Chapter 26
CHARLIE
All at once, I remembered why I’d vowed not to allow myself to fall for someone who worked with me again. Especially not someone in marketing.
They always had an agenda, and it never worked out well for me.
As she and our fathers sat there plotting and smiling, I stewed in quiet rage about these so-called conditions she’d put on her continued representation of the ranch.
Just who the fuck does Olivia Walker think she is, coming in with all these demands? And after not even acknowledging me since the rodeo? It’s outrageous.
Someone seemed to have forgotten that we were the client, and that clients were always right. It wasn’t like we were some small-fry outfit either. Our business—and my family—were worth billions, and I knew that she knew that.
Yet she was treating us—me, specifically—as if she was doing us some huge fucking favor for agreeing to stay on.
She wasn’t doing this for free. Their firm had made a fair amount of money out of us over the years, and their praises were being sung from the rooftops of every ranch across the state after what she’d done for us over just the last week.
Money and notoriety were what she was getting in return for the work she was doing, and it really boggled my mind that neither of those things were enough for her. On the other hand, what really boggled my mind was the fact that all of this had happened literally overnight.
At the rodeo, she’d been my beautiful, warm, sexy cowgirl who’d driven me nuts while we danced and who’d sung along to songs I hadn’t even expected her to know, and now, she was some ice cold New York exec, spouting off conditions to being involved with us at all.
It was unbelievable.
And I couldn’t stand not knowing what had triggered this change in her personality. Clearly, something had tripped a switch in her, but I didn’t have the faintest beginning of a clue what that something had been.
Eventually, Dad and Nathan got to talking and the meeting came to a close. They rose from their seats and left the conference room, laughing about how neither of them had ever found the golf course as attractive as they did now.
London glanced between Olivia and me, promptly gathered her things, and bolted out of the room. She didn’t even say goodbye, just running out like her ass was on fire.
Once she was gone, I expected Olivia to look at me. Now that she had the opportunity, she was going to light into me about whatever I had apparently done wrong, but when that didn’t happen, dread formed a ball in the pit of my stomach.
Liv ignored me. She collected her laptop and some paperwork, shuffling it into neat little piles and slotting it into a folder. She didn’t look at me, didn’t speak to me, and if I didn’t know any better, I would have thought that she’d forgotten I was even here.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I pushed my chair back loudly and looked up at her, my head cocked and my ankle hooking over my knee.
While I was happy to finally have a minute alone with her, I got straight to the point in the hope that we could clear things up before I had to leave.
“So, did you lose your phone at the rodeo?”
She glanced at me, her brilliant green eyes without so much as a flicker of emotion in them and her tone clipped. “I didn’t lose my phone. Just your number.”
My eyebrows shot up. I rose from my seat, my gaze still locked on hers and my chest constricting in the weirdest way. I felt the confusion and hurt on my face, but I didn’t bother trying to hide it. “Am I missing something here, Olivia? I feel like I am.”
Finally, I saw a flicker of my Liv in her eyes, a softer, more playful version of the ice queen I’d been dealing with since we’d walked in here. It disappeared as fast as it’d come, though. She blinked and my Liv was gone.
For a long moment, I thought she wasn’t going to respond. She stared at me without saying a word, like she was trying to decide whether she was going to put me out of my misery or shove me right back into the darkness.
When she finally spoke though, what she said wasn’t what I’d expected to hear from her. It didn’t put me out of my misery either, instead simply pushing me a little deeper into it.
“I forgot my purse the other night,” she said, stating it as mere fact, as if none of this meant anything to her at all. “When I went back for it, I heard what you were telling Dallas. I know you still don’t want to work with me because I’m a woman and I know it’s been a nightmare for you.”
I felt the blood draining from my face, the pieces of the puzzle suddenly falling together perfectly in my mind. “Now hang on a minute. You heard that completely wrong. I was—”
“Save it. I have real business to attend to.” She primly picked up her laptop and her folders and strode confidently out of the room, her heels snapping briskly against the polished tiles.
The sound of her footsteps receded. I sank back into the chair when they were gone. This girl is a savage.
