Vern saluted him. “Same here, sailor. You ever need someone to jaw with you about the service, I’m your man.”
Vern left, his shoulders a little less stooped, his gait a little less unsteady.
Shelby began clearing the table of Vern’s dishes as Nick sat down and asked for his own check.
“That was so nice of you,” she told him.
“You’re the nice one, Sweet Pea. Vern knows.”
“Knows what?”
“That you pay for his dinner every Friday. Thank you, Shel.”
Her gaze met his dark one and in the depths, she felt something stir. Not mere desire, but something deeper, and more lasting.
“Shouldn’t you be working instead of wasting the customer’s time?”
Shelby stiffened. The honey-sweet voice hid the acid behind those words. She didn’t need to turn around to know that the owner stood behind her. The woman had been in the kitchen an hour ago, barking orders and giving the evil eye when Shelby asked the head chef about a cake recipe with cinnamon.
With her cascading wispy blond curls, big blue eyes and stylish clothing, Natalie Beaufort caught many male eyes in small-town Barlow. Big Chuck Beaufort, her wealthy dad, spared no expense on his youngest daughter. Natalie boarded her show horse, Fancy, at the Belle Creek, so Shelby had to force herself to be polite. The ranch needed the fees to survive. It was no secret Big Chuck coveted the ranch’s lush four hundred acres for some pie-in-the-sky amusement park called Countryville. The man had been bragging around town about his latest plan.
Maybe Nick didn’t care about the land that had been in his family for five generations, but she did. The thought of seeing the rolling hillside, the duck pond where she’d gone swimming on many a hot summer day, the horse pasture, the faded red barn and the rambling outbuildings turned into a tourist trap made Shelby nauseous. And furious.
Natalie slid into the booth across from Nick, pretty as you please, pushing Shelby aside. “Well, hello, stranger,” she cooed. “Nice to see you again. And what are you doing here at my restaurant?”
“Leaving.” Nick gulped down his tea and slid out from the booth, his gaze centered on Shelby. “I’ll see you later, Shelby.”
Silently laughing, she nodded at Nick.
He dropped several bills into the check folder and then looked at her with those sleepy bedroom eyes, now sharpened, as they centered on her mouth. He touched her cheek and she startled, the contact sizzling between them like a crackling electrical line. Nick gently stroked a thumb over her trembling lower lip.
“Maybe I should have stuck around ten years ago and finished what I started with you.”
Whistling, he jammed his hands into his jeans pockets and strode off.
Natalie pouted so much she looked twelve instead of twenty-six.
“Get back to work,” Natalie told her in a sullen voice.
Humming, Shelby cleared the table and dumped the dishes in the wait station near the bar. The recent troubles came back to haunt her. Nick was staying at the ranch. He’d been away for ten years and had no idea of what he was waltzing back into on the Belle Creek.
As she headed into the kitchen, a dreadful thought struck her. Nick returned for the funeral, but what if Silas left the entire ranch to his son?
Impossible. Dan had faithfully remained on the ranch as foreman, aiding his uncle. Silas and his only son, Nick, had been estranged for years.
Silas would never leave the Belle Creek to Nick, the man who wanted nothing to do with the ranch and would probably sell if it was his.
And if he was the new owner of the Belle Creek, she faced a real possibility of being homeless once more.
Nick had never wanted to set eyes on the Belle Creek Ranch again.
Ten years ago, he’d thought the same about Shelby Stillwater, and not for the same reasons.
Sweet Pea Shelby. Damn, the girl had turned into a woman, and what a fine-looking woman. One night, upset over yet another fight with Silas, he’d come home and saw her sitting in the cabin, where he’d gone to sleep off the Jack Daniel’s. He hadn’t cared she was barely sixteen and he was old enough to know better. She looked so lost, as forlorn as he’d felt, so he’d kissed her. Her mouth had been warm and sweet, and the kiss had seared him to his very bones, so much that his dick had turned as hard as stone in his jeans and he knew if he’d stayed, he’d have done something very, very wrong.
Shelby was too nice for his brand of wicked.
And now she was legal. Very legal. With those big green eyes, thick brown curls with a hint of honey and sunshine spilling past her shoulders, all those curves and that spark in her eye, she made him think of hot, wet kisses in the night, and things men wanted to do to women who roused them to the point of madness. Long, slow sex. Fast, hard sex.
When he’d touched her, the past rushed back like a tornado. Her skin felt warm and soft as satin, and her mouth...
Nick pushed Shelby out of his mind. Tomorrow was the funeral, and then he’d be gone again, this time never coming back. He’d never return to Shelby or the ranch. Odd, he’d thought the old man would live forever, for Silas Anderson was one tough bastard.
Not too tough for the pneumonia that rattled his lungs and ultimately claimed him.
Nick parked his Harley in the curved driveway of the two-story white farmhouse and adjusted his backpack. Two elegant carriage lights tastefully accented the front porch, with its rows of white wicker rocking chairs and baskets of flowers. House...? Hell, this was a mansion compared to some places he’d slept.
He whistled. When he’d left, last time for good, the farmhouse had weathered paint, finicky plumbing and heat, and wood floorboards that creaked when you tried to sneak up the stairs. This kind of renovating took plenty of money. He knew, too, because over the past year since he’d left the teams, he’d found odd jobs doing construction and flipping houses.
His gut curling into a knot, he walked up to the double doors with the half-moon windows above them and rang the silver bell. Soft chimes sounded inside. Even the doorbell had changed from the sharp, annoying buzzer. He half expected a butler named Jeeves to open the door.
Instead, his cousin Dan did, and stood for a moment silently assessing him. Nick did the same. Five years older than Nick, Dan looked a little thicker around the waist than last time, and there were threads of silver in his dark hair. No welcome in his blue eyes, either. Once they’d been close. No longer. Not since the day Nick packed all his things and left for good. Abandoning the family, Dan had called it.
Survival, Nick termed it.
In a starched white shirt, black trousers and polished loafers, Dan looked more like a banker than a cowboy. Nick became aware of his shabby jeans, the faded black T-shirt beneath his collared chambray work shirt.
“Hi,
