by Jeannie Watt
She turned then to face him. His expression was tight. Grim. “What’s going on, Gabe? Who do you work for?”
He wasn’t stupid enough to try to touch her. She’d give him that. “I work for myself.”
“Are you contracted by the Widmeyers by any chance?”
“We’re friends.”
“Ah,” she said as if he’d commented on the weather, while her insides were beginning to churn. “I guess it’s not too hard to guess who your ‘friend’ is who’ll pay a decent price for the ranch.”
“It’s Stewart Widmeyer.”
Okay. One point taken care of.
“Did you come here expressly to buy the Lightning Creek?” she asked quietly.
“I did.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“Wait—”
“No. I won’t wait,” Dani said, taking a couple of paces toward him, her hands clenched into fists by her side. “You came here to manipulate me—us—into selling our ranch.”
“I came here to get the lay of the land, to see if it was possible to buy the ranch. I didn’t come here to manipulate you into selling it.”
“Then why do I feel manipulated? Why do I feel like I’ve been used?” She practically spit the words at him.
“I haven’t used you.”
“Bull. Shit. You set out to get close to me from day one. You bought a freaking horse even though you didn’t ride.” She put her hand to her head and shoved her hair back. “You bought a horse to get to know me and you don’t call that manipulation.” Her eyes went wide. “It was no accident that you were at Lacy’s pen, was it?”
Gabe’s lips were pressed tightly together, the line of his mouth nearly white as he shook his head.
“You son of a bitch,” she repeated. Dani bit her lip and turned away, having a sudden, almost uncontrollable urge to throw something, anything, and see it smash against the wall. Or better yet, against Gabe’s head.
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Oh, yeah?” she asked coldly. “Then how was it?” She folded her arms over her chest and waited for him to try to put a spin on it, as Chad had tried to put a spin on his activities.
“First of all, I was going to tell you everything tonight.”
“How convenient. You’re forgiven,” she said acidly.
“Dani...”
Now she was the one pressing her lips together, trying so damned hard to keep it together until she got this bastard out of her house. At least she wasn’t crying. Yet.
Tears of anger, she told herself, resisting the urge to brush the back of her hand under her eyes. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “You bought a horse under false pretenses. You hired me to train said horse under false pretenses—all so you could get your grimy hands on my ranch.”
“All right. The horse part wasn’t totally aboveboard, but the rest of it was.”
“If it was, then why didn’t you tell me the truth when you brought up your friend who wanted to buy the ranch? Why didn’t you say, ‘My friend Mr. Widmeyer wants to buy your ranch because it adjoins this other property and then he can—’” she waved her hands in the air “—do whatever it is he wants to do?”
“Because I couldn’t risk people knowing that. If that happened, the land prices would skyrocket and we’d have one hell of a time getting the acreage we needed at an acceptable price. Jeffries would have made certain that happened.”
Dani didn’t know who Jefferies was and she didn’t care. “But if you strung me along, you could get the land quietly and for an acceptable price.” She curled her lip up and asked, “How do you look at yourself in the mirror?”
“Dani...I didn’t want this to play out this way.”
“Oh. How did you want it to play out? In the way where you banged me a few more times, then disappeared back to wherever it is you live?”
“I didn’t plan on falling in love with you.”
For a moment she simply stared at him, too damned angry to find the words she needed. “You fell in love with me.”
“Yeah.” He shoved his hands into his back pockets in an uncomfortable gesture.
“You don’t treat people you love the way you treated me.”
“I was going to tell you. I was going to lay out everything. Ask you to understand that I started off the wrong way, but ended up...ended up caring more for you than I’ve ever cared for anyone else.”
“If this is the person you are—the kind that slides into situations and looks for ways to take advantage so that you can achieve your goal—well, you can just go to hell.”
He shifted his weight again, his troubled gaze still drilling into her. “There’s more.”
“How can there be more?” she asked him incredulously.
“Stewart arranged to have Jolie’s internship extended.”
Dani’s mouth fell open, then she snapped it shut again. “And did you arrange for Kelly to go to volleyball camp, too?”
He shook his head.
“Leave.” Dani pointed to the door, needing to get him out of there, because if he stayed much longer the angry tears were going to flow and she didn’t need that particular humiliation on top of everything else. “And take that horse with you.” Having Molly around was only going to remind her of what this guy had done to her.
Two liars in a row. How could she be so stupid? “Go.”
The word dropped out of her mouth like a stone. Gabe drew in a breath, then turned and walked out of the kitchen. A few seconds later the front door opened and closed. Dani turned to lean on the countertop, her forehead pressed against the old cabinets as she pulled in a choked breath. She let it out again, and then the tears starting hitting her hands and the counter beneath them like raindrops.
Son of a bitch.
Taken again.
* * *
GABE TOOK DANI at her word, borrowing a halter from the tack room and using it to lead Molly back to his place. He’d send the halter back. Somehow. Right now he needed to figure out what he was going to tell Stewart and Neal. Not only that he’d lost the deal, but that it was also highly probable that word would soon be out about what they had planned, and once again Jeffries would win.
