Читать книгу Wyoming Cowboy Protection - Nicole Helm - Страница 13

Chapter Five

Addie knew the next step was to walk away. Run away, but Noah’s gaze held her stuck. She was afraid to break it, that doing so might break her.

She’d been strong for so long, alone for so long. She had to keep being that, but the allure of someone helping... It physically hurt to know she couldn’t allow herself that luxury.

“Here are your choices,” Noah said in that low, steady voice that somehow eased the jangling nerves in her gut. “You can try to run away, and I can call every Carson, hell, and Delaney, in a fifty-mile radius and you won’t get two feet past the town limits.”

Irritation spiked through her. “Noah, you—”

“Or you can sit down and tell me what’s going on and we can fight it. Together.”

Together.

She couldn’t wrap her mind around this. Protection and together. Because she was his employee? Because she lived under his roof? It didn’t make any kind of sense.

Her father had cut off Kelly when she’d dropped out of school and refused to work at the furniture store. Then when she’d asked him for help in Kelly’s final trimester when the depth of her trouble with Peter was really sinking in, he’d refused to help.

He’d told Addie to never come home again if she was going to help Kelly.

If a father had so little love for his daughters, why was a friend, at best, so willing to risk himself to protect her?

“Telling me would be much easier,” Noah said drily.

It sparked a lick of irritation through her. She didn’t care for this man of such few words ordering her around. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. You aren’t my keeper. You aren’t even...” She trailed off, because it wasn’t true. No matter how quiet and stoic he could be, he had become her friend. Someone she relied on. Someone she worked with to keep the Carson Ranch running. It had given her so much in three short months, and she’d pictured Seth growing up here, right here. A good man.

Just like Noah.

Noah was her friend. Something like a partner, and wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t that make all this seem possible? Which was why she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. She’d made a promise to herself. No one else got hurt in this.

“Noah, the truth is, I care about you.” Far more than she should. “I care about all of you—Laurel and Grady and Jen and...the lot of you who’ve made me feel like this was home.” She glanced toward the window, but she’d closed the curtains. Was someone out there? Waiting? Would they attack? “But the kind of danger I’m in is the kind I can’t bring on all your heads. I couldn’t live with myself.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” he said, still standing so close and so immovable. Like he could take on the evil that was after her. “I think you’d do anything, risk anything, to keep Seth safe.”

Her chest felt like it was caving in. Because he was right. She would do anything. She didn’t want to bring the people who’d been so good to her into the middle of it, but what if it was the best bet to keep Seth safe?