The Heartbreaker of Echo Pass by Maisey Yates

CHAPTER FIVE

SHEWONDEREDIFGriffin would like pancakes. And also wasn’t sure if she should come up to the mountain that early. Or what she might find there.

They hadn’t discussed the time frame. Which made things difficult.

But he had really appreciated the food that she had brought yesterday. Far and away above anyone else she had ever fed.

They hadn’t discussed it, and he hadn’t really particularly thanked her. But she had heard it. That deep, guttural sound he made when he bit into the sandwich had been evidence enough.

She had to wonder what the man was subsisting on up there. She had had a look around the cabin, and as far as she could see, the only foods he had were of the canned variety. And beyond that, there wasn’t much of anything else.

He was...he was a strange man.

And when he’d made that noise, that strange, grunting growl when he bit into her sandwich, her stomach had turned over. And she had realized something else. She had been hung up on the fact that he was big. And, as a woman, that was something of a concern when dealing with an unknown man.

But she was starting to realize he was something more.

He was big. Muscular.

And behind that beard, he was beautiful.

His eyes were a deep blue, like denim. She hadn’t ever seen eyes like his before. His nose was straight and sharp, his lips beautifully formed. The beard kept him from being pretty. But she could imagine that as a younger man he’d been stunningly beautiful.

She had spent way too long thinking about that on her drive down the mountain.

He was also weird. Which she had reminded herself multiple times whenever her mind had strayed that direction.

She had been thinking, as she had trudged up the mountain, that she wasn’t going to allow herself to be a virgin who lived at home, and she wondered if her brain was inescapably trying to solve both problems at the same time.

Even thinking that as a joke made her face get hot.

She had never thought seriously about a man in that way.

Well, she had tried to think about Elliott that way. She had tried to imagine kissing him. But it had not made her warm. It didn’t make her cheeks light up like a beacon. Didn’t make her heart beat faster or her stomach stretch and twist like a ball of bread dough being kneaded.

Just thinking virginity and Griffin in the same sentence made all those things happen to her. Plus, she was sweaty.

And no closer to coming to a consensus on what she was going to do about her pancake idea.

She was standing in the kitchen considering it when Rose bounced into the room.

“What are you doing here?” Iris asked.

“I’ve been up working for hours,” Rose said. “I came to see if there was food.”

“And you couldn’t see if there was food at your and Logan’s house?”

“I was closer to here. Plus, Logan was out working too, so he wasn’t cooking me breakfast.”

Iris scowled. “Well, neither was I. In fact, I have to head to work.”

She grabbed the bag of pancake mix, a mixing bowl and her griddle, completely laden down with things.

“Wait,” Rose said, “you’re going to make pancakes for somebody else?”

“Yes,” she said. “Because I am trading for those pancakes. The pancakes are a form of payment. You don’t pay me. You just expect there to be pancakes.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Rose said.

But Rose never meant anything any way. Iris loved her sister so much. She had basically raised her. But only basically. Rose wasn’t her daughter. And Iris hadn’t been an adult. She had been a sad fourteen-year-old girl who had lost her mother, and had found some solace in playing mother to her desolate little sisters.

Because there was no one there to comfort her. So somehow, becoming strong and being the one to offer the comfort had... Well, it had felt like getting it herself.

But that kind of emotional surrogacy just didn’t last. Because now everybody was moving on and leaving her, and she was just this object. Someone who seemed comforting and warm and easy to everyone around her.

When she felt nothing like that inside.

She had pushed her own grief down. Kept it away. Had done her best not to deal with that at all, while she had poured herself into fixing things for other people.

And the added bonus had been hiding away.

Because the world was nothing more than terrifying to a child who lost their parents suddenly. A child who’d had to learn at an early age that you could wake up one morning expecting everything to be the same, and find that it was irrevocably changed.

Broken beyond repair.

She’d heard it said that it was always darkest before the dawn. That the night would end, and the sun would rise, but Iris had learned that when the sun rose, your grief would still be there. And the loss would remain.

That saying didn’t mean that everything would be fine. That everything would go back to the way it was.

All it meant to her was that time would march on, whether you were ready for it to or not.

And here time was, marching on. And she surely wasn’t ready for it. Not remotely. She was being left behind by it.

