“Good idea, baby,” Gray murmured, his eyes never leaving the barn.
I squeezed his hand. He squeezed mine back but he did it not looking away from his loss.
I let him go, took two steps away then turned and took two back.
Pressing again to his side, I lifted up until I was as close as I could get to his ear and whispered, “Say you love me, Gray.”
I rolled back to the soles of my feet and watched as he closed his eyes then he opened them and turned to me.
His hand came up, he cupped my jaw and his eyes moved over my face.
Then he said, “I love you, Ivey.”
I grinned a small, sad grin.
He gave me the same.
Then he bent and touched his mouth to mine, dropped his hand and I turned and went into the house to make coffee for firefighters.
* * * * *
Three hours later…
Dawn was hitting the sky, weak light beginning to glow through the window.
Gray and I had had showers but no sleep. We were in bed, Gray on his back, me pressed to his side, my head on his pectoral, hand flat and lightly trailing his chest and gut, his arm around me, hand in my panties cupping my ass.
We’d been there awhile, lying close, not speaking but also not sleeping.
Finally, I broke the silence by whispering, “You okay?”
“No.”
I pulled in a breath. Then I slid my hand up his chest, lifted and turned my head and rested my chin on my hand under me.
He had four pillows bunched haphazardly behind his head and shoulders (this was his way, my man liked pillows) and his eyes dipped to me.
“Please don’t kill Buddy,” I said quietly. “Just got you back after seven years. I don’t want to spend the next seven visiting you in the penitentiary.”
His face softened but he didn’t smile.
Still, he replied teasingly, “You’re in the mountain plains of Colorado, dollface. No jury from these parts would convict me for killin’ a man who killed seven horses.”
His joke fell flat, I knew he saw it on my face just as I saw it on his but I suspected his was worse. He was a cowboy, horses were kind of important to cowboys.
I lifted up, pushed up closer, sliding more onto his chest, my hand moving to curl around the side of his neck all as I whispered, “Baby, I don’t know what to do to help you.”
That was when he grinned. It wasn’t a big one and it didn’t warm his beautiful eyes the usual way but it still warmed his eyes.
His hand left my panties so his arm could close tight around the middle of my back and he told me, “You’re doin’ it, Ivey.”
I nodded and smiled.
Then I said gently, “I’m sorry, Gray.”
“Me too.”
“We’ll be okay.”
It was his turn to nod. “One thing I got is insurance. So, yeah, eventually, we’ll be okay.”
It was good to know he had insurance but that wasn’t what I was talking about.
“That isn’t what I meant, honey.”
“I know that, darlin’, and my response still stands. We’ll be okay in all ways. Just that right about now, when we need to crash so we can get at least a little sleep so we can face whatever the day’s gonna bring, you need to know that it’s all gonna be okay.”
He was right.
I tipped my face so I could kiss his chest. Then I repositioned and looked at him again.
“Do you get sleepless nights often?”
“Nope, work hard all day, sleep hard all night.”
“So, you waking up is unusual?”
“Can’t say it’s never happened, can say it’s so rare don’t remember when it happened last.”
“So what woke you?”
That got me a different kind of grin but he still wasn’t committed to it.
“Thought it was my subconscious reminding me you’d gone to sleep without your panties on.”
I grinned back then pressed gently, “But that wasn’t it?”
“If you’re askin’ if I heard somethin’, then no. I heard somethin’, I’d look. I wouldn’t start somethin’ with you. If you’re askin’ if I got a sense of somethin’, a vibe, who knows? What I do know is, awake or asleep, I’d hear that blast. I sleep hard but I don’t sleep so deep I’d sleep through that and I know since I didn’t the last time.”
“Mm…” I muttered, my eyes sliding away.
“Ivey,” he called and my eyes slid back. “We got a mess outside and a fight that was already pretty fuckin’ ugly that just got a whole lot uglier. We need to sleep so we can be prepared to face the day.”
