Chapter Three #4
“This is the man who almost ran me off the road,” she said. She heard the whine in her voice, and even she was annoyed by it.
“Still driving like a bat outta hell, huh, Jace?” Brad asked. They all laughed, and once again, Aurelie was dismissed.
“Grab another glass, will you, Aury?” Paige asked. Aurelie, stunned silent, nodded. Dismissed indeed.
“Grab a glass of wine for the handsome stranger,” Aurelie sang to herself, mimicking Paige’s high-pitched squeal when she talked about the celebrity.
“Ply him with wine so he can use his gorgeous smile to trick us into giving away our property. He’s just soooo good-looking. He can do whatever he wants!”
“I’m glad you think I’m handsome, but that doesn’t mean I think I can get away with murder or anything.”
Aurelie screamed and dropped a glass, breaking the bowl cleanly in two from the stem.
“What are you doing, sneaking around like that? You could scare someone into a heart attack.”
Aurelie’s blood pounded furiously in her ears, but she couldn’t be entirely sure the palpitations in her chest were from the fright or from his shoulder muscles contracting and pressing against the fabric of his shirt.
She reluctantly pulled her eyes from his body to his face, noting immediately that it didn’t help things.
She didn’t miss the way Jace’s mouth curved down in one corner, the way his eyes looked stung.
She’d wounded him, not the other way around.
“I’m not sneaking around, Aury. I offered to come help you bring everything to the table.” He paused, rubbed his forehead, his other hand on his hip.
“I’m sorry.” She handed him the newly opened bottle and a new glass to go with it.
“You can take these.” Aurelie had never been good at small talk, at the fluff that seemed to sustain most American conversations, and sorely regretted that now.
“If you promise not to treat them the same way you treat that car of yours.”
“Are you always this…” he started.
She turned back and threw him a be careful look.
“Abrupt,” he said, smiling back at her, “with people you don’t know?”
“I am until I have reason not to be.”
“What can I do to give you a good enough reason to like me? I mean, you think I’m attractive, so that’s something, right?
” Her cheeks burned hot with embarrassment.
If there were a tidal wave heading for her, she’d dive straight into it to avoid this man’s piercing wit and gaze that made her feel like she’d come to the party without bothering to get dressed first. In the fright of Jace coming up behind her and her dropping the glass, she’d forgotten that he’d heard what she’d been saying out loud—how much, she wasn’t sure.
She was mortified, but there was no way she was letting him know that.
“You can start by not destroying my friends’ farms.”
He frowned.
“I’m not the villain you think I am. Once upon a time, this was my home, too. It might not be now, but that doesn’t mean I want anything to hurt my former neighbors.”
But he was hurting them, wasn’t he?
Are you sure that’s true? She wasn’t. The evidence stacking up against him was damning, but it could be circumstantial.
Maybe. But not likely.
“Are you staying at your father’s property? To run it?”
He chuckled, though none of this was humorous. “No. That’s not part of the plan. I don’t want to be here any more than you want me here.”
“Then, what is the plan? Because anything other than selling to a rancher means devastation to this place, and—”
He was in her space in a nanosecond, taking up all the air. “I’ll sell to whomever I need to so I can leave as soon as possible, just as you requested. You don’t get to have it both ways, sweetheart.”
She inhaled sharply, a mistake since she also took in the scent of clove and something spicy. It went straight to her bloodstream like a hit of good Caribbean rum.
Even if he wasn’t the man buying the properties, which she still wasn’t sure was the case, he could still offload his father’s ranch—the longest-running ranch on their side of the Rockies—to the mystery mogul. She couldn’t let that happen.
“If you’re not going to listen to reason, then you need to leave.”
He shrugged, taking the wineglasses from her hand and walking out. His hand brushed her hip as he navigated around her. Her skin burned underneath his hand, and bolts of electricity shot out from that epicenter. She shuddered, unsure of what to make of that development.
“You didn’t invite me; Paige did. So, like it or not, I’m staying tonight. Maybe that’ll give you some time to actually conjure up some of that reason you’re on about.”
Aurelie’s jaw fell open as she stood alone in the space. The nerve.
She followed him out, confused as ever. For the life of her, she couldn’t get a read on the man.
“Welcome back, brother,” Brad said.
“Glad to be back to see you guys at least.”
“So, what brings you back to town?” Aurelie asked.
“Don’t badger him, Aury. He just got here. At one point in time, Jace was family.”
Yes, but since Aurelie had never so much as heard his name outside a movie theater, that time was in the distant past.
Owen pulled from his beer, giving the impression he was as wary of the newcomer as she was. He’d talked to her about his military training, and the sixth sense he’d garnered during his time with the Marines. Good. She’d need an ally when she confronted Jace about his plans for the ranch.
“I dunno,” Aurelie continued. “I know you’re here to settle your dad’s estate, but aren’t there people you can hire for that since, as you said, you don’t want to be here anyway?” She conveniently ignored the consternation emanating from Paige in waves.
Just wait, she wanted to tell her friend. You’ll see.
Jace raised a brow at her, frustration tugging the edge of his lips.
“I actually came to say goodbye. Yeah, I could have hired this out, but my dad’s property deserved more than a stranger offloading it.”
“Sounds like a well-rehearsed and acted speech,” she said.
Paige gave a frustrated sigh. “Aurelie, so help me—”
“No! You guys don’t understand.” She fished the papers out of the bag she’d brought and handed them over. “You may have known this guy when he was younger, but what do you know about him now?
“Hank Michaels just gave me some of his furniture last month and pretended everything was okay. Then I read this.” She pointed accusingly at Jace, her hand shaking.