And Rose was here wanting pancakes. While she had a fiancé she would go home with tonight. A man who would hold her in his arms. A future that wasn’t just assisting in the lives of other people.

Iris tramped out of the kitchen, through the living room and out toward her car, where she put all the pancake objects onto the passenger seat. Then she went back into the house, and opened up the freezer. She selected a couple of different meal options from there, held them to her chest as she stalked back outside.

“Don’t be mad at me,” Rose said from the porch, leaning against one of the support beams.

She turned and looked at her sister, who looked comically young and plaintive. And Iris didn’t feel young at all.

She felt every inch the old maid spinster that she was. Having a fit with a bag of pancake mix, though. So, there was that. It was different, at least.

“I’m not,” Iris said, even though her heart felt bruised, and she did feel a little bit mad, thank you very much.

“I don’t take you for granted,” Rose said. “I know that this made it seem like I do. But I don’t. You are the best, Iris. And if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have... I wouldn’t have Logan, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t be any kind of well-adjusted. You took care of me. You put your life on hold for me. Don’t think that I don’t realize that.”

“I know you realize it. And you tried to fix it by setting me up with the worst man in the entire world.”

“Hey,” Rose said, “he wasn’t the worst.”

Iris suddenly felt fatigued. “No. He was. Because you could have set me up with a guy with a neck tattoo, at least. And he might’ve been a terrible choice, but he wouldn’t have been... Boring. Or easy. And I am so tired of boring and easy. I am so tired of the biggest thing in my life—the biggest feeling I’ve ever had—being grief. That is the most defining thing in my life, Rose. And I am really tired of it.”

“It defined all of us,” Rose said, softly.

“Yes. But now you’re marrying Logan. You’re going to be his wife. You’re a rancher. You’re strong. Ryder is a father, and he’s a husband. He’s a cowboy. Pansy is the chief of police, and West’s wife and Emmett’s... I don’t know, surrogate mother. And what am I? I’m nothing different than I was back then. I’m just... Poor Iris. I am so sick of being poor Iris. I want to be more. I want to be everything. I want to have big crazy feelings, so that something overshadows my grief. Maybe I can be a business owner. I can open the bakery. That’s what I want.”

And she thought of Griffin, and his compelling blue eyes. His hands, which she had noticed were quite large.

But she said nothing about that. Left it at thebakery, and nothing more.

She didn’t understand the fixation she had with him, and had no real idea if it was real or something borne out of forced proximity and her deep need to rattle the foundation of her life.

Better kept to herself either way.

“I understand how you feel,” Rose said. “But I promise you nobody just thinks of you as poor Iris.”

But Iris had always been able to tell when Rose was lying. And this was no exception. She didn’t say anything. Instead, she rounded the car, going to the driver’s side, and got inside. Then she started the engine.

It wasn’t up to Rose to see her different. Not when Iris wasn’t doing different.

Iris had to see herself different. She had to change herself. No one was going to treat her the way she wanted if she didn’t first figure out how to become what she wanted to be.

So she was taking the pancakes, and she was leaving. And she was well within her rights to do that.

Maybe it would surprise them. And as rebellions went, she had to admit that it was a pretty small and strange one. But she would take it. Because she didn’t have much else.

She drove down the winding road that led to Echo Pass, humming a tune along the way. And when she realized it was a hymn, she abruptly stopped, because that certainly wasn’t doing anything to shake up her image.

It was strange that this road felt familiar already. That the cabin seemed like a place she knew well even though this was only her third time here.

It was a haven, if nothing else. A symbol of the new steps that she was taking in her life.

Same as yesterday, when she approached the cabin, she didn’t see him anywhere. And when she knocked, he didn’t answer.

She pushed the door open cautiously, and found that—again—same as yesterday, he wasn’t there.

She didn’t know where he went during the day, and it wasn’t really her business. Still, she found herself curious about the man she had struck up a strange business relationship with. More than she would like to admit. More than she would like to be.

But he was... She had never met a man like him before. She went into the kitchen area of the small cabin and began to open up the cabinets. She had already looked through them, so she didn’t know why she felt compelled to do it again. But she found things much the same as they had been.

