to order a hamburger. And when the server came with her basket of fries, she did just that.

“I was able to get one of the girls to close up for me.” Lane looked up and saw her friend Alison approaching the table. Her red hair was disheveled, dark shadows beneath her eyes. “I think I might need a vacation.”

“You definitely do. I think you’ve been working more than overtime getting the bakery stable over the past couple of years.”

Alison took her seat across from Lane and immediately stuck her hand in the basket of fries. “True. And I also lost two of my long-term employees last week, so I’ve been scrambling to try and fill holes in the schedule. I haven’t had anybody approach me for a while about a job. Which is good, I guess. Since I have a reputation of hiring people in dire circumstances, I can only suppose that there isn’t anybody hanging out in a dire circumstance. But I’d be more grateful if I wasn’t working my fingers to the bone.”

“That’s not a very appealing visual. Considering that your fingers touch baked goods.”

Alison made a scoffing sound. “Why did you order those pale, anemic fries?” she asked, as she took another one.

“Oh, you mean real fries instead of your imposter sweet potato nonsense?”

“They’re better. That’s just a fact,” Alison said, reaching into her purse and pulling out her phone, checking it quickly.

“What? Who are you? What is our friendship?”

“Rebecca said she’s almost here.”

As if on cue, Rebecca walked into the bar and crossed the room, heading straight for the table. “Sorry. I tried to get here sooner but Gage was at the store helping me close.”

“I imagine that’s relationship code for doing something that is absolutely not helping you close your store,” Alison said.

Rebecca turned bright red. “Possibly.”

Lane tried to ignore the stab of jealousy in her stomach. She had been single going on way too long now. It was getting old.

It was incredibly petty to have any sort of jealousy regarding Rebecca’s relationship with Gage West. It had been hard-won, the obstacles between them seemingly impossible to overcome given the fact that Gage had been at fault for an accident that had caused Rebecca serious scarring—inside and out. If anyone deserved happiness, it was Rebecca.

However, her friend’s happiness certainly highlighted Lane’s own aloneness. Granted, to a degree it was a choice. She didn’t exactly have the time or energy to devote to a relationship right now.

Too bad her discontentment had nothing to do with rationality. She knew that she didn’t want a man in her life at the moment—not in a romantic capacity—it was just that her bed felt very empty sometimes.

And looking at Rebecca, who fairly glowed with satisfaction, it felt very, very empty indeed.

“Gross,” Lane said, not thinking it was gross at all. In fact, she thought it was downright enviable. “Do you need to order? Because Alison and I didn’t wait for you.”

“I called it in,” Rebecca said, “mostly because I knew neither of you would wait.”

Rebecca’s hamburger ended up arriving before Alison’s or Lane’s, which seemed unfair on top of everything else. Not only had she very recently had some sex, she was also indulging in a hamburger a full five minutes before her friends. Her single, celibate friends.

When Lane’s food did show up, she attacked it with gusto. She had the vague thought that she was very likely using her hamburger to help soothe some of the unsettled feelings that were left behind after witnessing Finn’s confrontation with his brother. But it was no big news to her that she used food to deal with her feelings.

There was a reason that she had opened a specialty food store, and it was only partly because the old business had been established but needed to change hands right around the time she had been financially able to make that step.

She had always loved the Mercantile on Copper Ridge’s Main Street, ever since she had moved to the small town on the Oregon coast when she was seventeen. She loved the exposed brick on the walls, the warm, homey feeling and the easily accessible samples of bread and different types of infused olive oils.

The fact that she got to work there all day almost every day was one of her favorite things about her life. So what if she had a serious emotional crutch in the form of food? She had managed to find a way to continually keep herself surrounded by said crutch.

“I thought you were eating dinner with Finn?” Alison asked, eyeing Lane as she continued to feast on her burger.

She swallowed her bite, and then took a slow drink of her Diet Coke. For some reason, she was hesitant to bring discussions of Finn into the group. But then, that wasn’t unusual. Her friendship with Finn was specific. Its own thing.

It wasn’t easy or completely open the way her relationships with Alison and Rebecca were. But how could it be? He was a man, and she wasn’t blind to that fact. Not only that, he was older than her. And he’d been friends with her brother, Mark, before he was her friend. But as the years had progressed, and Mark moved away, the gap had seemed to close between the two of them.

