The Rival

Chapter Four

QUINNWASDETERMINEDand a little bit breathless by the time she was on the road to Levi’s house the next day. It was weird.

It was an eight-mile drive up the dirt road from Sullivan’s Point to the main road, and around a long, smooth curve. And there was Levi Granger’s property, and yet she never went there.

Ever.

And heading that direction now filled her with the kind of adrenaline she usually only experienced when she was in a rage.

Quinn was not a fighter. Well. Quinn wasn’t a fist fighter—anymore. Quinn was happy to fight with words, however. More than happy.

She hoped that it wouldn’t be necessary in this particular instance. But she’d hoped that from the beginning, and now here she was.

Hoping to negotiate. Ready to fight.

Except Levi was so problematic. Putting it mildly.

But she was armed with a plan. A plan she’d cobbled together last night in a feverish fit of desperation. She thought it was a very good plan, actually. In exchange for him allowing them to forge the road from the highway through his property to the farm store, she would offer him her advice. She had a degree in agribusiness, and she knew full well that Levi had no such thing. In fact, she’d spent the night digging through info on him and had come up with some she hadn’t had before.

“Digging through info” meant calling Colleen Brady, her mother’s old friend, and asking for anything she knew. Colleen always knew a lot. Apparently, Levi hadn’t even finished high school.

She knew he’d been running the ranch here since his parents had died—eighteen years. He knew the land, and she didn’t doubt it. But she had a feeling there was a lot he didn’t know about structuring a business, about organization and about a great many other things she’d studied. In truth, she could help him.

She was fairly excited by the prospect. Maybe excited was the wrong word, but she felt supercharged, so there was that. Because she loved a challenge. In her mind, that was the point of her education. She had gone afar, and now she could bring what she had learned back home. It was perfect. She drove up the long dirt driveway that led to Levi Granger’s homestead.

She had never actually been to his homestead.

Why would she have been? He had to be ten...maybe eleven years older than her.

Okay, she knew exactly how much older than her he was. That was the side effect of her little... Crush sounded extreme.

She’d become attached to the shape of his face. And the width of his shoulders.

But to say “crush” implied an emotional attachment, and that she didn’t have. No.

She was way too...academic for that.

However, fourteen-year-old Quinn was very interested in his...homestead. And current Quinn had easier access to her fourteen-year-old self than she might like.

Usually, she kept her emotions pretty tightly policed, related to all that previous...rage that she had. And she’d learned to channel it all for good.

She needed to channel her anger now. Minimize it.

She couldn’t see Levi as a villain.

She had to try to change her mindset so that she could see him as a potential ally. Because she needed him.

She needed him to need her, too.

There was no grand ranch sign signifying that she was on Granger land, not like the big sign that greeted all visitors to Four Corners. Just a narrow, dusty road lined with pine trees.

She rounded a corner, and a small dwelling came into view. All ramshackle wooden shingles on the roof and rough-hewn planks of wood.

It was little more than a shack.

That was a shock. She hadn’t quite envisaged...this.

She hadn’t realized things were quite so hard. And they had such a terrible story—the whole family did—and it made her heart contract with concern. He must need advice. Because the ranch could not be profitable if this was what he lived in.

Then, from around behind the dwelling, she saw movement.

And there he was.

Broad-shouldered and wearing a red-checked flannel shirt unbuttoned all the way down, he had a black cowboy hat on his head—a sight that was commonplace to her, so why she noticed at all, she’d never be able to say.

He was holding an axe.

He set a log on top of a large tree stump, held the axe high above his head and brought it down mercilessly upon the upended log. He sent the pieces flying. He picked up another bit of wood and began to set up all over again, and she couldn’t help but notice the practice in his movements. The fluidity. His muscles. And...what might’ve even been a tattoo on his ribs. She blinked rapidly.

She got out of the car and shut the door.

“If you used an awl it might be easier.”

