Now he had a new problem—did he call Layla and try to talk to her? Or did he let her have space so she could figure things out? He had no damn idea. In the past, if a girl had retreated from him, he’d let her go. No big deal. Relationships had always been about having fun and nothing more. He’d never been serious about anyone.
But it was different with Layla. Everything was different. The thought of letting her walk away gutted him, left him hollow. He wanted to fix this, even if he didn’t exactly know what he was fixing. He just knew that she’d been unhappy and panicked and he wanted to make it better.
Jack decided against calling her, determined to let her have her space, no matter how difficult it was for him. He worked in the barn all afternoon, Oscar set up nearby on a square bale of hay. He tried not to dwell on Layla’s reaction and thought about his land instead. How many rooms would he build in his house? If it was meant to be a long-term sort of thing, it needed to be big enough for a family . . .
Which made him think about Layla again.
He groaned, ducking his head as he grabbed a pitchfork, and attacked the fresh straw with vigor. Maybe he’d just try to think about football instead. But then he thought about sitting on Layla’s couch with her, her legs across his lap as she worked on her crochet and asked him about the game.
He couldn’t lose her. It didn’t matter that they were still early in their relationship. She was his. He was hers. It felt natural and right to be with her. He’d never met a girl he’d wanted to share his every thought with before Layla, and it was killing him that he couldn’t figure her out.
Jack cleaned stalls and oiled saddles until it was late, and when he was done, he ached with exhaustion . . . but his head wasn’t clear. He kept circling back to that afternoon. Layla on her knees in front of him. Him with his mouth on her. She’d smiled so sweetly when they were done, and her kisses had seemed sincere . . . but everything after that mystified him.
There’d be no solving it tonight, it seemed. He scooped up his sleeping dog and headed toward his cabin, but the moment he walked in the door, it felt like a mistake. His cabin smelled like sex, and Layla’s panties were tossed atop his nightstand. Jack set Oscar down in his bed, took a shower, and then checked his phone.
No messages.
Okay, he could play this casual and go to sleep, or he could text her like the besotted fool he was.
Really, besotted seemed the only way to go.
JACK: Just checking in on you. You left pretty quickly earlier. I hope you’re feeling better.
He had a million things he wanted to ask her. Are you all right? Did I move too fast? Did I do something wrong and scare you? But Jack kept it safe; she’d said she felt sick, so he’d make sure she was okay, nothing more.
To his relief, her answer came almost right away. Three dots popped up on his phone and he watched, holding his breath, waiting for her response.
LAYLA: I’m okay. Thanks for asking.
LAYLA: Sorry to bail on you earlier. It was just . . . a lot.
LAYLA: My stomach, that is.
It was just as he’d suspected, then. He’d moved too fast and she’d panicked and retreated. Jack sighed heavily. Okay. If that was the case, he could deal with that. He’d just have to move slower. Nothing but kisses and hand-holding until she was ready for more, until she made the first move—
Except she’d made the first move earlier today, hadn’t she? Damn, but his brain was scrambled over this.
JACK: Glad you’re feeling better. If you need me to bring you medicine, let me know. And if you want me to leave you alone, you let me know that, too. I’m here for you, either way.
This time, the three dots popped up and then disappeared, and he stared at the phone for so long that he began to suspect that she’d bailed out of the conversation. That she didn’t want to talk after all.
Just when he was about to drop the phone on the nightstand and go to sleep—ha, yeah, right, as if he could sleep right now—a new text from her popped up.
LAYLA: Thanks, Jack. I’m sorry if I’m being weird. I just need to clear my head of some stuff.
LAYLA: But I’d like to talk. Not tomorrow . . . but Monday. Do you want to meet up?
JACK: This sounds like a breakup speech.
LAYLA: It’s not, I promise, but it’s important. I won’t be able to relax until we talk.
JACK: You don’t want to meet tomorrow? I can come to you.
LAYLA: No, not tomorrow. I need time to think.
LAYLA: Night. I’ll text you.
Jack stared down at his phone. What the hell was that all about? She said it wasn’t a breakup speech, but in his experience, that was precisely what it sounded like. He’d given plenty of them in the past, most of them involving the phrases “it’s not you, it’s me” or “need time to think.”
Hell. He wasn’t ready for this to be over. Even if he lived to be a hundred, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be ready for this to be over between them. He wanted to grow old with Layla at his side. He wanted to wake up to Layla’s smile, to watch her push her glasses up her nose in that cute way she did. He wanted more than weekends and casual dates with her.
He was ready for forever.
But it seemed like he might be the only one.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Layla spent all day sitting on her couch, stress-eating ice cream and trying to figure out a way to defuse the ticking time bomb her mother had dropped into her lap. This was what Layla did. She was a fixer, a problem solver. She could do this. She had a notepad in hand, her cat curled up atop the couch, and she brainstormed ways to fix the mess of her mother’s land. But by the time night hit, Layla was bloated, out of ice cream, and despairing.
Every way this could go, it was bad.
She had to tell Jack about the land. As much as it made her want to run away, screaming, he’d never trust her again if she didn’t. So Layla was going to tell him tomorrow.