He had a bottle of Tabasco sauce. Salt and pepper. Canned chili. Canned vegetables. The kind of thing she would only eat in an absolute emergency. The kind of food they had eaten after their parents had died, actually.

When the casseroles had quit coming from the neighbors, when people had forgotten about their tragedy, and had gone back to their own lives, while the Danielses had settled in to a life that would never be the same again, there had been canned chili.

It was, to her, the kind of food that you got once your tragedy had been forgotten by those around you, but your grief remained.

The food of a person steeped in a half-life.

She touched the bottle of Tabasco. It wasn’t open. So he might have the ability to add flavor to his food, but she wasn’t certain he did. This was the kind of food a person had when they were in a life they didn’t particularly like.

That was when Iris had learned to cook. When she was tired of being in a transition. When she was tired of feeling the loss of her mother so keenly.

There were recipes. And she had watched her mother make bread countless times. So, she had purposed to make some herself. She had decided that she would take their situation and make it into something more. And she had found that food had taken a life that had felt shattered beyond repairing, and had introduced joy back into it. It was one reason she loved to cook. One reason she loved to bake. Because those early birthday parties, when their parents weren’t around, had been painful. But a beautiful cake had brought warmth back into it. Had made them feel like their mother was there in some regard.

And it didn’t matter to Iris if she was the one baking them. Or even baking her own. It had connected her to the woman that she missed more than anything.

She still felt connected to her through her cooking. It was magical to her.

The way that food brought you back to places you could never go again. Brought back people long gone.

Canned chili brought back the acrid taste of grief, loss and loneliness.

Freshly baked bread brought joy.

She moved away from the kitchen, and took a turn around the room. There was a couch, one that dipped in the middle and looked well-worn. And she had to assume it had probably been here when he’d moved in. There was that upright icebox in the refrigerator area. And his bed shoved in the corner. This was the place that a person lived when all they were interested in doing was surviving.

It was basic. But maybe that wasn’t fair. Maybe he really loved living here. Maybe he really loved the wilderness.

Somehow, she doubted it.

Well, he obviously loved the wilderness well enough, or he wouldn’t be here. It wouldn’t be a place to find solace in here if he couldn’t stand the spiders.

She shuddered, and looked up at the beams. She was going to clear out those creepy crawlies as best she could. They didn’t need to have homes inside the house, that was for certain. He might be somewhat sanguine about them being there, but she didn’t have to be.

No, she did not.

It became clear he wasn’t going to be back for pancakes, and she set that idea aside—and her disappointment at not getting breakfast herself—and set about to work.

The house was small, and after getting into more dusting than she had managed to yesterday, she headed outside. There were flower beds. Or rather, there had been at one time. Perhaps a young couple had lived here before him and they’d planted edible flowers and other hipster things. Or an older couple. And they had made sure that there was cheer planted out in the yard. Such as it was.

Mostly, everything surrounding the cabin was untamed wilderness. There were a few walking trails, clearly forged by hiking boots and deer hooves. And there were those flower beds. Otherwise, the place might have been dropped into the middle of nowhere with no sign of human life at all. But the weeds had taken over.

Maybe she would plant some flowers.

He had hired her, after all, to make good use of her time up here, and the house was so small that, while it would definitely need upkeep, and would get dusty quickly because it was out here surrounded by all this nature, she would need to do other things to occupy her time.

Obviously, once she was running the bakery she wouldn’t be up here every day, but still. She could plant him a flower garden.

She was good at this. At finding small moments in life to create beauty, or something sweet. Sometimes when the big things were sharp and shattered, when hope was gone completely, finding a way to breathe was all you could do.

Sometimes breath came from the beauty of the mountains around you. A piece of pie. A cup of tea.

From a flower garden.

She knelt down onto the earth and began to tug the weeds out, shaking the dirt from the roots and chucking them into a pile. She got lost in the repetitive motion of the task. She enjoyed this. Being outside in the sunshine, sitting in the dirt.

She had always liked this aspect of nature. Ranching had just never gotten in her blood. Not the way it had for Rose, Ryder and Logan.

Pansy had been so determined in her own path from an early age. She had been a hellion as a child, Iris could just vaguely remember. But after they’d lost their father, she’d gotten very serious. Determined to honor his memory by becoming the chief of police, just as he’d been.

