I’d taken a shower while Logan cleaned up in one of the guest bathrooms. His coat, that gorgeous thing that made him look so rugged and strong got spared. Thank goodness.
I insisted Logan call Christina’s mom to drop Maddie off. There was no way I was leaving without saying goodbye to her.
I watched from my bedroom window as she got walked to the side door of Nickel Song surrounded by cops like she was a president’s kid.
I took off for the stairs and into the kitchen. I choked up when Maddie ran into my arms. A hug from little skinny arms had never felt so good.
“I’m okay. I’m okay. See.” I let her look at me. I left my hair wet, but put a coat of primer on my face with a dusting of iridescent blush to make my cheeks glow. I felt ugly inside, but didn’t want to look ugly on the outside.
“I was so scared,” Maddie whined.
“Don’t be. It’s part of my job. If you have fans, you have people who don’t like you, too.”
“I’m your fan. I’ll always be your biggest fan.”
“I’d like to be your friend, though, too. I meant what I said last night. I want to check on you to see how your leg is doing. See how you are doing. Will you let me do that?”
She nodded. “You’re still leaving?”
“I have to. Especially now. I came here, hoping those stories about me would go away. I didn’t think they’d follow me here. And if that means you’re in danger, well hell’s bells, I am getting out of town to fix the scandal another way. I don’t want you hurt.” I hugged her and she hugged me back.
“I don’t want you hurt, either.”
Logan turned pale watching us. I’d gotten hurt on his watch. He couldn’t stop dangerous chemicals from being thrown on me. But who could have expected something like that?
“Mads, can I talk to Uncle Logan for a few minutes?” I hugged her again. “You can watch television in my media room, right next door.”
“Come on, peanut, I’ll get the T.V. set up for you.” Logan held his hand out to her and she went to him with a smile, but watched me over her shoulder.
Seeing those sad blue eyes did me in. Logan didn’t look back at me, though. His concentration was Maddie. I came first for a short time, but his focus had been reset.
He’d seen me accused of something hideous. Because I was so hands-on in my lab any plausible deniability was laughable. Except, it was entirely false.
My products were all natural. And any fillers needed to keep the products safe had already been tested by their manufacturers and were deemed clean. It was all a lie.
I just hoped Logan wouldn’t forbid Maddie to ever reach out to me again.
As if he knew a showdown was coming his way, he strolled into my office taking cautious steps. His face was expressionless, probably because of all the rooms that surrounded him. Reminding him of our differences.
I didn’t care about any of that. My wealth was numbers on a statement. I played the part of the CEO, lived in a beautiful apartment, but I wore black clunky shoes, my thick glasses, and a scratchy white lab coat at work every day. That was the real me.
Somewhere, Logan had seen that side of me again, right?
Except, now I was about to belittle and emasculate him and make him feel worthless, if for no other reason than to help him and protect Maddie.
“You okay, darlin’?”
“God no. I wish I could say I were. But then you might think of me as inhuman.”
“What’s this all about?”
“These allegations started on those hate web channels about two weeks ago, the head of my cybersecurity team stumbled on it by accident. What they are saying is total BS, they reference an offshore lab. No location. I have one lab, in Houston. I can prove that easily, but sometimes people don’t want proof. They want to believe people are evil. When the rumors took on traction, we noticed the more I was seen in public, it opened me up to trending searches and those false posts popped up more. I came here to lay low. We also hoped not denying it would make it go away. But that backfired. Tess, my senior publicist is now looking into a media blitz and a good-will tour for me. If anyone will let me get near a mic, I’ll defend myself.”
“Jesus.” He ran a hand through his hair.
“What? Does it sound bad?”
“No. You have your shit together more than I ever imagined.”
I stood, even though my legs were shaking. “I’m a CEO. I have to have my shit together. With Truitt gone, I’ll have to be in my office more, vetting my senior VPs and look for another operating officer.” I hid how that would take time away from my research, which would kill me. But this conversation needed to move away from me.
“Maddie follows you on Instagram, how come she never saw any posts about this?”
“It hadn’t made its way to my Instagram feed.”
“And you think that Truitt prick did this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sounded like the guy had a good gig. Cheated on you and got to keep his job, too. Why fuck it up now?”
That was the million-dollar question, I was afraid to find the answer to. It had dark and ugly written all over it. Instead, I took a breath prepared to show Logan the contracts my accountant had emailed me. Nails in our coffin that I’d printed earlier that morning.
Achy breaky heart time because Logan would be furious at me in two minutes.
“Is Maddie comfortable in the next room?” I asked, preparing to make Logan hate me.
Logan
THE TONE OF DELSEY’S voice sent shockwaves through me.
I was about to be dumped.
Swallowing and narrowing my eyes at her, I said, “Yeah, a new episode of some show just started.”
Nodding, Delsey laid out two stapled sets of papers on her desk. Paperwork about the house?
No more lover.
Back to being my landlady. The woman I owed money to.
