Chapter 25
“This is unbelievable,” Travis Walker whispered to himself. He tilted his phone toward his friend, Colt, who sat on his right side. Colt, in turn, dipped his head to read the text that Trap had just received.
Disgust ran through him, and he had no idea what Pastor Glover was even saying anymore.
The words from the text had been ingrained on the back of his eyelids, and he kept his eyes open for as long as he could, simply so he wouldn’t have to see them again.
I need you to meet me at the build site in one hour.
Lila Mae Dixon had said more than that—something about how she’d found a last-minute flight on that Sabbath day—and she’d see him in sixty minutes.
Not only that, but the text had come in twenty minutes ago during the sacrament service of church where Trap currently sat with his friends, and Pastor Glover had only been speaking for about ten minutes.
“Who’s The Heiress?” Colt whispered, and Trap turned toward him with burning, stinging, watering eyes. He finally blinked.
“That woman who wants to build the cat sanctuary at the Hensen place.”
Colt’s eyes widened, and then a smile bounced across his face. “Good luck with that one, brother.”
Trap sighed like he’d just been told he needed to wave a magic wand and get the church building to fly.
That would actually be more possible than cleaning up the Hensen place to the specifications of a cat food heiress who felt like she could text him with sixty minutes’ notice to meet her somewhere.
He looked over to Ty on his left side, and his friend looked at him, his eyebrows raised. Trap had been sitting with him, Colt, and Jacob at church for months now, and Ty had started bringing Winnie to their pew in the past couple of weeks.
Trap didn’t mind it so much, only that she served as a reminder of how female-free his own life still was.
Thankfully, he’d gotten past his insane crush on his cousin’s wife, as he and Ruby had to work together at the construction firm and interior design center that his parents owned and Trap was set to take over.
The screen on his phone went dark, and Trap had half a mind to ignore Lila Mae’s text completely. It was the Sabbath Day, for crying out loud. Wasn’t anything sacred anymore?
At the same time, Trap would love to work on the Hensen place, as it would be his first solo project, one that he’d gone out and found himself and that his daddy would have no part in.
Sure, Trap could consult with him on anything, anytime, but Daddy wanted to slow down and ease into retirement at Seven Sons Ranch the way some of his brothers already had.
Trap was more than ready and willing to take on the construction firm, as he’d been learning at his father’s knee for twenty-five years.
He was excited to take MSW Building & Design into a new direction while still living up to his parents’ high expectations for the firm.
“I’ve gotta get out,” he whispered to Ty, and his friend turned his knees so Trap could slither past him in the pew. “Sorry. Sorry, Winnie.”
He left the church at a good clip, sure he would have to answer some texts from other cousins and friends and his parents who had seen him leave. He didn’t mind. He could handle them.
The Hensen place sat west of town, and Trap could admit he’d been frustrated at how slow the project had been coming together.
He and Ruby had done an initial assessment of the property almost two months ago now, and the dust storm had slowed everything down.
Lila Mae had almost backed out, but the Hensen property really was the best fit for what she had in mind.
She wanted to build a cat rescue operation that her cat food dynasty would pay for.
This would technically be a nonprofit arm of that, where Lila Mae would take strays, rehabilitate them, and adopt them back out into the community.
She also intended to be a safe house for cats who couldn’t be readopted, and she’d told Trap and Ruby that she planned to have two full-time veterinarians on staff, as well as groundskeepers, vet techs, and others to help her run the sanctuary.
Trap couldn’t imagine dedicating his life to cats, but he supposed he’d dedicated his to wood and hammers, and there were probably plenty of people who didn’t understand that.
He went out past Aunt Marcy’s airplane hangars and Payne’s Pest Free, which she still owned but didn’t operate, and where Trap had spent plenty of time growing up, as his daddy and Uncle Wyatt were good friends.
All of Wyatt’s kids now lived out of state in a small town called Coral Canyon in Wyoming, and they operated their own rodeo animal-training ranch. While his aunt and uncle hadn’t made the move up there permanent yet, everyone in the Walker family knew they would eventually.
Trap beat Lila Mae to the Hensen property, where he had to stop at the gate, which was chained closed. He got out because spring had started to thaw the Texas Panhandle, and the sun felt good on his face today.
“Ten bucks says she doesn’t have a key to this place,” he muttered.
The Hensen ranch had been empty for years, and the previous family had been trying to sell the land and all the outbuildings for the past half-decade.
Everyone wanted turnkey these days, and the Hensen property was about as far from that as one could get.
That didn’t concern Lila Mae at all, because she wanted Trap and Ruby to gut the place and rebuild it—basically from the ground up.
