for the next few days, taking care of some family business, so if you need anything...”
Tank shook his hand. “Appreciate it.”
Hope could see the meeting had affected Garrett. It had affected her, too.
“I don’t understand how the military can boot someone out, just because they got injured,” she fumed, as they drove away.
Garrett paused to study the unmarked intersection of country roads. No street names were showing up on her GPS screen, Hope noted. Which meant she might, indeed, have gotten lost trying to find her way to the ranch.
“It was probably his choice to get a medical discharge rather than stay in,” Garrett pointed out, pausing to glance at a set of directions he had in his pocket, before turning south again.
“Why would Tank do that when he clearly loved being part of the armed service?”
“Because doing so would have meant taking a desk job, once he had recuperated, and my guess is Tank didn’t see himself being happy that way. He probably wanted to be with his buddies—who were all still in Infantry—or out of the service completely,” he said, as they reached the entrance to the Circle H Ranch.
Hope wasn’t sure what she had expected, since Lucille had promised they would all be quite comfortable there, and have as much privacy as they needed. Maybe something as luxurious as Lucille’s Dallas mansion. But the turnoff was marked by a mailbox, and a wrought-iron sign that had definitely seen better days. The gravel lane leading up to the ranch house was bordered by a fence that was falling down in places. The barn and stables looked just as dilapidated.
Garrett cut the engine.
Handsome face taut with concern, he got out and opened the door for her. “Mom and her driver were supposed to be here ahead of us.”
Obviously, that had not happened. Max, who’d been remarkably quiet and content, let out an impatient cry.
“I know, baby,” Hope soothed, patting her son on the back. “You’re hungry. Probably wet, too.” She lifted him out of the car seat and moved to stand beside Garrett. “But we’re going to take care of all that.”
Garrett led her up onto the porch of the rambling two-story ranch house with the gabled roof. He unlocked the door and swung it open. Like him, Hope could only stare.
The interior of the ranch house had not been updated in decades, was devoid of all furniture and was scrupulously clean. In deference to the closed window blinds, Garrett hit switches as he moved through the four wood-paneled downstairs rooms. Sighing, he noted, “Well, at least all the lights work.”
“Does the air conditioning work?” she asked, their footsteps echoing on the scarred pine floors. It was much hotter inside the domicile than outside. And the outside was at least ninety degrees, even as the sun was setting.
“No clue.” Garrett headed upstairs. There were only two bedrooms. One bath. No beds. Or even a chair for Hope to sit in while she nursed.
They headed back downstairs, Max still fussing. Worse, she could feel her breasts beginning to leak in response. “When was the last time you were here?” Glad she’d thought to put soft cotton nursing pads inside her bra, she opened up the diaper bag she’d slung over her arm and pulled out a blanket.
Garrett stepped out onto the back porch, where a porch swing looked out over the property. “Ah—never.”
Deciding her son had waited long enough, Hope sat down on the swing and situated Max in her arms. Waving at Garrett to turn around, which he obediently did, she unbuttoned her blouse and unsnapped the front of her nursing bra. Max found her nipple and latched on hungrily. “I was under the impression this was family property.” She shifted her son more comfortably in her arms and draped the blanket over him. As he fed, they both relaxed. “That your mother grew up on the Circle H.”
“She did.” Hands in his pockets, Garrett continued looking over the property, which was quite beautiful in a wild, untamed way. Overgrown shrubbery, dotted with blossoms, filled the air with a lush, floral scent.
He studied the sun disappearing slowly beneath the horizon in a streaky burst of yellow and red. “But she and my dad sold the place after my grandfather Henderson’s death, when she was twenty-three. They used the proceeds to start Dad’s hedge fund and stake their life in Dallas.”
It was a move that had certainly paid off for Frank and Lucille Lockhart. They’d made millions. Hope turned her attention to the collection of buildings a distance away from the house. A couple of barns with adjacent corrals and a rambling one-story building with cedar siding and a tin roof. Maybe a bunkhouse? “When did the property come back into the family?”
Garrett reached down and plucked out a long weed sprouting through the bushes and tossed it aside. “My dad bought it for my mom as an anniversary gift the year he sold his company so he could retire. They were going to fix the ranch up as a retreat. He purchased property in Laramie County for all five of us kids, too. So we’d all have a tangible link to our parents’ history here.”
Hope shifted Max to her other breast, glad they had the light from the interior of the house illuminating the porch with a soft yellow glow now that it was beginning to get dark. It was just enough to allow her to see what she was doing and yet afford her some privacy, too.
“I gather your dad also grew up in West Texas?”
Garrett nodded, his handsome profile brooding yet calm as he surveyed the sagebrush, live oak trees and cedars dotting the landscape. “On the Wind River Ranch, here in Laramie County. My parents bought that back, too. My brother Wyatt started a horse farm there.”
Max nursed quickly—a sign of just how hungry he’d been. When he was done, Hope shifted her sated son upright so he could burp, and used her other hand to refasten her nursing bra. “So you all have ranches then.”
“No.” Garrett paced the length of the porch, both hands shoved in the back pockets of his jeans. The action drew her attention to his masculine shoulders and spectacularly muscled flanks. Without warning, she recalled the feel of his rock-hard leg beneath her palm, the heat radiating from the apex of his thighs. Wondered what it would be like to be held against all that sheer male power and strength.
Then she pushed the disturbing notion away.
Oblivious to the lusty direction of her thoughts, he paced a little farther away. “My dad gifted me a house and a medical office building in town.” He chuckled when Max let out a surprisingly loud belch.
“It’s okay. I’m done,” Hope said.
Garrett turned to face her. Noting she had rebuttoned her blouse, he ambled toward her once again. “Sage received a small café in the historic downtown section of Laramie and the apartment above it.”
Hope spread the blanket out on the seat of the swing and laid Max down so she could change his diaper. “So you’d all eventually settle here?”
He moved even closer, gazing fondly down at her sleepy baby. The tenderness in his gaze was a surprise.
“That was their plan,” he admitted in a voice so gentle it
