Hidden Treasure (10 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Y
ou sure you’re
up for this?”

“I said I wanted to learn, dammit!” She was so tired of being looked at that way. Enough was enough.

Yet two more days had passed. It was coming closer and closer to the visit her father was paying her, and Brielle was failing epically.

“All right. Just remember that you asked for it,” he warned her.

“I can handle whatever you decide to throw at me, Colt.” She was wearing the dang jeans, a T-shirt she wouldn’t be caught out in public in, and the boots. Though she wasn’t going to tell him this, they were becoming more comfortable. That was a relief.

“Here ya go, Princess.”

Brielle looked at him with suspicion when he gave her a pitchfork and a wheelbarrow. “What is this for?”

“You want to work? You get to muck out the stalls. It has to be done every single day. Since you and Joe have become chummy, he’s going to teach you what needs to be done.”

“That’s not teaching me anything,” she snapped, emphasizing every word. She knew freaking well that it was a ridiculous thing for her to be doing.

“You said you’d listen to me, that you wanted to learn.”

“I want to learn how to run the ranch, not do the chores.”

“Chores are part of running a ranch.”

She faced him, seething. He wasn’t holding his end up to the bargain, but the stubbornness in her made her decide she was going to do this. No, it didn’t give her what she needed, but maybe if she did this, he would give her what she really needed.

That thought led to the wrong place in her mind, and she quickly moved on, knowing she didn’t want to go there, not with Colt, never again!

When Colt walked away and Joe approached with a tentative smile on his face, Brielle sighed in resignation.

“Have you ever mucked a stall before?” Joe asked her.

At least he wasn’t nearly as rude as Colt.

“No, but that doesn’t mean I can’t learn,” she told him as he took hold of the wheelbarrow and moved through the horse barn.

“All you have to do is scoop out the messes and then we’ll come in and lay fresh straw.”

Brielle felt a chill go through her body. “What
kind
of messes?” When she looked down, she said with horror, “I’m scooping poop?”

Joe’s cheeks turned red. She wanted to run in the opposite direction, but she knew this was some sort of test. Yes, it was a waste of time, and yes, she knew Colt was putting her in this position just because he was an ass, but she was going to do this, and do it well.

When she got a good whiff of how the horse manure smelled up close and personal, however, she started thinking this wasn’t something she could do. Her stomach began heaving. Then, an hour later, her back was burning, and her eyes and nose were running. Colt had to have given her the worst possible job there was on the ranch. Joe had done three stalls to her one, and she still wasn’t finished.

Every time she managed to scoop some of the disgusting poop onto her pitchfork, half would fall back off because her arms were shaking so badly. Another half hour passed before Joe declared the stall clean and pointed to the next one.

Nope. This wasn’t happening, not even with her determination to prove Colt wrong about her. This crap was downright demeaning — did he really think he was being funny? She was through with Colt. It was time to hire someone who would listen to her, who wouldn’t make a joke of her requests for honest help.

“I’m done,” she told Joe, wiping her brow with the back of her hand as she lay the pitchfork down and moved toward the door of the barn. Guilt followed her outside, but this wasn’t the life for her. She couldn’t do this. Who in their right mind would choose to live like this, work so hard for so little money?

Her arms felt as if they were on fire, and her lower back ached in a way it had never ached before. She had to get away from this place. In addition to the pain radiating through her body, she was sweating buckets. Reaching up, she pushed back her hair and was disgusted when her hand came away wet.

“That’s
it
.”

She should go take a hot shower to ease the aches, but she was close to tears and needed to be far away from the house, from the barns, from any chance of running into anyone. That meant she was going to the lake for a swim.

Marching out to the shed, she found a quad bike that already had the key in it. Luckily, she knew how to ride one because her last boyfriend, whom she’d dated while working at the mall in D.C., had found great pleasure in the things. At first she hadn’t been interested in riding, but the freedom of cruising on roads that standard vehicles couldn’t handle, plus the sensation of the wind rushing through her hair, had quickly gotten her addicted to the sport.

Not even pausing to see if Colt was around, she fired up the ATV and took off through her fields. She knew the way to the lake, and she also knew that the men were occupied mending fences on the other side of the property. She knew this only because she’d overheard them talking with Tony — no, no one had actually told her. But it meant she had at least two hours before anyone would even miss her.