“Really, but not really,” Trap muttered, which were words that Lila Mae had said herself when he’d asked her that very question.
“You want me to tear it all down and rebuild it? Why don’t you just buy a piece of land that’s bare bones?”
She’d given him a healthy pause over the phone and then proceeded to lecture him about renewal and recycling, as if the concepts were brand-new to Trap.
To be honest, he’d never hurt for money, and he never would.
His grandpa had been a billionaire due to his investments in the tech industry throughout the seventies and eighties, and Trap himself had inherited quite a bit of wealth from his own father.
Still, he’d grown up watching his parents work hard for their company, and he wanted to do the same.
The sixty-minute mark came and went, and Trap’s irritation with Lila Mae only grew.
She finally arrived thirteen and a half minutes late, in the back of a sleek, black, oversized SUV.
He expected her to drop from the driver’s seat, but as he peered through the windshield, he could see a man with a buzz cut and a pair of shiny sunglasses sitting at the wheel.
So…not Lila Mae Dixon.
Truth be told, Trap had never met the woman face-to-face. They’d only spoken over the phone, and he’d looked her up on the Dixon’s Delights website.
She wasn’t the CEO. Her momma still ran the company, but Lila Mae had been labeled the Environmental and Social Impact Director. Trap had no idea what that meant, and everyone he’d asked hadn’t either.
His gaze switched to the back doors, where he expected Lila Mae to emerge. A man on the passenger side—whom Trap had not even seen—opened his door in the front and dropped to the ground.
“Are you Travis Walker?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” Trap said with a tip of his cowboy hat.
“Praise the heavens,” the man muttered, and he moved to the back door and opened it. “This man says he’s Travis Walker,” he said.
Still, Lila Mae did not get out of the vehicle, and Trap took a couple of hesitant steps toward it. The man, who wore a pale yellow polo and a pair of black slacks along with his own shiny pair of sunglasses, leaned in further. He sighed and turned toward Trap.
“She wants you to produce some identification.”
“I have to produce identification?” Trap’s eyebrows went up. “Why doesn’t she produce some identification?”
The man rolled his eyes. “Your guess is as good as mine.” He held the door open and stepped back, and Trap stood there and gaped for several long moments before he sighed as loudly as well and pulled his wallet from his back pocket. He flipped it open and walked over to him. “See? Travis Walker.”
“Dude, I don’t even care,” he said. Then he looked into the vehicle. “It says Travis Walker.”
He hadn’t even looked at Trap’s ID. That made Trap smile, and he backed up and stuffed his wallet away as—finally—Lila Mae emerged from the vehicle.
The driver got out and opened the other door, removing a classy black bag and placing it near the front corner of the SUV. A very unhappy yowl came from a cat carrier, which the driver had just set on the ground beside Lila Mae’s bag.
“One can never be too sure,” Lila Mae said. “Thank you for checking.” Her voice rolled in a smooth Eastern accent, and Trap could only stare at her.
She wore emerald green from head to toe, including a hat that was tilted and pinned just-so on her head.
“Thank you, Franklin,” she said, and she nodded to the man, who seemed relieved to get rid of her as he closed her door.
She pinned her smile on him as the SUV backed away and left, and Trap wasn’t sure if this was a joke or not. “It’s wonderful to meet you in person, Travis.”
“You can call me Trap,” he said. “Only my momma calls me Travis, and only when I’m in trouble.” He threw a smile at her that Lila Mae didn’t seem to know what to do with.
Another protest came from the carrier, but Lila Mae ignored it as she extended her hand toward Trap, but not the way someone would to shake his hand. Oh, no. She extended her hand like royalty, like she expected him to take it and kiss the back of it.
Trap did exactly that, because he knew when he willingly played with fire, he would get burned.
Part of him wanted to see what Lila Mae would do if he scoffed at her and simply turned toward the land where she’d insisted he meet her.
His lips buzzed against her skin for the tiniest of moments, and then he fell back a step.
“All right, Miss Dixon,” he said. “You got me here on short notice. Now, what do you need that was so urgent that you had to call me out of my church meetings?”
His question seemed to stun her, for Lila Mae simply stood there and blinked at him, her long lashes painted dark though she had straw-colored hair and oceanic eyes. Trap could get lost in a woman’s eyes like that, and he cleared his throat and looked away.
“I—” She seemed at a loss for words, and that definitely pushed the tension riding the air between them up to a new level.
Had she forgotten why she’d flown here?
Could she not hear him?
Trap did have Deaf friends now, and the longer the silence went on, the less sure he became.