Page 57

“Fine,” she huffed. “Drop some knowledge on me.”

“Don’t sign a contract with a shady factory-farming company. Or your dad?”

She forced out a laugh, and he looked at her out of the corner of his eye, saw her gripping the shoulder strap of her seat belt and looking out the window.

“What?” he asked.

“Sometimes you’re so... You seem almost funny.”

“Maybe I am funny, Quinn. Did you ever think of that?”

She looked at him then, those green eyes clashing with his, and he looked away for a second.

He had to keep his eyes on the road, even if they were still on the property.

“You didn’t exactly brand yourself that way when we met.”

“I was unaware that I was branding myself.”

“You...lied to me, in a way. On purpose,” she said. “You don’t want me to know anything about you.”

“That’s not true. You know about my parents dying. You know that I leased out the fields and that I regret it. Those things are true.”

“But I don’t know you.”

There was something about the way she said that that burrowed its way under his skin. And for some reason right then, he thought about her little white shoes.

“You don’t need to know me. I didn’t invite your ass to my ranch in the first place. I didn’t invite you to know me, nor do I have a particular yen to be known by you.”

The words made something in his chest pull tight, because hadn’t he just been thinking that part of him did want her to understand?

“Does anybody know you?”

“That’s a good question,” he said. “And the answer is...probably no. I had to try and be the parental figure to my siblings, and having them know me just would have made that harder. I can’t have them seeing my flaws, after all. Not when I need their respect. And as for lovers...well, no. Not even a little.”

“Oh, wow,” she said, sounding irritated again, the words low and vaguely venomous. “You sleep with women you don’t know?”

“Now, that,” he said, “I am confident had absolutely nothing to do with the potential easement deal.”

He looked at her and noticed her ears were pink.

“You’re the one who brought up lovers.”

“That’s true,” he said, after a fashion. “I did.”

“And my question stands. Does anyone actually know you?”

“No,” he said, firm and hard. “I never needed anybody to, and I never asked anyone to.”

That wasn’t strictly true. He’d always had Damien, but then... They didn’t talk about stuff, not deep stuff. Damien had been there for him when his parents had died. And when Damien had lost his mom a couple of years ago, Levi had known just how he felt.

But they worked alongside each other. They didn’t bare their souls to each other.

Lord Almighty.

He decided to turn the radio on, because he didn’t know how he had gotten walked into a personal conversation with the little hellcat, nor did he particularly want to be in one. So he turned the music up, and enjoyed her obvious discomfort as Luke Bryan demanded that a country girl shake it for him.

They drove down to a feed store about twenty minutes outside of Pyrite Falls, not really situated in Mapleton, but not really anywhere.