by Kadie Scott
In the meantime… “I’ll be having a talk with their lawyers. My guess is they will decide to settle out of court.”
Deliberately redirecting water to keep it on their property could ruin the other ranch’s reputation. This business was a lot smaller than people thought. Word would get around. Most ranchers and farmers were honest, good, hard-working people who didn’t put up with a lot of bullshit or liars.
Carter and Mitch started putting their things into their cases to leave. And Logan finally hit the earth after falling from the sky.
“Mitch, mind if I talk to Carter for a second?”
To give her boss credit, Mitch looked to Carter who nodded. He quietly left the room.
“I’m sorry,” Logan said the second the door closed.
“What part are you sorry about?” She didn’t even bother to look up from packing her briefcase.
Logan put a hand over hers, staying her actions. She looked up, all the triumph of her discovery gone, and the cold woman who’d greeted him earlier back in place. She calmly pulled her hand out from under his and stared at him expectantly.
“I’m sorry that my first instinct was to turn lawyer on you. You didn’t deserve that.” Please let her believe him.
Only no give showed in her expression. “No, I didn’t deserve that.”
“Especially not from me.”
She crossed her arms. “Nope.”
He wasn’t getting through. He could take the smallest piece of evidence and convince a jury that it was the most important thing in a trial, but all those skills seem to have deserted him at this moment. She wasn’t budging an inch; he could see that in her hard eyes and the way she compressed her lips.
“I’ve been beating myself up since the moment you left.”
“I’m glad you learned a lesson.” She grabbed her briefcase and swung the strap over her shoulder along with her purse. “Let me know when I can start my property survey.”
She went to move around him.
“Wait.” He shot out a hand to grab her arm and stop her from leaving. “I don’t want to lose you.”
A flash of something—regret, sadness, maybe even love—lit her eyes for a second but was gone before he could be sure he saw it.
She pulled out of his grip. “I can’t be in a relationship where I’m constantly having to prove myself, where I’m constantly worrying that you’re going to find any little reason that this won’t work. I can’t live like that.”
“It was a mistake. A habit born of not trusting anyone, made worse by what I do, practiced over a decade at this point. It will never happen again.”
She stared at him for an interminable moment, indecision pouring across her beautiful features. She opened her mouth, and hope rose up in him, except she paused and fisted her hands.
Then she shook her head and his heart dropped to the floor where she stabbed it with her stiletto heel. “I can’t believe you. I wish, with all my heart, that I could.”
Panic gripped his heart in an iron band, squeezing tighter by the second. “Don’t leave, please. I’m in love with you.” Please, God, don’t let her walk out of my life.
Carter closed her eyes as though it were painful to look at him. “It hurts not to be believed, doesn’t it?”
When she walked away this time, he let her go.
*
A knock sounded at Carter’s door, only she didn’t bother to sit up or roll over in bed. She did glance at the clock and winced. Ten a.m. No doubt her family was here to drag her out of bed, as her father used to do when she slept past about seven in the morning as a teenager. Ranch life started early in the day and ended with an early bedtime. Only she didn’t feel like getting up.
“Carter?”
Not her dad, but her mother.
“I’m sleeping,” Carter called, not bothering to disguise her grumpy voice.
Rather than answer, the door opened. Carter still didn’t bother to rollover or even open her eyes. In fact she pulled a pillow over her head.
“Go away,” she groaned.
She’d been up until all hours of the night the last few nights in a row, finishing all of her analysis of the new topographical surveys. She’d finally hit send to Logan yesterday. This case was over. She’d asked Mitch to keep her off Logan’s cases just for a little while. She knew she couldn’t avoid them forever, but if Mitch loaded her up with work that kept her too busy to contract out to the lawyer, there wasn’t anything Logan could say.
She just needed a break.
The flap, flap, flap of blinds being raised sounded loudly in the otherwise silent room, and even from under her pillow she could tell sunlight now streamed into her bedroom.
“Get your backside out of that bed, stop wallowing, and either get on with your life, or do something to fix whatever went wrong.”
Not her mother, her father.
Slowly Carter lowered the pillow to glare at her dad. “You got a lot to say for somebody who doesn’t know all the facts.”
Her dad crossed his arms in a classic sign that she was in trouble. “I didn’t raise a daughter who backs down from anything. You’re not a quitter, Carter. And you’re also not somebody who has ever let anything difficult get in her way.”
Carter huffed a sigh. “I was up late working the last couple nights, that’s all.”
“I know I raised my children to know better than to lie to me, so you must be lying to yourself.”
Sometimes a girl needed her father.
Carter loved her mother with everything she had in her. Her mother had taught her how to apply makeup and how to be a woman in a man’s world. She’d taught her about the birds and the bees. And what a young woman should do to make sure her body was respected. She taught Carter love.
But… when it came to needing to talk something out, she’d always gone to her dad.
She sat up and plucked at her patchwork quilt, which was so old it was fraying around the corners. “Things got… bad with Logan.”
