Sirens in Bliss(15)

And he was letting it pass all of them by. “I think Lucas blames me. He won’t say it, but he thinks I should have brought her back in line long ago. I just thought I was helping her live her dream. I don’t know how I would handle it if she told me to stop ranching.”

“What would you say if she asked you to cut back?”

He sighed because there was no easy way to answer that question. “I would say that a ranch requires what it requires. You know damn well this isn’t a nine-to-five job.”

“No, but you have the money to hire extra hands. You could make it a nine-to-five job. With the new baby, we’ve put up extra money to hire another helper so one of us is always close at hand to help her out.”

Aidan shook his head. “I don’t have that kind of money. Everything I have is invested in the land. The free money we have is Lexi’s money and Lucas’s money. It shouldn’t go into the…” Fuck. The truth hit him like a bull on the loose. What had he been doing? “I was about to say it shouldn’t go into my ranch.”

Trev nodded as though he’d figured out the problem long ago. “Yours. Not theirs. You’re holding yourself apart. Do you think they can’t feel that?”

Aidan groaned, the enormity of what he’d done settling in his gut. “I didn’t mean it like that. You have to understand, Lucas came from money. Lexi’s stepdads have more money than god. The only thing I brought to the table was that rundown ranch that Jack Barnes had to help me save. I guess I didn’t think they would want it. I thought it was my burden to bear.”

But Lucas had helped out every weekend. Before he’d moved his office to Deer Run, he would drive home from Dallas and change out of his fancy suit and get down and sweaty doing menial labor with him and the ranch hands. Lucas never complained. He’d sat up long nights helping with calving and rode the fences when the air was so cold he couldn’t feel his hands.

And Aidan wouldn’t let him put a dime into the place.

Lexi worked so hard and was so proud of the money she’d brought in, and he forced her to keep it in a separate account because he didn’t want her hard work paying for his ranch.

How had that made them feel? Did they think he was trying to keep the ranch from them? As though it was too special to ever share?

“Do you know what Bo did with his money?” Trev asked.

When their dearly beloved asshole father had kicked it, he’d set his sons up in an impossible situation. He’d left Aidan the ranch and Bo the money needed to keep the ranch up. Aidan and Bo had been in a bad place and neither had been willing to really help the other. By the time they had settled their difference, Lucas and Lexi were on the scene and Jack had helped bail him out by bringing the O’Malley Ranch into his small co-op of organic ranches. Bo had kept his inheritance when he left Texas. “No, what did he do with it?”

“Well, first off, he gave some to Beth to fix up that house of hers, the one y’all live in now.”

Aidan snorted a little. “Yeah, well she turned a profit on that one.” Lucas had paid through the nose for the big, rambling farmhouse Beth had turned into a beauty of a home.

“Yes, and they brought every cent of it to me and demanded their fair share of our future. I bought into this place for ten million, but almost a million of that was Bo and Beth’s money. I know it sounds silly. I had the ten million from my last football contract, but it was important to them that they had a stake and not something I gave them. So we put the rest of the money in a safe place and now we live off what we make here and what Beth makes renovating houses. This is something we’re building together. You can’t take that away from them.”

But he had. He’d spent years telling them they didn’t matter in that one, deeply important part of his life. He didn’t discuss his anxieties about the ranch with them, only telling them that everything was okay and they shouldn’t worry. God, he’d just gone through hell with the city council and he’d never once said a word to Lexi. He’d only brought Lucas in because Lucas was his lawyer.

He’d shut himself off from their work lives as well. In trying to honor them, he’d shut them out.

When they were safely home, he would sit them both down and fix the situation.

“Things have to change.” And that started with him.





Chapter Eight:


Rafe



Rafe settled Sierra down in her crib, trying to resist the urge to reach down and brush his hand across that little cap of black hair. Maybe if he woke her up again, he could avoid the crazy people in the living room for another hour or so.

