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Reid’s sigh is long-suffering, slow, as if he’s just not the slightest bit worried about the angry chick with a gun big enough to roar like a bear.
“I only came to talk, as promised,” he says. “I saw your truck pulled up past the fence, and when you didn’t answer the door, I thought it might be prudent to seek you out.”
I roll my eyes. “Everybody’s always showing up on my doorstep. Haven’t you or your little buddy ever heard of phone calls?”
“My buddy?” He looks puzzled, then dismisses it with a flick of his fingers along his sleeve, before he adjusts the cuff of his shirt. “If I called, would you actually pick up the phone?”
I snort. “Nope.”
“There you have it.” He smooths his sleeve against his wrist, then tucks his glasses up his nose with his middle finger—and I don’t think it’s pointed, but it damn well might be. “May I please ask you to come to my office for a meeting next week? We can still negotiate something.”
“Like what?”
“If you put a reverse equity mortgage on your—”
“Fuck no.”
That’s when the shotgun’s out of the holster and across my saddle, resting on the horn.
I won’t actually shoot him, no.
Sadly, I’m a big old softie under this temper and this mouth.
But he doesn’t need to know it.
He just needs to think I might be as psycho as I’m trying to look.
“Mortgaging my house to pay taxes is the same as letting the bank own my place outright. This place is mine, paid off for generations, and it’s staying mine.”
I try not to sigh. Dad wasn’t bad with money, but between mounting medical bills and the endless upkeep on a place this size…he fell farther behind. Down a debt hole that still has me plummeting.
“This ‘place,’ as you put it,” Reid says coldly, “is only partially yours, ma’am. Think carefully. If you continue down this path…soon you’ll lose this land. A tragic end for a place that’s been Potter ground for over a century.”
I’ll give him one thing—it takes balls to say that to a woman threatening you with a sawed-off shotgun.
I guess it also takes balls to freaking bow to her, before turning your back like you aren’t just giving her a perfect target.
For a second, I’m sorely tempted.
So tempted I can suddenly understand my father doing something awful in a moment of anger and desperation, adrenaline hot and fear even hotter in the back of his mind.
For a second, my hand tightens on the hilt of the shotgun.
I relax it when Reid Cherish slinks back to his Jeep and calmly backs out, reversing into the little dirt lane.
Leaving me alone with just Frost and the sickly fear pooling in the pit of my stomach.
I don’t know if Reid Cherish and Confederated Bank know what my father did or know what’s back there.
I just know they’re dangerous.
And I’ve got to figure out how to outwit them.
4
Mustang Sally (Holt)
What can I say? A man can change.
This is the first time in my life I’ve ever dressed down to impress a chick.
Usually it’s all suit and tie, or at least a nice expensive designer shirt and a pair of slacks, rarely jeans.
Back in the Big Apple, I did the whole ‘dress for the job you want’ thing. The job I wanted then was being the most coveted man in New York, both in the construction business and in everyone’s bed.
I guess I’m still doing it here.
The job I want now is being somebody Libby trusts so we can find a way to make everything work.
I think I might actually have a soft spot for that little firecracker.
Nah, let’s be real.
A hard spot, too.
I can’t dwell on how much I’d like to let another part of my anatomy talk with her instead.
I’m hardly dressed like a gentleman today as I pull up in my Benz and find her waiting for me with two horses tied up to the fence at her side.
I’m in jeans and an A-shirt with another light flannel shirt unbuttoned over it just to ward off dust and flies. I don’t want to sweat half to death. Though it’s barely mid-morning, I’ve already got the sleeves cuffed and rolled up to let me breathe.
She’s wearing significantly less.
A tight tank top so close-fit and low-slung that those thin spaghetti straps look like they’re about to break free, snapping under the weight of her tits from the sheer strain on the dark rose-colored fabric.
Her cutoffs that might as well be panties with how high she’s cuffed them.
Fuck.
She’s still in those cowboy boots, too, highlighting her shapely, tanned mile-long legs.
Today she’s even got on a cowboy hat, too, shading her eyes and the loose tumble of windswept golden curls.
I can’t quite make out the expression on her face under it or what she thinks of me as I slam the car door shut and mosey up the little drive. I cross over the plating bridging the ditch nimbly this time, thank you very much.