He was right.
“Okay, honey,” I agreed and started to move to settle back into him but stopped when his arm gave me a squeeze and I focused back on him.
“I’m not used to sleepless nights but that don’t mean after what happened tonight, seein’ you run around a burnin’ barn, I won’t start to have them.”
I knew where this was going from my macho man rancher cowboy so I opened my mouth to cut him off.
He saw it and his arm gave me another squeeze.
“Let me finish, baby, yeah?”
I closed my mouth and nodded.
“You saved five horses,” he whispered.
I did. I did do that.
Gray wasn’t done.
“You runnin’ into that barn like that, workin’ to save those horses, this ranch, I didn’t like it and pray to God nothin’ like that’ll happen again. But I gotta say, wherever you were born and whatever you did, pool hustler, showgirl, tonight, you were a rancher’s woman and just like you, when you do somethin’, you’re the best there is.”
That meant so much, was so beautiful, my nose instantly started stinging and his face got fuzzy as tears filled my eyes.
He pulled me up his chest, ignored my burgeoning tears and ordered, “Now, say you love me, Ivey, kiss me then settle and go to sleep.”
I swallowed then whispered shakily, “I love you, Gray.”
“Now, kiss me,” he whispered back.
I touched my mouth to his and he pulled me back down his chest.
“Now, go to sleep.”
I put my cheek to his chest nodding and deep breathing.
I didn’t go right to sleep, it took me awhile just as it took Gray but I eventually got to sleep and I did it before him.
Chapter Thirty-Two
It Was Family
The morning after the fire, early, we got visits from Shim and Roan. Roan on his way to work, Shim with the flatbed of his pickup filled with horse feed and hay. This was kind since ours went up in smoke, something they both obviously knew (thus the visits) since news travels fast in a small town even through the night. It was also a testimony to the kind of man my cowboy rancher was that he accepted it considering Shim was still a ranch hand on Jeb Sharp’s land. It was too early for the feed store to be open so it was likely this was given to us by Sharp, not Shim.
For reasons unknown to me, regardless of the fact I was exhausted and dragging, I started the day by tricking myself out. I didn’t put on one of my fabulous dresses but did the hair, makeup, designer jeans, complicated but casual (and expensive) top routine. I didn’t strap on high heels, however, instead I slipped on some fabulous flip-flops. But I went for the gusto with everything else. It could be I needed my armor for the day after a tragedy. It could be that was just me.
In the end with who came calling, I was glad I did.
The night before, after the fireman and cops left, they cordoned off the barn with police tape. One could say waking up and looking out your window to see part of your property lined with yellow police tape was not a sight you wanted to see in the morning
Or ever.
After I fed my man and served coffee to him and his friends, I dug out the insurance papers. Then I called Gray’s insurance company and left them a message stating that after the police and arson investigators released the scene, we needed an urgent visit because we ha
d seven dead horse carcasses fifty yards away from our house and we needed to put those bodies in the ground so we could put those souls at peace.
The arson investigator showed shortly after Shim and Roan left and Gray asked, while he was dealing with things on the ranch, if I would go to the nursing home to break the news to Grandma Miriam. Seeing as our phone was ringing off the hook already and it was just eight o’clock, he was worried news would travel and she’d learn from someone else.
So I hightailed it into town and, in a futile effort to soften the blow, I bought her another book, some magazines and a shed load of candy bars. I figured a nursing home was kind of like prison, you had to have the proper currency to make your way and garner favors and for oldies it wasn’t cigarettes. So I bought enough candy bars to make Grandma Miriam the queen of the swanky retirement estate. I also got some for Gray since there was a reason there were so many candy bar wrappers in his truck. Gray did not reach for a Power Bar or a banana when he got peckish and considering his day was physical activity from dawn practically to dusk, he got the munchies often. Though I did make sure most of his had peanuts so he had protein.