As he walked through the clear evening, following the deer trail across the fields to the Staley house, Molly walking placidly behind him, he tried to come up with alternative plans—for both the Widmeyer deal and Dani. Especially Dani.
Was there any chance that once she’d had time to cool off that they could talk?
It sure as hell hadn’t looked that way when he’d left her kitchen.
He was in deep shit and he couldn’t see any way out of it. His only choice was to plow through it and see if he could salvage anything—on either front.
Maybe there were other suitable properties they could find in the area—if Dani didn’t instantly tell the world about what he’d done. She might not. She might not want the world to know that the guy she’d been dating had been, in her eyes, stringing her along. That Brody pride.
If she didn’t tell, then Kyle would.
He was well and truly screwed. What killed him was that if Kyle hadn’t recognized Serena, then all would have been well. He could have secured the ranch, continued his relationship with Dani, told her the truth...or most of it. He didn’t see where he would have ever told her about arranging that first meeting at Lacy’s stall, but everything else.
Stewart was going to be livid, but that wasn’t ruining him nearly as much as recalling the look of utter betrayal Dani had worn after she’d demanded the truth of him.
When he got home, he put Molly in the pasture next to the house, removing the halter as Dani had taught him. Once she realized she was free, that she wasn’t going back to the Lightning Creek to be with her buddies, she raised her head and let out a long series of whinnies, her ears perked forward to hear any distant answers.
Nothing.
Which was how it was probably going to be with him and Dani.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
DANI COULD HAVE called a sister. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have a lot to choose from, but instead she paced the house—the house now filled with furniture she’d bought while with Gabe the Liar, which was getting in the way of her stalking path.
How could she have been so manipulated and not seen what was happening? How could she have accepted that he was buying a horse for his best friend’s wife? And paying to have it trained? People didn’t do things like that. She was an idiot.
Although who would have thought that someone would go to such lengths to get to know someone? And Jolie’s internship! What kind of power did Gabe have?
Widmeyer power. The power of money.
Well, they were not buying her. Now it was a matter of principle. She’d been made a fool of twice, once by Chad and again by Gabe, and she wasn’t going to do either of them any favors.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
And what really killed her was that she’d liked him—pretend Gabe had been a good guy. Funny, sexy, caring, intelligent. She had no idea what real Gabe—if that was indeed his name—was like and she wasn’t going to find out. Fool me once, and all that crap...
Argh.
Dani finally stomped upstairs. She felt as if she’d been crying for days instead of for an hour. She stalked by the window, refusing to look out of it and see Gabe’s lights burning. How much longer would he be in the Staley house, now that he’d failed to get the ranch for his rich friend?
Not long, she bet. He’d be on his way. Off to fleece other trusting souls on the behalf of Widmeyer Enterprises.
Dani sank down on her bad and clasped her hands loosely between her thighs, staring at the floor. Her face felt raw from tears. Tears of anger, she reminded herself. Not tears of gut-wrenching loss. She hadn’t lost anything real. It had all been pretend, all in her mind. She’d been manipulated and used. Slowly she toppled sideways onto the bed, pressing her cheek against the fluffy white bedspread.
He’d been so perfect for her. Why couldn’t he be real?
* * *
“IT’S VERY UNLIKELY I can finesse this situation.” Gabe leaned his forehead against the refrigerator. It was the third call from Stewart in less than twelve hours—this time a conference call with Neal on the third line. The first two had been a confession followed by a this-is-unacceptable return call.
“Do you have any idea where it got away from you?” Stewart asked yet again. “Can we backtrack at all?”
Backtrack? How?
“No. I’m not quite sure when it got away from me.” Maybe it had been the minute he’d staked himself out at Lacy’s pen as a way to meet Dani Brody. Or maybe it had been when he’d realized they had something between them and he hadn’t come instantly clean, because he’d hoped he could confess half the lie and not the really sleazy stuff, like pretending to need a horse trained when that was maybe the last thing on this planet that he needed.
“We need to act fast before word gets out that Widmeyers own the Staley property,” Neal said, stating the obvious. “You’re certain that Danica Brody will mouth off about this?”
“She’s pretty damned pissed at me,” Gabe said, “but I don’t know how she’s going to handle it. The brother-in-law will. I have no illusions about that.”
“Why is she so pissed?” Neal asked.
Because it’s personal. Because she feels betrayed yet again.
“All that matters is that she is,” Gabe said.
“No,” Stewart replied irritably. “If we know the why, we can work from that angle.”
There’d be no working from that angle. “She feels manipulated,” Gabe said. “She’s angry that I didn’t tell her why I was getting to know her before I made the offer.”
There was a second of silence and Gabe knew that both Stewart and Neal were thinking that Gabe had followed the only reasonable course of action.
“Maybe she just needs some time to get over the feeling that she was manipulated,” Neal said. “Give it a few days.”
“You want me to give her a few days, then try again?”
“Let her cool off,” Neal said.
