The Rival

Chapter Eight

THEAFTERNOONSUNwas high, and it was warm. He knew he was being mean by keeping her out this long without stopping for food. He did have water bottles in the truck, and he had made sure that she was hydrated. He didn’t need her turning into a little ginger raisin on his watch.

He was beginning to get concerned that she might burn. She had brought a hat, but she was just so stinking pale.

He shouldn’t care. And he shouldn’t be transfixed by that near-translucent skin, or her freckles.

Dammit.

“Did you put on some sunblock?” he asked.

“Of course I did,” she said. “I’m a redhead.”

He could see that she was doing her best to not punch him in the face, and that it was a battle she had come close to losing on a few occasions.

The more of an ass he was, the more she tried to be calm, and that just seemed to make him want to push her harder.

“I’m not sure what I’m dealing with here,” he said. “I felt like I needed to make sure. I don’t want you broiling on my watch.”

Her eyes glittered like green beetles. “I don’t even need a college degree to know that I need to wear sunblock if I’m going to so much as even smell a ray of sunshine.”

“Well, at least you have some kind of practical knowledge.”

She looked up at him, staring hard. Her eyes were clear and green, and the freckles across her nose were arrayed in a scattershot pattern.

She was pissed.

And she really was very cute. Even in the work boots.

The work boots themselves weren’t cute. It was just that she stomped around in them like she was a six-foot-six lumberjack, and there was something about that which he found sort of charming.

Even if he shouldn’t.

As mad as she was at him now, she’d been furious at him this morning. And he wasn’t all that thrilled that he’d been caught in his subterfuge. Nor was he very happy with himself that he’d entrenched in the lie that Quinn was consulting him about anything.

Because now Camilla had a name. And now Quinn knew his weak spot.

Though she had seemed more helpful than conniving on the drive over. They hadn’t talked much while they worked on the fence.

He didn’t know the Sullivans. That was the problem.

The people at Four Corners had a decent reputation, but the Pyrite Falls folks who weren’t part of the outfit definitely viewed them with a mix of suspicion and respect. And, of course, they made fun of them. The Four Corners ranchers were a big-ass collective. They had a lot of power in the area, and as one of the few ranchers who wasn’t part of that massive operation in this area, he felt a little uneasy about joining up with them in any way. Because if things went awry, they had each other, and what did he have?

He was paranoid. He had every right to be.

If a man didn’t learn from his mistakes, then he was no kind of man.

He truly believed that.

So, he was learning from them. Because it was the only thing to do. And that meant being cautious when it came to making this deal.

He didn’t know how much traffic it was going to bring through the land, and there were other variables. And he liked to be certain now.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s stop and get some food.”

“I’m fine,” she said, looking all dirty, sweaty and determined.

“No. You need to get some food. I’m not letting you go pretending I’m some kind of tyrant.”

Well. He was kind of a tyrant sometimes. But he didn’t starve tiny women. That was a hard line, even for him.

“Let’s go have lunch at Becky’s.”

“Oh, that’s really not necessary,” she said. “I’d be totally fine with some cheese or bread or...”

And the more she protested, the more he felt like digging in.

“I’m not having you drop dead on my land, Miss Sullivan. If you ever want to be let back here again, we’re going to lunch now, and it’s my treat.”

“Well, thanks.” She looked at him with a very bland expression on her face.

She was mad. Mad mad.

He was beginning to recognize that the blander she appeared, the more she was seething.

He urged her into the truck and drove across the field, back toward the road that would take them out to the main highway.

“So you’ve been in charge of the ranch since you were eighteen?” she pressed.

He turned out onto the highway and kept his eyes fixed on a pine tree at the first curve in the road. “Yep.”

“That must’ve been really difficult.”

He never talked about this. There was no point. He wasn’t a big talker, never had been. He hadn’t had a lot of friends growing up, or in his whole life. He’d had Damien, who had been there every step of the way, so there had never been anything to explain.

When it came to women...

He didn’t do the talking thing.

He couldn’t remember if anyone had ever asked him something like this before. Conversational, but digging into his past. Into him.

“Think you ought to get to know the devil a little better?” he asked.

“No. I just... I’m curious. When you did that deal with my dad, I was so young. I remember you coming by the house but of course we never...”

He looked over at her and she turned pink. Interesting.

“I never got to know you.”

“Not surprising. You Four Corners people keep to your own. You’re kind of snobby.”

