The Rival

Chapter Two

“WHATANARROGANTBASTARD,” Quinn said, still stomping about three days after the meeting.

He was making her angry, and no one liked her when she was angry. Least of all her. She mostly kept it under control these days, until she was in the safety of their home at Sullivan’s Point, but Levi had tested that. And she was still absolutely feral now.

He was just... He was so...and then he...!

Ughhhhh.

Levi Granger was a whole problem. He had been a problem since Quinn was fourteen and had first seen him wearing a tight black T-shirt and painted-on jeans, hanging around Sullivan’s Point just after he’d taken over his family ranch.

He’d been around quite a bit for a while, and sure, the whole thing with her dad had gone south. But everything with her dad had gone south. She was just as wounded by her dad as anyone else. And it had absolutely nothing—nothing!—to do with their plans for the farm store.

She’d run every scenario. She’d looked at this from every angle.

Making the changes that would bypass town was good because it would create a direct route. It was good because it wouldn’t require an easement—only permits.

The easement option would be ideal in that it would carry the traffic through town and possibly bring business to everyone, but that meant getting Levi to allow them to use his land directly.

She hadn’t realized both options would end up involving him.

A complication she hadn’t considered, and Quinn considered almost every complication almost every single time.

Quinn Sullivan was book-smart and she was proud of it. She thought of it in those terms because most of the people in Pyrite Falls were often proud to declare that they were street-smart instead. Quinn had never felt that one should be forced to choose between different kinds of intelligence. Be well-rounded, she had always thought. And while it couldn’t be claimed that she was overly street-smart, she had been away to college. A rarity both in her family and within the broader scope of Four Corners.

Because Four Corners was the kind of place where you grew up knowing exactly what you’d do when you grew up. The nature of the job was handed down from parent to child—at least it was ideally.

Where you would work the land until you were buried beneath it.

And while Quinn could see the appeal of a legacy, and of working land, she’d still wanted to know.

Why she should work it. How to work it best. Other methods one could use.

Both she and her sister Rory had been more interested in outside education than either Fia or Alaina had ever seemed to be. But while Rory had opted to go to school in neighboring Mapleton, to get a more traditional education, Quinn had wanted to go to the one-room schoolhouse on Four Corners land, because she wanted to be connected to the land in everything she did.

The ranch itself had been established by four families back in the late 1800s. Technically, it was four different branches, but it was operated as a cooperative. There was Garrett’s Watch, McCloud’s Landing, King’s Crest and Sullivan’s Point. Each named for the families who had first settled them and who continued to run them today.

And while Quinn felt that the wisdom handed down from her father—before he had left—and her mother—not that she had been big on the ranch itself—was valuable, she had decided to go away and get a degree in agribusiness. Because she believed so firmly in all the smarts.

It was why she considered herself a great candidate to deal with the current situation.

Sullivan’s Point was the portion of Four Corners that Quinn ran with her sisters. Their parents had left all the responsibility of the place to them when they were very young.

Quinn’s oldest sister, Fia, had figured out inventive ways to keep the place running. By and large, they leased the ranch land while they tended a very large garden filled with fruits and vegetables, which they had turned into a very profitable business. They’d just taken some houses that had historically been used to house ranch hands and turned them into short-and long-term rentals, which were now being managed by her sister Rory.

They did canning and baking and sold things fresh at a roadside stand, at farmers markets and the store in town. But the latest bid for expansion was the farm store that they were building right on their property.

Of course, the sticking point to getting the farm store open was making sure there was an access road from the main highway. But in order to get an access road directly into that side of Sullivan’s Point, and avoid sending people down miles of dirt road to get right to the heart of their store, they were going to need to strike an agreement with the neighboring rancher.

And the problem with that was the neighboring rancher was...Levi.

Levi was a whole thing. Difficult, some might say.

Well, the Sullivans, Garretts, McClouds and Kings found all neighboring ranchers to be somewhat difficult. That was the problem when you were the biggest dog in town. People often took your mere existence as an invitation for a fight.

“Yes, you’ve remarked on his being an arrogant bastard,” Rory mused. “Four or five times now, in fact.”

“Well, it’s true.” Quinn scowled at her own reflection in the mirror.

“Do you not think...?” Quinn looked over at her sister, who had rolled onto her back on the bed, a book clutched to her chest. “Do you not think that maybe he has a point?”