I was dreading my task and once the news was delivered I felt little relief. Grandma Miriam was stunned, scared for Gray and me and heartbroken that the barn built by her husband’s father, a barn she saw out the back window while she was doing the dishes every day for over fifty years, no longer existed not to mention how she reacted when I told her we lost seven horses. And I was right, she was happy for her book, magazines and candy bars but they did not do one thing to soften the blow.
Before I left, her hand clutched mine with a surprising strength borne of fear, her fading blue eyes locked to me and she whispered fervently, “You and Gray stay safe, child. Promise me, please, you two will stay safe.”
I promised her yet again that Lenny was on it, Jeb Sharp was on it and that her grandson would never let anything happen to him or me. It was this last that got her hand to relax in mine. Then again, it would. She knew Gray so she knew this was the truth.
I drove home to see an SUV and pickup parked by the house and to find out from Gray that his morning had been busy. Half of Mustang had been by and I knew this was a fact when I hit the kitchen and found the farm table practically covered in dishes, pans and plates filled with casseroles, pies, cakes and brownies. Gray said his big shed where he kept tools, equipment and peach tree things was now filled near to overflowing with horse feed, hay and used bridles and saddles that folks had popped by to bring.
For the next hour, I would experience this same thing as folks brought food, pop, beer and equipment but I was surprised to see these folks were not lookee-loos. They came, they gave us their sentiments, they dropped off their generosity and they left. They knew Gray and I had things to do and other things to occupy our minds. They knew they’d be underfoot. They knew it was taxing to have unexpected company. So they shared their kindness then they got the hell out of there.
I’d never experienced anything like it.
It was like experiencing beauty.
It was early afternoon and Gray and I had just had huge plates filled with Ang, the waitress (still!) at the diner’s Mexican chicken, cheese and tortilla casserole. We were still at the table when his head came up and turned. Mine did too and we looked out the big window over the cabinet at the side of the kitchen.
There we saw coming down the lane another SUV followed by a pickup and as they careened closer at what appeared to be high speed I saw they were followed by a sedan.
“No,” Gray whispered then I tensed when he clipped, “fuck no.”
Then his chair scraped back and he was out of it like a shot, stalking to the backdoor.
I had no idea who owned those vehicles but I did know whoever it was really wasn’t welcome so I shot to my feet and ran after Gray.
When I got down the back steps I saw he was striding, long legs eating the distance, across the side yard that was dotted with big, shady trees toward the now parked trucks and car. And it was then I saw who was in them.
The SUV held Gray’s uncles Olly and Charlie, the two I’d met, in the pickup was a man I’d never seen but his looks were unmistakably Cody and in the car was Macy.
As they exited their vehicles I quickly took them in.
Back in the day during my first stay in Mustang, I noticed Charlie had gone soft and carried extra weight. I had met and been around Olly when he was home during my cooking lessons with Macy but (wisely) he avoided the kitchen during those times and I only shared greetings, farewells and a handful of words in between. Olly, then and now, and the man who had to be Frank had not gone soft. They were tall, their burnished, dark blond hair only sprinkled with gray and they were still lean, fit and handsome. They wore their age, definitely, but they wore it well.
“Get gone,” I heard Gray growl dangerously, still striding toward them as they lined up a few feet in front of their vehicles.
It was Frank, eyes narrowed on the remains of the barn, his face carrying an easily read emotion of being extremely pissed off, who cut his gaze to Gray and asked weirdly, “What you doin’ ‘bout this shit, boy?” Then he gave an irate jerk of his chin toward the barn.
“I said, get gone,” Gray semi-repeated, stopping four feet in front of them and I hustled to his side.
“And I said,” Frank leaned in, “what you doin’ ‘bout this shit, boy?”
I did not have a good feeling about this.
“All right, guys, let’s all calm down, go inside, open a beer and talk calmly,” Macy, arriving at the pack, put in and I knew by her bossy yet soothing tone she trailed the brothers in her own car because she’d tried to talk them out of coming, failed but followed them in order to play peacemaker.
