“That little girl deserved it,” she spat out, glaring at all of them.
“When she turned up pregnant at thirteen, well, that was all her fault, too. Her father beat her and told her he wasn’t going to be responsible for another mouth to feed. Her uncles told him she’d been making money behind his back, whoring it out to all the high school boys and dirty old men in town. Well, her daddy wanted his cut in exchange for letting her keep the baby.
“With a seventh grade education and no idea what the hell she was doing, she gave birth to me at fourteen in a dirty shack with no doctor, no drugs, no understanding of what was happening, and a wish and a prayer that she and I didn’t die.
“But she deserved that kind of soul-crushing pain and fear, too, right? She deserved to be treated like a thing, made to do things she didn’t understand at four and hated when she was fourteen and just wanted to love her little girl and give her the childhood those bastards stole from her.
“Who cares about her hopes and dreams of getting out of there and having a better life? She should have expected what she got because of what she did to survive.
“She may not know if my father is one of my great-uncles or some random john forced on her, but I know who she is, and she doesn’t deserve what she got or you all standing around talking about how she did and should have expected it.”
She looked him dead in the eye. “Fuck you. You’re not working with this whore ever again.” She turned to Roxy. “Do whatever the fuck you want with the business. I’m out.” The hurt in her eyes was only eclipsed by the pain he couldn’t stand to see in their depths. It went soul deep.
She walked away without looking back, leaving Austin standing there reeling from her words and the pain of losing her and knowing that he didn’t deserve her, but he had to get her back.
He took two steps forward but came up short when this time Roxy released Noah’s arm. His hand shot up and slammed into the center of Austin’s chest. “Leave her alone.”
“I need to apologize and explain.” He glanced past Noah’s shoulder to Roxy. “You know I don’t think anything bad about you guys. And I don’t think her mother or anyone deserves to be hurt.”
“I’m hurt by what you said. You devastated her.”
“Roxy, you know how much I appreciate what you’ve done for me.”
“I thought I did. But then I heard what you said and saw you break my sister’s heart.” Roxy turned and walked away.
Noah shoved him back, gave him a furious look that said how much he wanted to beat him into the ground, then turned and ran after Roxy.
“Sell me the land before you have nothing left.”
Everyone he cared about just walked away from him. His father orchestrated this whole thing and provoked him into saying exactly what he did so Sonya, Roxy, and Noah would overhear and turn their backs on him.
He wanted Austin isolated and desperate.
Roxy stopped in the middle of the street, stood there for a couple of beats, then turned back. She must have overheard his father.
A glimmer of hope sparked in his heart. He hoped she didn’t blow it out because right now that tiny light was the only thing in his dark world that gave him hope he could fix this.
Roxy glanced from him to his father and back, sighed so hard her chest rose and fell. Her lips pressed into a thin line, but then her gaze softened. “I’ll come by tomorrow to check on the progress on the house and make sure we’re still on track with the stables and the livestock delivery.” She turned on her heel and kept on walking. Noah hooked his arm around her shoulders, drew her close, and kissed her on the head.
Austin turned on his father and Kelly. “Don’t ever fucking come near me again.”
Without a plan, or a ride because Sonya left in Roxy’s truck and Roxy took off with Noah and the truck they’d driven into town, he left his father and an astonished Kelly at his back, pulled out his phone to call a cab, and started thinking about what he’d say to Sonya when he caught up to her.
Chapter Fourteen
Sonya sat behind Big Mama’s desk going over the night’s receipts and entering information into the spreadsheet on her laptop. The busywork didn’t keep her mind off what happened yesterday.
It didn’t make her heart stop hurting or her insides feel less raw.
She’d made the last plane to Vegas. She’d held it together over the long drive to the cottage. Barely. Then she’d walked past Adria and Juliana with nothing more to say than, I’m home for good, before she slammed her bedroom door, fell on her bed, and cried off and on for hours until her throat ached and her eyes were swollen and red.
She woke up this morning wrung out with puffy eyes and a broken heart.
Others had disparaged her mother. It always hurt, but she’d learned to brush it off. But hearing the callous way Austin spoke to his ex and father and let them say those things about her mom, it broke something inside her.
She’d thought . . . Well, what did it matter what she’d thought about her and Austin? They weren’t a thing then. They weren’t going to be anything now.
Her phone buzzed with another text. She wanted to ignore it, but wondered what Roxy had to say this time. Her curiosity got the better of her.
She picked up her phone, saw the text from Dave, and slammed her phone facedown on the desk. He’d gotten the promotion back at the firm, but still asked her to do the work for him. She’d taken Austin’s advice and stopped answering him. Dave resorted to begging at this point, but she simply didn’t care. She was done letting people take advantage of her.
Maybe she’d saddle one of the horses and go for a ride. Clear her head and figure out a way to ease the pain in her chest that just might turn into a real heart attack if she didn’t let go of some of this pent-up anger.
She needed to figure out what to do next.
Until then, she worked on the Wild Rose books.
