Page 1 of Love Me Back (Diamond Creek #2)

Grayson

The first glimpse of her standing on that mountain with her back to the view captivated me. It was her. The one I had been waiting a lifetime for. Her body trembled, her eyes fixed on the parking lot, completely ignorant of the breathtaking scenery. I approached her as I would an untamed horse.

Cautiously.

Carefully.

Casually.

My words were soft, subtle. If I spoke too loudly or startled her, she would bolt. So aside from a few words, I ignored her, speaking more to her friend. I knew I needed to take my time, let her get used to seeing me around, build trust and familiarity.

The problem with that approach was it took too damn long. I wanted her in my bed, in my house, in my life. Yet here, it was more than six months later, and she still wasn’t mine. I did my best to seek her out on the rare occasions I made it to town, but the ranch kept us holed up here most days.

That would explain her hostility when we ran into each other unexpectedly.

She glared at me and cussed me out when I showed her the smallest amount of attention.

Like a horse that nipped when you got too close.

But with time and consistency, you could tame any horse. I just needed to be near her more.

It might appear I was playing games. Just some random guy on a mountain. And sure, that was a valid assumption. But it wasn’t the truth.

I wasn’t just a random guy; I was her guy.

All I needed was a way to prove it to her. In order to do that, I needed to get off this fucking horse for one goddamn day .

The winter had hit us hard. Growing up on a ranch in Nebraska, I knew what to expect from the winter, but this past year was worse than anything I had seen in my thirty-five years.

Between the snow and the shit, the fence lines and the ice, it didn’t leave much time to court the stubborn woman.

Then we had the foals.

Why they always decided to come in the dead of night was beyond me, but there were multiple sleepless nights, making sure they all made it through the bitter cold.

Some might wonder why a sane person would choose to live in the middle of nowhere, with animals at risk of being buried alive after one snowfall.

The simple answer? This was all I’d ever known, and I loved it. Training horses was my life. It was what I was good at.

Not all the Powell children took to ranching like I did. There were six of us altogether. My oldest brother, Carson, preferred to be in town helping Pops run the hardware store. Pops was eighty-three years old, but if you asked him, he was just as able as when he was seventy-three.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Seventy-three wasn’t the same as thirty-three, but that was Pops. He was our mother’s father, and when our parents passed away ten years ago, he took over raising us.

Yes, Carson was twenty-eight at the time, but our baby sister was only nine. So, we let Pops believe he was taking care of us, because it was important to him. And that’s what family did.

They showed up.

So now Carson took care of Pops. Only we didn’t tell him that.

My younger brothers, Hudson and Emerson, enjoyed working the ranch with me, but they also enjoyed having a social life. So, when Carson moved to town, neither complained about my being left in charge. They happily took orders from their older brother.

Okay, I don’t believe it either, but it was worth a shot.

In reality, they butted heads with me every chance they got, but we made it work .

Then there was Tyson. At twenty-six years old, he wanted to forge his own path. Years ago, when the motorcycle club started a chapter here, Tyson thought it was cool. To a twenty-year-old kid, motorcycles were cool, I guess.

Five years later, he was still there. He still helped out when he could, but he was happy, and that was important to Carson and me. We wanted our siblings to be happy.

Our baby sister Addison was only nineteen. She was studying to be a vet, which would come in handy at the ranch. But I worried she was only doing it because she felt like she had to, not because she wanted to.

She was another woman in my life who had slipped through the cracks because of the ranch. It wasn’t easy when you were the boss. Not only were you responsible for the animals but also for the bills, and the income, the workers, and everything that came along with running a business.

Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t hurting. Actually, we were quite comfortable. The horses I trained didn’t sell cheap. But the responsibility of caring for everyone wore me down.

Then there were the bodies.

We’d found two women dead on our ranch. One could explain both instances as accidents. Wrong place, wrong time, and a lack of situational awareness.

Our cows trampled the first woman found last December. She never should have been in that field, and we had no answers as to how she got there.

The second woman fell from a cropping of rocks. She could have easily missed a step, but again, she shouldn’t have been out there. There was one other thing that connected these two women.

There were both naked.

There hadn’t been any other women found as of yet. But my brother Tyson did shoot and kill a detective from Oklahoma a few months back. He had been following the sister of one of his club brothers. Threatening her when Tyson shot him from just about half a mile away .

