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He wasn’t simple, either.
There was a constellation there. Emotion and thought and so many other things she’d never simply looked at another person and seen.
She felt rocked. Thrown off her axis.
Why did he do this to her?
Better still, why did it matter?
She felt like she was being pulled toward him, and that was enough to alarm her.
She took a step back.
“Nothing,” she said. “Anyway. Don’t we have work to do?”
“Just let me know what you need to get on your way, Cam,” said Levi. “I’m just going to be out on the property. So, call me.”
“Okay,” said Camilla, looking between them. “If you insist.”
“I do.”
He grunted and jerked his head toward the door. “Okay, Dr. Quinn, let’s go.”
“I don’t actually have a doctorate,” she said.
“Yeah. But you’re acting snotty, and have higher education, and it was a TV show.”
She sniffed. “I don’t remember it.”
He gave her a sidelong glance. “How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-five.”
He shook his head. “Lord Almighty.”
“What?”
“Just get in my truck.”
She climbed in the passenger side, nearly straining a muscle getting in. And she bit back a comment about the size of his truck and whether or not it was relative to egotistical damage as she did so. It was a nice truck. More evidence of the fact that he actually did quite well, obviously.
“What exactly are you not saying to me, ferret?” he asked.
“Are you just going to keep calling me names?”
“I was thinking about it. Because it’s funny.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t find it funny. Nor do I find it funny that you actually do need me, because clearly your sister was thinking about dropping out of college, and you were going to use my binder to try and convince her you had help when you didn’t.”
“Guilty as charged. What gave that away?”
“Your total lack of being receptive to me at all this morning coupled with Camilla’s certainty that you’d hired someone as a done deal.”
“I’m not going to apologize. You’re the one who rocked up here like the sharp end of a stick, poking around in everything and inserting yourself where you had no business.”
“I do have business. You came down to the meeting and you put us in an impossible position. I’m going to defend my ranch and my livelihood. That’s...obvious.” She gave him a sideways look. “And funny thing, you actually seem to care about college.”
“Wrong. What I care about is that Camilla doesn’t take options from herself because she feels like she owes me in some way. I don’t give a shit what she does. She could work at the Wendy’s a couple hours away or be a rocket scientist—wouldn’t change the way I feel about her. What I do care about is whether or not she misses out on her own dreams because of guilt. Especially out of guilt over me. That isn’t what I want, and it sure as hell wasn’t the point in getting those assholes raised.”
