What I Like About You

by Kait Nolan

  She half expected Sebastian to freeze up a little, as he had when they went to town. But he was far easier around Harrison and Ivy. It was clear, as they all worked to finish setting the table and prepping drinks, that the two men had a long history. And Sebastian treated Ivy with the same kind of fond, platonic teasing Xander had always directed at Laurel. By the time they sat down with food, she had relaxed into the flow of banter between good friends.

  “So how exactly did you and Harrison meet?” she asked.

  “Oh, well, I drove off a mountain because of a bear. Harrison is the one who rescued me.”

  Laurel’s mouth dropped open. “Off a mountain?”

  “I mean, it wasn’t awesome—my Blazer was totalled—but it could have been a lot worse. And I certainly didn’t cry about being trapped with all that big sexy for days because of a Tennessee blizzard.” She waved her fork at Harrison. “Talk about inspiration. Which was good, since that was the whole reason I was running away to the mountains in the first place. I had the worst case of writer’s block of my career.”

  “Do you write romance?”

  Ivy’s pale green eyes lit. “Sebastian didn’t tell you?”

  Laurel shot him another glare. “He said it would be more fun to see me guess.”

  She drummed her fingers together with glee and beamed at Sebastian. “You do love me!”

  “Not my secret to tell, and I know how much fun you have seeing how long it takes people to get it.”

  “You’ve got to at least give her some clues,” Harrison put in. “Fair’s fair.”

  Ivy angled her head, considering. “Okay. It’s not generally what people expect.”

  “You call that a clue?” Sebastian asked.

  “I think Laurel can work with it.”

  “I do like a challenge.” Setting her fork aside, Laurel studied her hosts. “I’m guessing Harrison was a Ranger. He carries himself like Sebastian does. If that was your inspiration, I’d narrow what you write down to romance or some kind of suspense. You said it’s not what people expect, so that would lead me away from romance and more firmly into thriller or suspense. The kind of stories about a guy who can handle himself.”

  Her hostess grinned. “Getting warm.”

  “You mentioned a publicist the other day. I’m guessing they don’t hand those out like candy, so that would seem to indicate a certain level of success.”

  “Warmer still.”

  “I haven’t had much time to read for pleasure the last few years, but I did do some browsing of the best seller lists before we came over. I don’t remember seeing many women among the suspense and thriller set. Which makes me think you might be pulling a George Eliot and using a male pseudonym. Or at least one that’s gender neutral.”

  She mentally flipped through the names she remembered. One, in particular, had stood out with multiple entries that had stayed on the New York Times Best Seller list for months. Sitting across from Ivy now, a lightbulb went off. “Holy shit, you’re Blake Iverson.”

  Ivy bowed with a flourish. “At your service.”

  Sebastian stared. “You managed to get to that from ‘It’s not what people expect?’”

  “It’s deductive reasoning.”

  “Dear God, now we have two of them,” Harrison groaned.

  “Don’t worry, baby.” Ivy patted his hand. “I’m sure it’ll take at least until dessert for us to take over the world.”

  Sebastian still looked a little shell-shocked. “I’m beginning to see how it is you’re at the top of your class.”

  Laurel grinned and shifted her attention to Harrison. “Now you. Your name wasn’t anywhere on Amazon either, so also a pseudonym I’m guessing.”

  He angled his head in acknowledgement.

  “Your former occupation would lend itself well to thrillers or suspense, but I’m guessing you maybe went in a different direction.” She took in the Battlestar Galactica T-shirt stretched across his broad shoulders. “Maybe military science fiction?”

  Amusement had his lips curving. “Keep going.”

  “I’m way less familiar with that as a genre, so that’s about as far as I can go. Except…” She’d seen some military sci-fi in her brother’s living room. That wasn’t his usual genre. It stood to reason that maybe he’d check it out if somebody he knew actually wrote it. What was the name on the spine? She closed her eyes, trying to bring it into her mind.

