Chapter 64 Rivals
The sun dipped lower, bleeding amber and rose across the desert, casting long shadows that stretched like fingers over the corrals. Sierra rose from beside her sleeping father and slipped quietly from the room. She needed to check in with Julian, whom she’d left abandoned outside several hours before.
As she moved through the living room toward the screen door, she paused suddenly.
Outside, leaning against Ryder’s pickup were Ryder and Julian.
She moved closer to the screen door but couldn’t bring herself to open it and reveal herself. Instead, she watched and waited.
Ryder stood with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, his Stetson tilted low over his brow, while Julian, dressed in a tailored linen shirt and chinos, his collar undone just enough to appear casual, gestured toward the barn. Their postures were starkly different. Ryder’s was grounded, deliberate, his voice low as he explained something. Julian tilted his head, one arm resting against the fender of the truck, listening with the inscrutable patience of a man who always calculated his next move.
Sierra leaned against the threshold, the screen door buzzing faintly in the dry breeze. From a distance, they could have been partners in some unspoken venture, two men of different trades finding common ground.
Sierra pulled her phone from her pocket, thumb hovering over the camera app. The thought struck her as absurd: capturing this moment, the way the sun seemed to gild them both in gold, as if they were equals in a world that had never allowed such a thing. Her thumb hovered, then retreated. Some things weren’t meant to be documented.
Ryder laughed, a low, dry sound that sent a shiver through her. Julian’s reply was all smooth charm, his hands sketching some kind of invisible graph in the air. Only certain subtle hints could reveal their rivalry. Like the way Julian’s gaze flicked toward the ranch house, toward her, though he couldn’t see her. She could see Ryder’s jaw tighten, recognizing that Julian’s smile never quite reached his eyes.
What did they have to talk about? The ranch? The future? Or was this another battle of wills, another way of asking, Who do you choose?
Sierra’s fingers curled into the door frame. Strength. She studied it in both men, as though it were something tangible.
Ryder’s strength was in the calluses on his hands. It was in the way he’d stayed when no one else would, stayed to teach Cody how to manage the ranch and to tend to her father. Ryder had never once tried to mold her into something he could hold. He had simply been a steady hand on the reins of her chaos. She remembered the way he’d held her and made love to her as if it might be his last.
Ryder had worn the same Wranglers and scuffed boots for years, his wealth measured in the strength of his stock and the lines of his face. Love with Ryder was spoken in the language of the land, of droughts and monsoons, of quiet evenings beneath a sky full of stars.
Julian’s strength was more ostentatious. A man whose power was in his wealth and the manner in which he used it to bring about his will. He was a man who made strength look effortless, a chess master who’d already moved his pieces into place.
Julian had offered her the sky, a life of sleek efficiency and luxury. “Partners in business and life,” he’d said, his voice smooth as the cognac he preferred. But was love in Julian’s world nothing more than a transaction, a merger of wills and assets?
Were the strengths of one man better than those of the other? Or were they just different manifestations of the same thing?
In unison, the two of them suddenly pulled away from the side of the pickup and strolled toward the barn, their silhouettes framed against the amber light. They spoke in easy tones, shoulders brushing as Ryder pointed out the weathered beams of the corral. To anyone else, it may have looked like a cordial exchange. To Sierra, it was a collision of worlds, one rooted in the red dirt and the other in polished luxury.
Julian’s voice rose slightly, and she saw Ryder pause, his hand brushing the rail of the corral. The two men glanced toward the house, and her pulse quickened. For a heartbeat, she considered stepping out, joining them.
Sierra bit her lip. She should step outside. She should go out and join them, say something. Her throat was tight with the weight of a dozen possible questions.
What happens if I go out there? What if I walk to there and discover who I’m really in love with? Or what if I don’t?
Even from that distance, she could see Julian smiling at Ryder and her chest tightened. It was the look of a man who saw Ryder as another puzzle to solve. Part of her understood and part of her resented it.
She thought of Cody’s words… Ryder stayed. He fixed fences, kept the hands in line, rotated the cattle from one pasture to the next, continued fulfilling the commitment Sage Ranch had made to ship premium beef to their buyers in LA, and continued to look in on her father. She suddenly understood that his love wasn’t a grand gesture. It was the quiet, relentless act of showing up. While she’d been in Manhattan tending to Sterling & Quinn, drowning in spreadsheets, presentations and skyscrapers, jetting about in a luxury private jet and drinking champagne on a luxury yacht, he’d been here tending to a ranch that wasn’t even his. Helping out your neighbor in hard times was the Arizona way, but at what point did it go beyond common courtesy? The Marsh Ranch had to be suffering some in his absence, yet he continued to invest himself in the Sage Ranch as though it were his own.
Again, she considered joining them out at the barn as the desert wind carrying the scent of rain and the thick promise of a storm grew stronger. If she joined them, one would expect her to come into his arms, and the other would have to look on enviously. Which one would it be? She couldn’t make a choice.
Instead, she stayed frozen in place, unable to make the inevitable choice.
Her problem of choosing, in that moment, resolved itself after some moments when she saw Ryder extend his hand to Julian for a quick shake, and then turn on his heel. Even from inside the screen door, she could hear his boots crunching on the gravel as he strode purposely toward his truck.
Sierra’s breath hitched. No…
She lunged through the door. She couldn’t let him leave without talking to him, without saying thank you. “Ryder!” Her voice was thin against the vastness of the desert.
He paused when he reached his truck, looked toward her, nodded, opened the door, and got inside.
“Wait,” she called out, stumbling down the porch steps as the diesel engine roared to life. “Ryder, I need to talk…”
Her words died on the desert wind and the sound of Ryder’s pickup retreating up the driveway.