No way did she want to be left alone with Todd.
“Nora, could you stay a minute?” Todd fixed his green gaze on her, and she silently, sternly, forbade her knees from weakening. “It’s been years. It would be great to catch up.”
Catch up? As if they were old buddies who could just have a chat, share their latest news and then go on their way? As if there hadn’t been emotions between them deeper than anything she’d ever known before?
“Wade and I have a lot of chores to do, so we should probably get going.” It wasn’t a lie; their to-do list was easily several feet long and the day was nearly over.
“Tonight,” Todd said. “Can we meet for a drink?”
Nora glanced at Wade for some kind of rescue, but her brother just shrugged his shoulders in a singularly unhelpful way.
“Sure.” She sighed. So many years of thinking about Todd made it impossible to say no. She was still so full of questions. “I’ll meet you at the Dusty Saddle. At eight.”
The Dusty Saddle was a dive bar on the edge of town. Not a place anyone would want to linger and a good way to keep their drink short. Which was perfect because seeing Todd again was wreaking havoc in her heart. Hell, the way she was feeling right now, she could down a beer in about thirty seconds flat. She’d fit right in at the Saddle.
“Sounds fine.” Todd smiled and she recognized the faint curl to his lips when he did. She used to tease him that he smiled as if he was in on some private joke. He’d always answered that it wasn’t a joke—he was just smug because he knew he’d gotten the best girl. She wondered how he explained it nowadays.
“Okay,” she mumbled. “See you then.”
“I’ll look forward to it.” Todd leaned down and grabbed a couple of their dilapidated chain saws. He held them as if they weighed nothing. “See you around, Wade. I’ll give you a call with an estimate. And I’d like to take you up on that fishing invite soon.” He turned and started toward the back of the shop.
Nora watched him walk into the shadowy interior, trying to ignore the way his worn jeans fit him perfectly, and the slight swagger in his stride that she didn’t remember from when she’d known him before. It took effort to turn away, but she followed Wade to the truck, her brain tumbling like a clothes dryer, each random thought twisting and turning as it cycled around. And then one image came to the surface, clearly separate from the emotional tangle. The image of Todd, walking away just now. It wasn’t a swagger that she’d seen. His footsteps were uneven. Todd walked with a limp.
And then she knew, with a thud in her stomach, why the voice of the masked man had sounded so familiar. It had been Todd’s voice in the dark last night. It was Todd who’d chased her and grabbed her arm and thrown her phone. Todd Williams was the masked man who’d freed the wild horses.
NORA LEANED OUT of the truck window, staring at the blue-gray blur of sagebrush rushing by, letting the hot afternoon breeze snap her hair in every direction. It was a good thing Wade was at the wheel, because her hands were shaking and her stomach heaved.
Anger was bubbling inside her like lava, flowing over her initial surprise and leaving sharp edges and disjointed thoughts in its wake. Todd had freed the horses. He was the idiot who’d terrified her in the dark. He’d almost gotten her killed. He lived here, in Benson. Her mind jumped between topics, between their past and the present, as she tried to make some kind of sense of what she’d learned.
Wade stopped the truck in front of their shabby ranch house. Nora stared at the peeling paint and sagging porch, seeing it with new eyes. Todd’s eyes. She’d always hid her impoverished, messed-up past from him. But soon he would know. Moving back here and facing that past had been hard. It would be harder with Todd Williams in town to witness her struggles.
A shutter banged in the late-afternoon breeze. The amount of work the house needed was overwhelming. And when you combined that with what the ranch required, it was mind-boggling. Luckily Wade was fearless. Nora wasn’t sure she’d ever take on a project as large as revitalizing this ranch on her own. But the impossible nature of it seemed to spur Wade on and give him a focus as he got used to life outside the army, life away from war. And for that she was grateful. So grateful she’d offered to help him out. To move back to the childhood home she’d vowed to never set foot in again.
Now she wished that she’d let him return home on his own. That she’d just offered financial support—a check in the mail from someplace far away from Todd.
She realized, suddenly, that Wade hadn’t moved, either. They were sitting in the truck in silence—except for the noise of Wade’s fingers tapping restlessly on the steering wheel.
“You’re angry.” She stared at him in surprise. Wade rarely got angry with her. Or anyone.
“Yeah, I guess so.” Her brother looked straight ahead, not at her.
“Why?”
“Because you never told me about him.” He turned to face her then, his dark brown eyes narrowed in frustration. “He dumped you, didn’t he? Right after college. Right before you took me with you to Nevada.”
“So?” She didn’t want to talk about that time. Didn’t want to remember how lost she’d felt. “It was none of your concern.”
“Yes, it was. I’m your brother. We lived together. You think I didn’t notice how sad you were? That I didn’t wonder why you got up every morning with red eyes?”
“You could have asked.” She sounded like the sullen teenager that he’d been back then. But she was ashamed at the memories—at the way she’d totally fallen apart.
“I did ask, Nora! You told me you had allergies, but I never bought that. You wouldn’t choose to be a plant biologist if you had hay fever. I never could figure out what was wrong.”
Nora smiled faintly at his logical conclusion. “I didn’t know you were worried.”
“I heard you crying. A lot. I thought maybe it was all the stuff that was happening with Dad. Or having to take care of me.”
She turned in her seat to face him then, and touched his shoulder gently. “I never minded taking care of you.”
“I just worried that...well...” He glanced away for a moment. “I was a brat.”
“You were a teenager, and I took you away from your hometown, so of course you acted out. But you were my brat, you know?” She reached over and ruffled his short hair. “You were my family.”
He glared at her, refusing to be teased out of his frustration. “Then, you should have told me what was really going on.”
He was probably right. But she didn’t want to admit it. “I guess I figured my little brother didn’t need to know the details of my love life.”
“A three-year relationship is more than a detail, Nora. And it might have explained a lot. About how you were.”
She didn’t want to talk about those dark days. “I was fine.” She glared at Wade, daring