“No, we aren’t,” she said, and now she was pink because she was mad. “We are a huge community filled with people who love ranching and the land, and we have barn parties every month after our town hall meetings and...”

“For the people who work on your ranch. You’re like a club that nobody else can get into. That’s fine. But you have to know that you’re a little bit...insulated. Plus, very few other places around here have your land and your earning capabilities. Land is the most valuable thing you can have.”

“Well, it can be a little bit of an albatross, too, believe me. The work that we’ve had to do to make Sullivan’s as profitable as everybody else’s plot is pretty intense. It is a hell of a lot of work. We’re all sisters. We had to get creative. Everybody has hired ranch hands—that isn’t the thing. It’s just that when it comes to the McClouds... You have five men who can contribute to the heavy lifting. That’s just a whole lot of manpower that you aren’t paying hourly. The Kings have four. The Garretts only have two, but still. We wanted something that we could do. Practically. We’ve been creative with leasing fields, with planting... And the farm store is part of that. It’s diversification, which is good for the whole endeavor, but also for us specifically. We needed to provide something that only we could provide. You doing beef is a great example of that. You’re a smaller operation and are focusing on premium product rather than simply producing volume.”

That made him feel unexpectedly sympathetic to her. He hadn’t thought about how the Four Corners crew might still have to negotiate things individually. He hadn’t realized what it meant to be the Sullivan sisters. It reminded him a lot of the kinds of bargains he’d had to make in order for ranching to be profitable.

He didn’t want to relate to her.

“Are you saying that the beef ranchers on Four Corners are just producing volume?” he asked.

“No. Not at all. They have great stuff. I am just saying that it’s more accessible. And yours is premium.”

He looked at her, lifting a brow. “Are you saying my beef is premium?”

Better to make a joke than feel empathy for her. Better to defuse the moment.

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Then opened it again. “I... You mean the cows, right?”

“What else could I have possibly meant?”

Her cheeks were pink, and he was fascinated by the way her freckles faded when she was pink. “Right. Okay. But my point stands. It isn’t actually that unusual for people about town to not know you all.”

She frowned, and he could see that she had never considered this. But then, he didn’t see why she would. So many people worked at Four Corners Ranch. They must have over a hundred employees. They were a huge percentage of the population of the town. Many of them lived on the property. Kids went to school on the property. They must feel entrenched and enmeshed in the community. It was just that they, of course, so rarely left their own little pocket that they didn’t ever look up and see all the strangers.

“Well, I just think that’s an assumption,” she said. “We would all be very open to socializing if anybody wanted to.”

“You’re a ranching gang,” he said.

“I just don’t agree.” She was on the verge of sputtering. “I... It’s not like I get along with everyone because I live there.”

“Really?” he asked.

“No.” She let out a harsh breath. “Look, the idea you’re excluded because you aren’t Four Corners people indicates you’d be included just because you are. And no. That isn’t true. I didn’t have friends growing up on the ranch. For years all I wanted to do was please my dad and then...well, later, my temper caused all kinds of...issues.”

“Can’t imagine why.” He looked at her, and he tried not to feel sorry for the image her confession conjured up in his mind. Of young Quinn living on that ranch without any friends. “You rolled up onto my land and talked down to me, so I can see why maybe people find you an acquired taste.”

“I did not talk down to you. I’m confident, Levi, and it is not my fault if men perceive confidence in women to be a threat.” She snorted. “I mean, ask yourself if Sawyer or Denver or Gus have friends. They do. Are they any nicer than me?”

“I don’t think Denver King has friends,” he pointed out. “And anyway, did you meet my sister this morning? And I know you haven’t met my sister Jessie, but believe me when I tell you, I am very comfortable with confident women. You, Miss Sullivan, were being kind of a dick.”

She sputtered again, and he took great joy in that, even as they rolled into the main drag of Pyrite Falls, and he pulled directly into the small parking lot of the ramshackle wooden building that housed Becky’s diner.

“I have been very nice!” she protested.

“Oh, really?”

He killed the engine and got out of the truck, and he heard the passenger door slam a few seconds later. She was huffing and stomping in those boots again. “I was not a... I was not a dick.”

“Oh, you didn’t take one look at me and what you assumed was my situation and me beneath you?”

“I did no such thing.”

“Then how come you assumed that the cabin was my house?”

“It appeared to be.”

“And if it were, would that make you better than me?” he pressed.

Because, again, it was better than feeling bad for her.