  Richards. Ramsey. Rawls.

  “Russell. John Patrick Russell.”

  Ivy whooped and Harrison’s mouth fell open. He glanced at Sebastian. “You told her.”

  “Hand to God, I didn’t.”

  Harrison squinted at Laurel in suspicion. “Are you psychic?”

  “No. Just observant. And very, very good at research.”

  “What is it you actually do?” Harrison asked.

  “I’m finishing up my last year of law school at Vanderbilt.”

  “Yeah? What’s your track?” Ivy asked.

  “Corporate law.” It was a natural enough question, but Laurel instantly began looking for ways to shift the conversation before it barreled on toward what came after school.

  Ivy studied her. “It’s not what you want to do.”

  Laurel glanced at Sebastian, who was frowning.

  “No, Sebastian didn’t tell me that. The moment I asked, you froze up. It’s not what you want to do, but you’ve spent so much time on this path, you don’t know how to do something else, and it’s starting to freak you out because graduation is just around the corner. You’ve spent years defining yourself by your academic achievements, and you’re about to be out in the real world, where you’ll have to define yourself some other way, and you don’t know what way that’s going to be. You’ve got a good brain that you don’t want to waste and, I’m guessing, a healthy sense of caution about switching to something else without having a solid plan in place. Not to mention, you feel like walking away from all the hard work of your education would be both a waste and a betrayal, and if you do that, what does that make you?”

  Speechless, it was Laurel’s turn to stare.

  Harrison sighed. “Honey, we’ve talked about this. You’re not supposed to profile the guests.”

  Ivy had the grace to look chagrined. “Sorry, sorry. Old habits. It’s just, I get it. I know exactly what it feels like to struggle with that because I did it. I didn’t start out planning to be a writer.”

  “What were you going to do?”

  “I thought I’d be a profiler for the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI. I’ve been profiling people most of my life, and I’ve got a graduate degree in forensic psychology. But I figured out that I didn’t have the stomach for the real deal.”

  “So you just…switched to writing?” Laurel couldn’t fathom making that kind of leap.

  “Oh, that makes it sound like I had a plan. I totally didn’t. But I was lucky enough to fall into the writing before I graduated, and it turned out that’s what I was made to do.”

  “Do you regret having spent all that time on your graduate studies?”

  “Not at all. My graduate training is part of why I’m good at my chosen genre. It’s not at all what anybody gets a degree in forensic psychology for, but I’ve made it work. And the fact is…you can do all kinds of stuff with a law degree that doesn’t involve business contracts or court battles. It may not be the most obvious path, but it doesn’t mean whatever you figure out is the wrong one.”

  Laurel sat with that for a minute. All this time, her big example for changing directions had been Logan, who’d picked something totally different from what he’d been doing before. But Ivy, it seemed, was a lot more like her. Someone academically gifted, who’d finished what she started and found a non-traditional way to use the same skills doing something else. A something else at which she’d been monstrously successful. It gave Laurel hope that maybe there was an answer to her conundrum. One that would make her happy and keep her from being excommunicated from the family.

/>   “It’s certainly something to consider.”

  Ivy smiled. “And the middle of a dinner party with relative strangers isn’t where you want to do it. I’ll stop now.” She shifted her attention to Sebastian. “Your turn.”

  Sebastian held up a hand. Ivy’s skills were always fascinating until they got turned on you. “I do not need my head shrunk, Ivy.”

  “No, but something’s stuck in your craw,” Harrison said. “And I’m guessing it’s got something to do with that wellness check Ty took this morning.”

  “Wellness check?” Laurel asked.

  Sebastian blew out a breath, wishing he’d come up with some kind of solution. “Yeah. The Sheriff’s Department got a call to do a wellness check out in the county. Older guy. Widower. He usually shows up at the feed and farm supply every couple of weeks to buy supplies for his chickens and horse. He didn’t show this week, so Stan—he’s the guy who runs the farm supply place—called to ask for a wellness check. Turns out Mr. Massey died. Several days ago based on—well, the evidence, as it were. The animals were starving.”