“Do I need to show that boy my shotgun?”
Carter had to laugh. “I’m a better shot than you, Dad.”
“Damn straight you are.” He dropped down to sit on the foot of her bed and patted her foot through the blanket.
“I handled it.” She grimaced. “But something tells me I didn’t handle it the way I should.” She glanced up at him. “You and Mom always taught us to stand up for ourselves, value ourselves, and never let anyone let us feel less than. But…” She trailed off, giving her head a shake.
“Why don’t you tell me what exactly happened,” her ever practical father suggested.
“I don’t even know where to start.” Because really this thing went as far back as when she was still engaged to Brian. That was when it had been safe to be just friends with Logan.
“Your mother went to settle down for a nap, and your brothers are covering things on the ranch.” He got up and moved around the bed to come sit on the other side leaning against her headboard, his feet stretched out in front of him crossed at the ankles. “I got a couple hours. Think that’ll be enough?”
“I should hope so,” she muttered.
Then, starting at the beginning, Carter told her father everything.
As he had done her entire life, her father listened with his eyes closed, almost as though he were asleep. He’d told her once that he listened like that so that his reactions wouldn’t change the way she told her story. It also almost made it easier. She skated over the parts about the sex, but she still told him. Mostly because part of her was worried that Logan only ever wanted her for that, which was why it had been so easy for him to shut down.
“And here we are,” she wrapped up.
Her dad cracked one eye open. “That’s everything?”
“The whole shooting match.”
He opened both eyes and regarded her with his typical hard stare. “Do you love this man?”
Carter closed her eyes, because the truth was hard to face dead-on. “I think maybe ev
en since the first case we worked together. I just couldn’t let myself see it at the time. I was in a relationship and happy.” She opened her eyes to find her father watching her. “Yes, I love him.”
“Then forgive him.” Her dad never was one to sugarcoat things.
“Forgive him?” Honestly, she’d kind of expected her dad to grab his shotgun and hightail it to Austin to go after Logan.
“Seems to me, at the very first test, you didn’t give that man a chance to figure things out, or even fix things once he had.”
Carter jerked upright in bed. “So this is my fault?”
“I’ll tell you a secret to a good relationship right now, young lady.” Her dad paused for effect. “Don’t assign blame.”
Carter raised her eyebrows.
Her dad gave a shrug. “Sounds easier than it is. Rarely is it one person’s fault. Usually, it’s a little bit of both. Go talk to him. Forgive him. I suspect it won’t be the first time you need to.”
Carter frowned at her father, total confusion warring with the fact that anytime her father had given her advice, he’d been right. But this didn’t sound right. Or was she being stubborn?
“Don’t believe me?” he asked.
Carter dropped her face into her hands. “Honestly, I’m so confused, I don’t know if I should scratch my watch or wind my butt.”
“What’s got you the most riled?”
That was easy. A whole bunch of things. “What if he hurts me again? What if he walks away? What if he blames me for another human mistake? This one turned out not to be a mistake, but that doesn’t mean I won’t make one in the future.”
“There isn’t a single relationship in the world the doesn’t come with some risk attached to it. Your mother married a rancher. I was a bit like Autry in my youth, good with the ladies.” He gave her a wink. “She had no guarantee that I wouldn’t stray. She knew the life of the cowboy is a dangerous one. Hell, I could get thrown today, or take the wrong end of a bull, or fall off a ladder, and that’s the end of me.”
Carter wanted to say the risk was greater when it came to Logan and relationships, but the more she thought about it, the more the truth in her father’s words settled inside her.
“You just have to ask yourself… Is the love you feel for him worth taking that risk. Worth putting in the hard work. I’m not talking about getting through fights. I’m talking about what the day-to-day can do to a relationship, the mundane work of just getting through it. You’re both driven with your careers, and that’s going to be a challenge right there, probably on a daily basis. So, are you strong enough? And do you love him enough?”
Carter closed her eyes and really gave her father’s words the consideration they deserved. And he sat beside her silently, waiting, giving her the time to come to her own conclusions, like he’d done since she was a little girl.
Carter opened her eyes and sighed. “My father didn’t raise a quitter.”
His weathered face crinkled around the eyes as he grinned. He reached forward and tugged on a lock of her hair. “That’s my girl.”
She jumped out of bed, frantically pulling her suitcase out of the closet where she had shoved it when she’d come home. “I need to go talk to him.”
Her father cleared his throat as he stood. “That’s going to be easier than you think.”
Her hands stilled in the act of throwing clothes haphazardly into her suitcase and she straightened look at him, heart taking off like a stampede. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that boy is standing in my living room right this second, looking about as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof.”
“Oh my gosh.” After a second of standing there gobsmacked, the amount of time her dad had been here with her struck. “You left him out there waiting this entire time? What if he gave up and left?”
Her dad shook his head. “Not that one. Whatever his past, I think you found one who will stick. Besides he earned the right to sweat a little when he broke my baby girl’s heart.”