He stopped, midmotion. He had a dark beard and hair, blue eyes. And she felt like they were looking straight through her. Worse, and weirder, she felt pinned to the spot. Like her shoes had been glued right there to the dirt, and she couldn’t move.

She’d seen him just two days before. She couldn’t figure out why she was frozen now.

He’d made her mad two days ago.

And for the first time in recent memory, angry felt like the safer option.

Why was she...fluttery now?

She had to get unfluttery really quickly.

“Excuse me?”

“Just... If you used an awl...”

He stood still for a moment, appraising her in a way that made her feel like he was seeing deeper than her skin. The silence made her unbearably uncomfortable, and she was about to say something else, when he spoke. “Miss Sullivan?”

“Yes?”

“Did you think that I needed pointers on how to cut wood?”

“I thought you might like it to be easier.”

His mouth twisted upward into an approximation of a smile and he made a hard, grunting sound that may have been a laugh. “Ma’am, I prefer things to be harder. I like life to be a punishment, actually. So that I never slip into a false sense of security and believe it might treat me kindly. It hasn’t yet. I don’t like to be caught unaware.”

Quinn always knew what to say. Speaking was a natural gift. She opened her mouth, and words poured out. But she had no idea what to say to that. “I see.” She paused for a beat.

“I’m not sure you do.”

And that was it. No questions about her, no nothing. It was like trying to get blood out of a stone. But that was fine. Quinn knew how to fill a silence.

“I feel that we got off on the wrong foot.”

He simply stared at her.

“And I would like to see if we can find...a right foot.”

He looked down, then back up at her. “I have a right foot all on my own, but thank you.”

“That isn’t what I was talking about. I’m almost certain you know that.”

“Almost. Okay.”

She cleared her throat. “I came here to talk to you about a business proposition.”

He looked up and she felt compelled to follow his gaze. There was nothing there but the tops of the evergreens.

Finally he looked back at her. “A business proposition. How interesting.” He did not sound interested. In fact, all he did was set up another piece of wood, raise that blasted axe of his and bring it down hard onto the log, splitting it as effortlessly as he had done the first two.

She pressed on.

“The permits got denied.”

“I’m shocked to hear that.”

He was obviously, patently, not.

“You aren’t. You told me they would be.”

“Ah, so you were shocked to hear that. Even though you did hear it from me.”

Irritation crept up her spine. “Yes. That is true.”

“So what exactly do you mean by coming here and telling me you have a business proposition?”

“You’re our last hope, Levi.”

“You’d have been better off if Obi-Wan Kenobi were your only hope, Quinn. Sorry to tell you.” He turned away, like he was dismissing her.

“Levi,” she said. “Please hear me out.”

He turned back toward her. The way that he moved, the way he paced himself. His words, everything else... It threw her off. The other night, he’d been angry. This morning was even worse.

He was dismissive.

If he didn’t want to listen, her options were so perilously limited.

“We need you,” she said. “If we could use your road as an access to the store, it would solve everything. People would still drive through town before turning to Four Corners. The distance on the dirt road would be shorter. People would just come in from the other side of town.”

“And you don’t have any other plan?”

She shook her head. “No.”

In that same manner as before, it was like he missed a beat before speaking. “Sounds like poor planning.”

“We had a good plan, but you, the town, disagreed with it.”

“You have enough land you could have put the store nearer to the road.”

“We each have our own plot,” she said, running over the tail end of his sentence. “The Kings were hardly going to let us build a facility in the middle of their land. We’re a cooperative, but that only goes so far.”

He plunked the axe head down on the ground, his hand gripping the handle hard. “Fair enough.” He lifted the axe and turned it slowly. “I do fancy that I am a fair man, Miss Sullivan. But you really thought you could plan all of this on the assumption that I and the whole town would be all right with it?”

“Yes. Well, no. It isn’t that we simply assumed... We really did think the permits would be a formality. We were paying for the road and we didn’t foresee there being any issues. But there were issues.”

“Yes, there were.”

“So now we need to come up with something else, and that involves you.”

He said nothing, but somehow the slight lift of one dark brow spoke in loud volumes.