“There were construction supplies all over his property. Do you think your lives, your farms, are going to stay the same when he starts construction? Do you think he will stop at just the Michaels’s property? ”
Jace was staring at Aurelie like he’d just learned she came from another planet.
His jaw was open, his eyes wide and full of surprise.
Any inclination she had that she’d hurt him earlier was nothing compared to the look he gave her now.
She’d shattered his veneer, and not in the way she’d expected.
Something in his eyes reached her in a way his words hadn’t.
Why did she feel like she was dead wrong all of a sudden? Like everything she thought she knew was a lie?
Paige glanced between her best friend and Jace.
The room fell into a strained silence as Paige and Sophie read over the gossip paper and the men pored over the Banberry Times; even the soft murmurs from Maddie were hushed.
Jace took both when they were done, his lips parted in what appeared to be genuine surprise.
“Is this you?” Paige asked Jace.
“No. No, it’s not.” The but hung in the air, unspoken. He’d already told Aurelie he’d sell to whomever he needed to in order to leave as soon as possible and get back to his life in Hollywood.
“Aurelie, is there truth to this?” Paige asked, her voice almost a whisper. The whole room held Aurelie’s gaze, expectant. She nodded.
“It seems like it.”
Paige wheeled on Jace. “Tell me what the hell is going on. Right now. If it’s not you, would you sell to this…this stranger?” Owen’s fists clenched, as did Brad’s jaw.
“I’ll make whatever deal I need to so I can close this out,” he said. “You know me. I value this land and what y’all are trying to do here, but I can’t afford to be picky if it means being stuck up here for months. My home is in California now.”
The room filled with tension, and Aurelie should have felt pride with the win. She’d saved the day, hadn’t she? So, why did this feel wrong?
Jace, serious again, put a hand on her arm, and she didn’t have the willpower to remove it. His hand was both rough and tender.
“Again, I’m sorry about earlier. I’ve already called the studio that loaned me the car—it was a surprise to me, by the way—and told them to trade it for a truck.
” He chuckled, his voice wavering, then squeezed Aurelie’s arm as he said the last part.
Her body erupted in flames that would burn her if she allowed herself to indulge in them too long.
What did that mean? What was he trying to tell her that he couldn’t just say?
“And I’m sorry to all of you that someone seems to have their sights set on Banberry.
This place is special and doesn’t deserve the same fate as Yellowstone. ”
Another but hung between them.
“I should go,” he said.
He put his drink down so softly it didn’t make a sound in the otherwise vacuum of a room that all the air had been sucked out of.
The only noise was that of his boots on the wood floors echoing off the vaulted ceilings as he made his way to the door, opened it, and shut it as quietly as if it were made of fleece.
A sharp, cool breeze that slapped Aurelie square across the face was the only evidence that the door had even opened, that Jace had ever been there.
That and the half-empty bottle that sat sweating a ring of moisture on the dining room counter, a talisman left behind.
The room remained frozen until Aurelie coughed, something invisible stuck in her throat.
“I think we should cancel dinner,” Paige said. “Give Owen and me time to think this through.”
“I’d like to stay, figure out if we can afford to pool our income and buy the ranch before he sells it to that asshole in the paper,” Brad said.
They all looked at Aurelie, who took a beat too long to figure out what they meant. They wanted her to leave.
“Oh,” was all she got out. That’s what she got for bringing this to their attention: being shown the door along with the other interloper to Banberry.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Paige said. “Sorry, Aurelie. This will just be easier if we have the stakeholders to figure out a plan.”
Aurelie nodded, stunned silent for the first time in her life. She left the same way Jace had, as shocked by the turn of events as he likely was. She’d never felt like such an outsider, and anger mixed with grief swirled in her stomach, making her feel ill.
She made her way up the stairs to the welcome warmth of her apartment and stood in her small living room, breathing in the memories that littered her walls in frames.
Paige and her on the beach, mid-laugh, arms wrapped around each other, drinks in coconuts in their hands.
She, Paige, and Owen at their wedding, him gazing at his bride with a smile that proved how deeply he felt for her.
There was one from Maddie’s birth, the small newborn naked on her mother’s bare chest, Aurelie looking on from behind them, Owen and Brad smiling at the whole group at the edge of the photo.
Every one of the moments that had meant something to Aurelie in the past four years involved Paige and her family.
She’d been hurt by them tonight—Paige the most—in their rejection.
Worse was the knowledge that she might not be given the time to make things right before she was shoved out of Banberry and back to the island she’d fled.
She stripped where she was, left her clothes in a pile at her feet—a deviation from her usual strict attention to cleanliness and care for her well-loved fashion—and went to her room, climbed under the down comforter, put her head to the pillow, and sobbed.
Tomorrow usually hung on the horizon as a beacon, a chance to start over, but tonight, as her brain replayed each crappy moment since coming home from shopping that afternoon, she wasn’t looking forward to whatever awaited her when the sun rose again.
She slept soundly, dreams of floating back on the tide to her island soothing her aching heart, calling her home.
Maybe she’d left prematurely, her dream-self thought, guiding her through the cerulean waters and white sand littered with conch and starfish, a path to her childhood home spread before her like a bounty of love and welcoming.
Maybe she was made for the sea, for the cleansing salt waters that surrounded her, not the rugged peaks that called out her flaws, made her feel looked down upon.
These thoughts guided Aurelie toward the next day, her mind made up. She was heading home to face her father, no matter what Dr. Roberts had to say. She’d face her father and her fate with the strength she’d built in Banberry.
The question remained, though, would they even notice if she left?