Only two minutes later, distracted by her thoughts and the hurt that wouldn’t go away, she entered the wrong figure into her spreadsheet for the third time, huffed out a frustrated breath, fell back into the chair, and stared out the office door in stunned disbelief when she spotted Juliana leading Austin down the hall and straight for her.
He was here. At the Wild Rose Ranch. What the . . .
He walked in and sucked all the air out of the room. His presence took up the entire space. He stood there looking devastatingly handsome in the same black T-shirt and worn blue jeans he wore yesterday and bone-weary tired all at the same time with a huge bouquet of roses and lilacs in his hand.
Her heart leaped but her anger ruled. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“You swear a lot when you’re angry,” he casually pointed out, his eyes roaming over her like he hadn’t seen her in weeks.
She turned on Juliana, who stood next to him, smiling like a crazy person as she held her hands clasped together in front of her. Her heels beat up and down on the carpet with her nervous energy. She acted like a five-year-old waiting her turn to hold a puppy.
Sonya studied her sister more closely. Was she wearing the same clothes as last night? “Did you just get home?”
Juliana’s eyes went wide, giving Sonya a better look at her dilated pupils. “Are you high?”
“I delivered your guy. I’m out of here.” Juliana rushed for the door and didn’t stop, despite Sonya calling out, “Juliana, come back here.”
Austin glanced over his shoulder at her retreating sister. “She said she was Adria.”
Sonya scrunched her mouth and tried to breathe. “She does that sometimes. It’s a childish game she refuses to give up.”
“I don’t give up either.”
That drew Sonya’s attention back to him. “Then let me be clear. Get the fuck out.”
Austin sighed out his weariness. “So you want to do the whole fight thing.”
“I don’t want to do anything. I don’t even want to fucking look at you.”
Austin took three steps closer. “You
’re swearing and getting angrier.”
She barely held back a snarl as her ears burned with rage. “I have nothing else to say to you.”
“Good, then listen. I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. Sorry I ever met you and thought you understood about Roxy and me. But that was all bullshit—”
“No it wasn’t!”
“—so Roxy would invest her money and I’d help you get your business up and running. As soon as you get what you want, you’ll dump her, too, because we’re just a bunch of fucking whores!”
“I don’t think you or Roxy or your sisters are anything of the sort. But I wasn’t about to stand on the street defending you and me and what we’re doing together to a man who could give a shit what I say and only wants to hurt me. And he’ll hurt you to do it if he thinks you’re important to me.”
“Yeah, well, we know what you really want—”
“I want you!”
“—is me back in Nevada, Roxy out of the picture, and the ranch to yourself.”
He raked his fingers through his disheveled hair and grabbed a fistful. “Damnit, I want you, with me, the fucking business be damned.”
Sonya rolled her eyes. “Right. I’m supposed to believe that after what you said because you feed me some bullshit ‘I’m sorry’ and bring me flowers.”
He held up the bouquet. “These are for your mom.”
She leaned forward. “Do you seriously think I’d let you anywhere near her after what happened yesterday?”
“Either you introduce me, or I plop my credit card down and hope that I haven’t spent every last dime I have on the plane ticket here so I can apologize to her.”
Sonya stood and planted her hands on the desk and leaned forward. “I don’t know what you think you’re playing at, but you fucking spend one cent to spend time with my mother and tell her about the vile things your ex and father said about her, I’ll kill you.”
“They said those things. Not me. You heard what I said and what I glaringly left out. Which is what I really think. Do you seriously believe I’m such a callous asshole that I don’t care what happened to your mom? That I think she deserved what happened to her? Which you lied about.”
“I didn’t lie. I told you what happened.”
“You left off the part about your uncles raping her. Why? Because you thought I’d think she deserved that because of her job? What the fuck, Sonya? Didn’t our time together show you who I am? Or do you just believe what he wants you and everyone else to think about me?” Austin collapsed into the chair in front of the desk and rubbed his hand over his face. The flowers dangled from his other hand. His big frame slumped in the chair and his eyes filled with misery. “You’ve been there for me through cleaning out my grandfather’s house and finding that letter from my mom. Didn’t you think I’d be there for you when you found out your mother had been violated like that? I can only imagine how devastated and scared you must have been for her. I saw it in your face when you got that call. I would have come here with you, held and comforted you, done anything I could to ease that pain the way you did mine with just your presence and understanding.”
Her anger dissipated and her heart warmed but she still had some questions. “What did you mean when you said she propositioned you?”
His head fell back and he stared at the ceiling before he turned and looked at her again. “Remember the first day you showed up and found me passed out drunk on the porch?”
“Hard to forget how we met.” The humor of it failed to alleviate her anger at the moment.
“I spent the night before trying to drink away the memory of her coming to me, acting like she wanted me while she wore his ring. But all she wanted was a heartless stud.” Austin stared up at the ceiling, sighed, then faced her again. “My father sent her to me. Because I’m such a disappointment, he needs a new heir, but apparently he’s shooting more blanks than bullets.”