“No. There is no shame in...” She scrunched up her face and he thought she might be praying. Or she was doing some kind of breathing or counting exercise. “No. It isn’t about being better. It’s about seeing the resources that you had and wanting to make sure that you were doing the most with them that you could.”

He could see that he had really riled her. He wanted to chase that because she had no right. No right at all to come onto his land, knowing nothing about him, about his life, and just deciding she knew best...

He couldn’t stand that.

She could leave anytime. She didn’t need to keep on trying this, and he didn’t have to treat her nicely. She didn’t have to be here.

You’re feeding her lunch...

Because starving her was a bridge too far; he’d covered that already.

Also, caregiver habits died hard. He hadn’t always wanted to care for his siblings, either. He’d literally raised Camilla from the time she was two. It had been hard. He hadn’t enjoyed every moment of it.

He’d had to take their grief and walk them through it, while he stumbled through his own darkness blindly. He’d seen his brother through teenage heartbreak, when he’d never had time to experience his own. He’d walked his sisters through puberty, when he’d known sweet fuck-all about how to handle all that, but he’d learned.

Pads, tampons and Midol for cramps? He was a pro at providing whatever they needed.

He’d become their mom and their dad before he’d become a whole person himself.

He was good at caregiving. Sweet little else.

In some ways, they’d passed him up. Because he’d never really learned how to live life as a whole adult.

He’d felt like he was running with a gun to his back, for years. With someone snarling in his ear: don’t stop or everything falls apart.

He’d never stopped to take a breath. He’d grieved while learning to run a ranch, while taking care of his siblings. He’d let go of any aspirations he’d had outside the ranch, any dream that wasn’t what was right in front of him, because there had constantly been fires to put out. So you couldn’t look ahead, not any further than the immediate path in front of you.

He’d wanted to be in the rodeo so damned bad. He’d had a gift for it. It was the thing that had sustained him while he was trapped in classrooms wishing he could be outdoors more than anything.

He’d have been good at it. Better than managing a ranching spread. But in the end, it hadn’t been a choice. In the end, he’d had to give everything of himself over to that place.

And he could never, ever stop moving. Not to catch his breath. Not to shed a tear.

He didn’t resent it—it was how life had gone. What could you do?

It had made him who he was.

He was a parent, in every way that mattered, and he couldn’t just not...

He took care of people, even if angrily. It was kind of his brand.

“You think that you’re smarter than me because you went to college,” he said flat out, because he might as well make her say it.

“I think...” And she was squinting again and trying very hard not to confirm that, but the thing was, he was fairly certain it was true, and he was 100 percent right about her.

He waited a good while, and she didn’t continue her sentence. “What is it you think, Miss Sullivan?” He kept his voice low and measured on purpose.

“I think,” she started, “that I worked very hard to get myself to college because I valued it.”

“And you think that somebody who didn’t go didn’t work hard?”

She sputtered. “No. I think perhaps we had a different value system.”

“And what do you suppose my value system is? Beer and tits?”

“I didn’t say that,” she said, turning the color of a lush, ripe strawberry.

In a perfect world, those would in fact be his priorities. But his world had never been perfect. He’d prioritized taking care of his ranch and taking care of his family over anything that he might want to do.

That seemed to be what Quinn Sullivan didn’t understand. It was all fine and good for some to be able to do whatever the hell they wanted. Not that he would’ve chosen that anyway. It was just different worlds. Different philosophies. They didn’t see eye to eye, and they wouldn’t.

But he was bound and determined to force her to admit that she was a snob. That she had judged him. He didn’t really know why. Well. Yeah. He did. Because all fine for her to have the life she did, and pass judgment on his.

He was in danger of letting her become emblematic of a whole system he wanted to rail against. One he’d always been angry about, but was even angrier about it as time went on and he...

He’d had to be there for everyone else. No one had really been there for him.

Any fixing he’d done, he’d done on his own. And still, he got treated like he was less.

Wow. What a whiny-ass thing to think.

He didn’t often indulge in self-pity, but for some reason, all this stuff with Quinn had a way of pushing him that direction.

They walked into the diner, and Sarah, the normal hostess, was standing there with a pen behind her ear and an apron tied around her thick waist.

“Hi there, Levi,” she said. “Usual table?” She looked over at Quinn and frowned.

It was obvious to him that she had thoughts on his appearance with a Sullivan. But she wasn’t going to speak them out loud.

Probably only because she didn’t know Quinn well enough to do it.

She would normally have no compunction about scolding him.

