Cricket was a bloodthirsty little thing.
He had to grudgingly respect that.
She led the way down a trail that had been worn into the grass, and he followed. And groaned when the very rustic-looking house came into view. “You’re not serious.”
“I am absolutely serious. What’s wrong with it?”
“If the house is dilapidated, how bad is this going to be?”
She kicked open the door, and inside was... Well, pretty much nothing. There were bunks, but they looked like they were moldier than not.
“Cricket,” he said.
He’d slept in worse, that was for damn sure. But not for as long as a month.
“Okay,” she relented. “All right, I have a better idea. You can sleep in the house.”
* * *
The look he gave her was full of skepticism, but his skepticism wasn’t her problem. She was enjoying talking to him. Trying to get a sense of what he thought. What he knew. If they were alike.
And when he had talked about his dad...
She had wanted to know more. She was jealous. Because her own father had never cared for her at all. What would it have been like to grow up on the ranch? To have a place where she belonged. It had actually become something of a cherished fantasy.
The idea that James Maxfield wasn’t her father. The idea that she made sense.
“Sleep in the house.”
“Yes. There’s an extra bedroom.”
“Great.”
They went back toward the house, him with his sleeping bag in tow.
“There’s a quilt,” she said.
“Is it full of dust?”
“Don’t be silly.” She waved her hand. “I beat the blankets out. I looked that up online. I’ve got this, I really do.”
“Right.”
“This place wasn’t totally unoccupied until recently. The older lady who lived in it passed away. I don’t really know why my dad owned it. He wasn’t charging her very much in rent, which honestly doesn’t seem like him. It leads me to believe that one of his business managers must’ve bought it and he didn’t remember. Or even know. That does sound like my dad. He doesn’t really notice people.”
It was weird to call James Maxfield her dad. She had suspected he wasn’t for at least six months. Not since she found out that the reason for the feud between the Coopers and the Maxfields was that her mother had once been in love with Cash Cooper.
It had all made so much sense then.
Her mother hadn’t felt like she could get married to Cash, because he was penniless. And so, she had chosen to marry James Maxfield, and signed on for a life of misery. But Cricket had long suspected that the reason she existed, the reason she was a late-in-life child, was not because her parents had suddenly found a way to rekindle their romance ten years after her sisters were born. No.
It made much more sense to her that her mother had gone straight back into the arms of Cash.
It was just Cricket wanted to tread lightly in finding out the truth. Because his wife had passed away not that long ago, and she imagined it would be very painful for Creed, Jackson or Honey to accept that their father had had an affair.
From her point of view, it was pretty romantic. But then, her father wasn’t heroic to her. Cash seemed much nicer. Though, she knew the Coopers loved their mother very much, and she’d seemed like a nice woman. Cricket didn’t like the idea that Cash might have done her wrong.
For all that Cricket could see the affair as a forbidden romance, she imagined the Cooper children wouldn’t view it in quite the same way.
So she had to tread carefully. Treading carefully wasn’t her strong point. Never had been.
She tramped up the steps again. And Jackson cursed sharply. She turned just in time to see his foot go through the second step.
The only problem with all of her theories had been Jackson. And the way she’d felt about him for the last ten years. And the way her suspicions had forced her to...
Well it was a relief, really. She’d always hated how Jackson made her feel. Like her heart was too big for her chest and her breath was too big for her lungs. She’d felt connected to him, from the first moment she’d laid eyes on him, and she’d hated it. Especially as she’d gotten older and seen how badly a relationship could hurt a woman. Her parents’ marriage was toxic. She’d never wanted anything like that, but her heart had attached itself to Jackson all the same.
That connection had made a strange, dizzying sort of sense when she’d realized. When she’d figured it out. Because, of course.
Of course she wasn’t so foolish as to fall in love with him.
Of course love at first sight wasn’t real, especially not as a kid.
Of course that connection was something else.
Of course.
Cricket didn’t trade in uncertainty. And for years, the intensity of the emotions she’d felt around Jackson Cooper had felt uncertain.
It was a relief to find certainty.
It was.
“I’ve never had that problem,” she said.
“Like I said. Not more than a buck twenty-five soaking wet.”
“Can’t help it.” She scampered the rest of the way up the steps and into the house. He followed her, and she noticed that he didn’t lighten his footsteps at all to make allowances for the fact that some of the boards were iffy. He got what he got. If he ended up severing a tendon it wasn’t her fault.
“Thank you for the wild goose chase around your property.”
“No, that wasn’t a goose chase. We’ll goose chase later. There’s a pond.”
“Do geese favor a pond?” he asked.
“Mine do.”
“You have geese?”
“A few domestic. One Canada goose. He has a broken wing. It’s flipped kind of upside down. He can’t fly.”
He frowned. “You have a Canada goose?”
“I do. His name is Goose.”
“Creative.”
She arched a brow. “Do you have a problem with a Canada goose?”
“No. Not at all. But you can’t exactly make a ranch off of them.”
“I’m not suggesting that it be a goose ranch. But my point is that tomorrow we’ll go on an actual tour. No drama. This was just a walkabout.”
“I can’t believe you were going to throw me in the bunkhouse without ever having looked at it.”