Gabe ran a hand over his face. He wasn’t going to tell Neal exactly why that was highly unlikely, as in he’d been sleeping with Dani, which made his betrayal doubly painful to her—probably to the point that she was feeling vengeful—so he settled for, “When I last saw her, she gave no indication that she would cool off.”
“We have to salvage before word gets out and prices get out of hand. Go with plan B,” Stewart barked.
“Plan B?” Neal asked. There was no plan B and Stewart knew that, but he was so damned insistent on showing up Jeffries that he didn’t appear to be thinking much better than Gabe was.
“Come up with a plan B,” he amended. “Gabe—be here in the offices on Monday and lay it out for me.”
“What about the other sister—the one who was married to the deputy?” Neal asked. “Have you tried negotiating with her? She seems like the weak link.”
“There are no weak links, Neal.”
“There is always a weak link,” Stewart said. “We need to figure out how to work one sister against another. That’s our plan B.”
* * *
GABE FLEW OUT of the Missoula airport late Sunday afternoon. Molly was at a horse-boarding facility—he’d had to rent a truck and trailer to get her there—and he told the owner that he was thinking of selling, so if she knew of any potential buyers, to let him know. The prospect of selling her bothered him, but he had to do what was best for the horse and if things continued as they were now, he wouldn’t be back to the Staley place except to pick up his belongings.
Was he giving up that easily?
He stared out over the wing of the 737. Maybe he was. He didn’t want to continue hassling Dani, had given up on the fairy tale that while it might hurt her to have been manipulated by someone she’d come to trust, she’d be happier on another property with more modern facilities.
No matter what happened, she was going to harbor bitterness against him.
He felt as if a hole was being eaten in his gut.
When he got to his Bloomington apartment close to midnight, he was overwhelmed by how stuffy and almost claustrophobic it seemed after he’d kicked around in that giant-ass house for over a month. He opened windows rather than turning on the air, then closed them again as the muggy heat rolled in.
Okay. Trapped in what had once seemed like a luxurious space with fake air and a giant load of anxiety. Oh, yeah. This was the life.
After a grand total of maybe two hours’ sleep, he was up again, showering and shaving. He forced himself to stop for coffee and a bagel before heading to the Widmeyer offices. His space, which he leased on a yearly basis from Stewart, was on the same floor as corporate, so it was just a quick walk down the hall to the boardroom after dumping a few things in his office.
Stewart was already there, seated at the head of the table, his computer set up in front of him. Gabe paused in the doorway, drawing a breath. This guy had saved his life.
“You’re early.”
“Yeah.” He walked forward and set the case containing his laptop on the table.
“Neal will be here in a few minutes.” Stewart typed a few words then looked up. “He moved back in with Serena.”
“How do you feel about that?” Gabe asked, surprised that the Crown Vic magic had worked so well. If only he could figure out a way to straighten things out with Dani so fast.
“They don’t seem to be able to let go of one another, so it’s just as well they work it out. Serena’s an asset to the team.”
“She’s joining the team?” Gabe asked.
Stewart looked up. “She’s only your part-time assistant, correct?”
“You pay most of her salary,” Gabe said, wondering if this was a nudge toward the Widmeyer door. “She’s whatever you want her to be.”
Stewart focused again on the screen in front of him, his body posture tense. He hated losing and most of all
he hated losing twice to someone who’d betrayed him. And Gabe didn’t know how he could help him.
“Hey,” Neal said as he walked into the room. “Back from the Wild West.” His voice was friendly, but there was a reticence in his expression.
“Not with the outcome I envisioned.”
“We all knew that this approach was speculative,” Neal said smoothly.
“It’s a situation we need to rectify. Fast.” Stewart placed his palms flat on either side of his computer as he spoke, emphasizing the point. “Plan B?” he asked with a pointed look at both men.
“I’m not in for pitting one sister against the other,” Gabe said, making himself clear on that matter before taking his chair after Neal had closed the door. “There’s got to be another way.”
“Like showing up with a truck of money fast?” Neal asked with a smile as he took his seat.
“We’ll make another offer. Soon,” Stewart agreed.
Gabe gave a slow nod. It might work—but he sincerely doubted it would. Stewart was once again giving him the long hard stare and he felt a bit like he had that night he’d been bailed out of jail, which in turn made him feel like one hell of a failure. “I don’t yet have a viable plan B, other than looking elsewhere for property we can develop.”
“Next to skiing and water? Good luck.”
“Here’s my plan B,” Neal said. “We make another offer to the Brodys and also make it clear that whether they sell or not, the Staley property will be developed into a resort.”
“It can’t compete with Timberline.”
“We’ll get to that. If the Brodys choose not to sell, they need to understand the impact this will have on their lives. Traffic across their property, close to their house, will increase exponentially. I foresee developing the acreage where the two properties adjoin—also close to their house—into an area where we can hold weddings and other large-scale affairs. Privacy fences, landscaping, will keep out guests from being troubled by the view of their property, however, the noise... Sometimes the noise can get out of hand. Parties late into the night. That kind of thing.”
“Your plan is to convince them we’re going to be a nuisance?” Gabe asked.