Upon arriving at the lake, she stripped off her clothes without hesitation, then walked out on the short dock and dove into the water, its coldness cramping her muscles for only a few seconds before a welcome sense of relief spread through her.

This was exactly what she’d needed, a day away from Tony and Colt, and from all the other little boys who were so willing to do Tony’s bidding, but not hers. At some point she would learn to assert her authority, but it wasn’t going to happen today.

She was just fine with that, she thought as she lay back in the water and let herself float on its surface with her eyes shut and the sun beating down on her.

She wouldn’t even mind when she woke up the next day with a sunburn, because this was close to pure bliss. To hell with the wrinkles in her fair-skinned future. Before moving to Montana, she would have been terrified to swim in a real live lake, much preferring the clean but chlorinated pools owned by her family and friends. Those pools had no chance of snakes, fish, or who knew what else lurking below the surface. But, since she was in this place — did the people of Sterling have any idea what an in-ground pool was? — she had to adapt.

Her hair spread out behind her atop the water, the sweat of the day was washed away, and her limbs were already feeling better from just drifting in the pristine lake. Best of all, it was private, and she didn’t have to worry about a swimsuit.

Not that she minded the tiny bikinis she owned. They were showpieces for her best assets. When she put one on, she knew she looked good, and that was a feeling any woman enjoyed having. Still, there was nothing like being in the water without even a trace of fabric blocking her from the cool goodness.

“I see you didn’t really want to learn a damn thing!”

Brielle sank below the surface of the water when Colt’s furious voice startled her from her “happy place.”

She came back up, coughing and sputtering water. Then she turned and glared toward the dock where Colt was standing, hands on his hips and breathing fire and brimstone.

“What are you doing here, Colt? I thought you were off with the guys, that you were too busy to mess with me,” she said, when she was able to speak again. Her own fury easily matched his. He had no right to be mad at her for leaving when the task he’d given her taught her nothing!

“I didn’t tell you what I was doing, but when I came back to check on you, I found Joe working alone. Had I known you were going to take off at the first sign of real work, he would have had another hand to help him so he didn’t have to do all those stalls by himself.”

“Oh, boo-hoo. Joe is just fine! He was moving much quicker than I was. And, I didn’t ask to clean up horse dung. I asked to learn how the ranch ran. We both know you gave me that task because you thought it would be funny to have the
little princess
shoveling shit. Well, you know what? I started to play your game, and then real quickly I decided you’re just an arrogant ass who enjoys power trips. So I stopped.” Brielle dogpaddled to stay afloat. There was no way she was swimming back toward him, not when she was naked.

“That’s part of running a ranch, Brielle.”

“That’s crap and we both know it. Yes, it may be part of running a ranch, but I’m the owner, Colt, and there are plenty of men. That was teaching me nothing!” It was unfortunate that she couldn’t face him down more effectively. Kind of hard to do when she was in the water.

“Really, Brielle? You know this because you’ve worked so many ranches? My dad mucked stalls his entire life, and I still muck them myself every once in a while. It’s therapeutic. I figured you’d learn something and gain a deeper appreciation for how things run.”

“Now who’s lying, Colt? You didn’t do it to teach me anything but a lesson,” she contended. “And of course you muck stalls. You work for
me
. That’s part of your job!”

He stopped what he was about to say, then blew out his breath in frustration before shutting his mouth. Well, too freaking bad for him. She didn’t care if he didn’t like her pointing out that he was a ranch hand. He could deal with it. The man acted like such a pompous jerk all the time, and someone needed to put him firmly in his place, because he was sure having fun trying to belittle her.

“You know what, Brielle? Why don’t you just give this up? We both know you don’t want to be here, that you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for your daddy pulling your purse strings. I’m sure if you beg him hard enough, he’ll let you out of this deal you’re locked into with him, and then you can go back to the city…where you belong. This isn’t the life for you, and we both know it, so just give up and save yourself a lot of grief.”

The end of his words came out more like a sigh than as a put-down, and that hurt more than the insult. Was that what they all thought of her? That she was just a spoiled heiress with no chance of making this work? Was that why no one would talk to her, no one would teach her? They knew it was just a waste of their time.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t thought about that same thing, but hearing the words from Colt, from the man she’d made love to only two weeks earlier — and knowing the other ranch hands were thinking the same thing — stung. Really stung.

