Page 27

And they didn’t much get into the negative history of the ranch.

He wondered how much Quinn knew about the deal he’d made with her dad.

It was clear that she thought she was a clever little genius because of all that schooling.

School, in his estimation, was nothing but privilege. Had nothing to do with how smart you were. Just whether or not you could get there. Fine for some if they could jump through all the hoops they needed to in high school to get scholarships. Fine for some if their mommy and daddy were alive and could pay for it. And even if not alive to pay for it, just alive so they could be the adults, rather than him having to do it.

His were in the grave, and he hadn’t gone to school because he had been busy taking care of his siblings and, before that, his mother while her health declined.

Anyway, sitting down, staring at papers all day, it was all bullshit anyway. The words jumped around and the letters turned themselves every which way. It was such a pain in the ass to sit there and try to read a page of shit he didn’t even care about while the ranch was going to hell or his mother needed something. It just didn’t make sense.

Of course, there had been times that all that had jumped up and bit him in the ass, but he dealt with it. He made mistakes, being young and inexperienced, and he covered it.

He didn’t need somebody like Quinn Sullivan showing up and acting like she knew better than him just because she’d gone to school and he didn’t even have a high school diploma.

Of course, very few people knew that. His siblings didn’t know that. There wasn’t any reason to talk about it.

Not that he cared. It just didn’t come up.

But he went back down the driveway around the same time she had shown up yesterday, and parked his truck next to the old cabin. Just in case.

Then there she was. When she parked her car and got out of the driver side, she was clutching a big, flowered binder to her chest that he swore was nearly as big as she was.

He only looked at her. He’d gotten the feeling when she’d been here last that his silence, and his pace, was off-putting to her.

He was going to use that. Use the fact that he liked to chew on his words a minute before he spoke, whereas she spit words out like they were tacks she needed to expel as quickly as possible.

“Here I am,” she said. She stared at him. Clearly, she expected him to say something. So he didn’t. “I said that I would come back, and I have. Is there somewhere that we can sit?”

He looked around, then looked at the cabin and back to her.

“Oh, no, ma’am,” he said. “The inside of my house is not fit for a lady like yourself.”

She frowned at him. For some reason, he noticed that she was wearing white ankle socks. White tennis shoes. He didn’t know why he noticed that detail. And he also didn’t know why his immediate thought was that the socks were cute.

He looked back up at her face. Covered in freckles, her nose wrinkling slightly. Like a mad little bunny rabbit. “I’m not sure that I... A lady such as myself? I work on a ranch, Mr. Granger.”

He was amused he’d managed to get her to call him that.

He’d known her since she was knee-high to a prairie dog.

Well, known was a strong word.

But they’d grown up in a town the size of a vole’s tit, plus he’d had business with her family once upon a time. And still, he’d managed to set the tone and get her acting all formal.

“Miss Sullivan,” he said, drawing it out to the point of a drawl. “I just hate to be inhospitable, but I don’t want you seeing the state of things.” He was a liar. But he was having fun with it.

He realized she wasn’t just thrown off by him taking his time to speak. She thought he was dumb. She thought she knew more than him. So let her twist about a little bit, and he might as well play into it.

“Well...” She wandered over to the stump that he had been cutting on yesterday, and put one white tennis shoe–clad foot right up on it.

Her dress rode dangerously high up on her pale thigh—and she was too damned young for him—but he wasn’t made of stone, so he did notice. Then she put the binder down on her thigh and opened it up, supporting the other side on her forearm. “This is the first page. I’m going to show you the different ways that you can use your acreage to increase profits.”

He only looked at her. And he could see her mounting discomfort, and took great joy in it.

She started talking, running right over the silence, and he was regretful to find out that she actually did know some things. He wondered how much of it was intel from the old deal he’d done with her dad.

He’d been a dumb kid when he’d signed that lease. Ten years with his land tied up growing soybeans for a factory-farming outfit at a terrible rate, thanks to all the cash Brian Sullivan was skimming from the deal.