What really made me feel like a dimwit, though, was that I’d been here before. I remembered feeling this way about the last girl I’d fallen for too, and this time, I should’ve known better. Fool me once…
I sighed, resolving right there in their fancy conference room that I would keep my distance from now on—even though I knew there was something there. Something real and a dozen times more powerful than I’d felt before.
But it was for the best. I already knew it wasn’t going to be fun or easy, but it had to be done. I had to force her out from underneath my skin, no matter how much it might end up hurting.
After sitting there staring at nothing for a while, I got up in search of my father, finding him finishing a cup of coffee in the break room with Nathan. Both men stopped talking when I walked in, and Dad swigged the last of his drink before saying his goodbyes.
He extended his hand to his friend. “We’ll talk, Nate. Let’s go hit some balls next week, alright?”
“You’ve got yourself a deal.” Nathan shook with him before he turned to me. “Good luck, Charlie.”
“Thanks.” I offered him a nod from the door. “See you later, and thank you for all the work your team is doing for us.”
He gave me a brief wave, but there was a thoughtful gleam in his eyes that told me he was still preoccupied with whatever he and my dad had been talking about. On our way back to the ranch, I returned to my silent stewing, wrestling with the anger and pain trying to tear my insides apart.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Dad asked once we left the city behind us. He sat with his elbow on the open window, his body angled to mine. “Things seemed pretty tense between you two back there.”
I sighed and shook my head. “There’s nothing to talk about. I’ll just never understand Olivia, is all.”
Dad laughed. “Son, you will never fully understand any woman. They’re the greatest mystery of all time.”
“Truth.” I smiled, but I didn’t really feel amused.
Our interaction at her office had left me feeling tired, deflated, and disappointed.
If she thought so little of me that she’d heard the beginning of what I’d said to Dallas and had believed it—completely without context—without confronting me about it or giving me the chance to explain, then she hadn’t learned very much about me after all.
What she’d heard had been the first minute of a conversation that had lasted a couple hours, until well after we’d gotten back, offloaded the animals, and had a few beers. It had also been the first—and only—time I’d talked about us.
About her and me.
Curling my fingers tighter around the worn leather of the steering wheel, I stared at the road and followed the familiar lines of it all the way back to the ranch without saying another word.
Dirt crunched under my tires as we turned onto the property, but even the usual comfort of being back was now riddled with memories of her instead.
I drove past the stream with my parents’ tree beside it and remembered showing it to her, though I now had to ask myself why I’d taken someone there who had been little more than a stranger to me. She hadn’t felt like it at the time, though.
Sure, at her office this morning, I’d realized I had no idea who she really was, but those nights we’d spent together, I’d been convinced she had let me in.
Everything had felt so natural with her, even though we came from completely different backgrounds and shouldn’t have been able to relate to one another at all.
I shook my head at myself and refocused on my dad as I pulled up to their house. “I’d better get back to reality. See you at dinner, Dad.”
“See you.” He reached for the door handle and looked back at me. “Do what needs to be done, son.”
With that cryptic instruction that might or might not have been advice about Olivia, he climbed out of the truck and disappeared into the house. Doubtless to give my mom some feedback about how the meeting had gone before he headed back out on the ranch himself.
For the rest of the day, I did my best to concentrate on my duties instead of her. I was lying on my bed that night, still failing in my mission not to think about her, when my phone lit up.
Groaning, I rolled over and prayed the horses hadn’t been left outside again. I grabbed my phone and my heart gave a tug when I saw the name on my screen.
City: We have a new idea for the socials. I’d like to run it by you and Colt tomorrow. Let me know if you have time for lunch.
Me: Name the time and place. We’ll be there.
I hit send and kept my phone in my hand, but long after she’d read my message, I finally accepted she wasn’t going to reply. The mere fact that I would be seeing her tomorrow kept me from falling asleep.
Hard as I tried not to think about it, it was the only thing I could obsess over. It was a restless night, sleep eluding me until the early morning hours, at which point my thoughts were simply replaced with dreams.
Escaping her was really starting to feel futile. Whether I liked it or wanted it, Olivia Walker was still under my skin, and there didn’t seem to be a darn thing I could do about it.