One Night Rancher
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Maisey Yates
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16
One
“You have to spend the night in the hotel if you want to buy it. Because they had too many people back out. Isn’t that completely wild, Grandpa? I mean, I’m sure that it is haunted. Nothing can be around that long and not be.”
Cara Summers looked up at her grandfather. He was sitting on the shelf behind the bar. In an old Jack Daniel’s bottle.
Just as he had asked.
Cara had done her very best to fulfill his last wishes. Cremated and then placed on that shelf behind the bar so he could see everything.
He didn’t answer her question.
At least not audibly. She didn’t expect him to. Though she often felt his presence. It wasn’t anything she could really describe. But she knew he was there. It was why she talked to him. Almost as easily as she had when he was here. Hell, maybe it was even easier because he didn’t interrupt.
“The bar is empty, scrap. Who are you talking to?”
She knew the voice. She didn’t have to turn.
Even if she didn’t recognize the tone—and of course she would, after this many years of friendship. It was the way it made her feel. Because that was the thing. Jace Carson was one of six brothers. They all sounded relatively similar. Deep, rich male voices. But not a single one of them made goose bumps break out over her arms or made a suspicious warmth spread all through her body when they spoke. No. That would be way too convenient. Kit Carson liked to flirt with her, or at least he had before he had married Shelby Sohappy. And Flint enjoyed flirting with her to rile Jace up. But she knew that none of it was serious. Well. She had a feeling that any number of the Carson brothers would’ve happily had a dalliance with her if she was of a mind. They weren’t exactly known for their discernment when it came to women. Every one of them except for Jace. Oh, Jace wasn’t discerning either. But Jace was...
He was not interested in her that way. And just the mere suggestion of it made him growl.
They were friends. Best friends. Had been since middle school. It was a funny friendship. He was protective of her. And sometimes a little bit paternalistic. Or brotherly. But that was the thing. He saw her as a younger sister. The younger sister he no longer had, she knew.
And in some ways, she was an emotional surrogate for what he had lost when he had lost Sophia. She knew that. She’d always known it.
Every so often these days it made her feel bristly and annoyed.
Because the problem with Jace was that she wanted him.
And he didn’t want her.
“Just telling Grandpa about my next move.”
“Right,” he said looking around the bar. “Is he here now?”
“He’s always here,” she said, gesturing to the makeshift urn.
“Cara...”
“I know you don’t believe in any of this. But I do. I believe that I can talk to him. And that he hears me.”
“I’m sure that’s comforting.”
“I think that sounds more condescending and less accepting than you think.”
“I don’t mean to be condescending. But I don’t really mean to be accepting either. Just... I can understand why you need to think it, I guess.”
That was Jace. He just didn’t have a fantastical bone in his body.
He himself was a wonder. A masculine wonder. Over six foot but with broad shoulders, a well-muscled chest and not a spare ounce of fat over his six-pack abs.
He had a square jaw and compelling mouth with the thin white scar that ran through his upper lip. His nose was straight, his eyes the color of denim. Each Carson brother was sort of the same man in a different font, a remix of very similar and very attractive features.
It seemed kind of unfair that all six of them were just there. Exposing the female populace to their overwhelming male beauty. But there they were.
The really unfair thing was that none of their particular beauty called to her the way that Jace’s did.
When she had been a kid, the first time she’d met him, it was like the hollow space had opened up inside of her chest, just to make room for the sheer enormity of the feelings that he created within her.
She could still remember that moment.
She’d been so angry. And so hurt. Wearing one of her oversize T-shirts to school, her grandfather’s wristwatch, a pair of secondhand sneakers and jeans with holes in the knees. She had a brand-new pink binder that her grandfather had gotten her, and she knew that it had been a big deal. There were so many years where the bar that her grandpa owned—The Thirsty Mule—barely made ends meet, particularly back then. The downtown of Lone Rock had been functionally dead in the early 2000s. All the way up until the 2010s, and there just hadn’t been a whole lot of money to go around.
Most of the shops back then had signs in the window that they were for sale or rent, while they sat empty.
Not only that, her grandpa just hadn’t known what to do with a young granddaughter that he had taken in a few years earlier.
He loved her. Fiercely. But he had all sons, and his wife was long gone. And the gesture of buying her the pink Trapper Keeper that she had wanted so much had been... It had meant the world to her.
But there was a group of girls at the school who lived to terrorize her. For being tall and skinny and flat chested. For not being cool at all. For the fact that half of her clothes were men’s, and certainly weren’t in fashion. For her long blond hair, her freckles, her horse teeth...
She was occasionally amused by those memories. Because suddenly at age sixteen her boobs had come in, and when they had come in, it had been a real boon. She was stacked now, thank you very much. And it turned her a pretty impressive amount in tips on a nightly basis at the bar.
Whatever.
She thought maybe she should feel a little bit guilty that sometimes she wore a low-cut top to collect a bit more cash. But then she thought of the girl that she had been in seventh grade. The one who’d had president of the itty-bitty titty committee written on the outside of her locker door. And then she pulled the tank top lower and leaned toward the patron with a big smile. Everybody had their childhood trauma.