  Laurel covered her mouth. “Oh my God. That’s terrible. What will happen to them? Did he have any family?”

  “No. It was just him. A neighbor’s gonna take the chickens, but there’s nobody to take the horse. Ty saw that he got fed and watered and his stall cleaned out, but he needs a new home.”

  Understanding softened her expression. “And you can’t afford to take on any more of them.”

  “What if we sponsor him?” Harrison asked. “We can afford to take on the cost.”

  An odd mix of embarrassment and gratitude swirled in his chest. That they’d offer was a mark of their long friendship, but that they had to… Sebastian had had enough of being a charity case. “I appreciate that, man, but it still doesn’t alleviate the problem of space. We’re simply out of room.”

  Laurel’s expression turned thoughtful. “Can you rig up something for the short-term?”

  “Depending on what he needs, probably. Why?” He could practically see the wheels turning in her head.

  “Your primary issue with expanding the setup you’ve already got is funding. You said yourself the riding school barely supports the care of the sixteen horses you have. But what if you had other sources of income? The kind of income that would allow you to build bigger facilities, to house more animals, so you can keep doing the rescue work you love.”

  Why don’t you wish for a lottery win while you’re at it?

  “It’s a nice pipe dream, Laurel, but unless you’ve suddenly developed the Midas touch, I don’t see how that’s feasible.”

  “It is if you switch your focus to equine assisted therapy. You said yourself the horses saved you. This would give you the chance to offer others that same opportunity. And in doing so, it would open the doors for you to continue the rescue work you’re really passionate about.”

  Sebastian was more than a little horrified at the idea. He already wasn’t keen on being a riding instructor, and now she wanted him to become a therapist?

  Apparently he didn’t do a good enough job hiding his reaction because Laurel was leaning forward with that convince-the-jury gleam in her eyes. “I know you don’t want to people. Just hear me out. You want the horses to be self-sustaining. There’s not sufficient demand for a riding school in a place the size of Eden’s Ridge to ever support the level of rescue you’d like to do.”

  The matter-of-fact way she cut down the one idea he’d had for bringing in money had him wanting to hunch his shoulders. But she was still going.

  “Equine assisted therapy fills an established need. I know I don’t have to cite the statistics on homelessness, substance abuse, and suicide among veterans to you. Those are the men and women you served with. Friends. There’s considerable research documenting the efficacy of equine assisted therapy as a treatment for everything from anxiety to depression to PTSD and more. I’m proposing that you establish a therapy program that expands what you have now to hire an equine therapist, who’d do more of the peopling. Logan would probably have some ideas on that front. We can talk to him when they get back, but either way, that would free you up to do more of the animal rescue and rehab you love, and would bring in more money overall to support the program and possibly expand in the future.”

  “Oh, that’s brilliant,” Ivy said.

  It was pretty brilliant. She’d come up with a solution that took into account everything he’d told her. How he wanted to make the horses self-sustaining so they—and he—were no longer a drain on her brother. How he wanted to spend less time with the people and more with the horses. He’d read some about this type of therapy and knew it was a thing. Given his own experiences with horses, he had no trouble believing it worked. But it was so huge, so much of an undertaking, and she still hadn’t addressed the matter of funding.

  “I still don’t understand where the money would come from.”

  “Grants. There are 60,000 nonprofits in North America that account for more than seven billion dollars in funding from federal, private, self-help, and therapy programs for veterans. There’s all kinds of funding out there. All you have to do is find and apply for it.”

  That sounded about like searching for a needle in a haystack. “You just fill out an application and they’d hand over money for me to build another barn or whatever?”