She cleared her throat and continued. “I have a degree in agribusiness. And there are some things that I could recommend to you that you can improve here on your homestead.”

He lifted the axe up off the ground and turned it so the blade was facing him. He brushed his thumb over the sharp edge, then looked over at her. “Because you think I need it?”

“Yes. I mean... I’m sorry about what I said the other night.”

He smiled, slow and unkind. Her heart was thundering now, but with excitement. This was the part she’d been waiting for. “I would love to do a review of the place and give you pointers on what you could do.”

“What’s your area of expertise?”

“Everything. From the business end, profits and different types of crops. I know so much about how to organize, how to maximize land use, how to ensure you have the right paperwork, streamlining and, well...everything.” The words flowed effortlessly, because she was an expert. Because she knew—exactly—what she was talking about. Exactly what she was doing, and it felt great.

This was what education got you.

Pennies well spent.

“You know so much about streamlining and everything, but you have to ask me if I can provide you with an easement for road access?”

“Our land is the way that it is. And the county surveyed it the way they did, and reached the conclusion they did. And that’s the thing. With ranching, you’re going to run into the realities of where exactly your ranch is set. But that doesn’t mean you can’t refine things.”

“Is that so?” He leaned back on his heels and she suddenly became very conscious of the difference in their height.

Quinn was not a tall woman. She was the smallest of all her sisters, and she’d compensated for that by being—what some would call—unreasonably determined. She was willing to grit out any situation that came her way, willing to fight and push and scrap if need be.

As an adult she’d discovered she could use her brain instead of actually scrapping with anyone. But that same baseline determination was what had gotten her through...everything. Most especially getting scholarships and leaving Pyrite Falls and Four Corners for the first time and going to California for school.

She’d worked so hard. To fit in. To get the best grades. To learn what she needed to. Because her goal had been to bring it back home to Sullivan’s Point and help her sisters. Especially Fia, who had taken such great care of them after their parents had gone.

So it didn’t matter if he was tall, and unyielding and far too slow to speak, and a whole lot of other things besides. She was Quinn Sullivan, and she knew her business.

“It is so. And I would like to have the opportunity to speak to you in depth about your needs.”

He looked her over. Slowly. Very slowly. And with that a burning sensation started in her stomach and bloomed ever outward.

She was aware—so aware—that she was pale and he could probably see it.

She hoped desperately he couldn’t see it.

“Miss Sullivan,” he said. “That is a pretty terrible plan.”

She hadn’t expected that. “Why is it terrible?”

“Well,” he said, picking up another log. “I don’t need anything.” He brought the axe down on it with a crack. “Not even an awl.”

“But everyone needs something.”

He just looked at her. Utterly unreadable.

“Nope.”

“That’s it? You’re just saying no? That’s it?”

He straightened. “I’ve been running this place pretty damn good for the last eighteen years, and I expect I’ll run it just as well in the years to come. Also, I don’t see myself joining up with Four Corners folk. There are some mistakes you make only once.”

She knew he’d done a deal with her dad, and she knew he hadn’t been happy with it, but this had nothing at all to do with that. That was ancient history.

“I’m not my dad,” she said.

He stared at her, far too cutting. “I don’t simply take people at their word. Not these days.”

“I’ll show you,” she said, because she couldn’t bear the idea of just...failing. She didn’t fail. She never failed, especially when she was right, and she was right. They just needed the use of his road for some traffic to be able to get to their store, and in exchange she would help with whatever he needed.

It was reasonable, and it would be good for everyone.

He was being ridiculous and he was wrong and she would make him see that.

“I’ll prove myself if that’s what you need. I’ll be back. With a binder.”

He laughed then, loud and hard, and the sound echoed up through the pines around them, and she hated him just a little bit. “Make sure to include lots of pictures or I might not understand. After all, you’re the one with the degree. I’m just a rancher.”

And then Levi Granger walked away and left her positively awash in outrage and thwarted purpose and some throbbing heat that she just didn’t want to dwell on.