And she had done it. Gold Valley’s first female chief of police.

Iris couldn’t be prouder.

But while Iris had never found her passion in ranching, unlike Pansy she hadn’t really found it anywhere else either.

Not true.

She supposed it was in cooking. It had healed some of the loneliness in her. Had given her purpose when she’d been lost. It had connected her to people she loved.

It had always been a way for her to earn her mother’s favor. If Iris cooked a meal, she was lauded for being a helper, and she carried that good feeling around with her for days after.

It made her want to use it to give that sort of feeling to others, even in a small way.

She might be arriving at it late. But she was finding her passion. A way to apply it.

She stood and surveyed her handiwork. The now cleared planting spaces. It was looking good. It was perfect. Everything she needed it to be.

With a song in her heart she picked up the scraggly weeds and went over to her car, where she found a bag and dumped them inside.

She would take them back to the ranch and give them to Ryder to go on the burn pile. That way they wouldn’t leave any spores behind and replant themselves here.

She had a feeling that up this far the battle against weeds was a losing one, but she figured she would do the best she could.

She could leave. She was sure that she could. Because he wasn’t here to give direction, and there was nothing else immediate to do.

But from where she stood by the car she could see a small path that led up into the trees. And she was curious.

Right. Because he seems like the kind of man who would bear your curiosity well.

There was a strange shimmer beneath her skin.

That she had opinions on what kind of man he was. It felt strange and intimate. And she didn’t quite know why.

She shrugged it off, ignoring the feeling, and began to walk toward that path.

The deepest groove in the path was at the center, speaking to the narrow footprint spread of deer that must travel here frequently, and she wondered if there was water somewhere that way. But it faded out to shallower, bare dirt along the edges, which seemed to indicate that a person walked it often enough as well.

Griffin. It had to be.

Since as far as she could see there was no other life up here at all.

She began to make her way up the trail tentatively, conscious of the fact that while she had made bold claims about carrying bear spray to potentially fend off Griffin, she hadn’t actually taken the steps to do so. She knew that her brother, Ryder, never ventured into the woods without a sidearm at the very least.

You never knew what you might encounter out in the middle of nowhere. From wildlife that was intent on making you a meal, to people who might be out trying to hide their more unsavory activities in the middle of nowhere.

Protection was a consideration.

But as Iris didn’t frequently venture out into the wilderness, it wasn’t one that she often thought of.

But she knew animal tracks. Her father had taught her. And she knew basic safety. So, she pressed on. She didn’t see any tracks that she should be concerned about, anyway.

She passed a small clearing, with a boulder at the center, and looked around. There was nothing particularly special here that she could see. A thick grove of trees surrounded it. Maybe it was a place for pagan rituals.

Which wasn’t something she would ever normally think. That kind of drama was more Rose’s type of thing. She must be overly hot or hungry. Or maybe it was just... Maybe it was just getting out of her rut. And it was allowing her to think some strange things too.

She kind of liked that idea.

The trail went past the clearing, and she continued to follow it. But it wasn’t a cougar that she found that surprised her. Rather a nice looking building, out there in the middle of nowhere. A small fenced in corral, and what looked to be a covered paddock.

And then she saw a horse exit the covered area, tossing its head, its black mane gleaming in the light.

Another horse followed, this one with a blond mane and tail. She wasn’t an authority on horses, not in the least, but these two were glossy and well cared for, clearly round and well muscled, and enjoying their existence out here in the wilderness.

And they had to belong to Griffin.

The horses seemed to live in a better kept, newer home than their owner. And they were definitely more well-kept than he was.

It was the oddest thing. Of all the secrets she had managed to find out about the man, she hadn’t expected this to be one of them. That he secretly had a pair of beautiful horses.

She heard footsteps, coming from the other direction, and she turned, to see Griffin barreling down toward her. “What are you doing?”

“I... I... I finished. And I didn’t want to leave without finding you. And there was a path. And I followed it.”

He stopped, crossing his arms over his broad chest. “Little Red Riding Hood, didn’t anyone ever teach you not to go wandering into the woods?”