He was kind of like an older brother. Except a little more equal. She supposed the exact definition didn’t really matter. But she still often felt the need to put up a wall between that relationship and her relationship with her girlfriends. She told them everything, but telling them everything about Finn bordered on being a violation of him, and that was what she tried to avoid.

“Well, I was. But... He had a visitor?”

“Please don’t tell me he forgot that you were coming over and hooked up with some girl,” Alison said, her nose wrinkling. Alison was always prepared to think the worst of men. She tried to keep the negativity to a minimum, and Lane knew that. But she also knew that the other woman had ample reason to have a low opinion of the species.

Lane hesitated. “No. He didn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that. You know Finn, he’s... Well, he’s a little bit nicer than that. It’s just he has kind of an infusion of family right now. Because of his grandfather.”

Alison looked contrite. “Right. I forgot about that. How is he?”

Lane shrugged. “As good as can be expected. He knew that Callum was going to go soon. I just think even when you expect it there’s nothing easy about it. Plus, he has to deal with his brothers now. And that’s just a whole thing.”

“Family invariably is,” Rebecca said.

“Speaking of family,” Alison said. “How is Jonathan warming up to Gage?”

Lane’s attention was momentarily pulled away from the conversation by something flickering on the TV screen above the bar. And then everything faded into the background.

Because there he was.

Cord McCaffrey, newly a senator, darling of the media, instant internet sensation and Lane’s personal trial by fire. How was any of this fair? Here he was, in her bar, disturbing her French fry time.

The man was like an incredibly charismatic cockroach. He could not be killed. Not that she wanted him killed; it was just she wanted him a little less successful and a little less in her face. Also, a little less beloved by all.

Seeing him on the screen, in a power suit with a power tie, giving a speech so well constructed it could make angels weep, she felt tiny. Tiny and insignificant. She hated that. She had achieved a lot in her life. Without help from her family.

And mostly, she didn’t miss them. Mostly, she didn’t ever think about the big house she had once lived in in Massachusetts with her old money blue blood parents. Mostly, she was very happy living in a tiny, seaside town on the Oregon coast, as far away from them and their judgment as it was possible to get without crossing the ocean.

But seeing Cord dredged up memories. And God knew she had been seeing him way more often than usual lately.

“Lane?”

She blinked, looking across the table at Rebecca, whose expression was one of concern. Suddenly, she remembered where she was. She had been outside of herself for a moment. Outside of her body, possibly outside of Oregon. Somewhere else entirely.

Twelve years in the past maybe.

“What? Sorry, I spaced out.”

“You seemed distracted by Senator Good Hair.”

“Oh,” she said, trying to figure out how she was going to spin that. Because she didn’t exactly want to have a conversation about the fact that she knew Cord McCaffrey. She was never going to have a discussion with anyone about the particulars of that knowledge—that was for sure. But she was trying to decide on the most believable and innocuous lie.

“I get it,” Alison said. “He’s compelling. I mean, I think being a politician’s wife would be horrible. All I can picture is how controlled it would be. How owned you would feel. But I get why some women go for it.”

Lane had a feeling that Alison would find a long-term relationship with any man stifling at this point. Her ex-husband was to blame for that.

“It’s just weird,” Lane said, going for the closest version of the truth that she could manage. “He lived in my parents’ neighborhood. We grew up next to each other. It’s always kind of strange to see somebody that you knew in a different context becoming famous.”

Saying something so innocuous about him nearly killed her. The fact that she had occasion to talk about him at all—with people who had no idea of their connection—just made her angrier.

At the same time, if Cord had never achieved his political ambition she might have been even angrier. Because then what would the point have been of any of the pain that he put her through?

“I can see that being weird,” Rebecca said. “I really can’t imagine any of the jackasses I went to school with ascending to political office. It’s a terrifying prospect, actually.”

Rebecca truly had no idea. “Yeah. Weird.” She shoved another fry in her mouth to keep from making further comment.

She felt weird the whole rest of the evening, which she hated. Because Cord wasn’t rattling around his giant-ass mansion feeling weird right now. No, he was likely sitting in a wingback chair with a snifter of brandy, letting his Stepford wife rub his feet while his two perfect children slept upstairs. When she walked back to her car later, Rebecca intercepted her. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Lane said, breaking away quickly, tromping across the parking lot with more forceful steps than necessary, loose rocks and gravel crunching under her feet.