Just like that, she found herself shivering in the water, her body cold and drained. This was a game she didn’t want to play anymore. She was a failure, just like her father said she was, just like Tony assumed she was, and just like Colt told her she was.

Suddenly she was fighting tears. She’d held off crying for twelve years, and now she felt like doing it every freaking day. This was so not good.

“Would you please turn around? I want to get out.” Her voice was weak as she struggled to keep the tears at bay.

“It’s not like I haven’t seen it all before, Brielle,” Colt said, but this time his voice wasn’t as harsh.

“Please, Colt.” There was only defeat in her tone now. She hated him right now for making her face her weaknesses, for making her doubt herself. But he was right. She was failing while her brothers were thriving in their businesses. A heavy weight had descended on her chest, and if she didn’t get out of this water, she never would, because her limbs were barely holding her up right now.

He was wrong in thinking that her daddy was going to save her, though. No. Her father would cast her out, and her brothers wouldn’t give her a helping hand. She suddenly felt so alone, more alone than ever before. At least before this challenge her father had given her, she’d known she could come home. Now, she didn’t have that same faith.

As if Colt could sense that she was at the breaking point, he turned around, and Brielle moved slowly toward the dock. He kept his back to her when she stepped out of the water, her body shaking so badly now that she could barely catch hold of her clothes.

She hadn’t brought a towel, so not only did she have to put her sweaty, disgusting work clothes back on, but she’d have to put them on while she was still wet. It took her twice as long as usual, but even by the time she was finally clothed, the shivers hadn’t died down. She had no idea how she’d manage to drive the quad back. She was exhausted, barely able to stand.

“Hey, are you okay?” Colt had turned back around, and as she swayed in front of him, he held out his arms and caught her. Feeling her shake must have prompted him to pull her in close against his chest.

“You’re freezing,” he muttered, and rubbed up and down her back.

“I’m fine,” she said through chattering teeth. “Just need to get back to the house.”

He pulled back and looked at her, really looked at her, and Brielle felt the unshed tears fill her eyes. She didn’t want him to see her. Face it — she didn’t want anyone to look at her anymore.

“Aw, hell, Brielle. I’m sorry,” he whispered, and he picked her up in his arms.

She wanted to protest, wanted to tell him to stop being nice. But it was too late for that. She knew how he truly felt, and she deserved it. She needed to just leave this place, a place that made her feel so bad about herself. It had to be this place.

But instead of letting her go, he carried her over to his horse and lifted her up, barely giving her time to grip the saddle horn before he swung himself into the saddle behind her, and then wrapped an arm around her waist and held her securely against him.

“My quad…” she protested as they began moving.

“I’ll send someone for it, Brielle.” Then he was silent as the sun began setting in the sky and he directed his horse toward her house.

Brielle fell asleep with her head leaning against the hardness of his chest.

Chapter Seventeen

W
hen Colt and
Brielle reached the house, the sun was setting, and, thankfully, no one was around. He didn’t want anyone to witness him carrying her inside again. Not this time. It was either blind luck or fear, but no one had said a word to him about the first time he’d gone inside. Nevertheless, he knew Sterling, and word travels fast in a small town.

As he leapt down from the horse, Brielle woke up, though she was disoriented as he lifted her down effortlessly and cradled her in his arms. He didn’t know how he’d gone from furious with her to worried, but there it was.

She leaned against him, still half asleep, as he walked through her front door, and he steadily made his way to the living room and sat down on the couch with her still in his arms. She appeared so vulnerable, and it was something in her he’d never seen before.

He hated that his words had done this to her, made this strong woman so weak — even if he knew it was bound to be temporary. She wasn’t the spoiled little city girl he’d first thought she was. There was a lot more to Brielle than she wanted the world to see, and all of a sudden Colt found that he wanted to see beneath the layers of protection she’d built around herself and discover who she truly was.

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

Her question startled him from his thoughts, but she was asking and she deserved an honest answer. “I want to know more about you — the real you, not this spoiled little girl you try to show everyone.”

“How do you know that’s not me?” She couldn’t hide the pain in her voice.

“I don’t,” he said, and he felt her recoil. “But I have a good feeling that it’s an act, like I said a couple of weeks ago. I’d just really like to know why you feel the need to put on such a facade.”