Her father leaned down and planted a kiss on her forehead. Then sniffed and wrinkled his nose as he straightened up. “One suggestion. Take a shower before you go talk to him.”
“But–”
He opened her door and paused. “Your brothers and I will make sure he sticks around.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
He closed the door behind him with a soft snick. And Carter flew into the bathroom.
Chapter Seventeen
Logan stared down the hallway, where Carter’s dad had disappeared, then glanced at his watch. He’d been here an hour. What the hell could be taking so long? Either she’d come talk to him, or she wouldn’t.
“You sure you don’t want to sit down?” one of the ladies, Beth maybe, asked from behind him.
He sent a distracted smile over his shoulder. “No, thanks. I’m fine.”
A sarcastic snort had him turning to find yet another of Carter’s brothers entering the room from the kitchen, his wife right behind him.
“Cash. Holly,” Logan acknowledged with a nod.
The gang was all here now. School was out for the summer, which meant Beth was home. And Autry had come in, with the excuse that it was lunchtime, bringing Jennings with him. Now that he thought about it, Logan vaguely recalled Jennings leaving the room and hearing him make a phone call. Maybe a few calls. Because not ten minutes later, Will and Rusty, who had both been in the barn working horses, had made an appearance. And Ashley had shown up not much later. Now she was bouncing her baby as she sat on the couch beside a very pregnant Beth. Cash and Holly rounded out things, and Logan could see Cash’s oldest daughter, Sophia, out in the front yard entertaining her twin siblings and Beth and Autry’s son, Dylan.
“You don’t look fine,” Cash tossed at him casually.
From the corner where he been propping up a wall with his shoulder, Autry snickered. “He looks like a man about to puke if you ask me.”
“Maybe we should get a bucket, just in case,” Jennings tacked on.
At least Will didn’t say anything. Merely crossed one booted foot over the other and stared at Logan with, if Logan wasn’t wrong, the light of murder in his eyes. Maybe that was worse. He didn’t want to have to hurt one of Carter’s brothers, or maybe all of them. She’d never forgive him then.
“Anyone who could brave four brothers on their home territory deserves a break,” Rusty said, shooting her husband a disapproving frown. Not that Will’s expression changed one iota.
“Not if he broke Carter’s heart,” Cash said as he moved his hand to rest on the butt of the gun strapped to his hip. He was dressed in his sheriff’s gear, so must’ve left work early for this little soirée.
“I seem to remember the day, Cash Hill…” Holly said. “When you told me that you want me as far away from your family as possible.”
For once, the stoic sheriff appeared less confident, pain flashing in the blue eyes he shared with his twin sister. “I figured marrying you would be enough apology for that,” he muttered.
Holly smiled softly. “I guess it was.”
Autry came off his wall with a shake of his head. “Regardless, we all know Carter’s been walking around like a ghost since she got home. And it’s his fault.”
She had? As much as he hated the fact that he had done that to her, Logan took some amount of hope from those words.
Beth barked a laugh. “If you think you didn’t stomp on my heart a little bit before you pulled your head out of your ass, Autry Hill, you got another thing coming.”
Autry gave his wife a pained look. “What are you saying, darlin’?”
She shook her head at her husband. “I’m saying you might want to pull your head out of your ass again and realize that Logan is here to fix things. And you and your brothers are not helping.”
All four of the Hill brothers turned suspicious gazes his way. “That true?” Jennings asked.
All four wives rolled their eyes.
“’Course it’s true, you
fool,” Ashley said. “Can’t you recognize a man in love when you see one? You look at one in the mirror every morning.”
Jennings eased up enough to flash his wife a wink. “Yes, I do.”
Logan ignored all of them, his focus on the hall. Apparently, each man having said his piece, and each woman having gently redirected her husband, they were happy to be silent and just watch him squirm as they waited.
The silence was almost worse. Because with each tick of the grandfather clock, another stone was added to the pile growing in his gut, weighing him down.
Dragging him down.
Vaguely, he was aware of Will moving around. Carter’s oldest brother came over and put a hand on Logan’s shoulder. “It’s been an hour.”
Logan turned away from the hall to stare Will down. “I need her to tell me to leave. I’m not leaving until she does.”
Will regarded him with a quiet sort of sad patience. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think Carter wants to see you.”
“Oh, yes, she does.”
Logan spun to face the woman he’d been waiting for and had to swallow his heart back down at the sight of her.
He scowled. “You look awful.”
She did. She’d obviously showered, her hair hanging down her back in long, damp waves. She was wearing a sundress in a light yellow color and had put on makeup. But that didn’t disguise the pallor of her skin, or the dark circles beneath her eyes. Or the fact that she’d managed to lose visible amount of weight in a very short period of time.
Carter plopped her hands on her hips. “So do you. Have you eaten since you left?” Then she visibly stopped herself and shook her head. “You want to try again?” The last question came out more like a dare.
Logan had to choke back a laugh, one partly of relief. He had been waiting over an hour and the first thing he said was that she looked awful. Dumb move.
