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Now that it didn’t matter anymore.
After a moment of excruciating confusion, Nash broke through the painful silence. “You didn’t say who Angel was.” His voice sounded clearer. He’d taken the phone off speaker.
Porter wasn’t sure what to say. He needed to get to Angel and figure out… what? He stared blindly at the half-finished garden. It all seemed like a joke now. She wasn’t who she’d said she was. At all. Shock froze him in place. “Oh… nobody.”
“Huh.” Nash didn’t sound like he believed him. “You love her,” he teased, “don’t you?” His brother’s words froze him in place. Porterreallydid… and he had no idea who she was. He’d feel some sympathy for what Angel had gone through when he’d tricked her, but she was playing a much bigger game.
Nash laughed. “I’m joking.”
“Yeah, good joke,” Porter said through lips that felt numb. He needed to end this call and hunt Angel out. No wonder she always looked near to tears all the time—she was living a lie.
“Look,” Nash said. There was a desperation in his voice that Porter had never heard before. “I need your advice, twin advice. I took a job from this real sleaze, named Lacy Lynch.”
“Lacy Lynch?” His hand tightened over the phone. Angel had talked about a Lacy! What were the odds that this was the same guy who’d broken her heart, except that Nash and Angel ran in the same circles? That had to besomeclue as to who she was. His last name was Lynch? “That sounds like some gangster offSopranos,” he muttered.
“Right? He wants me to survey this land that belongs to Millie Turner—she’s a friend of Dad’s.”
That sounded shady already. Porter was having a hard time grasping Nash’s exact dilemma as he tried to figure out Angel’s connection to all this, but one thing was clear. West was using Nash for more than distracting Eva Trout. Their older brother was making Nash work his sleazier deals, just as Porter had feared. He gritted his teeth.
“She wouldn’t work with anyone else,” Nash said. “She really trusts me, ya know? And get this, my cut after brokering this land deal could be in the millions. That’smillionsof dollars.”
Porter whistled. “Are you kidding?” Was Angel pulling something like this here at Harvest Ranch? Why else was she going incognito here? She was getting the inside scoop, getting to know the people, working a scam… breaking his heart, all for just ameaslymillion dollars. He winced. Thatwasa lot. “Maybe I should’ve gone to Nashville too.”
“Yeah, the money’s pretty good.” For once, Nash’s tone was missing its usual cocky arrogance. “It’s just that… I caught Lynch’s guys bringing in seismic thumper trucks to find oil.”
“Why is that bad?”
“It isn’t… for them, but I’m supposed to appraise this land, make Millie a fair offer for her land, and they don’t want me to bring up anything about what they’re doing. It’s all on the downlow.”
Lacy was a real piece of work, wasn’t he? Was this how he made his money—by cheating everybody? He couldn’t imagine Angel working for such a sleaze, but then again, she’d fooled him about everything else. “Do you know if they actually found oil?” Porter asked.
“No idea, but they’re sure eager for me to close the deal.”
Of course they were. “They found something,” Porter said.
“That’s what I think, too, but West said that we still don’t know that for sure, and that our people are the ones taking a risk buying the land if it doesn’t yield oil. West says that I represent Trout’s interests, not this widow’s, so I shouldn’t even try to add the prospect of oil in my appraisal, but…” Nash hesitated. “It feels off, like I’m cheating Millie, but this is just business, right? I’m doing the right thing.”
Was this how they got to Angel, too? Bribed her, manipulated her? Or worse, had she been driven by her own greed, like… West? His anger boiled as he thought of his older brother. He’d gone too far this time.
But what if she was innocent? What if Angel actually believed that she was doing the right thing? Was this really a legitimate business?
There was only one way to find out. “Are you supposed to be an objective third party or just someone making a bid for Trout?” Porter asked Nash.
“It depends on who you ask.”
“What if I askedyou?” Porter turned relentless.
“I believed I was an objective third party until this whole oil thing happened, and then West turned this on my head.”
Nash had never sounded so defeated. Was this the man that Angel thought she knew? Was that why she could talk so freely in front of him, and not in front of Porter?
But his twin wasn’t this weakling who could be controlled by a bunch of scammers… he never was. Porter might be able to call him a lot of things, but no one told Nash what to do.
West wouldn’t get away with this; neither would Angel. No, Porter had to put an end to this madness before it was too late.
Nash might’ve deserted Porter for the big city, but he was still the same guy who stood up for him back in high school when Morningstar had thought that Porter had tie-dyed his football jersey pink and purple… and maybe Porter had. So what? The fact was that they’d run all over these hills getting into scrapes and bailing each other out from the time that they were babies in diapers, and it would continue until they were old and… in diapers probably.
They’d been inseparable from the beginning. That would never stop.