If he was honest with her, maybe she’d reciprocate. He practically held his breath as he waited for her to speak. He could feel her pulse increase. Had it really been so long since she’d opened up that she didn’t know how to do it anymore?

“You can talk to me, Brielle. It won’t leave this room,” he vowed. “I know you don’t know me, but once I give my word, I don’t break it.”

“You’re right. I don’t know you. I don’t let myself know anyone,” she said with a sigh.

“Why? You’re obviously beautiful, intelligent, full of spirit, and that’s just scratching the surface. Why do you feel you have to act like someone you aren’t?”

Brielle sighed again. “Do you know that I have four brothers?”

“No. I knew you had siblings. I met your father. There was something he said about you all being spoiled and needing to grow up before it was too late. I wasn’t in the best of moods when I spoke to him,” Colt said. What he didn’t say was
why
he’d been in such a bad mood. If she knew it was because he’d just learned that the land he wanted had been sold out from under him, she’d close up faster than a Venus flytrap with a fresh kill.

“Well, I do have four brothers. We used to be so close…” she began, then stopped to pull herself together. “My mother took off when I was only three. I guess she’d had enough of being with us. I never knew her. My oldest brothers have vague memories, but I have nothing, not even a memory of her smile from back then. I was so little. There are pictures, of course, but I never look at them. She betrayed me, betrayed us all. It was even worse because when I was growing up, all my friends had moms. I didn’t understand why I didn’t.”

She choked up for a moment. Colt didn’t say a word, just found himself holding her close to his chest while he ran his fingers through her hair.

“I miss them, you know.”

“Miss who?”

“My brothers, even my dad. I never say that out loud, never admit to anyone that I miss them, that I need them. If I admit it, then I hurt, and I’ve hurt enough already to last me a lifetime. Before this last year I hadn’t shed a single tear since I was thirteen years old.”

“Not one tear? Not even when you got hurt?”

“Nope. Not a single tear.”

“What was so significant when you were thirteen?”

She was silent for so long that Colt knew that whatever she was going to say would make a difference. He just didn’t know which of them it would actually change.

“That was when I found my mom.”

Colt sat there and waited. Something traumatic must have happened to make her feel the need to become so determined to hide who she really was. The air around them was so thick, it felt like an actual weight on his shoulders.

She started to squirm in his arms. “You don’t really want to hear this, Colt.”

He continued caressing her hair as he said, “I really do, Brielle. Open up to me. It will help.”

“But I don’t even know you.”

“Sometimes it’s easier to open up to someone you don’t know, because there isn’t that fear of being judged the rest of your life.”

“I found out that my mother was living in South Carolina, and I had a friend who was vacationing in the same town on the coast where my mother lived. Dad didn’t know, so when they asked if I could vacation with them, he let me go. It was summertime, and I stalled for almost the entire week before showing up at her door.”

Again she paused as a sob stopped her. But she managed to swallow the tears. “She lived in this nice neighborhood. Nothing like where I lived with my father, but a nice two-story house with flowerpots on the front porch. It’s funny the things I remember, but I clearly recall those blue ceramic pots with purple flowers in them. I gazed at them for what had to be five minutes before I worked up the courage to ring the doorbell.”

“Was she home?”

“Yes. She opened the door, and I was amazed. She was so beautiful. We have the same color hair, and the same eyes. It was almost surreal looking at her in the open door. She had a friendly smile on her face as she asked how she could help me. I remember my heart thumping so hard I couldn’t even breathe. I don’t know what I expected, but I guess I was hoping she would recognize me immediately. I mean, I
am
her daughter, but it had been ten years since she’d seen me, and it wasn’t as if she’d been home all that much those three years right after my birth. Or at least that’s what my brothers said.”

Brielle was rambling, but Colt didn’t try to stop her. He knew this wasn’t easy. He began kneading the tense muscles in her shoulders.

“I told her who I was and her smile faded — it was almost in slow motion. She looked around behind me as if worried someone was watching, and then ushered me into the house. I was so happy that she invited me in. I didn’t even think about the fact that her smile had disappeared.

“We walked into the living room, and I’ll never forget that moment, because there was a gas fireplace against the wall, and a few framed photos sat above it. They weren’t of my brothers and me, but of her with another man and two little girls, girls with the same color hair as me…”

This time when she tried to push down the sob ripping through her, it didn’t work. A deep grimace of pain contorted her beautiful face as she fought against the truth of the memory.

