“What about you?” she asked, grateful for its warmth.
“I’m not cold. I’ll get a fire going soon enough.” He led the way down to the beach to a ring of logs around a huge firepit. Even if a spark escaped, it would find nothing in the sand to set alight. In a drought year, that was important.
Tory took a seat as Liam dropped the beer nearby, returned to the truck, grabbed an armful of wood and came back. In just a few minutes he had a blaze going.
“No one will see and come looking?” she asked.
“Nope. Like I said, no one lives here anymore. The place is going to the dogs. You should see it in the daylight. Real shame. The lodge is sound enough, I think, although there’s moss on the roof. The greenhouses are empty, but it’s the treehouse cabins that are falling apart.”
“The treehouse cabins.” Tory couldn’t believe she’d forgotten them, but she’d only ever gotten glimpses of them when she was a child. Those were off-limits on public days, and she could understand why. Dozens of people had shown up for those occasions. No treehouse could stand that many kids climbing up into it at once. “I’d love to see one.”
“Not in the dark. Too dangerous.” He handed her a beer.
“Maybe in the light sometime then,” she ventured.
Liam grunted. “Maybe.” He popped the top off his beer and took a drink but didn’t gulp it down, she noticed. She took a drink, too, and sighed. Domestic beer, and not a craft brew, like she’d gotten used to drinking in Seattle. Not her favorite, but it would do.
He took a seat on the ground, his back to the log on which she was sitting. A few minutes later, she joined him there. It was far more comfortable like this.
“You’ve got to get up early in the morning,” she observed some time later. “Should we be getting back?”
He took another drink of his beer, buying time, she thought.
“I’m staying out here for a while—a few nights, actually, but I’ll drop you home whenever you’re ready.”
“Staying here? Why? Aren’t you needed at the ranch?”
“A man needs to get away once in a while.”
“Is everything all right?” She couldn’t believe she’d dared to ask. That was a personal question, and she didn’t know Liam well enough to be personal.
She thought he’d say yes, and leave it at that, but he hesitated again.
“No.” He shook his head. “Not even a little bit.”
Tory waited, holding her breath. Was Liam Turner actually going to confide in her?
“There’s always too much to do,” he went on. “Always money that’s short. Always something broken, something to fix, something to find. Used to be Noah helped a lot more, but he’s busy. I have to make all the decisions, and that’s fine, but—”
“Sometimes there’s too many decisions for one person to make,” Tory finished for him. “Don’t I know it.”
“You in a hurry to get back?”
“To Enid and the rest of my family? No.” She wasn’t. She didn’t want to explain—again—to her mother why they’d never be close. Didn’t want to endure Enid’s sad eyes and puppy-dog expression. It wasn’t fair. Enid was the one who’d caused all this.
“Then stay,” Liam said. “I’ve got enough gear for one more.”
“Stay? With you?”
“I’m not going to jump you. Not even if you want me to,” he added with a grin.
“I don’t want you to jump me.” Tory wasn’t sure that was strictly true, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to let Liam know that. For some reason she kept finding herself looking at him. At his firm jaw. His strong hands. Those shoulders. Liam wasn’t a kid anymore, that was for sure. He was all man.
“I’m just saying I’ll be a gentleman. There’s plenty of room. No one will ever come looking for you here. No one even remembers this place.”
“I doubt that. I bet kids come here all the time to party and have sex.”
“I’ve never seen any of them. It’s like it has a spell on it,” he mused. “Like it’s just waiting for its people to come back.”
“Whatever happened to the Hunts?”
“The boys grew up. Joined the military. Their mom got sick of running the resort all on her own after a while, I guess. She took off, too.”
“Remember her flowers?” Somewhere on the property there were rows of greenhouses and fields behind them that had burst with color all summer long. Monica Hunt had supplied cut flowers to florists for miles around.
“Yep. They were something. So, what do you say? Want to join my camping trip?”
“You got any grub?”
“I do.” He sounded amused.
“Pancakes and bacon for breakfast?”
“You got it.”
“Hot chocolate?”
“Yep.”
“A sleeping pad?”
“Yeah, I got those, too. Greenhorn,” he added in mock disgust.
“You brought more than one? Who did you think was coming with you?”
“No one.” He moved to put another log on the fire, and sparks shot up in the air. They danced into the sky to compete against the pinpricks of light from the stars. “I just had a whole truck bed. Figured I’d be extra comfortable.”
“Glad you did. Yes, I’ll stay,” Tory said decisively. “I’d better text Steel, though, and let him know I’m okay. If anyone were to track me down here, it’d be him.”
“You’re probably right. Don’t need your brother coming after me. You can’t use your phone, though. No reception at all in this hollow. We’ll have to walk out to the other side of the bridge and up the road a bit.” He stood up.
“What about the fire?”
“We’ll be back in a minute. There’s nothing to burn on this beach.”
“That’s true.”
Tory took in the silence as they walked, aware that things were rarely this quiet at the ranch—or in Bozeman—or Seattle for that matter. She’d missed this kind of country