“No, Rory, I don’t think he has a point. We are not trying to hurt the town. If anything, we’re going to help the town. I put in all kinds of projections. If a certain number of extra people come out to visit our store, it’s not taking anything from John just because they decide not to go to a store that they wouldn’t have gone to anyway. They’re different demographics, and the whole thing is a straw man.”

“Do tell.”

“It’s a straw man because the whole thing isn’t actually a thing. It’s simply a fake boogeyman erected to distract from—”

“I do know what a straw man is,” said Rory. “But thank you.”

“I didn’t say that you didn’t know what it was,” said Quinn.

“No, you just sounded like it. You have a way of coming across as a bit superior, Quinn.”

Quinn and Rory had grown closer in the last couple of years, but even though they were next to each other in age, they hadn’t really been close growing up.

Their home had been tumultuous. Fia and their mother had been at each other’s throats all the time, to the point where Fia had even run away for a while at the peak of it all.

Quinn had responded to the unrest with hostility. Toward everyone. And that had made it hard for Rory—or anyone—to know her. She’d put her head down and tried to cozy up to her dad, get him to be proud of her, because the drama inside the house had been too much to bear.

Rory, who had always been softer-spoken, more anxious, had responded by retreating. She’d befriended Lydia Payne, and they’d gone to school in Mapleton together, and she’d spent tons of time with Lydia’s family. Dinner with them, sleepovers. Quinn didn’t blame her, really.

Then Rory had gone off to college...and come right back. She had only made it through one semester, and she hadn’t wanted to talk about whatever had happened. Quinn had been on the verge of going off to college herself and had been determined to stick it out instead of coming home because she’d wimped out. Not that she’d said that to Rory.

But it was part of their whole...schism. They just weren’t the same person, not even close. Still, since they’d both been back at the ranch, they’d leveled out a bit. Rory had found a place managing the rentals while Quinn took a managerial role in the overall financials, and that had brought the two of them a little closer. It was nice because Quinn had struggled to make friends on the ranch. Well, she struggled to make them in general.

“I don’t mean to act superior. But it’s just that in this, I actually know what I’m talking about. I know what I’m doing. I’m frustrated that some big...lunkhead of a rancher gets to come in and just say he doesn’t want to do it, and because he speaks with a certain amount of conviction, people listen. If anybody actually cared, they would know that I’m just right.”

“You always think you’re right,” Rory pointed out.

“No, Rory,” said Quinn. “I only have a fight if I think I’m right. If I know I’m right. I don’t think that this is going to hurt the community in any regard, and if we are carrying merchandise from other artisans, then it’s actually going to increase business for them. Because I believe that our store will be a destination for people up to an hour away, and there are other business models for this kind of thing that could support that. And like I said, those people wouldn’t have been coming to go to John’s anyway. He by and large supplies people on their way to the coast, people who live even more rural than we do and people who live around here. Because everybody occasionally needs a bike pump, a very specific kind of screw and an inner tube to float down the river. But that is the kind of stuff he has, and it isn’t the same customer.”

“You should’ve said that at the meeting.”

Quinn growled. “I was mad. Anyway, if he’s so worried about the community, he should be worried about us. One more year of posting in the red and we’re at risk of having to sell off chunks of acreage to the other families.”

“They’ll never actually enforce that.”

“You think, and you hope. But they could.”

“Where exactly are you going?” Rory asked, as Quinn finished putting on some blush and eyeliner, and regarded herself in the mirror.

She didn’t often wear makeup, but this seemed like it called for it.

“I’m going down to Smokey’s Tavern to see if I can find any of the cowboys that were at the meeting the other day. Because I am going to say it. I’m going to make the point. There should be guys from the ranch and collective down there, and it would be a good opportunity for me to do a little bit of outreach.”

Rory looked at her skeptically. “I should go with you.”

“Why?”

“No offense. Like really, no offense, but you are...you are...”

“Just say it, Rory.”

“You can be a little pointy. And sometimes you poke people. Even when you don’t mean to.”

That made Quinn feel just...upset. She never tried to poke anybody. She just said what needed to be said. And often, she felt she had facts and logic on her side, and people seemed to get weird about that. Like maybe she should find a way to soften the truth they didn’t want to hear, and she had never known how to do that. It had been a long-standing bit of annoyance for her.

“What?” Rory asked, staring at Quinn.

“I’m just trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing,” Quinn said. “Like how do you soften something like this? Am I supposed to say nice hat, you’re wrong?”

Rory threw her head back and laughed. She flung her book to the side. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt, Quinn. It wouldn’t. Let’s go together.”