Anger bubbled inside me, my pride and ego felt smashed. Not to mention my heart. A small voice screamed out like a nerdy hero running down the hall waving a piece of paper with the solution to save the world. Wait! Don’t hit the red button and explode on her yet, she’s done so much for Maddie.
“So, what’s up?” I got my mature on and folded my arms.
“I want you to listen very carefully to me and with an open mind, okay? Let me say what I have to say and finish.”
Holy fuck. She was going to destroy me, wasn’t she? “Shoot.” Literally, might as well.
“I want to sell you the house. This is a contract with a reasonable selling price so we don’t decimate local property values of your neighbors. The loan will be underwritten by a new LLC I created this week to give low-cost loans to the tenants in town who are renovating. Let me repeat that last part before you say I’m doing this just for you. I created the LLC to help all my tenants, Logan, not just you. It’s my way of giving back to Wild Heart and helping good people who deserve it because they’re honest and decent. It’s not about charity, it’s about doing what’s right. Using my money for good. Not evil. Now, I know you got that southern cowboy pride and I respect that. This is a legitimate business deal I’d offer anyone. And it has nothing to do with us as a couple, if that’s what we even are.” She stared at me like she wanted a confirmation of us being a couple. I’d been winging it, been reckless because she turned my world upside down. And now this... “In this loan, you’ll pay zero percent interest, zero closing fees, zero monthly costs with a five-year balloon payment with an option to renegotiate.”
I processed all the words. Zero. Zero. Zero. Loser. So much that I was ready to tell her to go to hell.
I kept staring at her figuring out a way to turn down this damn charity offer born out of pity. No matter what she said.
“You were real busy this week.” I grabbed both sets of documents.
She sat down glaring at me and my legs went weak. “When I snooped around the land behind your house, I smelled the river. I didn’t think much of it at the time. You
kept my mind occupied most of this weekend with things much more important than a river.”
“I assume you mean the sex.”
“And Maddie,” she snapped and now I felt like shit.
“Go on.”
“Did you know Cord Renner had given drilling rights to the energy company ten years ago for parts of his property?”
A shudder went down my back. “Not until...” I swallowed thinking of that day. That meeting with Lake and Cord where I found that out. The day my family died. Except Maddie. Keeping my face even to push past the emotion, I said, “I do now.”
“And that they also found pockets of gas on Sutherland Farms? Down by the river?”
“Hold up...” I raised my hand.
“I said please listen.”
“No.” I tossed the papers back on her desk.
“No, what?”
“No. I’m not letting you give me this house so I can do some deal with the gas company.”
Rafe was on his way to being a billionaire since a large part of his land ran along the river. My stomach turned over. No way was I opening myself up to that nonsense.
“I can’t tell you for sure if there’s gas there, Logan. Or even if the energy company will do a deal with you. But it’s worth looking into. In the meantime, here’s a way for you to own the house. The home you gave to Maddie.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, angry she’d yank at my heartstrings. All that I’d done for that little girl, including going broke because it was the macho thing to do instead of crawling to people for help. Now Delsey was telling me the opposite was more powerful.
“I don’t take handouts.”
“It’s not a handout.” She lifted one set of papers back up. “Look at the summary of the home sale offer. You’ll see I tacked on the unpaid rent. And interest. And a penalty. I walloped you with everything legal I could so you can strut away from this deal knowing you got nothing for free.”
I grabbed the paper from her and the amounts laid out in black and white were rather shocking. My rent had been a number I paid every month out of my salary because I hadn’t had many other expenses. That thousand-dollar-a-month payment hadn’t meant anything to me.
But multiplied by six, plus interest at an ungodly rate, and a penalty, the total jarred the hell out of me. This was how much I actually owed her.
And yet, she shrugged it all off this week because I... No. Because of Maddie. Maddie made her draw up on the reins. Maddie stopped the bleeding. And in turn, Delsey and I were able to get to know each other. Something explosive happened between us, all the while she knew that number was out there.
And she didn’t care.
Because she cared about Maddie.
And perhaps me, too.
Delsey stood and gathered all the papers into one pile. “Show this to a lawyer. Don’t take my word for it. I’m offering to sell you the house. And I found a way for you to make money if you own the land.”
My heart pounded in that stupid way when I got close to winning a scratch-off. I put two and two together quickly. My survival instincts jumped up and down. My damn pride, though would rise up and ruin everything now, wouldn’t it?
“I buy the house and then I work with the gas company? You’re out of it?”
“It won’t be my land anymore.” She shrugged.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are you doing this?” Somewhere all this amounted to a load of cash on the dresser.
“Do you really have to ask me that?”
I didn’t really, I knew what this was. A backhanded hand-out. Don’t fuck this up. She’s doing this out of the goodness of her heart.
“Why aren’t you doing the deal with the gas company?”
“I wasn’t aware of what’s been going on until yesterday. I already planned to sell you the house and was just waiting for my accountant to email me the contracts. But the minute I found out about the gas rights, I thought of you, Logan. Nothing about that house or that land felt like mine. Every corner was you. And Maddie. Your home and in turn, the home you gave to her.”
“And because you’re already rich, and you don’t need any more money, is that right?”