He had not been insulated by a whole big ranch. He had been insulated by the town. When his parents died, there had been a whole lot of adults around these parts that had taken care with them. Took an interest in them. And nobody could carry the weight for Levi, but there had been support.

People had lent a hand. Women had come by with casseroles. Sarah among them.

“You having your usual?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Coke?”

He nodded at that, too.

She looked at Quinn expectantly. “I’m not... Can I see a menu?”

Sarah shook her head, but fished a menu out of the pocket of her apron. And while they walked over to the table, Quinn reviewed it quickly. “I’ll have the Caesar salad. And iced tea?”

“You don’t eat here very often?” he asked after they were seated.

“Is it that obvious?” she asked.

“Sarah, please get Quinn a Legend Burger. She doesn’t want the Caesar salad.”

“Excuse me?” Quinn asked, even as Sarah walked off without a word. “You don’t get to decide what I want. Maybe I’m a vegetarian.”

Well, that would be a hat trick. A little ranching expert who lived on the land producing the most beef in the area being a vegetarian.

“Are you?”

“No. But that’s beside the point. What if I have a gluten allergy?” she asked.

Another hat trick, considering she and her sisters provided most of the baked goods for the area and he couldn’t remember a preponderance of them being labeled as gluten free.

“Do you?” he asked.

“No,”she said. “But maybe I wanted a salad.”

“I’m not saying that you didn’t want a salad, but what I’m confident in is that you don’t want this salad. It’s a Caesar salad, but only in name. It is chunks of iceberg lettuce, thick pieces of purple cabbage, and it comes out of the bag that may or may not be as old as my kid sister. You don’t want it.”

She practically hissed like a mad cat. “It said Caesar salad.”

“I am pretty sure they put ranch on it.”

“You come here a lot, then,” she grumbled.

“I do. And the Legend Burger is good. Do you even know what it is?”

She frowned. “No.”

“It’s named after Gideon Payne. You remember Gideon.”

“Who doesn’t? He set every football record for the county back in high school. I don’t even care about football, or Mapleton High, and even I know that. They gave him a whole parade when he left to join the military. Plus, he’s my sister Rory’s best friend’s older brother.”

“Lord. That’s a mouthful.”

“It kind of is. But what is the burger, other than named after Gideon?”

“It has barbecue sauce and onion straws and it’s excellent. The stew is also good. The pie is damned good. Don’t get fancy. There are some things on that menu that shouldn’t be there. It’s to suggest variety. Don’t mess with variety at a small-town roadside diner. Unless it’s for some reason a weird special that is much lauded by the locals.”

“I actually do live here,” she said.

“But you don’t eat here.”

“No. But it’s because we all do a lot of cooking. So we don’t really have occasion to.” She put her little nose in the air when she said that and he wondered if she had any idea how snooty she looked. He shouldn’t be remotely charmed by it.

Much like the socks.

Those damned socks.

“So don’t presume to be an expert,” he said. “You think you’re an expert on just about everything, don’t you?”

“And you are pretty much bound and determined to twist everything to suit your narrative. The fact that I believe I’m an expert on what I want to eat is not arrogance, Levi Granger.”

“The fact that you think you’re a better expert on the menu than I am is, though.”

She scrunched her nose and bit her lip, and her cheeks turned pink. Like she was trying to hold back words with all her might.

And he could see the moment she lost the battle.

“You are a hardheaded pig,” she said.

He’d done it. He’d broken her.

“Wow,” he said, drawing the word out. “So this is where our business partnership is going to go.”

“We don’t have a business partnership. Because you’re asking me to jump through all these hoops for you and you’ve offered me nothing in return.”

“You’re pretty feisty.”

“I am when I have to be.”

She was fascinating. Feral and a bit mean, but she sure as hell tried to cover it. She inherently thought she was better than him, and she tried to cover that, too.

She reminded him of...

Not of him. Not totally. Except she seemed wounded. That was the truth of it. A feral animal tended to be yet more feral when it was injured.

He knew that well.

He should hate her, and he found himself more interested in poking at her than getting rid of her altogether, and maybe that was a side effect of having not had this kind of experience before.

He hooked up. But he had never been one to have a relationship. It just wasn’t possible. Not with his life. He had to either be ready to get himself a ranch wife, or he just had to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. He had never seen a way to have anything in between. Not while working the land and taking care of his siblings. And it had definitely crossed his mind that there would be something to getting himself a wife.

But then he just...couldn’t. He could never get himself past that initial thought.

He just couldn’t see depending on anyone. It was better, way better, to handle it all himself.

