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Jack seemed to read my mind. He shifted so he could lean forward, his gaze unusually intense. “Look, Sam, we don’t need her to agree to marry us—not today, at least. We just need her to stay. If she does that….”
He had a point. If she stayed, we would win her in the end. If she wanted courting, we’d do it. Roses, candlelight, horseback rides. Whatever. This had been fast and that damn lightning wasn’t something she believed in. That was okay. If she stayed, we’d have all the time in the world to have her fall in love with us.
“You’re right,” I said.
He grinned. “Of course, I am.”
I kept thinking of the way her eyes had lit up during dinner at Cara’s the other night. She’d been luminous and in her element. Laughing and talking, she’d been relaxed and content—a far cry from the tightly wound ball of stress I’d met that first day at the bar. She deserved to be like that all the time, not just when she was on vacation.
That right there was what I was afraid of. She saw all of this as a vacation from life. A hot fling, a leisurely pace, fun with friends—I had a horrible feeling that in her mind this was all just a break from “real” life. Perhaps even a distraction, something keeping her from the fast lane, the corner office. Maybe I was wrong and Jack was right. Maybe she was coming around to the idea of staying. There had definitely been moments when I’d thought she had, but then there were times when I could see her mind drifting back to New York and all the bullshit that waited for her there. It was hard to fight against a cell phone, instant messaging, emails and a type-A personality.
Much as I might want to trust that Jack was right, I knew better. Our Katie was torn in two and there was no telling which way she’d go in the end.
I didn’t feel any better about the situation when she arrived looking frazzled and irritated. Gone was the sweetly satisfied woman who’d let me eat her pussy in her kitchen a few hours ago. What the hell had happened in that time to make her look so rattled?
Jack gave a quick questioning look as she strode past him into the living area and I shrugged in response. Something was up, that much was obvious. Whether that something worked in our favor or not was impossible to tell.
“What’s going on, doll?” I came up behind her and took her purse from her shoulder, setting it on an end table so I could rub her shoulders and neck. Sure enough, she was a bundle of knots. Before she opened her mouth, I had a good idea what she was going to say. There was one name I was starting to hate because it was bound to have this effect on her.
“Fucking Roberts,” she spit out.
Jack groaned and fell back onto the couch. I couldn’t blame him, at this point it felt like we were beating our heads against a brick wall trying to get Katie to face the fact that her life back in New York was toxic and unfulfilling. At least I’d tracked down her ex and called him. Chatted about his behavior. Chatted, and when he wasn’t as accommodating as I’d wanted, threatened a stalking charge, a restraining order, both of which would be public record and something the senior partners at Barker, Paul and Cambridge might be interested in. After that, we’d seen eye-to-eye and I was satisfied he could be crossed off Katie’s list of jackasses. But Roberts? The only way he was going to go away was if Katie did. To Bridgewater, permanently.
“What did he do now?” Jack asked.
I inwardly groaned, wishing he hadn’t. I hated seeing Katie so worked up over that asshole thousands of miles away. If he could fuck with her at such a distance, I had to wonder what he was like in person.
Before she could launch into a tirade about whatever the fucker had done this time, I cut in. “What did you find out at city hall?”
She blinked in surprise and I could practically see the gears shifting in her head. This was why she and I worked. We thought alike, were able to multitask to the extreme. I knew how to push her buttons—challenge her, make her think. And she did the same for me. I looked over to see Jack taking a swig of his beer as he lounged on the couch.
Thank God we had Jack to round us out. To make us remember that life was sometimes pretty damn simple. The perfect threesome. Well, pretty damn close to perfect anyway.
Katie reached for Jack’s beer, taking it out of his hand and making him laugh as she drained the rest of it. Then she turned to me. “It was eye opening, I can tell you that.”
She recounted what she’d learned and at the end, Jack let out a low whistle. Being a rancher, he knew water rights inside and out. I knew them from a legal perspective, knew what Katie now owned—controlled—without having to go to city hall. “Wow, that’s some power you’ve got there.”
“You could make half the ranches in the county go belly up.” Just over something as simple and basic as water. I should have kept my mouth shut, judging from the glare I got from her.
“What are you going to do?” Jack watched Katie with a look I knew well. It was the same look he gave me every time he was giving me shit… playing devil’s advocate. He knew damned well Katie wouldn’t do anything to hurt this town or the people in it—because she loved it here. But he wanted her to admit that simple fact. Maybe then she would admit that she wanted to stay, that she belonged in Bridgewater.
Shit, sometimes my cousin was smarter than he looked.
Right on cue, Katie got all riled, worse than when she’d first arrived. “What do you mean, what am I going to do?”
“It’s a lot of money, doll.” I took a step toward her, putting my life on the line judging by that glare. “No one would blame you if you were tempted to take the deal.”
Her jaw fell open and she stalked over to me, closing the distance between us. Stabbing a finger into my chest, she said, “How can you even say that? Do you know what would happen if I sold to that developer?”
“You’d be stinking rich?”
She stiffened up like a rod and Jack grinned.
She whirled around so quickly her hair whipped my face. “And I’d screw everyone in this town over in the process.” Shaking her head, she backed up so she could face us both, her arms crossed in front of her chest.
“Now simmer down, doll.”
Those words had the exact opposite effect I wanted. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see smoke coming out her ears at that point. Surely she had to see it now. It had to be obvious that she cared about this town and its people. She couldn’t walk away from it any more than me or Jack could. This town was in our blood and where we belonged, and it was the same for Katie.