One thing was certain.

Quinn Sullivan would never remain thwarted, not for long.

She had book smarts. And she was going to use them.

LEVI GRANGERHADbetter things to think about than the small woman who had invaded his space today. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was a know-it-all. A know-it-all that wasn’t him, anyway.

He knew this land so well, when he closed his eyes at night he could walk himself through it.

He knew this land so well, it was branded onto his soul. And some uppity collegiate with freckles on her nose and hair the color of a cooked carrot didn’t have anything to teach him about it just because she had a certificate that said she understood.

You couldn’t understand this work by reading about it.

You had to have dirt under your nails and calluses on your hands. You had to have blood soaked into the dirt and sweat soaked into every fence post.

He had inherited this place at eighteen. He’d made his mistakes. One rash mistake he’d paid for, for years on end, and he’d learned. You didn’t make deals in haste.

But this... This was a deal he wasn’t going to make. Not with a Four Corners person, and most especially not with a Sullivan.

That road she wanted to have people—strangers—driving on wound around the mountain, and to a quiet spot with a big oak tree. Under that tree, his parents were buried. Well, it was where their ashes were, anyway. And it was where he sat and talked to them, even now.

There was no way in hell he was allowing an influx of people onto that road, no matter how fast Quinn Sullivan tried to talk her way into it.

But she wasn’t his problem. Not now.

He had much bigger issues, like what Camilla had told him over pizza the other night. It was unexpected, and he was unhappy about it. She hadn’t worked so hard to get into school just to come back because she was worried about him. He had thought that maybe it wasn’t the best idea for her to come for spring break, and he’d been right about that. Because she had taken a look at the state of the house and him, and decided that he wasn’t coping with an empty nest.

And no amount of him telling her he had been waiting for an empty nest for the past fifteen years had done any good.

His sister was the baby. And she meant well.

They all meant well.

Jessie meant well...and she was off with Damien now, his best friend turned brother-in-law, and that had been up there on the most shocking things that had happened to him in his life.

Dylan had joined the military—Lord Almighty, Levi would never be okay with that—and was deployed again.

Camilla shouldn’t be considering coming home. Not when she had a whole life, a whole future out there for herself.

But it was the strangest thing. The way that you could take care of three people for that many years, and somehow, the minute they get grown they think they have to take care of you.

Levi never wanted to have kids. He had raised plenty enough of them already. And anyway, he figured he didn’t need to have any, because this was what it was like. You finally got them out of your house, and they came back, and they acted like they knew more than you.

That did remind him of Quinn Sullivan. Making suggestions on how he might cut a log. The girl didn’t look like she was strong enough to lift an axe. She had looked petite and fragile today. Wearing a floral dress with her strawberry-colored hair blowing in the breeze. He would’ve laughed at her if he weren’t so nice.

Okay, he had laughed at her, but just the once.

But she was ridiculous.

And he wasn’t all that nice.

He walked up the side of the mountain, the most direct path to the main house. He could have driven, and he could’ve taken a path, but Levi liked to do things direct.

The new house had been finished just a few years ago. The final stage in his parents’ dream that they hadn’t been able to see come to fruition. When they’d died, they’d all been living in that cabin down by the highway, because there had been a bigger house under construction for them. It had taken years for it to get finished without them. Insurance money had helped see it through—that and the deal he’d struck at eighteen that had been...well, it hadn’t been the best decision, but it had gotten them through and it was up now anyway. Well, all that and dogged determination on Levi’s part. But that house had never been intended to be the final one. They’d had another set of plans, and really just out of a desire to see their dreams finished, Levi had gone and built that next one. Even though he lived in it mostly alone now.

And the house wasn’t the only thing that needed finishing. Because Camilla needed to go out and get on with her life. Then things would feel finished.

Finally.

When he pushed the door open, his sister was literally on her hands and knees in the entryway scrubbing at a muddy boot print.

“What are you doing?”