It just made more sense.

Because you couldn’t depend on people. In that, he agreed with Quinn, but it was perhaps not exactly the same bent.

Things happened that were beyond people’s control. Those structures that people counted on, that nuclear family, their parents...

For him, it had disintegrated. Not because his parents weren’t good people. They had been.

His dad had been a great man. He had loved deeply. Too deeply.

When his wife had died, his heart had given out.

Levi would never be able to believe that the two things weren’t connected. Broken-heart syndrome, he was sure of it.

The fact that he had a heart attack less than a year after his wife had passed...

It was a thing. He knew it was. Levi had watched his dad fade. Turn gray, his weight going down, every bit of responsibility he carried clearly costing him more.

Levi had started picking up more and more in that year. Trying to do some of the work his dad struggled to do. Wishing he could do something with the business end but being utterly baffled by it all. Knowing the finances were slipping and not knowing how to fix it.

One thing Levi had known was that he could never do that to himself.

It wasn’t an issue for him at this point. He couldn’t fathom having the time, energy or trust to begin to fall in love, and even if he could... Well, Levi wasn’t here to die of a broken heart.

Better to never let your heart get that involved.

The truth was, he already had too many liabilities in his life. His brother joining the military...

That killed him. He never wanted him to know that he spent his waking hours in a state of anxiety when his brother was deployed, but it was the truth.

When Camilla had gone off to college, it had been the strangest thing. He’d been glad. It had been the moment he’d been waiting for.

When she’d gone, he’d felt a lot like he’d lost a limb.

And Jessie, who had been there all along, when she had moved away with Damien, even that had been difficult. And he wanted her to have it. But that didn’t make it easy.

He was, in many ways, a parent. It was all a bit much. He didn’t need any more. And so, he had decided to forgo the ranch-wife route.

He’d raised his kids anyway, so to speak. He didn’t want to do all that again, either.

He didn’t want to create more people to love. More people he could lose.

He was great with chatting up women in a certain way. He didn’t do it all that often. He was busy. He was a rancher, and he had to get up early. Plus, he had various siblings in and out of the house, and he had never believed in bringing women back where they could see.

Except the first time. A girl he knew from school had come by to visit and bring cookies, and she’d given him sympathy and a kiss, and one thing had led to another. It had been a godsend in some ways. Because right then it had felt like time was slipping through his fingers because God knew who might drop dead next.

He’d been filled with the need to go quickly then.

Sign a contract quickly with a factory farm.

Take the pity sex on offer when it turned up.

He didn’t regret that. Because in the years after, sex had been scarce.

As the kids had gotten older and they were able to be alone into the wee hours of the morning, he’d taken his women to a motel after meeting them in a bar.

Now, with Camilla out of the house, he supposed he could...

He never did, though. Because it felt weird.

Motels were fine.

But yeah. Actual conversation with women, he wasn’t all that well-versed in. She was...irritating. Compelling.

Once he had started getting her goat a little bit, he had really gone in for it. It was like he hadn’t been able to help himself. But then, she was picking at a scab of his. So it seemed fair.

“Hey, Levi.”

He turned and saw Dave Calhoun, and gave him a half wave.

“Hey, yourself.”

“Granger.”

He gave a half wave to Jaime Lopez as well, and to Jeff Carmichael, Alan Gutierrez and some other men he knew from the Huckleberry County Ranching Association.

“So everybody knows you,” said Quinn.

“Yeah.”

“I guess I take your point about the Four Corners folk. Because I don’t know any of them.”

“Listen, you just keep to your own. Granted, your own is big. You guys are basically half the town.”

“Yes. But does everybody see it as us versus the rest of them?”

“Whether you want to believe it or not, it’s not perspective so much as reality. Anybody in ranching has to compete with y’all. And it isn’t easy. You have collective money that the rest of us don’t have. You have ways of covering each other, helping each other, that we don’t.”

“If we’re using an easement on your property, it seems like we need to maybe offer you a little bit more.”

He frowned. “I have no desire to be absorbed into Four Corners.”

“That isn’t what I mean. I just mean that maybe you’re right. You should get some compensation. After all, land is important. And if we’re using your land...”

“I am aware of how important land is.”

He was land rich before he was anything else. Now. The contracts he’d signed that had kept his fields tied up for all those years had taken these last five years to begin to result in riches for him. He’d hog-tied himself back then, and he wouldn’t do it again.

He’d also been the subject of suspicion for that deal. The factory-farm angle plus the Four Corners connection hadn’t made him popular.

