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Ding.
The sound of the elevator—the barely functioning, green-carpeted elevator that he rarely used anymore—gave him yet another reason to delay. If somebody was stepping off the elevator, they could be coming to see him. But there were other businesses down the same hallway. A tax preparer, an accountant, and a mortgage company, to be exact. Most of the time, the mortgage company was exactly where people were heading. The town’s dozen or so real estate agents did the majority of their closings there.
Focus. He needed to focus. Clayton put his hands on the keyboard and stared at his screen before remembering he wasn’t typing. He was scrolling through email. Sighing, he moved his fingers to the trackpad and double-clicked the first email in his inbox.
A female voice broke through the silence in the room. “I need to talk to you.”
Georgia Ludington had appeared in his doorway while he was staring at the screen. He saw her in his peripheral vision first, arms crossed over her chest.
She’d straightened her hair. He liked it better curly. Not that she needed his approval. But for years, he’d admired those long dark waves that fell around her face and cascaded down her back. They accentuated her gold-brown eyes perfectly. She always seemed to straighten it for special occasions.
Wait—this wasn’t exactly a special occasion, so why was her hair straight? She wore jeans and a sweater under the long coat she’d had on that morning. He couldn’t help but remember the cartoon doughnuts on her pajamas, barely visible beneath her coat. Something told him she’d be mortified to find out he’d noticed.
“Good morning,” he said, glancing at the time on his computer.
It was already almost eleven. That made sense. The inn served breakfast to their guests before sending them out onto the ranch for activities. He didn’t know how they handled lunch or dinner. He just knew the inn was often called a bed and breakfast by locals.
“May I help you?” he asked in his most professional tone.
He tried to keep the corners of his mouth from tugging upward as he leaned back in his chair. He set his elbows on the arms of his seat, hands clasped in front of him.
She lifted her hand, which clutched the folder he’d brought to her that morning. “Whatisall this?” she asked.
Oh, yeah, he should have expected a follow-up. It wasn’t logical to believe he could just drop all that on her and run. In fact, he’d half-hoped she’d come straight back to him. But he knew enough about the Ludington brothers to expect they’d pay a million dollars for a lawyer before they’d let her talk to him.
Let her. Yeah, that was the key. Teenage Georgia might’ve obeyed the family directive to stay away from anything having to do with the Knott family, but grown-up Georgia made her own decisions.
“As I said this morning, there’s a land ownership dispute.” He gestured to indicate the thick folder she was holding. “It’s all in there.”
She entered, walked straight to his desk, and set the file folder down on the edge of it. “I need it explained to me in plain English. Dumb it down.”
He tried not to let his amusement show. There was no need to dumb anything down for Georgia Ludington. She’d been an honor student in school and was now a savvy businesswoman. The dude ranch her dad started when she was just a kid had thrived over the years, and recently, it was in large part because of her. Everyone knew it—everyone who paid attention, anyway. And he paid attention.
“Your grandfather never owned that land.” Clayton shrugged and reached across the table to pick up the file folder, settling it on top of his laptop keyboard and opening it. He began thumbing through its contents, picking up pages and setting them face-down next to the pile as though looking for something in particular.
He didn’t need paperwork to jog his memory. What he did need, though, was something to distract him from that face, those eyes, that smile…
“He was basically a squatter,” Clayton said while he turned pages. “He built a house on property the Knott family owned. Nobody said a word. Phoenix and Gus didn’t even know.”
Phoenix and Gus were widely considered business partners at Knott Ranch. Gus, short for Augustus, was the father of the three brothers and two sisters living on the Knott property. Phoenix was the oldest brother. Long before Gus’s wife had died, Phoenix was at Gus’s side, running everything.
“Gus’s grandpa died when Gus was a toddler.” Clayton leaned back in his chair and dared to look at Georgia again. She still wore her coat, as though she planned to escape at any moment. “They owned all this land all this time, but they had no idea. They assumed the cutoff was where your granddad plopped down a fence.”
There was fencing that ran the entire line of the property. Talk about marking your territory. Only it wasn’t his territory. It took some courage to drop a fence and mark territory that wasn’t even yours. “Audacity” was a better word for it.
Georgia was staring at Clayton now, and it wasn’t helping him focus. All those years, watching her without her even acknowledging his existence, had taken a toll, he supposed. Now that he was getting her attention, it was almost overwhelming. Like admiring a celebrity for years and meeting her in person and having her stare back at you.
“That’s not possible.” Georgia had stepped back a little and was looking down at him, arms crossed over her chest. Was that a protective move or defiance? He wasn’t sure how to read her just yet.
“What does your mom say?” he asked. “She might know something about this.”
Georgia shook her head. “I haven’t told her or my brothers. They won’t?—”
She stopped there, leaving him to wonder what the rest of that sentence was. He waited patiently, hoping she’d clue him in, but that didn’t happen.
“I’d rather get this all straightened out on my own if I can,” she said.
Now he was staring at her, making no effort to hide it from anyone. “They’ve already filed in court.”