If Jack backed out of the sale after learning the truth, he’d lose his hefty deposit. It would take him years to save up again.
If Jack went ahead and bought the land, he couldn’t build there. It’d either be worthless to him, or he could try to sue her mom for misleading him. If he sued her, Janet would just fold her company and declare bankruptcy, and Jack would be out court fees and still be stuck with the land.
Or he could skip the suing and report her mother to the authorities. If that was the case, Layla would be investigated, too, because her stamp was all over the paperwork. Janet was a convincing liar, and Layla wasn’t sure that her mom wouldn’t try to play ignorant and somehow pin it on her by accident.
At least, Layla hoped it would be by accident.
Any way she looked at it, though, the situation was awful. Someone was going to lose in every scenario, and if it wasn’t Jack . . . it was Layla.
She didn’t know what to do. And the person she wanted to ask most? The person she wanted to lean on? Was Jack. But she wasn’t entirely sure he’d be on her side for this.
After all, her mother was right—Layla had known about her plans and still hadn’t stopped her. That made her complicit, didn’t it? And now Jack would probably hate her.
Driving up to Jack’s house that Monday was the hardest thing she’d ever done. She hadn’t slept a wink all night, and now she was surviving purely on coffee and adrenaline. Her stomach was too knotted for her to eat, and she’d canceled her client meetings that day. She was in no mood to work, not when her personal life was crashing down around her. She’d texted Jack that morning and agreed to meet at his place, since he was working and couldn’t abandon things as easily as she could.
The day was beautiful, at least. The snow was pristine and fresh, but the skies were blue and clear. It was a perfect early-March day . . . sort of. If the world wasn’t falling down around her ears, she would have enjoyed the wea
ther. As it was . . . Layla swallowed hard. She finally got out of her car and approached Jack’s cabin. She knocked, her stomach fluttering.
“Not there.”
Layla turned in surprise. “W-what?”
The man standing on the porch next door was Jack’s brother. Caleb, she was pretty sure. He had a similar face to Jack, but in her eyes, he was less handsome. He seemed far more serious, his expression solemn, and he had a basket of what looked like laundry under his arm. Right. Amy had mentioned that Caleb pretty much only went home to do laundry.
“Hi,” Layla breathed. “I—”
Caleb pointed at the barn, cutting her off. Right. Caleb wasn’t much of a talker. How he’d ever hooked up with her friend Amy, she had no idea.
Not that it was important right now.
“Thanks,” she said meekly and headed for the barn. Inside, she could hear the sound of voices, a deep, gruff one, and Jack’s smoother tone answering in a distracted sort of manner. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but the gruff one sounded irritated. Stuffing her hands in her pockets, Layla headed for the barn and knocked on the big, open wooden doors there, feeling like an idiot. “Hello?”
“Come in,” Jack called.
She stepped inside, smiling a little overly brightly at the two men. Jack was there, his coat zipped up to his neck, and he had a pitchfork and a mess of hay around his boots. One of his brothers—Hank, she assumed by the full, bushy beard—was glaring at Jack. He looked over at Layla, nodded, and then shook his head. “Tell Caleb I’m doing a fence run.”
“Appreciate it,” Jack called to his brother.
Hank just glared at him from over his shoulder.
Layla bit her lip, waiting until the scary-looking older brother was gone, and then she took a few more steps toward Jack. “Am I . . . causing a problem?”
“Nope.” Jack gave her a slow, dreamy grin that made her heart flip in her chest. “It was my turn to go out and check the fences in the more distant pastures, but I told Hank I needed to talk to you. He’s going instead, and he’s not thrilled because he was going to have lunch with Becca today.”
“Oh.” Layla winced. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. He can suck it up.”
So now two of the Watson brothers were going to hate her. Wonderful. “I . . . can we talk?”
The grin slid off his face. “Of course.”
“Should we go someplace private? To your cabin, maybe?” She glanced at the horse stalls nearby. No one else seemed to be around, but the barn felt very open and exposed. In a weird way, at least she could hide in Jack’s cabin.
“I guess?” He rubbed his jaw and put the pitchfork aside. “All this subterfuge is killing me, though, Layla. Can’t you just spit it out?”
“It’s not that easy.”
He grunted, his mouth flattening, and for a moment, he looked just like his stern older brothers. Then his zipped-up coat shifted, and Oscar poked his head out of the collar.
Layla smiled despite herself. “You’re carrying Oscar?”
“In a baby sling,” he admitted. “You know how he loves attention, and it kept my hands free so I could work.”
Oh, she did, and a baby sling was a great idea. She felt guilty that she’d left the dog with him, because of course it was going to hamper his work. Just another card to add to the guilty pile. Ugh.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
They headed to his cabin in utter silence. Layla’s pulse pounded in her ears. It felt like walking to her doom. How could she possibly expect Jack to understand when she didn’t even understand it herself? How could her mother do such a thing? How could her mother screw a perfect stranger over like this? Or Jack? Her mother knew she was dating Jack, didn’t she? Surely she’d recognized his name on the paperwork . . . and yet she’d said nothing at all.
Because no one mattered to Janet except for Janet.