Rory’s curly hair was loose and flowing, and her sister always looked effortlessly feminine and beautiful. She knew Rory had felt awkward in school—well, Rory had been awkward in school. Freckled, bespectacled, braces on her teeth, all limbs, but she was anything but awkward now. She was wearing a light yellow dress that only went down to midthigh, and Quinn knew a moment of envy for just how easy it was for Rory to be soft.

Quinn had never known how to be soft.

It had caused her a whole lot of problems in her life, but those problems weren’t exactly instructive on how to fix them.

Quinn had done her best to take her more complicated features and use them to her advantage. It was one reason going to school had been so important to her. If she could approach things from a logical, educated standpoint, it often was distancing, and made things not seem personal. In fact, Quinn found it helpful.

“Come on—let’s go,” Rory said, grabbing hold of Quinn’s arm.

Quinn looked at herself one more time. She had put her hair into two little buns, and had traded out her glasses for contacts. She had on a velvet choker and a wide-collared floral dress, and she thought she was doing the ’90s justice, and really that she looked quite pretty, if she said so herself.

She knew that men liked pretty. And soft.

So she was going to attempt that. Quinn had no real desire to be soft. It only got you hurt. But sometimes it could be useful, so she needed to give it a try.

Quinn was book-smart. But she could admit, she was often not people-smart. She tried, but she was results oriented, and sometimes the smoothness of the process felt negotiable. Damn the torpedoes, et cetera.

But perhaps if she was dressed soft, she would sound soft.

And if all else failed, she would just have Rory talk to them about romance novels. That was about the softest thing that could ever occur.

Rory was nothing if not supersoft.

Quinn had been soft once upon a time. If there was one thing she admired about Rory, it was how she’d retained that. Of course, as far as Quinn could tell, it also made Rory anxious and overly concerned about things Quinn just preferred not to care about.

She used to care about all kinds of things. And then she’d whittled it down. She cared about her sisters, the ranch and her own goals. The end. It was the best way to be. The best way to keep herself from getting hurt.

They piled into Quinn’s car and drove the ten minutes off the Four Corners property to Smokey’s.

That was why they needed road access. The gravel road that led all the way to Sullivan’s Point as it stood was a very, very long drive that would cover a car in fine dust, and also, it was the road they used for daily, practical things. The road they used for their horses, for their tractors, and they really couldn’t have traffic from the public cluttering it all up. Well, they could, and if they had to, they would open the store using the main road, but she had a feeling it would severely hinder the amount of business that they got.

“I can hear you thinking. You might find it helpful to dial back some of the intensity,” said Rory, as they pulled into Smokey’s parking lot.

“I don’t know how to do that,” said Quinn.

“I get that,” said Rory. “I do. But...you could try.”

“Sure,” said Quinn.

Except she didn’t even know how to try. Honestly. She just didn’t know.

If she did, she would do it. If she knew how to be honey, so that she could catch all the flies, she would’ve transformed herself into something sticky and syrupy long ago.

They filed into Smokey’s, and Quinn froze at the door. She wasn’t used to having so many men...look at her.

At Four Corners, they were like wallpaper. Practically invisible. But at the bar, they were a little bit less...known, and she could see that they appeared to be two eligible women who weren’t normally around.

Quinn wished that she cared.

The problem was that at an extremely formative age she’d developed a crush on...

It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to think about that insufferable bastard.

He was a problem. Not a crush.

She had been so childish back then. A giant open wound wandering around feeling all the feelings. No more.

All that mattered was crushes were not a thing for her now, and maybe it was partly because some of her heart and soul had been tied up in one a long time ago when she’d never gotten it back. No one had ever felt half as compelling, half as interesting.

Half as big of a pain in the ass.

But she wasn’t going to think about that, because she wasn’t going to think about him.

She noticed that Rory looked disinterested in all the attention they were getting, and she thought that was strange, since Rory was a true romantic, and she would’ve thought that Rory would be thrilled to have a man pay her some attention.

“This is not how it goes in a romance novel,” said Rory, as if she already knew what Quinn was thinking.

“What?”

Rory shrugged. “I mean, that’s not true. Sometimes a romance novel starts with a one-night stand in a bar, but the connection is electric. And I feel no electricity. So if you’re wondering why I’m not excited about this...”

“Oh, Rory,” said Quinn. “I don’t care about romance. All I care about is lobbying for road access. And so away we go.”

They marched deeper into the bar, and Quinn recognized some men from the ranching collective and made her way there quickly. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Quinn Sullivan. You may remember me from the meeting the other day. I just wanted to talk to you about...”