But, her breast boon notwithstanding, she could clearly remember when that same group of girls had taken that light Trapper Keeper with its beautiful white butterflies and tossed it into the dirt.
And one of the boys on the football team had held her back while they’d made sure that it was irreparably torn and stained.
She hadn’t let them see her cry. No, she turned around and punched the boy right in his face. And then she got sent to the principal’s office. For fighting.
“What was I supposed to do? He was holding on to me.”
“You’re supposed to go and get a teacher,” the principal had said, maddeningly calm.
“Why wasn’t a teacher there to help?”
“They can’t be everywhere at once. You can’t retaliate. You have to get help.”
She had decided that was bullshit. Then and there. She had burned with anger.
And in fact, had said as much to the principal. “That’s bullshit.”
“Young lady, we can’t tolerate that language.”
And that was how she had found herself suspended, because she had thrown even more language in the principal’s direction. And the funny thing was, she had just been channeling her grandpa and the way he talked on any given Sunday.
But then, that was the root of the problem. Everything about her was wrong. Wrong on some level. She said the wrong words, and more, the wrong things. She didn’t know how to be a girl. Whatever that meant. Except that she knew that she wasn’t even in the same species as those other girls. And not just because she wasn’t a bitch. They had really been bitches. They were still bitches.
But she had ended up crying down by the river behind the school. Not sure how she was going to go home and tell her grandfather that she was suspended for a week.
And she was trying to wash the dirt off the binder, scrubbing at it in the water, trying to find a way out of her misery.
And that was when he’d appeared.
He’d been in eighth grade. Tall and lanky at the time, with shaggy blond hair. His family had only come to town a couple of years before, and any other family would have still been considered new. But while the Carsons hadn’t lived in Lone Rock for a few years, they owned land there and were part of the original founding families, so they were considered foundational, not new.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Well. Everything. First of all, middle school is bullshit.”
“Right,” he said. “No argument from me. Why are you crying?”
“I got suspended. Because these girls ruined my binder. And this boy was holding on to me so that I couldn’t stop them. So I punched him in the face.”
“Good,” he said, nodding decisively.
“Then I told the principal that I thought middle school was bullshit.”
“And that’s why you’re suspended?”
“Yes.”
“It all sounds reasonable to me. Not the suspension. Everything you did. The question is, why didn’t it seem reasonable to the principal?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“I’m Jace Carson. What’s your name?”
And she suddenly felt shy and self-conscious. Because he was an older boy. And he was just so... Cute. And older boys, or boys her age, or really any boys, never talked to her.
“I’m Cara Summers. But I warn you. I’m not cool. And they call me horse teeth. And if you talk to me, they probably won’t think you’re cool either.”
“Seventh graders? I’m fine with that.”
He had walked her home. He had helped her explain the situation to her grandpa. And then he had helped with some chores around the property.
He told her a couple days later, after he came by to visit and finish some of the work, she reminded him of his sister.
He hadn’t explained any of that then.
But later, about six months into their friendship, he told her that he had a sister who would be her age now. One who had died when she was a little girl. “You remind me of her. Makes me want to look out for you. The way that I looked out for her.”
And that was it. They had really been best friends ever since then. Through a whole lot of things.
She’d admired him, for years. Just looked up to him like he was a god.
And she felt weird and possessive, and hadn’t particularly liked it when he had girlfriends.
Not that he ever had them for all that long.
And she knew that when he was out riding in the rodeo he did a lot of casual hooking up. But she just did her best not to think about that.
It wasn’t until one night at the bar, when she had been back there helping her grandpa, that she had really watched him putting the moves on a woman. He had his hand on her hip, and then he’d let it drift slowly up to her waist, and Cara had felt a physical, visceral response to it.
And that was when she’d realized.
It was when she’d realized that she wasn’t just possessive. She didn’t just admire him.
She was attracted to him.
She wanted him to touch her like that.
And she thought about saying something. About asking him if he would be her... It was so embarrassing. If he would be her first. Because she trusted Jace, so, it seemed like a pretty reasonable idea.
But then her grandpa had died. And that had been one of the single most devastating, destabilizing things that had ever happened. And in the four years since, she had done her level best to build herself back up. To take the bar and build it up. And handily, Lone Rock was having a bit of a boom, a resurgence. People were enjoying traveling locally, taking road trips, spending time in small towns.
There were all these posts that went up on the internet. These most charming small town posts, and Lone Rock was almost always there, as an 1800s gold rush town that still had original Western facades on a bunch of the buildings. With outlaw lore deeply embedded into the dirt all around, it was an attractive place for people to come and visit. Which was why she was now ready to invest in the hotel property. She wanted to reopen it. She wanted to get it online. It was haunted, that was the thing. And ghost stays were incredibly popular.
It was just that there had been three buyers that had backed out, and now the seller—who didn’t live in Lone Rock—was demanding that potential buyers spend at least one night there to prove that they could handle it. To prove that they knew what they were getting into.
She wasn’t afraid. In fact, she loved that stuff. It was just the idea of spending the night there alone...
It didn’t really appeal.
But that was future Cara’s problem. Right now, she had a bar to run, and Jace was here.