“You were very quiet tonight. You’re never quiet.”

She let out an exasperated sigh that bloomed in the cold night air, joining the low-hanging fog that was creeping in off the sea. “Just tired. I stayed up late making dinners for Finn last night, and then had to work most of the day. And then I had to deliver the food, so...”

“You do a lot for him.”

Lane bristled. Mostly because whenever anyone made comments about her relationship with Finn, those comments contained undercurrents. Undercurrents she didn’t like. “He’s done a lot for me. Plus, his grandfather just died, and he might have been a surly old coot, but he was pretty much all Finn had to call family.”

“Except all those brothers,” Rebecca pointed out.

“Half brothers. And he didn’t grow up with them.”

She didn’t know why she was being defensive. About Finn, about anything in his life. She was crossing the velvet Finn rope she tended to put up around her conversations with other people, and hell if she knew how she’d gotten dragged over it.

“Sorry,” Rebecca said, letting out a long sigh. “I’m just worried about you and I’m trying to drag out a reason why you might have been upset and I tend to come back to him.”

“Well, Finn is not ever part of my upset. Finn is one of the only truly good men on planet Earth.”

Rebecca looked at her, long and hard, her dark eyes glittering in the lamplight. “Okay.”

Damn her. She still wasn’t taking Lane’s placating lies at face value. But she was also wrong about the source of her issues. And if her Finn stuff was cordoned off by a velvet rope, her Cord issues were kept in a very difficult to access attic, beneath a really heavy box with a blanket over it, so no one would ever look and she’d have a hard time ever pulling it out herself.

“I’m fine,” she said, singsong now, walking to her car with a small bounce in her step. “Fine, fine, fine.”

“Keep saying it,” Rebecca said, her tone dry. “That will make it seem more believable.”

Lane cheerfully flung her middle finger into the air, directing it at Rebecca along with a smile. Rebecca lifted her own hand and made a catching motion, as though Lane had blown her a kiss. Then she put the imagined item in her pocket. “In case I need a good Screw You later.”

“I think you had a good screw earlier,” Lane shot back.

“Don’t hate the player,” Rebecca said, her tone completely serious.

Lane rolled her eyes and got into her car. Sometimes she thought it would be more practical to get a big truck. For garden soil, wood chips and anything else she might need for her garden. But she liked the fuel economy of her little car. Plus, Finn had a truck and he could always do that stuff for her.

Her house was a quick trip from Ace’s, which sat on the edge of town. In about five minutes, she was at the dirt driveway that led back into the hills to where her little homestead was. Four potholes and three curves later, she was pulling into her driveway.

The house was modest, but it was cozy and perfect for one person. Nestled in the pine trees, the little cabin looked like it might be growing straight out of the earth. But the value of this place wasn’t in the house, it was in the property.

She had spent the past couple of years taming it, getting herself a decent-sized garden plot prepared and revamping an old outbuilding set way back in the trees that was designed to store things like jam and root vegetables.

Well, Finn had helped with a lot of that.

But, like she had told Rebecca earlier, Finn did a lot for her. It was one reason she happily did a lot for him. Anything. She would do anything for Finn.

She walked across the soft ground, bark and pine needles muting her footsteps until she reached the wooden porch steps. She shoved her key into the lock—even out here she kept her doors locked out of an abundance of caution. She wasn’t particularly concerned with anyone stealing her things, not in Copper Ridge. Really, she wasn’t legitimately concerned with much considering that Copper Ridge was a very safe place to live, but she was a woman who lived alone in the middle of nowhere, so her anxieties tended to center on some deranged drifter lying in wait in her living room when she returned from town after a long day.

That she could live without.

She sighed heavily, dumping her purse and her keys over the back of the armchair that sat adjacent to the entryway. She felt unsettled and restless, which wasn’t how she usually felt when she walked into her snug little house.

It was so different to that expansive stone monstrosity her parents had lived in, heaving with dashed expectations and the scent of disappointment. It had always felt so cold. So vast and empty.

Because there was nothing even close to love in the hallowed walls of the Jensen family home. And no matter what her parents said, she could feel it. And it made that massive manor feel claustrophobic.