He didn’t relish stepping back into that space.

She had no idea what she was saying when she made statements like that. No idea who she was lecturing.

“I worked hard for you today and I am willing to continue to work hard to show you that I’m genuine, and that I know what I’m talking about. And that even if I’m from Four Corners, our desire to ranch right does extend to our neighbors.”

She looked down. “Does this have something to do with my dad?”

He snorted. “What do you know about all that?”

“Not everything. But you could tell me...”

“No need to discuss it.” He didn’t like talking about it. It still made him feel all the old feelings. The ones he never needed to revisit.

“Do you think I was thrilled that he left?” she asked. “I have my own issues with my dad. You aren’t going to offend me. Or shock me.”

He shook his head slowly. “I’m not interested in having the discussion.”

“If you won’t discuss it, then how do I understand? My dad aside, what could Four Corners do, what could they have done, to make people trust us?”

Nothing. That was the truth. He’d been too mired in his own stuff to really give a shit about the giant ranching collective next door, and he wasn’t overly concerned with them now. His niche was his, and it worked well for him.

But he’d worked hard to get here, and he had reservations about making changes again.

“I can work,” she said. “I can give you a whole week’s worth of work. I can give you whatever you need, but my sisters and I have worked so hard for this, and I don’t want it to fail because our customers don’t want to drive eight miles on a dirt road to get to the store, and I don’t want to fail because a bunch of crusty men at the county think they know what’s best. And I really, really don’t want to fail because my dad doesn’t have the same level of integrity I do.”

“Maybe you should apply for work at the county,” he said, and he was half-sincere.

“Conflict of interest, plus I have a job. It’s at my ranch, on my land. You understand that—I know you do. This life chooses you. And I went out and I made myself as qualified as I could, but this is... This is escaping me. I learned all of these things and now I’m having to ask a bunch of men for permission for my business to succeed, and I hate it. So I’ll work for you. I’ll show up every day. I’ll sort through your paperwork, do anything for your business I... I know I can help you and I know we can make this work, and I know I can make you trust me.” She took a deep breath and kept on going. “You assumed the worst of me, and that isn’t fair.”

“Guilty by association, I admit it. But also, because you think that you should be allowed to show up and flash your fancy degree and have my trust. That isn’t reasonable, Quinn. The degree means something to you. It means nothing to me. I don’t need a degree to run a ranch.”

She looked down. “Then why...?”

“Here you go, honey,” said Sarah, setting a burger down in front of each of them, along with their drinks and an extra basket of fries.

“Thank you,” said Quinn, just as he nodded and said, “Thanks.”

“Why do you need help with your paperwork, then? If you have it all together.” She took a fry and stuck it in her mouth.

So she was opting to be a brat now that he’d refused to answer her questions. It seemed to be the Quinn Sullivan go-to.

“I don’t care to do my paperwork. It stresses my sister out. She thinks that I leave it too late, and that it’s not as organized as it could be. She’s a control freak, and she’s meddlesome. And that’s all you really need to know about it. Camilla’s anxiety about it is her issue. I said what I did to placate her. I didn’t say it because I needed it.”

“So you’re saying there’s no validity to her concerns?”

“None. Like you, I think she got a little taste of the broader world and thinks she knows better.”

“You don’t think another perspective might be helpful?”

“Not one I didn’t ask for. And I didn’t ask for yours, sweetheart.”

“Okay, maybe I shouldn’t have expected to show up and just have you respect me because I told you I went to college. It’s clear to me that we don’t speak the same language when it comes to education. However, you are being reductive. And you don’t have the right to underestimate me just because my credentials come from a school. And because I’m a woman. And small. Admit it, those things make you skeptical of me.”

He looked at her. He didn’t know how to explain to her that it wasn’t her gender or her size.

It had something to do with those little white socks. And the white shoes.

So he just went ahead and decided to agree. Better to have her think that he was a misogynist than a weird sock fetishist. That wasn’t even what it was. Probably. Maybe.

Hell.

“Yeah. I am,” he said. She angrily took a bite of her hamburger. And he could see her attempting to not respond to how good it was. He felt the corner of his mouth lift up into a smirk. “I told you.”

“Well, I didn’t get to sample the Caesar salad.”

“You’re welcome.”

They ate the rest of the meal in relative silence.

And when they were finished, he paid in spite of her protests.

“Why don’t you call it a day,” he said.

“No,” she said, turning to look up at him. “I won’t.”