“What brings you in?” she asked.
“Beer. And a burger. I figured I would try to miss the evening rush. It’s too hard to talk to you when you’ve got all those bros crowded around the bar drooling on you.”
She rolled her eyes. It was the funny thing about her relationship with Jace. It wasn’t like they didn’t acknowledge those kinds of things. He talked about men panting after her all the time and was often growling at his brothers when they made commentary that was specifically designed to rile him up.
And she often talked about the way women acted like fools around him.
But they didn’t make it personal. It wasn’t about what he thought about her. But what other men thought.
And of course she never shared any actual details about her love life.
Well. Probably because she didn’t have one.
That was irrelevant.
“Nobody drools,” she said. “And even if they did, I don’t mind if they leave tips.”
“Yeah. Well, the place has become awfully popular.”
“It’s definitely different than it used to be.”
“Too bad Mitch never got to see it.”
“Of course he sees it,” she said. “Like I said. He’s here all the time.”
“So you’re telling me that his spirit lives on, and he’s still hanging out in the shitty bar?”
“That’s back to what I’m telling you. Anyway, I was just telling him about the hotel.”
“You still fixating on that?”
“Yes. I’m going to until I get to buy it. There’s just one weird little hoop to jump through. There were a couple of other offers in, but they fell through, because when they were looking around the place, there was some stuff that was... A little disconcerting. So now the owner is demanding that somebody spend the night there before they put in an offer. So... I’m gonna spend the night.”
“You’re gonna spend the night in the hotel? Why?”
“Because it’s haunted. That’s what I mean, people keep backing out because there’s all this haunting stuff. I guess he’s come close to selling it twice, and they were about to sign the papers when something spooky happened. So...”
“So you have to spend the night in the place to prove that you’re not going to back out on the sale?”
“Yep.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Why is he letting people with overactive imaginations cause so much grief? And why give any credence to it?”
“It works in my favor—it gave me enough time to get all my finances together. Anyway, I want it to be haunted,” she said. “I can get it on the national list of most haunted places in the United States. People come from all over to stay in haunted hotels. It’s something they’re fascinated by.”
“I don’t want to stay in a haunted hotel. Because that’s how I know the owner is a pancake short of a full stack.”
“So you think I am not playing with a full deck?”
“I think that you are a bull short of a herd.”
“Rude.”
He shrugged. “Sorry if you don’t like it.”
“I don’t think you are. I think you’re always far too happy to give out your opinion.”
“Oh well. You keep me around. Did you put my order in with the kitchen?”
She groused, but punched his burger order in at the register, then went over to the tap to pull a draft beer for him. She knew what he liked. She didn’t have to ask. She had it in the glass, and he took a seat at the bar. There were only three other patrons inside, and they were in the corner next to the jukebox, not listening to anything that was happening over at the bar, from her conversation with Jace to her earlier conversation with her grandpa.
“It would be nice not have to be at the bar all day every day. If I make some money with the hotel, I can hire more people.”
“Except, it’s a huge additional expense.”
“I know that. I’ve saved up for it. I can afford it. Especially if I can get it to a certain capacity during the high tourist times. But there’s just not much in the way of lodging around here. Yeah, there’s vacation rentals, but the only other hotels are thirty to forty minutes away. Hotel right downtown would really be something.”
“You know, if you need money...”
“I’m not taking your money. I’ve basically been taking your charity since eighth grade, and I have no interest in continuing to do it,” Cara said.
“It’s not charity. It’s friendship. Anyway. When are you fixing to spend the night in the hotel?”
“Tomorrow night. I’d... I don’t know. There’s no real furnishings in there. It’s going to be a little bit... Bracing.” She wrinkled her nose.
“I don’t really like the idea of you staying in a big empty insecure place by yourself. Especially not when some people might know that you’re staying there,” Jace said.
“I stay at the place I live by myself all the time.”
“I don’t know. This just feels different to me. I’m not comfortable with it. I should stay there with you.”
“That’s fine,” she said, ignoring the slight jumping in her stomach when he offered that.
She had spent the night with Jace any number of times. Mostly camping. But, what would this be if not camping? They would end up bringing sleeping bags and probably a space heater.
It would just be like all the things they’d done when they were kids.
“Yeah, all right. That sounds good. In fact, now the burger’s on the house.”
“Why? You don’t have to pay me to stay with you. I want to keep you safe.”
“You get a free burger because you’re submitting yourself to going on a ghost journey with me. And I know how much you hate that stuff.”
“Please don’t tell me you actually think that it’s haunted.”
“I think it might be. It stands to reason. It’s historic. There were so many gunfights in this town back in the day...”
“Why are you talking to me about ghosts like there’s anything logical about them? Come on. It’s ridiculous, Cara, and I think on some level you must know that.”
“I do not. It is as reasonable and logical as anything else in this world, Jace. And you know what, you’ll see. I think that we will have a haunting.”
“I don’t think so.”
“If we don’t, it’ll be because he’s scared away by all your skeptic energy.”
“Well isn’t that convenient. An even better reason for you to have me out. Because if you don’t see a ghost, you can blame me.”
“Don’t be silly, Jace. I always blame you.”