“Put away your religious tracts,” said a lazy, laconic voice from across the bar. She didn’t have to look to know who it was.

The goose bumps on her arms gave it away.

“This has nothing to do with religion,” said Quinn.

“I don’t know. You sure seem to have that kind of bright-eyed fervor.”

Quinn couldn’t decide if that was a compliment or not. She decided it wasn’t.

“Mr. Granger...”

“Miss Sullivan,” he said. “I am busy.”

He gestured toward a blonde sitting on his left. Quinn honestly hadn’t noticed her.

And she felt...

She didn’t like what she felt at all.

It wasn’t her fault that Levi Granger was the best-looking man she’d ever seen in her life. It wasn’t.

She could remember very clearly a time when Levi had come to the ranch to talk to her dad about something.

The soybeans, she assumed.

She had been fourteen. She had seen Levi before, but for some reason that time it had been like seeing him for the first time.

It had burned itself into her psyche, into her consciousness. It had changed everything. Everything she had ever dreamed about, fantasized about... Not that she really had fantasies at that point. But she had really thought that a smooth-faced boy from one of the popular dance bands was cute, and also the Fox from Robin Hood. And all of it had been vague and disconnected from anything real. And then suddenly it had all slammed into her, visceral and far too big for her body to contain.

She had always been a creature of feeling. She always had a temper, and then as an extension of that, she had always been very excited when she was excited, and happy when she was happy.

And so, the moment she had seen Levi she had been immediately, viscerally, passionately in lust.

She had at least been smart enough to know that it wasn’t love.

But just very suddenly there was no one and nothing else that would ever do for her. His square jaw, dark hair, blue eyes and solid frame had lit her on fire. And it hadn’t mattered that he was twenty-five; in fact, it had been the appeal of him.

All of the men at Four Corners were familiar. And more than that, the ones she went to school with were boys.

Levi had been a man.

She had grown out of that, mostly. She didn’t flutter anymore when she saw him because she didn’t flutter in general. She had been to college in the intervening years, and she had met a great many men, none of whom had felt compelling to her.

So she simply hadn’t, and if the holdover of remembering the visceral impact Levi had had on her body had influenced that, then fine. She had used it as a talisman.

Convenient when she was hundreds of miles away from him, less convenient when she was only a mere few inches from him. He was the biggest barrier to her current goal, and he had another woman on his arm.

“You were the one who spoke to me,” she said.

“Because I see what you’re up to. And I’m here to tell you, it’s not going to work. I happen to know for a fact that your permits are going in for review tomorrow, and it isn’t going to go your way.”

“You can’t...you can’t possibly know that,” she said.

“I possibly can. My case was made, and it was made well, and you’re simply going to have to deal with that, Miss Sullivan.”

“I...I will not.”

“You don’t have another choice.”

“Can we please...?” She did her best to gather her temper, because she didn’t do explosive fits of temper any more than she did vulnerable these days. “Could we speak outside for a moment?”

“Why?” He leaned back, resting his hand on the woman’s lower back. “There’s no reason you can’t say what you have to say right here.”

“I feel that we may bore the lady.”

The woman looked between the two of them. “I’m not bored,” she said, smiling, and for some reason, Quinn found that she wanted to punch the other woman in the teeth.

“Well, it’s proprietary,” Quinn sniffed.

“Proprietary,”he said, drawing out each syllable. “Now, that is a big word.”

“Levi...”

“Quinn.” He said her name like she was a child.

“Please, come outside.”

He took his time answering, like he actually had to mull the question of going outside. She could not understand it. He either wanted to go outside or he didn’t. Okay, he said that he didn’t. But she did. And so there.

“All right. We’ll go outside. I can turn you down out there just as easily.”

She led the charge just outside the door of Smokey’s, and stood beneath the yellow light, her arms crossed. “I don’t think that you’re giving this full consideration. I told you, there’s a gap.”

“Please,” he said. “Explain it to me. Slowly.”

She could not tell if he was being serious or not. “We would be bringing in extra people,” she said. “People who wouldn’t be going to John’s anyway.” She spoke each syllable of what she had already gone over with Rory slowly and laboriously. “It’s obvious that our way is the best way.”

“It’s not obvious to me,” he said, his expression unreadable.

She could not fathom if he was this obtuse, or if he was playing the part to perfection.