His voice was rough, the way he said those words making them change shape inside her. They seemed to fill her, scrape through her like velvet. Like a touch.

That thought made her insides shiver. But she couldn’t quite pin down why. She was having difficulty pinning down exactly what this man made her feel in general.

Out here in the sunlight, with the golden rays pounding down on him, he was like an avenging angel. His dark hair was shot through with spun gold. As if the sun had reached down and touched him. She’d thought him a mountain, a rock, and he was. But there was something else too. Like magic. It was like discovering a different dimension of him, and that seemed silly. Fanciful. And Iris Daniels had never been accused of being fanciful.

It was the absolute strangest thing.

He moved, and that same sun caught the light in his eyes, and they were an even more startling, piercing blue than she’d realized.

His shoulders were thick, heavily muscled from hard labor, his forearms well-defined, the muscles visible even beneath that colored ink that was etched into his skin. His waist and hips were slim, while his chest was broad and thick.

He was holding a hammer in his hands, she realized, and that just made her think about their size and strength in a more visceral, specific way than she had done when she pondered their size yesterday.

He was not wearing khakis. He didn’t look like a man who would own khakis. He didn’t look like a man who would even know what khakis were. If she said something about dress pants to him he would probably curl his lip in disdain.

He looked like a relic of the land itself. A collection of the elements that had been breathed into life.

And somewhere deep inside of her, a voice that she hadn’t known existed in there, whispered to her.

Adventure.

He looked like adventure.

He looked like a change.

Like something that nobody would ever believe she could handle.

The simple truth was Griffin Chance looked like something Rose would never believe that Iris might do.

And she would have said she wouldn’t either.

But he made her feel like she was trembling somewhere inside, and it was an entirely foreign, and not unpleasant, sensation.

“What?” he asked, sounding angry. Dousing cold water all over that strange, half formed fantasy that had been blooming inside of her. Because he clearly wasn’t thinking anything of the kind.

“I... You startled me, that’s all. I’m sorry.”

“No harm,” he said.

“You ride horses?”

“Iris, I’m a damn cowboy.”

That was... Slightly disappointing. Because cowboys were essentially all she knew. Other than water filtration guys. And she had never imagined that she might find herself interested in a cowboy, considering she was not a ranch type person.

Interested? A strange word, Iris. Wrong word. Intrigued by? In fascination with?

“Right. Sorry. I didn’t know. I mean, I didn’t realize you had a... Ranchette.”

“A ranchette,” he said, dismissive. “I have three hundred acres up here.”

That did surprise her. That basically meant the whole mountain was his.

“It’s just that my brother has a giant spread. Beef. So, by comparison...”

He snorted. “Not interested in comparing ranch sizes with your brother. Don’t care. I like to ride horses. That’s it.”

“That’s it?”

“Anymore,” he said. “Yes.”

“Oh. Well, they’re lovely horses.”

He huffed a laugh. “I’m glad they meet with your approval. I was obviously very concerned about that.”

She wrinkled her nose and fought to keep staring at him with the full blaze of the sun in her face. “You don’t have to be mean.”

The ground was rocky, the light extra bright over the light gray surface of the rocks. There were scrubby yellow weeds popping up out of the dirt at odd heights, fat bees drunkenly twirling around the blooms. She could smell dirt and pine, hay and horse.

The scene was idyllic, really.

And she felt turned inside out.

He frowned. “I’d like to think that I don’t take the kind of effort required to be mean.”

She looked away then, a breeze stirring up, moving the air a bit. But her face still felt prickly. “You’re a bit mean.”

She didn’t know why she’d said that. She didn’t know why she was pushing the issue. She didn’t know why she cared at all.

“Did you want to go for a ride?”

She whipped her head back to look at him. “A ride?” She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d stripped his shirt off and done a seductive dance.

But that made her think of yesterday when he’d walked in with his shirt off. And the fact that she’d seen every one of his muscles on display when he’d done it.

What she knew about his chest was that it wasn’t just broad, it was clearly defined. And what she knew about his stomach was that it was flat and ridged in the most interesting way. But he had dark, compelling body hair covering his skin, and she had never been fascinated by body hair in her life.

But found herself more than a little fascinated by his.