“I built my company from scratch. Those products on the shelves are my inventions. My dream. My success. The money from my business is what I earned.”
“I get that.” Say you’re proud of her, asshole. She had a gift, a love of science, and she used it for good.
“Take the deal, Logan. Get an attorney and show him or her these contracts. If you need changes, we can make changes.”
“You know I don’t want to do this, right?”
“I do know and I respect the hell out of you. You’ve done an amazing job with Maddie and kept your head above water. But now you’re drowning and only a fool wouldn’t take a life raft.”
“I’m a fool?” I jumped out of my chair.
“You didn’t always let pride get in the way of making you rich.” She sat down and just stared at me while clicking a pen and I got chills. “I did some snooping about you after I got down here, after I realized what happened to your family. I was looking for details about the accident. Honestly, there was only a small block in the Wild Heart Journal about it,” she whispered, I assumed because Maddie could have heard us. “Logan Grady, winning trainer of Blue Lake got a hell of a lot more hits.”
I stumbled back. “Okay, all that money—”
“I don’t care what you did with that money, Logan. That’s your business.”
“I planned to put it in a college fund for Maddie. But then came the funeral expenses and medical bills. And I had to pay an upside-down balance on the short sale to get rid of my parents’ house.”
She stared at me again, her green eyes focused. Nothing I said mattered to her. “Out of nowhere, you found yourself training a Grade 1-worthy Thoroughbred. Those races Blue Lake won netted you nice prize money as the trainer.”
“We already went over, I—”
“You didn’t turn the money down.” She stood up and started yelling. “That opportunity fell in your lap. You got lucky, Logan. Rafe Sutherland bred and trained that horse. You just had to haul that horse to the racetracks.”
“Now, you hold on one minute—”
“But so what? Some people get lucky. Some people get hit with bad luck. This...” She grabbed the sheets. “This is you getting lucky again. I own other homes, Logan. None of them are on the river. You. You live in the one house that does. You didn’t tell Cameron Renner, No way am I gonna take on a Kentucky Derby shoo-in. That’s too easy. You didn’t bleed to make it happen. Why would you not take this deal? Is it because it’s me? Or is it because I’m a woman?”
All of this seemed way too good to be true. Oh wait, it was true. I could have it all, except all didn’t include Delsey.
“What about...” I couldn’t finish that sentence. I hated to show how much her leaving was tearing me apart.
“I was there the night of Blue Lake’s auction,” she said cool and detached.
Oh shit. “I know, I saw you.”
She quirked a smile. “You didn’t talk to me.”
“Delsey, I can’t believe you want to rehash that—”
“Still too cool to talk to me, the nerdy girl.”
“Don’t do that. God, we’ve come so far in one week.” Right there, I realized I was madly in love with her because I wanted so much more of her. If my world and my heart got mended in one damn week, what could a month with this woman do?
Tell her you love her...
“Then why?”
“I didn’t think I had the right.”
“You weren’t behind on your rent then. Why were you avoiding me?” Her voice went serial-killer calm and shivers went down my spine.
“Where are you going with this? Don’t you have a plane to catch to get the hell out of here?”
Her face paled and before I could take back my words, she said softly, “You’re right. I have to g
o back to Houston. I run a company that’s in crisis. I have a responsibility. Please tell me you get that and respect it?”
I nodded tightly.
“Show the contracts to an attorney. If you don’t want this, Logan, I won’t force you.” She closed the distance between us. The smell of her perfume and her clean hair walloped me. “Think about your niece,” she whispered.
“This is for her, isn’t it?”
“And you. You, Logan. I want you to have this. Is there something wrong with that?”
“No. Do you understand how hard this would be for me to take?”
“I do. Do you know how hard it would be for me to know that you’re even further in a jam and with Maddie, too?” Delsey took my chin. “You have no one left, Logan. They were all taken away from you. I can help you. Let me help you.”
I snapped my face away cussing under my breath. Even if the sensible side of me knew she was doing something good, I said, “That’s a low-blow, princess.”
“Why am I doing this besides Maddie, you asked? It’s because I love you, Logan.” She staggered into her seat again like the words winded her. Waving her hand, she said, “And don’t you dare say it back to me because I know you don’t. I know this contract creates a wedge between us and you probably hate me all over again in some way. I was willing to sacrifice what I want so you can have a lifetime of security.”
What she wants?
Me?
Me?
The broken SOB of Wild Heart.
She discreetly checked her phone. Whether it was for a message, or the time, I didn’t know. But it was a signal. This was over. She was leaving.
Me.
And Maddie.
The heartbreak under my own skin would be damn hard enough. But to see it on my angel’s face...
“I need to get with Grace before I leave and I need to pack.”
“And I’m just in the way.”
“No. You’re in your own way.”
I scoffed and tipped my hat. Picking up the papers, I said, “Nice doing business with you, Delsey and the sex was amazing, too. If this is my payment, then—”
“Stop!”
The Cowboy's Rebel Heart: An Enemies to Lovers Second Chance Romance (Wild Texas Hearts Book 4) Page 21