“It should be,” she said. “I respect and understand that you have spent your life working your land, Levi, but I have actually had formal education on this very thing. I am much more qualified to make commentary on whether or not this is a viable—”

“Again,” he said slowly. “Viable for you.”

“No, for everybody,” she said. “You don’t understand because you don’t have the appropriate knowledge to make the decision.”

“Say it,” he said. “Go ahead and say it, Quinn.”

“You’re being stupid,” she said.

The minute the words left her mouth, she felt awful. Mean. She felt that instant regret that had always come when she’d lost her temper and she hated it. He had...pushed her, and he had a way of getting under her skin. He always had.

He asked her to say it, because he was acting like she thought it, and even if she did think it...

“Good. I’m glad that you were able to be honest. And of course you’re right,” he said. “You’re at Four Corners, after all, and I’m just a struggling rancher. What do I know about anything? It must make you so angry, given the fact you are so much smarter than me, that I won.”

“You did not win,” she said, her voice low.

He looked around. “I think I did. They’re not going to approve your permits, Quinn. You’re not going to get access. You’re going to be at a disadvantage, and you’re going to know what it’s like to actually have to struggle to make a living. All that schooling, and still just scraping by. Almost as if ranching is hard fucking work.”

How dare he imply she didn’t know that? “I will figure this out. I will.”

“Good. See that it has nothing to do with me.”

He turned and started to leave, and she reached out and grabbed his forearm. And the minute she wrapped her fingers around him, the minute she made contact with his skin, she wanted to jump back and howl.

“I...” Their eyes clashed, and she felt desire tight in her gut, pull its way all through her body. Why was it like this? Why was he like this?

“I’m not going to give up,” she said.

“Good for you,” he said. “Good for you.”

“Don’t leave,” she said.

“Miss Sullivan,” he said, a slow grin spreading across his face. “I came out here to get laid tonight, and that pretty blonde in there is going to do the honors. So unless you’re volunteering to fill the position, I suggest you let me back to my business.”

Her whole face felt like it was on fire. Like it had been sprayed with hair spray, and someone had lit a match on it. She felt exposed and horrified, because she didn’t actually think that he would want to take her to bed, but she had the horrible feeling that perhaps he saw that at one point in her life she had wished that he would take her.

They’d barely ever spoken to one another. He was a lot older than her, and she’d always been too embarrassed to ever approach him at the moments when they had been in the same vicinity. He had been a fantasy, nothing more. She had known, always, that he wasn’t actually something she was going to have in reality.

But... But. Old longings died very, very hard.

Even when the person was infuriating.

“I am not volunteering,” she said, absolutely certain that she was the color of a beetroot.

“Well, then. I bid you good-night.”

And he left her standing there feeling utterly defeated, and she howled, kicking the side of Smokey’s, and then hopping up and down when her foot hurt.

She covered her face with her hands. She didn’t know why she felt things this deeply. It had always been something that...

She used to follow her dad all around the ranch, talking, laughing. Weeping when a sheep had a lamb that died, raging when the chickens got killed by a fox. She’d felt everything, always. Until he’d left. Until all of her feelings had been whittled into a sharp point. Until the only thing driving her had been rage. And then once she’d reached the dead end of all that anger, she’d decided that she had to protect herself. Her goals. She just didn’t want to be hurt again, and she didn’t want to hurt other people, either.

She’d leaned in to her education. It felt like protection. Like a shield protecting her from the things outside of herself, and the feelings in herself.

It was just simpler that way. And the truth was, she couldn’t just...turn her feelings off. She wished. But her anger had protected her, until it had become uncontrolled. And inside... Yeah, inside it was still her go-to. A release that didn’t leave her hurting.

Though it did sometimes leave her feeling sorry.

Which she didn’t like, either.

The door opened, and Rory appeared.

“What happened?”

Rage boiled inside her.

“He’s just impossible. I legitimately can’t tell if he’s actually dumb, or if he’s...”

“It doesn’t matter. You don’t need to get Levi Granger on your side.”

She sighed. “Unfortunately, Rory, I think that I do. Because I’m pretty sure that if I don’t... I’m pretty sure that if I don’t I’m not going to be able to get anybody on my side, and if I can’t get anybody on my side...we might as well give up now.”

One thing Quinn couldn’t do was give up. So that meant that she wasn’t done. Maybe Rory was right, though. Maybe Levi wasn’t the place to start.

She would go back in, and she would talk to other people. And then she would go down to the county herself tomorrow. She would make sure this happened. She was determined. And when Quinn Sullivan was determined, God help anything that got in her way.