Page 133 of Tempting Wyatt

I turn toward my ex in the hopes of getting him gone as quickly as possible.

“What are you doing here?”

Malcolm glares at me. “What amIdoing here? Ivy, what the fuck?” He waves his hand toward the landscape beside us. “You haven’t answered any of my calls or texts because you ran off to the middle of nowhere to screw a bunch of hillbillies? Really?”

His eyes cut to where Isaac and Wyatt stand a few feet away. He snorts as if he finds them lacking somehow, but I know him. He’s intimidated and can’t stand it.

The back of my neck heats as my blood pressure rises to a dangerous level. “No hillbillies here, Malcolm. Just hardworking men. Not that you’d recognize a real man if you saw one.”

He snorts loudly. “Well, considering I see one in the mirror every day?—”

I can’t help it; I laugh. Watching him peacock around, poking his chest out, stomping his feet like a child, and parading around in a designer suit as if he was going to show up here in a rented Bentley and tell me how it was—and even more hilarious, tellWyatt’ssix-foot-four self how it was going to be—it’s too much.

This guy.

“Look, I realize you pay everyone in LA enough money to pretend you’re the man, Malcolm. I’m glad that’s working out for you. But out here, a measure of a man is much more than how much cash he can throw around or who he can fire.”

“The measure of a man?” Malcolm rolls his eyes. “Please. Out here, everyone is inbred and illiterate.”

The memory of Wyatt sitting at his kitchen table at three in the morning, going over the ranch’s expenses, trying his best to figure out how not to let anyone go, hits me suddenly.

It kept him up at night, the thought of their families suffering. The knowledge of how difficult their lives wouldbe without that income kept him from sleeping and had him scribbling dozens of math problems in the margins of all the bills.

Because he’s a good man. An amazing man. The most amazing man I’ve ever known.

How I could have ever mistaken Malcolm for a man is beyond me. A real man wouldn’t make a blood sport of firing people publicly to “keep everyone else in line” every chance he got. My frame of reference was severely lacking.

“Out here, people are hardworking and loyal. Honest. And they have more integrity and intelligence in their little fingers than you will possess in your entire lifetime.”

Malcolm folds his arms across his chest and leans into my personal space. “Jesus. Here we go again. I can’t believe you, Ivy. I mean, really? What happened is in the past, and you need to let it go. You’re going to throw everything we had away over a dumb whore like Heidi? It wasn’t like I was?—”

The hand-stinging slap I deliver to his face cuts off whatever else he planned to say.

Isaac whistles his approval.

“That was for Heidi,” I tell him. “Andyouare the one who threw away what we had, you narcissistic jackass. But looking back, I know now that we didn’thavemuch of anything. So, get in your pretentious prick mobile and go right back to LA, where people think you’re somebody. Because you don’t have any power or control over anyone here. And you never will.”

He narrows his snake-like eyes on me. “I have plenty of control, sweetheart. I already found a work around and cast Heidi as the lead inCaptive.”

It dawns on me then why he’s fighting so hard for Heidi—who he just disrespectfully referred to as adumb whore—to get the lead inCaptiveover an experienced, more talented actress.

He can control Heidi.

She’s young, inexperienced, and screwing him.

The actress I had been been begging the casting director to choose as the main character, Elena Ortega, would tell Malcolm to go fuck himself and probably sue his ass for harassment if he tried to pull any nonsense with her.

“Call me all the names you want. I’m not leaving until you sign this paperwork,” Malcolm says, glaring daggers at me while still rubbing his cheek. “And if you don’t sign it, you’ll be hearing from my attorney for breach of contract and for assaulting me just now.”

Better me than Wyatt. If Malcolm keeps this up much longer, Wyatt will be the one taking a swing. After seeing this ranch, Malcolm won’t hesitate to sue him for everything he’s worth.

“Don’t kid yourself,” I say evenly. “You’ll leave when that pissed-off rancher over there decides you’re leaving.” I nod to where Wyatt leans on the side of Isaac’s truck with murder in his eyes.

I hold out my hand. “Let’s see this paperwork then.”

Malcolm smirks like the smug bastard he is, then reaches into his car. He pulls out an iPad and opens it to a twenty-six-page eSign contract.

Of course he wouldn’t bring me a paper copy or email me one I could have my attorney look over.