Her face felt warm, and she still couldn’t blame the sun. She kept hoping if she stood there long enough she might be able to. But the breeze was nice. It wasn’t the air.

It was him.

“Would you?” he pressed.

“Yes,” she said, finding herself agreeing before she had even thought it through. “Sure. But I’m not that good at it.”

“You grew up on a ranch and you’re not that good at it?”

She frowned. “I haven’t ridden in years.”

“That doesn’t seem right.”

“I’m just not a horse girl. I mean, I like them, but it’s nothing like my sister. Rose was basically born riding horses and she hasn’t gotten off of them since. Working the ranch is what she does. She’s a real, proper cowgirl. And that’s just never been me.”

“Well, there’s a lot of ground between doing a trail ride and becoming a bona fide cowgirl.”

“I suppose.”

Without a word he went past her, and opened the gate to the corral. The scent of him joined with the sunbaked earth and pine. Something spicy and compelling that made her stomach drop and her heart cramp painfully.

He paused for a moment and her breath froze.

She hadn’t realized that could happen. That your breath could turn to a solid and just sit there, painful, in your lungs.

Then he moved, blessedly, and so could her lungs. He disappeared into the paddock, and she stood there for a while, not moving. He returned with tack, and made quick work of getting bridles and saddles ready to go. He did all of it without asking for help. He did all of it without looking at her, actually.

It was the strangest thing.

She couldn’t help but be utterly and completely compelled by his movements as he strapped the saddle into place. The way each muscle worked, the way his fingers moved. Expert.

She had seen this done thousands of times. Had watched men with equal expertise handling horses. Her brother, Ryder, was so quick with this kind of thing you could barely see his movements. But she’d never found it fascinating.

She found this fascinating. She found him fascinating.

Like some of that wildness in him had possessed her somehow. And she didn’t think that was something he meant to do, or wanted to do. He couldn’t seem less interested in her.

Undoubtedly, he was not standing there pondering her scent and the way it mixed with the breeze.

She’d liked guys before, of course. She’d gone to high school. She’d had crushes. She’d found different men who worked in different places around town attractive. But she was invisible, and always overlooked. She’d always made sure that she didn’t have the time to date, so that it never bothered her when she didn’t get asked on one.

It wasn’t like she didn’t know what it felt like to have a crush. Like she didn’t understand sweaty palms, a racing heart and a tightening stomach.

Except, this was different and deeper, and it felt altogether more dangerous. And she didn’t want to believe that it had anything to do with a crush, because it felt utterly and completely... Well, stupid. She had made a business arrangement with this man. She couldn’t go having it turn into anything else.

As if.

Yeah. This man. Tattooed and bearded and hard, was going to be interested in soft, dull Iris. Who would have done better to be named after a small dowdy bird than a bright, beautiful flower.

It had long been said in their family that Pansy had been given the meanest name. Because she was tiny and tough, and wanted to be a cop, and being named Pansy was an impediment to those things. Rose... Well, her name suited her. Her youngest sister was beautiful, vibrant and full of thorns.

Iris had always quietly felt that her name was a slap in the face. To be named after such a brilliant, glorious flower that couldn’t be overlooked, deep yellows and purples, and all the incredible hues that it came in, being applied to her.

She was plain. And she knew it.

And adding insult to injury she was quite dull.

A little old lady before her time, and she liked it. So what was there to be done about it? She liked quiet. And she liked being at home. And yes, she had felt that she should be wanting more, the desire to make her own space in her own way. But she still didn’t see herself going out on a Saturday night when she had the possibility of binge-watching an entire British detective series while knitting a new sweater.

She just was who she was.

More western meadowlark than an Iris. But nobody was going to name their baby western meadowlark.

And western meadowlarks didn’t attract the attention of big, burly men who seemed to hold the secrets of the universe behind their compelling blue eyes.

End of story.

So she quit staring at him, and chose a leaf that was waving in the breeze to be the recipient of her attention. Then he opened up the gate, and the clanging sound brought her focus back to him. And he led both horses on through, and that was a picture. This man effortlessly guiding the two massive beasts, not with force, but with a gentle hold. His connection to the animals was clear, and even though she wasn’t a horse girl, she found she couldn’t deny the appeal of that.

“All right. Saddle up.”