“So she tried to seduce you so she’d get pregnant, then she’d pass the child off as your father’s.”
Cold-blooded, devious bitch. What the hell was she thinking?
“If he can’t have another son, why not raise his grandchild and groom him to take over?”
“And they never intended to tell you the child is yours?”
“Why? She thought the same thing you do, that I’m such a heartless bastard I’d turn my back on my child, or simply just give him up.”
“I think no such thing,” she snapped. “After what your father put you through, you’d never do that to a child, a friend, anyone. You know how much it hurts.”
“Lucky for me, I figured out her game before things went too far. When her plan didn’t work, she offered to pay me ten grand to do it and walk away. That’s why she made the reference to me being just like you. Neither one of us is who they think we are, and while I didn’t defend you, I know exactly how you feel when someone thinks that you’d sell yourself.” He held up his hand to stop her from saying anything. “I’m not saying that people who do are bad or deserve whatever terrible things happen to them. I’m just saying that’s not you.” He sighed out the weight of his anger, grief, and resignation that what happened comprised a whole lot of convoluted drama with his father, his ex, working with Roxy and what that implied to others, and her.
“For what it’s worth, he set me up. He knew you all were standing there and steered the conversation so I’d say those things or not say what I really felt so you, Roxy, and Noah would hate me. Then I’d really have nothing left. Not even my friends.” He glanced up at her again. “Or someone who could have been a hell of a lot more.” He leaned forward, propped his elbow on his knee, and dug the heel of his hand into his eye socket, then rubbed his hand over his head and looked up again. “I came here to tell you I’m sorry. I despise him, but I hate myself more for making you think for one second I thought you were anything less than amazing. I thought we had something good going, but . . . Never mind. He ruined it just like he’s ruined everything else. You really are the smartest, strongest, kindest woman I’ve ever met.” He set the flowers on the desk. “Please give those to your mom and tell her I hope she feels better real soon. I wish you both all the happiness you deserve.”
He stood, gave her one last forlorn look, and headed for the door.
“Austin.” Fear that he’d actually leave and she’d never see him again seized her heart.
He stopped but didn’t turn around to face her. Every muscle in his back and shoulders tensed in anticipation. She could only imagine what he thought she’d say to knock him down even harder than his father had already done.
But she couldn’t let him walk away. Not without asking herself every day of the rest of her life if she’d let real love walk out the door.
“My mother loves flowers. Roses and lilacs especially. She’d like to meet you.”
He turned slowly and studied her face. “I’d like to meet her.” One side of his mouth drew back, making the corner of his eye crinkle. “I have to confess, Roxy told me about the flowers.”
Sonya held up her phone. “She’s been texting me nonstop.”
“She already explained what happened?”
Sonya nodded.
“You knew I was coming.”
She shook her head and dropped her gaze to the series of texts lighting up her phone.
“You weren’t sure I’d show. You really were surprised to see me when I walked in.”
She glanced up at him. “My life hasn’t been as rough as Roxy’s, but I have my own trust issues.” She put her hand on her opposite elbow and held herself.
He nodded. “You needed to hear it from me.”
She needed to see it in his eyes. “You’ve been open and honest from the beginning. You say what’s on your mind.”
“So when I didn’t stand up for you, your mother, and tell them to go to hell, I made you doubt what I really think about”—he looked around—“this place and the women who work here. You doubted how I really feel about you.”
“And in my mind all I thought about was seeing you again and figuring out a way to get you to stay longer that didn’t involve sabotaging the renovation or burning the place to the ground.”
She held back a smile. He really was determined to be with her. He’d used every dime he had to come after her.
Who did that?
Someone who cared deeply. Someone like Austin.
Still a little skeptical about his feelings for the Ranch, she tried to make him understand what she expected. “I don’t need you to agree with what goes on here. But I need you to remember these women are human beings with the same feelings we all have and lives with history that sometimes is filled with abuse, trauma, and violence. Show them the same kindness you would any other woman. They aren’t hurting anyone or doing anything illegal.”
“At the risk of pissing you off again, I don’t care what goes on here, or what anyone back home thinks of me working with you and Roxy.” He came around the desk separating them and cupped her face in his big hands and looked deep into her eyes. “I want you to come back. I want to get to know you better. I want to get the ranch up and running. And I’m hoping that when I do you’ll stick around because you want to, not because you work for Roxy.”
“What else do you want?”
“You. And I desperately want to kiss you.” He gave her time to pull away if she wanted to before his lips touched hers in a soft caress.
Sonya rose up on her toes, wrapped her arms around his neck, and took the kiss deeper, slipping her tongue past his warm lips and tasting his restrained need for her.
Maybe after all that happened, they needed this quiet, intense moment to recharge their connection. And it felt good to be held and kissed like it was a relief and a pleasure to simply be this close again. She wallowed in it and let time slip away. The tightness in her chest eased. His shoulders relaxed under her arms and she sank into him as he pulled her closer.
Restless Rancher Page 13