can’t get away from the mistakes you inevitably make. I’m a pro in the mistake category and have learned that people generally find it easier to kick me out than forgive.
As for the name thing, how about this: on the day I show up in Telluride to get the Colt-approved tour, I’ll tell you my full name. I’ve never hated an OPSEC policy as much as I do right now, but in a way it’s a little fun. I’ll be able to introduce myself to you, and in the meantime, you’ll wonder if every stranger who comes to your door might be me. One day, it will be.
And seriously. Christmas is in less than a month. Buy the kid a puppy. And hug Maisie for me. Let me know how chemo goes this month.
~ Chaos
…
“Who the hell does he think he is?” I snapped as the door slammed shut behind me. Maybe I slammed it. Whatever.
I let the anger flow through me, hoping it would overpower the grief welling up in my throat. Chaos had been with Ryan. A part of me had known already—seeing as his letters had stopped when Ryan died—but guessing and knowing felt incredibly different.
I lost Ryan and Chaos and had been handed Beckett Gentry like some kind of messed-up consolation prize with a hero complex.
For God’s sake, Ryan. You know I never needed saving.
“Who?” Ada asked, popping her head out of the kitchen.
I kicked off my muddy boots and headed toward Hailey, whose eyebrows would have been in her hairline if she could have jacked them up any higher.
“Gentry!”
“That is one giant bite of man candy, even with the one-word answers,” Hailey said, flipping another page in her Cosmo magazine.
I snorted, half at her opinion and half at the fact that she still read Cosmo. That she was still in a phase of life where Cosmo held the secrets of the universe. I’d moved on to Good Housekeeping and Professional Women’s Magazine, where there were no quizzes on how to tell if he was into you.
I was twenty-five with six-year-old twins, one of whom was in a fight for her life, and I owned my own business, which took up every spare minute of my time. No guy was into me. I tugged on Ryan’s dog tag, the one that had come back with his things, moving it up and down the chain in nervous habit.
“What? He is. Did you see that scruff of beard? Those arms?”
Yes and yes.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
She looked over the pages of her magazine. “If I have to tell you that he looks like he’s about to take Chris Pratt’s role in the Marvel universe, then you’re way far gone, Ella. Those eyes? Unh.” She leaned back in the chair and stared dreamily at the ceiling. “And he’s here until November.”
November. That man was going to be on my property for the next seven months.
“He has that whole super-strong, broody, secret pain kind of look. Makes a woman want to pull him close and—”
“Don’t finish that sentence.”
“Oh, give the girl a break. That boy is something to look at,” Ada agreed, leaning against the reception desk. “People skills could use some work, though.”
“That boy is special ops.” I said it like the curse it was.
“And how would you know that? Because of his dog? I still have my reservations about having a dog on property, but she seemed well behaved, and Labs can’t be that aggressive, right?” Ada looked over the desk to see what Hailey was reading.
“One, Labs can absolutely be that aggressive, hence why she’s a special ops dog, or was. Whatever. He’s her handler.”
“Don’t be jumping to assumptions just because you feel a little awkward that there’s an attractive, single man within walking distance,” Ada warned, flipping the page of the magazine herself.
“I’m not—how would you know he’s single?” Had they already Facebook stalked him? Did guys like him have Facebook? Ryan never did. He said it was a liability.
“No one checks in for seven months with only their dog if they’re not single.”
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t matter. Ryan sent him.”
The magazine hit the desk in a flutter of pages as both women stared at me. Ada was the first to react, sucking in a shaky breath.
“Talk.”
“I guess Ryan wrote one of those death letters and asked him to come to Telluride and watch over me. Seriously. Ryan’s been dead three months, and he’s still giving me his opinion on the men I