Page 46 of Hometown Hottie

“Okay,” she said slowly and softly. “I’ll try, but I should warn you that I’m pretty close to my breaking point right now and this line of questioning isn’t helping.”

“The questions might not help, but I want to,” I said. “I want to help, which is why I’m asking. I guess the question I should be asking is whether you’re willing to risk losing everything rather than letting me help you?”

“That’s not up to me.” She met my eyes, a glimmer of doubt in hers. “I’m not sure I should be telling you this, but after a few things I heard from my brother earlier, I doubt he’d take your help even if the alternative is losing everything.”

I sucked in a harsh breath. I’d known Ryan wouldn’t readily accept my help, but what the hell could he have said to her that made her think he’d rather lose the ranch than come to me?

It stung to know that one of my oldest friends didn’t trust me enough to let me help him save a ranch I loved just as much as his family did, but either way, this wasn’t personal. It was business. At least, that was how I had to try spinning it.

“After I fired Frank, I gave it some thought,” I said, pushing past that sting of hurt. “I honestly don’t believe that he’s going to let it go. Not if someone doesn’t buy the entire property from him before he can start selling off pieces or unless your parents magically find a way to start thriving again.”

“It’s not magic, though,” she protested, but it wasn’t me she was fighting against right now. “It’s just good business, but Dad doesn’t see it that way. We could be thriving.”

“Okay, that’s great, but what happens until then?” I asked, but it was a rhetorical question. “Once I realized that he wasn’t going to stop pushing until you were gone, I went back to him and told him to draw up an offer. For the entire property. I’ll buy it from him and gift it back to you, free and clear. No harm, no foul.”

“No harm?” she squeaked. “You’d be out a ton of money and I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to pay you back.”

“That’s the point of a gift, though, Nova. You don’t have to pay someone back for it.”

She shook her head. “Sure. If it’s a scarf or some bath products for Christmas, then it’s no harm, no foul, but a whole ranch is hardly the same as a pair of novelty socks. It’s not something you just gift to someone.”

“Fine, then I’ll gift it to Ryan and you. That way, it’ll be in your names, where it was going anyway, and you could operate it however you pleased. Work your not-magic, turn it into a thriving business with all the ideas you have, and pay me off in installments once you’re able to.”

Instead of simply saying no again, she looked deep into my eyes. “While you were giving this so much thought earlier, did you ever stop to think about how Ryan would feel about all this? He doesn’t want your help, Carson.”

I blew out a sharp breath. “Yeah, I kind of figured he didn’t want it, but he needs to get over himself for once in his life and allow me to be a friend. Either that, or his whole family could lose everything you guys have spent generations building up.”

Unsurprisingly, Nova leaped to his defense, but I had to admit that the angle with which she came at me caught me off guard. “You say that he needs to get over himself, but he’s been doing that every damn day for the last ten years, Carson. He got over himself for the first time that day when he turned down a scholarship to stay behind while you and Vance danced your tight asses out of here. He got over himself again when you got drafted. He got over himself to cheer for you in every game you played and he got over himself while watching from a distance as you got to live his dreams.”

My mouth dropped open, but she wasn’t done yet. “Don’t you dare tell me that he needs to get over himself for once in his life. I know that it wasn’t your fault that he didn’t go, Carson. I also know how hard you tried to convince him to change his mind, but at the end of the day, he did it for us. For his family, so don’t you dare accuse him of not choosing to protect everything that our family has spent generations building up.”

“I wasn’t—” I started, but then I realized that it was exactly what I had been doing. I’d gotten so caught up in how pigheaded he was for not wanting me to help that I had accused him of not caring if they lost it all. “I’m sorry.”

With tears welling on her eyelids, she swallowed hard and turned back to the window. “Take me back to the truck, please. I need to get home.”

Obviously still fuming, her shoulders were rigid and her spine was ramrod straight all the way back to my mother’s house where she was parked. She didn’t say another word, but I’d have given her all the money for the ranch just to have known what she was thinking.

I stopped next to Ryan’s truck and wondered when she’d be getting hers back. She didn’t climb out immediately. Instead, she turned slowly to look at me again, defeat now shining dark in her eyes. She drew in a deep breath like she needed it to give her courage.

“I’m sorry about the other night,” she said in a voice so quiet I barely heard her. “I didn’t mean those words the way they sounded. Thank you for telling me about Frank’s plan, but we’ve got it from here.”

I wanted to reach out and take her hand, asking if she would’ve given me a chance if things had been different back then. If she would give me a chance now.

But I didn’t take her hand or ask my questions as I watched her get out of my truck. One thing she’d gotten right that night was that both she and her brother had more than enough on their plates right now. The last thing they needed was to have me crashing into them while they were juggling everything that was most important in their lives.