“This place is a mess. Levi, you don’t do well when you don’t have people that you’re responsible for.”

“Excuse me. I don’t think you get to tell me what I’m doing well.”

“I call it like I see it.” She pushed a mop of blond hair out of her face and looked at him with furious blue eyes that reminded him far too much of his own. She was stubborn. And he knew he couldn’t come at her from the front. That was the thing with them. They proved that there was a fair amount of nature inherent in a person’s behavior. Because the Grangers were stubborn. All of them. Down to their cores.

“Well, did you see fit to call that I might need some lunch?”

“You have food in the fridge.”

“So you’re only taking care of me to the degree that you want to.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Have mercy. Child, you have to go back to school.”

“Levi...”

“Has it occurred to you that I might actually want some time alone?”

“It actually did. But I expected to come back and see that you were...I don’t know...doing something. You did so much for us, Levi. You do so much for us. And I thought that maybe once all the kids were out of the house you might...move toward having a life.”

He had no idea what his sister was talking about. He got up every day and he worked the land. There was no other life. No other life that he wanted, no other life that he had ever dreamed of. And all right, the case could be made for the fact that he simply didn’t have dreams. But when you were a seventeen-year-old kid who lost both parents to separate tragedies in less than a year, you kind of quit having dreams. You just focused on what you could do. On raising the kids that were left behind. That was what he’d done. He’d made the land his own, and he had used it to sustain them.

There wasn’t more. Not for him. And he was fine with that.

“You don’t know what all I do with my time.”

“You haven’t done anything with it except work in the time that I’ve been back home.”

“Maybe I have a different life when you aren’t here.”

There was some truth to that. He wasn’t exactly having a thriving sex life in full view of his siblings.

That, he did on his own time.

But he assumed she didn’t mean that, either.

He was happy to pretend she didn’t have a sex life, and he imagined that was mutual.

“You need someone to take care of you.” She sounded like a little hen. Cluck cluck cluck.

What was with women who had to be more than ten years younger than him thinking they knew better than him today?

And he thought of the little redhead that had appeared in his driveway earlier. “I’m fine, Camilla.”

“Are you really?”

“Yes, I am.”

She frowned. “What about all your records? Are you set to do taxes this year?”

“I’m hiring someone. And anyway, I can handle that on my own.”

He knew well enough now to know to hire out when he needed it. He was good at working the land. Paperwork? Well. Part of being in charge was knowing your strengths. He knew his. They weren’t paperwork, and that was fine.

“I worry about you,” she pushed.

“Well, don’t. I’m a grown adult, and I took care of you for your whole snot-nosed life.”

“You’re the epitome of an isolated mountain man. You haven’t shaved. The contents of your fridge—while plentiful—are not healthy. You basically live the life of a hermit. I don’t want that for you.”

He looked at his sister, the world feeling tilted. He had spent so many years worrying about her. And he was grousing about her acting like she suddenly knew more than him, but there was more than that. She was worried. Worried in the way that he worried about her. While she was away, he was concerned about everything. Boys taking advantage of her at parties, putting something in her drink. Her feeling stressed about her grades. Her having issues with friends. It was a constant turn of concern. But the idea that she was actually worrying about him while she was supposed to be taking care of herself... “Yeah. I...I am. I’m actually... Camilla, I want you to go back to school and not worry about me, in part because I’m in the middle of changing some things.”

“You are?”

And he thought about Quinn again, and the fact that she needed him. And Lord help him, he didn’t want to get involved with a Sullivan in any regard.

But since the Sullivan had involved herself with him...

Maybe he could use that.

He could consider it back pay from the Sullivan family.

“Yeah. I have some new plans on the horizon. Someone coming in to help manage some things. Don’t even worry about it.”

All he needed was for Quinn to show off that binder and get Camilla on her way.

And then he could get her out of his hair.

That did not mean he was agreeing to the easement, though.

He’d already lost some of the land’s integrity because of a hasty choice he’d made at eighteen to trust the wrong person. He wasn’t making the same mistake again.