It always came back to Layla to fix Janet’s messes, too. The moment she got into something over her head, she’d call Layla up, cry, and swear it would all be different, and Layla would fix things for her as much as she could. She’d let Janet borrow money more times than she could count. She’d paid Janet’s taxes. She’d shown up at the water department to argue that Janet’s water should be turned back on. She was always there to bail her mother out because they were family.
And look what it had done for her.
Jack opened the door to his cabin and unzipped his coat, releasing Oscar. The dog wiggled on the bed, rolling happily, his tail flicking with excitement at the sight of Layla. She couldn’t stand it. With a sigh, she sat on the edge of the bed and put her arms out, and he jumped into them.
“Didn’t even flinch at your hands,” Jack said proudly. “He’s getting used to us.”
Layla tried to smile. She pulled Oscar close and kissed his floppy ear, wanting to cry. “I suppose if he can be brave, I can be, too.”
“That sounds . . . dire.” Jack’s voice was no longer laughing. When she looked over at him, his expression was shuttered. Serious. “You’re worrying me. You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“No. Not really.” Layla managed a weak smile. “I don’t want to talk about it at all, but I really don’t have a choice.”
He thumped down on the bed next to her, all big, solid presence. “Can you just spit it out already? It’s been making me crazy for days. Tell me what I did wrong. Tell me how I can fix it, because I like you. Whatever I somehow fucked up, tell me so I know what’s not on the table when it comes to me and you.”
She stared at him. “It . . . it’s not you, Jack,” Layla stammered. “You’re perfect.”
“Then what the hell is it?”
She swallowed hard. Forced herself to spit out the words. “You can’t buy your land.”
There was a long moment of silence. Jack paused. Squinted at her, as if not entirely sure he’d heard her correctly. Then he said simply, “Huh?”
“The land,” Layla repeated. “The land you bid on. I can’t let you buy it.”
And even though it was hard, Layla spilled out every single awful detail.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Jack rubbed his jaw, trying to process everything Layla had told him. She’d spoken so rapidly, her words tumbling over one another, that for a few brief moments, he’d thought she was making it all up. But the serious expression on her face, the way her eyes shimmered as if she were holding back tears, it all told him that she believed every word of what she told him.
“I thought the land seemed awfully low-lying,” Jack began. “So we triple-checked the surveys. It’s not in a flood region.”
“It is,” Layla insisted. “The paperwork has been completely fudged. JS Properties is the owner, right? JS is my mom—Janet Schmidt. She bought up that land years ago in one of her get-rich-quick schemes, only she didn’t bother to look at the paperwork herself. She was going to subdivide it and sell it off to someone to make money, except it’s in a floodplain. Not a hundred-year floodplain, where you might get flooded. This land literally turns into a lake every spring. In about a month or so, you’ll see just what I mean.” Her expression was downright miserable. “Mom knew that no one was going to buy it like that, so she got some shady friend of hers to help her forge some paperwork and sell it to get it off her hands. When you took me there Saturday, I panicked . . . I knew she had a buyer, but I didn’t know it was you.”
He could feel his brows furrowing as he tried to decipher everything, to let the enormity of the problem sink in. He tried to envision the lovely property he was buying, the creek overflowing with runoff and rain. If Layla was right, it would turn into a small lake and he wouldn’t be able to use it. A little mud, sure. But land that constantly flooded? Repairing fences would eat his profits away and he’d have to constantly watch his animals closely to make sure nothing got mired in mud or broke a leg. A
floodplain wasn’t the worst . . . but it wasn’t good. He shook his head. “I don’t understand. That property’s been for sale for months now.”
“I know,” Layla said miserably.
“You knew about this?” He stared at her. “You knew she was forging paperwork and you were fine with it until you found out it was me?”
“No, of course I’m not fine with it!” Layla held the dog in her arms tighter, as if she could draw strength from Oscar’s warmth. “I just . . . didn’t think she’d go through with it. I was busy, and my mom always has schemes and . . .” She shook her head.
He got to his feet and pulled out the documents he kept in a folder on his desk, because he’d looked at them a dozen times in the last few days, mentally planning the future. “Your stamp’s right on the paperwork, Layla. You signed off on everything.” He’d noticed that when he signed off on the initial contracts, because seeing it there had made him proud of her. It also made him feel better about his purchase. Layla was always so thorough and detailed when it came to her work. Anything she signed off on was safe.
Layla bit her lip. “My mother went to my office and borrowed my notary stamp. That’s not my signature; that’s hers.”
“What?! That’s illegal!”
“I know! I just . . . didn’t think she’d do it.” She looked miserable.
“This is your mother we’re talking about, Layla. You’ve told me a dozen times that she’s a narcissist. That she only thinks about herself. Of course she’d do it.” He gave her an incredulous look. “She’s stepping all over you. Did you call the cops when you found out she stole your stamp?”
“No.” She stiffened. “She’s my mother, Jack.”
“She’s breaking the law and she’s forging documents. Do you know how much I put down as a deposit on this land?” He felt sick. Years of saving . . . and he was going to lose all of it if he bailed now. And she was defending her mother? The mother who admittedly did terrible things and made Layla fix her problems? “She’s a terrible mother.”
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