Ride Rough - Tessa Layne Page 0,27

brain went nuclear around Cecilia?

"You were supposed to stick to the ranch and lie low," Sterling accused with a frown. "What happened to that?"

"What was I supposed to do when Tony and Robbie kept bugging me to join them? Keep saying no?"

"Yes." Sterling nodded with a glare. "Folks in town know that the guys out here are working on putting their lives back together. They're friendly, but they understand why a lot of our guys keep to themselves."

"But I'm not one of them," Trace pointed out. And that, really, was the problem. He didn't fit in at the ranch, not really. Everyone here had welcomed him, and had made a point of including him in their Sunday night dinners, but they were an extended family with a shared history and he was the intruder. But he didn't belong anywhere in his old life either. It hadn't taken very long to realize the painful truth once he'd arrived in Prairie. He, Trace Walker McBride had been living in a house of cards. He'd constructed a paper-thin life with paper-thin friends and he'd set it on fire himself.

A decade and a half of blockbuster movies, entourages and a million-dollar lifestyle and not one person in his "friend circle" had texted to see where he'd vanished to, not one person had called to ask how he was doing when the story broke that he'd been fired from the set. Except Portia and her wife Sandra. He owed Portia everything - up to and including his life. His rocket to fame hadn't changed her, or her feelings for him. But it had changed him. An argument they'd had when he'd signed his first movie contract resurfaced. I can see you're hungry, Trace. If you eat what they're offering, you'll crash and burn. And I'll be here to help you pick up the pieces when you do. They hadn't spoken for years after that. Because of him. Because his MO was to cut and run. It was only a chance meeting at a charity banquet four years ago that had rekindled their old friendship. She could have told him to fuck off, but she'd remained his friend. Not because he deserved it, he didn't at all. She buried the hatchet because she was a better human. And when she looked at him she still saw the homeless kid, sick with fever, she'd discovered shivering under the pier in Santa Monica.

And after two months of hard work by day and long bouts of lonely soul searching by night, he resolved to be more like her. So when the guys hadn't given up on inviting him out for beers, he'd caved. Because he couldn't stand his own company a second longer, and he'd wanted to try. Much to his surprise, he'd enjoyed it. There was no pretense amongst the guys he'd come to know out at the rodeo arena. They looked at him and saw a guy who worked at a ranch and wanted to master bull riding in his spare time, just like them. They didn't see Trace the movie star, or Trace the fuck-up. To them, he was simply another one of the guys. And he wasn't going to let it go. He needed it too much.

"Look," he said, scraping a hand across his beard. "You may not like it, but Tony, and Robbie, and Jax... those guys have become my friends. And I'm not about to quit hanging out with them." Not when he was starting to feel like he belonged. "With as much time as we spend together, people would ask more questions if I kept to myself," he argued. "Especially someone like Cecilia. I'll draw less attention to myself if I become part of the community."

"But how are you going to explain yourself? CiCi's like a terrier. If she thinks something's not right, she'll grab on and won't let go. Hell, she drove her own dad out of town."

Trace's eyebrows shot up. "What? What do you mean?"

"It was a long time ago, and not my story to tell, but you need to keep your distance. Because if this whole thing blows up, a lot of people will get hurt." Sterling's eyes bored right into him. "Resolution Ranch is a safe zone for a lot of vulnerable people. Hell, the whole town is. Maybe you remember the town nearly got blown off the map nine months before you were here last time? People are still recovering. And I'm not... we're not going to