The taste of forbidden

5. Wild one.

5. Wild one.

Becket.

Today starts off as a bad day.

Before herding the cattle to the north pasture, we realized we had to repair a few fences that were damaged by last winter’s rain. It’s the first time something like this has happened to me, which only worsens my already gloomy mood. Although I have a clear idea of what—or who—has had my mind so scattered over the past week, I ignore everything related to her.

Damn the day Lia showed up at the ranch.

I almost wish I’d stayed in the dark, not knowing about my brother’s death. That way, I wouldn’t have these moral battles between my love for my brother and my love for this land. But it’s not just about protecting what’s mine, it’s about protecting every family that depends on this farm.

"Rose told me she heard Lia packing her things really early," says Miguel, my foreman and right hand, as we repair the broken fences together.

I pull out the nail I’m pressing between my lips and hammer it hard into the wood.

"How does Rose know Lia was packing?"

"Because she was making a lot of noise. Rose heard her dragging things from one side to the other. She even thinks she was moving the bed…" the older man hands me another nail. "Is she leaving today?"

"Mmm," I nod evasively, refusing to tell him I practically kicked her out.

"Poor girl, she looks really lost."

I laugh, a hoarse, irritated laugh.

Poor girl?

The woman who threw bills on the floor in a clear attempt to humiliate me is neither poor nor lost.

"There’s nothing here for her," I tell him.

"I don’t know, Beck. Lucas grew up here, and she’s his wife. I think she has the right to connect with who your brother once was."

"What does it matter? Lucas isn’t here anymore, he’s gone."

"So what?" Miguel’s voice hardens. "Don’t tell me that if you had the chance to know who Lucas was in his last years, you wouldn’t take it."

"What do you mean?" I look at him.

"Why don’t you see what that girl’s presence means, Becket? Instead of seeing threats where there might not be any, realize that she’s the only living person who’ll keep you connected to him, who’ll let you know who Lucas became, the man he was when he died. Don’t you want to know?"

A memory of my brother’s face, happy on his wedding day, rushes through my body like a painful current.

"We don’t get along," I admit to Miguel, ashamed to say it out loud. "She and I… we don’t get along. I’m pretty sure she hates me."

He laughs.

"I’ve seen her a couple of times, always quiet and sneaky. What could that helpless little creature possibly hate?"

"Helpless creature?" The words come out full of irony. "She’s a harpy."

"She’s just a girl."

"A brat," I sigh, taking off my hat to wipe the sweat from my forehead, "she drives me crazy."

The memory of the bills thrown at my feet makes my skin crawl again.

Helpless creature?

Every time she opens her mouth, with a single phrase, she hits with a terrifying precision.

I’ve talked to her twice and those two damn times she’s aimed to wound like a damn harpy.

Why didn’t you ever look for him?

I'm ashamed of you.

She seems to know exactly which buttons to push to unravel me.

I’m about to open my mouth to explain to this poor man what lies beneath her angelic appearance, but the sound of Hank’s truck speeding toward us puts us both on alert.

"What’s going on?" I ask when he hurries over to us.

"It’s Lia," Hank explains, and my whole body tenses instinctively.

"What did she do?"

"She’s moving into Miguel’s old cabin, dragging a mattress all the way there."

What. The. Hell?

"Isn’t that cabin out of use?" Miguel asks.

I nod.

That damn cabin is older than time itself. Miguel stopped living there years ago, and now we just use it to store firewood when winter comes.

I put my hat back on and mount my horse, then gallop full speed to confront the woman who is seriously one step away from driving me insane.

"What the hell are you doing?" I shout at Lia, dismounting my horse at the sight before me.

I would laugh if the situation were different, but I can’t, not when the circus is happening on my own land.

She doesn’t even look at me. She’s too busy dragging a mattress with a rope tied around it like a makeshift cart. The scene borders on the absurd: the mattress clearly weighs more than she does, but still, Lia manages to move it across gravel and dirt.

The dust has turned her white pants into a mess, but curiously, she covered the mattress with an old rag to keep it clean. I suppose at least that stayed intact.

Still… is she insane?

I look around and notice everyone watching her, completely entertained by the show she’s putting on. I shoot them a deadly glare and, like magic, they return to their tasks. Everyone except Cassidy, who keeps eating a banana while watching Lia with an amused smile.

"She hasn’t accepted help from anyone," Cass explains to me, "I doubt she’ll take yours."

I don’t want to help her. I want to strangle her.

"Go back inside, Cassidy."

"But…"

"Inside," I order.

Once there are no nosy eyes or ears nearby, I turn my attention back to Lia.

The damn woman keeps dragging the mattress, unfazed by my presence.

Wait…

"Is that mattress mine?"

Shit, that’s the mattress that was on her bed, in the room where she was staying.

Seriously, what the f**k is she doing?

When I told her to leave my house, I meant the whole property, not just move to another corner of the same damn ranch.

Finally, she stops and seems to think something over. Then she walks up to me, throws more damn bills at my feet, and goes back to dragging the mattress on her own.