After Zane had pronounced those fateful words—Mr. Mayor—Sierra had conveniently pooped and gotten terrifically fussy. Stella had offered to change her but then Polly had said something to Long-Haired Roger about his new sign placement and Long-Haired Roger had started arguing about flashing lips hurting his business, and Stella had been forced to referee.

Because Hi wasn’t around to do it anymore.

The whole morning was gone and now they were starting the afternoon and he wasn’t any closer to getting his peaceful house back.

He stared down at the tiny baby who was rapidly becoming the center of their world.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Hiram Jones. How hard had it been to not follow his family? Sure, Hiram had been an adult, but even adults wanted that connection to family. In making the decision to stay in Bliss, he’d given up everything he’d known before.

Had he been lonely? Had he lived all these years in Bliss wondering what his life could have been?

It was different for Rafe. He had Laura and Cam and their baby. He wasn’t alone. He had a family already in place.

He just needed to find his place. What if his place was back in Miami?

“They are awfully cute when they’re sleeping,” Zane said quietly. The big tavern owner leaned against the doorframe, his normally hard face soft as he looked at the baby. “I never thought that watching a baby sleep could be so peaceful.”

Rafe glanced back down at his daughter in her pink blanket sleeper, her tiny belly rising and falling as her mouth sucked on some dream pacifier or bottle. “Being a parent is the most important job in the world.”

He would never turn his back on her. Never. No matter what she did. Even when she was forty, she would still need to know her father was around.

Zane nodded. “Yes. I know that more than most. My father walked when I was ten and my mom was more interested in partying than raising a kid. My childhood was a little unstable. It’s weird to think about it, but Nate Wright was the only constant in my life before I came to this town.”

Zane and Nate had come to town after their jobs in the Drug Enforcement Agency went bad. Nate had become the sheriff of Bliss and Zane opened Trio. “Do you miss your old job?”

Sometimes Rafe really missed his. He missed the adrenaline of the chase, the mystery of the puzzles. He missed feeling important.

Zane’s mouth curled up in a little smirk. “Do I miss getting my ass shot at, pretending to be a drug runner and being tortured when the people I’m investigating find out I’m not really a drug runner? No.”

Yes, well, their jobs had been very different. Zane had been undercover and Rafe had profiled in the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Though a couple of times he had gotten his ass shot at.

“You do miss your old job,” Zane surmised.

Rafe sighed. It was so much more than that. “I miss having a job at all.”

“Well, that’s good because I’m offering you a new one, one that will definitely keep you busy.”

Rafe shook his head, gesturing for Zane to move into the hall. He closed the door to Sierra’s room after making sure the baby monitor light was working. “I’m still not quite sure how you can offer me any job at all.”

“It’s called a coup, Rafe.” Zane’s massive body took up most of the space. “This is a good old-fashioned political coup. It’s also what’s best for this town and very likely what’s best for you. You’re drifting.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. Even if it was kind of true. “I’m looking for a job.”

“And yet you’re still here in this cabin all day long. Hey, I know about what happened with the feds. Sorry about that, man.” His green eyes became grave. “If you want to work in government again, you’re going to have to lie about your living arrangement. Unless you work in Bliss. I wish it wasn’t true, but the outside world isn’t going to accept Cam. Have you talked about keeping him a secret from work?”

Cam Briggs was his best friend and the best man Rafe had ever known. “I won’t say I haven’t thought about it. What am I supposed to do? Pretend Cam is some lazy friend who lives in the guest bedroom? How would I ever explain that to Sierra?”

Cam had been the one to give up putting his name on the adoption papers. Sierra was legally Rafe and Laura’s. Cam trusted him. He couldn’t betray his best friend like that.

And he also couldn’t just stay in the cabin for the rest of his life. But shouldn’t the mayor be voted into office?

“I suspect that would cause trouble down the line if you decide to work outside of Bliss. Of course, you could make a difference right here in the town where your daughter will grow up.” Zane was doing a reasonable impersonation of Mephistopheles. That was exactly what Rafe needed, his own personal deal with the devil.