Page 35

“Probably,” she said.

“Great. Well.”

“Stan Hawkins.”

“Congratulations.” He’d been higher ranking than Stan in the same unit. Well, he’d probably had a promotion since Gideon was gone.

“I hope you’re both happy,” he said. “I really do.”

He didn’t sound happy. He knew that, but he couldn’t do anything about it, so he didn’t try.

“I’ll get that check in the mail.”

“Good.” And he hit End on his phone, and drove mindlessly over to the ranch. When he pulled into the driveway, he got a pop-up notice on his phone that he had an email. He opened it. From Monica Brown.

I’d like to withdraw my name from consideration for the job. I don’t think we would be a good fit.

Fucking hell. He’d fucked that up. He hadn’t even gotten an employee yet and he’d already alienated somebody. And Cassidy was getting married, and he didn’t even...

He hadn’t had sex in two years. Two years. And he hadn’t even been bothered by that. Because there had been other things to focus on. His marriage had broken up, and that hadn’t been about sex. It had been about the dissolution of a life. The detonation of everything that he knew. He hadn’t worried about the sex then.

He’d bottomed out after that, and all that had mattered was pills. Not sex. Then he’d gotten clean, and he’d actively worked to keep sex off his mind. He didn’t need to replace one addiction with another. And that void in him had been so powerful right when he’d quit he’d known if he weren’t careful, he would. He’d lose himself in women’s bodies rather than a bottle, but it wouldn’t actually fix him.

Not that he was fixed now. He was better, though. But with nothing to numb him, he was growing impatient with the whole thing.

He’d climbed out of the gutter. He’d gotten clean and sober. But it hadn’t fixed the things that had brought him there in the first place, and it...

It made him feel helpless. That had never been him.

He couldn’t even do a job interview.

He got out of the truck and just about bit his tongue off when Riley Connor, the current owner, came walking up toward his truck. “I’m here to go over some paperwork,” he said.

“Good to see you, too,” said Riley. “Looks like you’re not having the best day.”

He felt assaulted by that observation, not because it wasn’t true, it patently was, but because he had no defenses. No way of hiding this stuff anymore.

“I’m good.”

“All right. So we just need to talk about the well. The capacity’s pretty low right now, and if you want to go adding these new buildings, then you’re going to have to dig a new one.”

“You didn’t mention any of that when we were initially talking about the sale.”

“Well, it’s since been reevaluated.”

“Fuck,”he said.

“Now, there’s no call to go using language.”

“This is call for using language,” he said. “Because this is not what we agreed on.”

“I don’t have control over the water,” said Riley.

“You fucking have control over what you choose to share and don’t. You’ve already put me off on the close date and this is unacceptable.”

He took a step closer to Riley and the man took a step back, going pale. Gideon realized his fists were clenched and that he was closer to the man than he’d realized.

“We’ll work something out,” Riley said, suddenly intimidated and a lot more tractable than a moment before.