“You can stop, Brielle. You don’t have to go down this road…”

“No. I need to finish… I asked her who they were. She told me they were her children. I’ll never forget the ache in my chest at her words. I turned and asked her about me, about my brothers. She said…” She stopped again.

This time, Colt didn’t interrupt.

“She said that we were strangers to her, that she had never wanted us, and had only produced us to please my father. She was so cold as she spoke to me, looking right through me. I begged her to stop, to quit saying what she was saying, but she just looked right through me, and in a cold voice she told me that I was in the real world, and I’d better grow up, that she’d married for money, but money eventually hadn’t been worth the misery she’d been forced to endure, that she had never loved my father, and therefore she couldn’t possibly love any children he’d helped to create. She told me never to come back or seek her out again. That her new family knew nothing about us and she wanted to keep it that way. Then she ushered me out the front door and didn’t even give me a chance to turn around and look at her one last time before I heard the door shut behind me. I walked away in a fog. I didn’t want my friend or her parents to see me like that, so I sat on the beach for hours. So many tears...

“When the last tear fell, I stood up, walked out to the ocean water and scrubbed my face with it, burning my eyes and nose. I didn’t care. I looked out at the sunset and vowed then and there that I would never shed another tear, that no one would ever have that much control over my emotions. I changed that summer. When I went back home, I saw my dad in a different light, and my brothers. I think I blamed them all for her leaving. I didn’t want to blame myself, but I did that, too. Though she said it was our father she hated, I was thirteen. At that age the world revolves around you, so I came to the conclusion that it was me who’d made her run away. I never told my brothers or my dad about the visit. It was my own private hell to deal with.”

Brielle fell silent again. Just as she had that summer day, she forced the tears back and retreated inside her head.

“Don’t do that, Brielle. Don’t let a woman like that have so much power over you. She’s the one who was wrong. She’s the one who missed out on your life and the lives of your brothers. You did nothing wrong. How could a three-year-old do anything wrong? Anyway, no child could ever chase a parent away. It was her choice, so don’t continue to let her shape your life.” Colt turned her head so she was forced to look into his eyes.

“Why do you even care?”

“I don’t know; I just do.”

“Then stop. I don’t want anyone to care about me!”

“Yes, you do. We all need someone to care about us. It’s long past time that you realized that.”

“Well, I don’t need you,” she said, and she began wrestling with him, trying to get away.

“I think you’re lying, Brielle. I think you need me just about as much as I need you.” Colt was surprised by how much he meant those words. He barely knew her, but he did need her, needed her so much, it was frightening.

There hadn’t been any major trauma from his past making him afraid to love, but he knew that when he did marry, it would be for life, and he didn’t want to make a bad choice. He’d seen too many people do that, and then have children, and then live in misery, or get a divorce and fight for the next twenty years.

It was why he didn’t stay with women for long. When he did settle down, he wanted a marriage like his parents had shared, a marriage where he wanted to fall into his wife’s arms each and every night. He hadn’t found a woman yet who inspired him to drop to one knee, who he could picture lying next to for the rest of his life.

But with Brielle… It was odd, but the more he was with her, even when he was angry, even when she put on her full suit of armor, it was just…different. He wanted to know more about her, wanted to be with her. The urge to run — which he’d felt so acutely a couple of weeks before —was nowhere to be found now.

Brielle kept struggling to get free. “I’m tired. I think it’s time you go,” she said, pulling him from his thoughts.

He was thankful for that. “That’s a good idea,” Colt told her, and this time he released his hold.

She stumbled from the couch and then stood across the room with her arms over her chest as she waited for him to leave. Colt knew he should just go, but for some reason, he found himself walking toward her.

He had to have one taste, had to say goodbye with a kiss. Without saying a word, he cupped her neck in his hand and bent down, gently caressing her lips with his, holding her gaze. Her quiet sigh let him know she wanted him, but now he was the one confused. Did she want him or need him? Did it really matter?

As he turned and walked slowly away, shutting the door behind him, and almost hazily making his way toward his horse, he realized that it did matter — this city girl mattered more than he cared to admit.

As he rode home, Brielle’s story played over and over again in his head. This woman had been trouble from the first day he’d found her on her backside in front of her porch. A little over a month later, she was in even more trouble.