“Stay outta this, Macy,” Olly rumbled, not taking his eyes off Gray.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Frank prompted ominously.
“And you haven’t moved your ass off my goddamned land,” Gray shot back. “Now get…the fuck…gone.”
“Maybe you guys can come back in a day or two?” I suggested but none of them even looked at me.
“Bud Sharp needs to learn a lesson,” Charlie told Gray and I tensed.
“My problem, not yours. Get gone,” Gray returned.
“Sittin’ here, sittin’ on your hands when you got fucked?” Olly asked then went on to state, “That’s not Cody.”
“You wouldn’t know what Cody is, you asshole. Now get gone,” Gray clipped and all of them tensed and it was more than a little scary.
“Seems we know more ‘bout bein’ a Cody than you, boy. Fuck. Half a day’s gone and there’s no Sharp swingin’ from no tree,” Frank remarked and my tense went ultra tense.
Frank wasn’t done.
“Your Daddy, my Daddy, my Daddy’s Daddy would not get his goddamned barn burned down right under his fuckin’ nose and then delay to seein’ someone pays.”
And at that, something clicked in me. I felt it. I could swear I even heard it.
And when it did, I lost it.
“How dare you?” I whispered but that whisper vibrated with a feeling so strong it shimmered in the air and everyone present felt it. I knew this when all eyes came to me. “How dare you?” I repeated then I shrieked, “How fucking dare you?”
I took three fast steps to the Brothers Cody and got a steel band-like arm wrapped around my belly which hauled me back into Gray’s body and cut off my advance but it didn’t stop my tirade.
“Buddy Sharp’s been playing with Gray for years and you didn’t have his back then. I’ve been home for weeks and not a one of you,” my eyes moved to Macy, “even you, came to see me. You live in this town. You know what happened to us. And you know Gray nearly lost this land, this house, that barn,” I swung an arm out behind me, “because he was taking care of your mother,” I jabbed a finger at them, “and you didn’t do shit. His trees were poisoned, his horses were poisoned and where were you then? Now you have the balls to show up h
ere when you left your nephew blowing in the breeze and try to tell him how to deal with a tragedy? How he should handle that sick, jealous piece of shit in town whose entire life focus is taking Grayson Cody down? You show up here after we spent a sleepless night after being in a barn that was collapsing around us, taking our lives in our hands to save your legacy, a legacy you have given nothing to for decades but still you have the nerve to drive up here and get in Gray’s face about it? How dare you?”
“Ivey –” Macy started, her voice placating but my eyes sliced to her.
“No,” I cut her off. “Actually, I don’t give a fuck how you dare. What I give a fuck about is that you, all of you,” I swung an arm out to indicate them all, “get out of my man’s space right now. He’s survived this. He’s survived the hits he took in his past. He’s bent over backward and twisted himself into knots making it so your mother survived and had as good a life as he could give her after her legs were taken and he’s still doing that. And he’s done all this without even a little help from you three.” I stabbed a finger in turn at the brothers three. “You don’t get this so I’ll give it to you. You have nothing to say to Grayson Cody, not about what he does or this land. So get in your cars and,” I strained against Gray’s arm and screeched, “go.”
“I see, little lady, that you don’t get when your Momma turns her back on you, that has consequences,” Frank informed me more than a little arrogantly.
“No, what I see is that Momma was disappointed in the sons she carried, she birthed and she raised when they acted like greedy jackasses after she lost her legs and her son and they didn’t set about doing everything they could to win back her trust, respect and affection. That shit was a result of your,” another finger jab, “actions and I find it laughable that you three would come here and demand Gray man up when not one of you has done that same thing for over a decade. Gray taking care of this land, that house and your mother while you lived your lives carrying your grudges makes him more man than the three of you combined and then some.”
“Ivey,” Gray murmured warningly with an arm squeeze.
I shook my head and didn’t tear my eyes off the Codys.