  “Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Different grants have different stipulations. But the biggest hurdle for most people acquiring that kind of funding is the actual grant application. They’re usually needlessly complex and overwhelming. It so happens you have someone on your side who’s an expert at navigating the needlessly complex and overwhelming. I’ve already got a stack of half a dozen options printed and annotated back at the farm.”

  Sebastian only stared at her.

  In the Army, he’d been the problem solver. The guy everybody else came to for help. He never asked for help himself, even when he needed it. It was a pattern that had continued even after he got out. He’d been wrestling all damned day with how he could help this horse. Hell, he’d been wrestling for weeks about how he could expand the program, period. And she’d offered a solution.

  He had no idea if something like this was really possible. No idea what Logan would think or if it had a chance in hell of working out. But in this moment, he was incredibly moved by the fact that she’d put so much caring thought into a problem he’d mentioned to her without asking for help, and that she’d come up with something that really took the things he’d said into consideration.

  Beside him, Laurel’s excitement dimmed. “It was just a cursory search. If you’d rather focus on the equine rescue side of things, I’m sure there’s something out there. I can—”

  He held up a hand, cutting off the rest of whatever she was about to babble. “Stop.”

  Folding her hands in her lap, she slipped on that polite mask he’d seen her wear around her parents. “I’m sorry if I overstepped. I’m sort of conditioned to research and document. It’s an occupational hazard.”

  Sebastian just shook his head, trying to line up his thoughts to set her back at ease. “It’s not that.”

  “What is it then?”

  “I’m accepting reality.”

  Frowning, she leaned toward him. “You don’t have to give up. We can figure something out. I’m sure there’s—”

  “Not about the horse.”

  How the hell was he supposed to defend against this woman? With her big brain and even bigger heart? As a Ranger he was trained never to admit defeat. To keep going. Keep pushing, come hell or high water. But strong and stubborn as he was, he didn’t think he could keep fighting against what he felt for her. He wasn’t even sure he still wanted to.

  “I’m talking about the fact that I’m completely, unavoidably crazy about you.”

  Sebastian imagined it took a helluva lot to make Laurel Maxwell speechless. He wanted to lean over and kiss that stunned “Oh” right off her lips.
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br />   Across the table, Ivy gave a squee. “I knew it!”

  “Shut up, Ivy.” He reached out and found Laurel’s hand beneath the table, uncurling her clenched fingers and lacing them with his. “Thank you. I don’t know if the grant thing will work or not. We’ll talk to Logan about it when he gets back. But thank you for trying, either way.”

  A pleased blush spread across her cheeks and down her throat. “It seemed like the least I could do.”

  “Your least is more than a lot of people’s most. You’re a helluva woman.”

  At the sound of a shutter click, they both looked over to Harrison, who had his phone in hand.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Sebastian demanded.

  “Documenting. Ty and Porter would never believe it otherwise.”

  “You’re a dead man, Wilkes.”

  Harrison only grinned. “It’s totally your turn.”

  Chapter 7

  Laurel stayed quiet on the drive back to the farm, her brain too full to flirt. For the first time in maybe ever, she actually felt like there might be a way out of the cage she’d backed her way into. Ivy was right. There were more options with a law degree than the ones she’d been chasing. She’d just never explored them because they weren’t part of The Plan, and The Plan had been writ in stone practically since time immemorial.

  As Sebastian parked his truck by the barn, he braced an arm on the steering wheel and turned toward her. “You okay?”

  “I’m just thinking about what Ivy said.”

  “Ivy said a lot of things tonight.”

  His dry tone had Laurel huffing a laugh. “Yeah, she did. I like her. She was stunningly correct in her profile of me. It’s so hard for me to even conceive of doing something else because it feels like giving up. Because when you’re gifted at anything—academics, the arts, whatever—that’s how your stewardship over your own gifts is presented—over and over. If you don’t use them, it’s a waste. It’s something that’s always been important to me, so I’ve never let myself think about doing anything else.”