That was how he got his road name.

Winchester.

We all knew how to shoot. You didn’t live out here in the middle of nowhere without knowing how to use a gun and use it well. But Tyson excelled far beyond what could be considered proficient.

In 1964, the army drafted Pops into the war. Nana was pregnant with our mom, and not only did Pops miss the birth of his daughter, but he spent the first six years of her life in Vietnam.

He’d taught us everything he knew about shooting and protecting ourselves against an enemy.

Foreign and domestic.

Those women were part of the reason I’d hesitated in pursuing Jessie the way I wanted to. That, and she was so goddamn skittish.

I knew nothing about her. Sure, I could ask Ellie, but being her best friend, I wasn’t sure how much she would tell me. Then again, Danny and Dante were living in one of our cabins, and they knew her as well.

Danny Franks was a member of the Golden Skulls MC, while Dante had joined the Soulless Sinners MC.

The four of them met in college and had been close ever since. As a hacker, whatever Danny didn’t know about her, he could find. But would he help?

Something told me no. If there was one thing Tyson had taught us about being in the MC, loyalty meant everything. I wasn’t in the club, so that loyalty extended to Jessie first.

Thunder’s muscles rippled beneath me. The tension in his body told me he was alert to something.

He was a magnificent horse. An American quarter horse I’d raised from birth.

He was the only horse on the ranch I would never breed.

While his bloodline was superb and he’d been bred to be a racehorse, possibly one of the fastest racehorses in the world, his temperament wasn’t ideal.

I was the only one who rode him, brushed him, and fed him. No one else could get near him. Hundreds had asked me why I would keep a horse no one could get near but me. The answer was simple.

My mom.

Thunder was the last horse she bred before she was taken from us. She’d had high hopes for him. Only she died not long after he was born, and it was because of him I didn’t lose myself when she was gone.

Somehow, he’d grieved right along with me. He was the first horse I had delivered on my own, and he was born on the night of my parents’ accident.

Thunder had brought me back from the pain and grief of losing my parents. Sometimes I wondered if he’d taken on all the anger I thought I’d worked through. Taking care of him had given me purpose when I was floundering after the death of our parents.

Mom and I were close. She taught me everything I knew about horses. She grew up on this ranch, just like we did. Folks in town called it the Powell Ranch, but the legal name was The Triple J.

Mary Johnson was the third generation of Johnsons to live and work this ranch. When she married my dad and changed her name, Pops offered to change the name of the ranch, but Dad wouldn’t let her. He said this was her family’s ranch and it should stay that way.

Our last names might be different, but a Johnson would always live and work on this ranch if I had anything to say about it.

Thunder’s ears flickered, and my eyes searched the area, straining to see anything in the distance. One of the things I loved about Nebraska was the flat landscape. You could see an enemy coming from a mile away.

Except at night.

It was so damn dark at night you could see every star in the sky, but that didn’t give off as much light as people thought. Unless it was a full moon, you might as well be locked in a windowless room with the lights turned off.

There was nothing on the horizon. No plume of dust rose up from a horse galloping my way. No vehicles barreled toward us in our path. But Thunder wouldn’t settle.

The MC was having some trouble. A new club was trying to push its way in. They’d already lost a prospect. And I had one brother and a woman living in a cabin not far from Danny and Dante.

Tyson had been living at home since Banshee and Aspen had moved to the ranch. Protection for them, and us, he said. He patrolled at night. And a couple of prospects hung around during the day while he slept.

King wasn’t in the habit of sharing club business with me, but when he needed a place to put someone, he had no choice. I wouldn’t put my family at risk without all the facts.

Thunder sidestepped his big body, and I pulled on the reins. He sensed something. Pulling out my phone, I called Tyson.

“What’s up?”

“Not sure. I’m in the west pasture. Thunder is spooked. I can’t see anything, but he won’t settle.”

“I’m on my way.”

He disconnected the call, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before he was here. I turned the horse around as I heard a hiss. Then something hit the ground, tossing grass and dirt in the air.

Thunder reared up, and the reins slipped from my hands. Time felt as if it slowed to a crawl as I slipped off the back of the horse, hitting the ground with a thud, before everything went black.