Did she just pay me for the mattress?

I close my eyes for a second and run a hand over my face, trying to contain whatever’s about to explode inside me.

But when I look at her, what breaks me is that… that little amused smile on her face, like pushing me to my limits makes her happy.

She’s completely insane.

And she wants to drag me into her madness.

I walk straight toward her, a growl building in my chest, and throw her over my shoulder like a bale of hay.

"Goddamn you," I growl as she squirms so much she nearly topples us both. "Stay still, fuck."

I stride toward the small abandoned cabin just a few meters from the house. The whole way, she scratches my back with her nails and kicks me, but I lock her legs down firmly. I throw her inside, dropping her to the floor while she kicks and growls nonsense.

"f**k!" I clutch my arm when she bites it. "You’re not a harpy, you’re a beast, a f*****g beast with claws and teeth, holy hell!"

Lia growls and glares at me with shining hatred in her eyes.

I glare right back.

Until I look around.

She…

"This can’t be real."

Her stuff is already here, in this dilapidated wooden room that’s been out of use for years. It smells old and musty and is unfit for anyone to live in. But here she is, making it hers.

I look at her again.

I’ve never met anyone like her.

I never expected to meet someone like her.

My brother couldn’t have married someone like this.

The woman I saw in the wedding video?

I laugh because there’s no trace of that sweet girl right now.

"Do I need to get a rabies shot?" I point to the bite mark on my arm.

"Go to hell."

"Ah, she speaks."

And curses like a sailor.

She goes quiet again, like she’s thinking better of it. Little by little, she calms down until she closes off completely, like she’s building a wall between us. Suddenly, her gaze goes right through me, like I don’t exist.

That pisses me off even more.

"You can’t stay here."

She ignores me, starts folding her clothes and putting them in the busted-up closet that could be from the last century.

"Come on, Lia, you can’t be serious about this," I tell her. "This place isn’t fit for anyone, not even you."

Nothing.

She won’t speak to me.

"You need to go back to your home, there’s nothing for you here."

It drives me so crazy that she won’t speak, I want to shake her and force the words out of her.

Seriously, it’s the first time in my life I have no idea what to do.

What do I do?

What the hell do I do with her?

"Fine, come back to the house," I relent, gritting my teeth.

She lets out an ironic laugh, a joyless chuckle that tells me that’s the last thing she’s going to do.

But she can’t live here, doesn’t she get it?!

Is she blind to what’s around her or is her stubbornness bigger than her common sense?

"God help me, Lia, you should come with a manual because… I have no f*****g idea how to deal with you!"

She keeps folding clothes, not saying a single damn word.

Ah, to hell with it.

"HANK!" I shout because I heard him park again at the house a moment ago.

He appears three seconds later, glancing doubtfully from Lia to me.

"Yes, Becket?"

"Help me bring Lia’s bed down here. We’re setting it up in this spot."

And let her deal with the consequences if bugs and mosquitoes come at night and she can’t handle them.

She wants to live here?

Fine, let her live here.

Fuck it.

I storm out of there in a fury and head up to the room she was staying in. Sure enough, the mattress is already gone and the wooden bedframe is bare. There are screwdrivers and tools scattered on the floor, which tells me she tried to dismantle it to take it to the cabin, but when she couldn’t manage, she just took the mattress.

"Let’s get started," I say to Hank.

It takes us less than ten minutes to take the bed apart, and when we leave the house carrying the wooden pieces toward the cabin, I see Lia has already dragged the mattress by herself to her new home.

She doesn’t give up, does she?

I push the door open and walk in carrying the slats while Hank holds the headboard. She doesn’t even look at me; she keeps folding her clothes, arranging them like she’s a normal woman and not someone who’s been missing ten screws for a while now.

Hank and I drop the bed pieces on the floor and go back to the house to get the rest. When we return with the remaining parts, we stop cold at the sight of what she’s doing.

Fuck, she really is going to drive me insane.

Lia is throwing the bed parts out the door, tossing them into the dirt, making the gravel crunch loudly under the impact.

"What the hell are you doing?" I drop the remaining slats and walk toward her.

She throws a board even harder this time, nearly hurling it right at my feet. I have to take a step back to avoid getting hit. I also hold my breath to avoid inhaling the dust that rises up.

She’s rejecting the damn bed?

I watch her brush her hands off to get rid of the dirt, looking me straight in the eye with a defiant glint.

"Lia," I warn her.

She smiles without showing her teeth and shuts the door in my face.

Bloody f*****g hell!

I let out a growl as I take in the dismantled bed all around me, the bills still scattered a few feet in front of the house, and the trail in the dirt from where she dragged the mattress.

She...

"Well, should I take the bed back?" Hank asks, amusement in every word.

I glare at him, pick up my hat, which at some point fell to the ground, and get back on my horse, galloping away at full speed.

As the warm air fuels my fury even more, I realize something… she still hasn’t said a single word to me.

And that’s what pisses me off the most about all of this.