Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Ry-Ry,
I don’t know why I feel compelled to write you this letter.
Maybe it’s because I just left the attorney’s office after finalizing my will.
Or maybe it’s because Aunt Roxanne insisted these sorts of things need to be considered when finalizing what happens to you in case something happens to me.
Regardless, I’m doing what she tells me because your aunt scares me a little.
Rylee snorted as she took the letter to the couch and settled into the corner. She pulled a blanket over her lap and continued to read.
I guess it’s safe to say if you’re reading this, I’m dead.
Is that what I’m supposed to say? I don’t know what I’m doing, kiddo.
I don’t think any parent ever does. I suppose I’m writing to make sure you know that I love you.
More than life itself. I want what’s best for you no matter what.
That means when you grow up, you might have to make difficult choices.
You might have to listen to advice you don’t agree with.
But that doesn’t mean you have to do what they say.
Make mistakes. Learn from them. But most of all, follow your heart. Because only you know what’s going to make you shine the brightest.
Unless it’s that kid from down the lane. Then stay far away from him.
Just kidding.
Rylee swiped at a tear sliding along her cheek, a smile pulling at her lips. She’d forgotten her father’s dry humor.
But in all seriousness. When it comes to love, I hope you jump in with both eyes shut.
Feel the rush of the water and the weightlessness that surrounds you.
Find a man who will listen to you. A man who will challenge you.
A man who will fight for you. That’s the kind of person I want for you.
No one is perfect, kiddo. And some of those characteristics might not appear right away.
But if you can find someone who makes you laugh or makes you feel safe, that’s a good starting point.
He should be present but not pushy. He shouldn’t make you feel rushed into anything.
Some of her father’s descriptions had her thinking about Tate. And it made her heart hurt to think of the way Tate had just… walked away.
One day you’ll find someone you can’t stop thinking about. Someone who will realize your worth. I hope to be there when it happens, but if I’m not, I hope you’ll still feel my support from beyond the grave. I love you, kiddo. Forever and always.
Your Dad.
P.S. This letter writing thing isn’t half-bad. Maybe I’ll do it more often.
Rylee sucked in a shuddering breath and tossed the letter to the side.
She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
When she closed her eyes, another tear slipped free.
The universe had to have a terrible sense of humor because getting that letter while she was in her current predicament was insane.
Her father wanted her to be happy, but he also included information about finding love. To him, those subjects went hand in hand. Nothing about a career or finding where she belonged. It was all about love and happiness.
Seeing as her mother had left him to raise a child on his own, that letter was unexpected. She heaved a heavy sigh and lifted her head so she could prop her chin on her knees.
Why did everything about that letter feel so off?
Present but not pushy.
She went back to that line and read it again, and it would not leave her thoughts.
Tate had pushed. He had pushed a horse on her that she said no to. He pushed six chicks and a coop she never asked for, and three goats she never agreed to, and a cow that came up to her hip. He spent a whole summer arriving on her property with animals in a trailer and a dare on his face.
Except she had told him no about the horse, and he said okay and carried the plates to the sink and went home, and left her to walk over there. Except the chicks came with a bill she made him hand over. Every one of those pushes had a door in it, and not once had he tried to stop her from using it.
Her father would have liked him. That was the trouble with the whole letter. Her father would have taken one look at a grown man turning up with a miniature cow and liked him fine.
Rylee got up off the couch.
The photograph was where she had put it, in the drawer of her father’s desk under a box of pens that had dried out before she was born.
She carried it back and set it on the cushion beside the letter.
Two pieces of paper. One from a man who told her exactly what he thought of her, in writing, and signed it.
One from a man who stood in her own yard and gave her nothing at all.
That was the part that didn’t fit. Not the woman. The nothing.
He had one sentence to say and every reason on earth to say it. She had asked him out loud, in front of her aunt and her friends and a man she despised, and Tate Dennison looked her in the face and kept his mouth shut.
Keeping it shut had cost him. She hadn’t worked out what.
A knock at the door drew her focus and she sighed as she tossed her blanket to the side and opened the door. Then she sighed again and leaned against the doorjamb. “What do you want, Alex?”
He bristled. “Is that any way to talk to the man who wants nothing but the best for you?”
She arched a brow. “I beg your pardon?”
Alexander’s jaw flexed and he glanced past her into the house as if to check there wasn’t any chance of being overheard.
Then he lowered his voice. “I care about you, Rylee. I always have. And it’s important for me to point out to you that what you’re doing here is only going to make you miserable. ”
Rylee looked at him with clear disdain and he got her message. He straightened and folded his arms defensively.
“I know you might not see it, but this whole thing you’re doing? Moving out into the middle of nowhere? It’s not healthy. You don’t belong here.”
She winced against her will. That was exactly how she’d felt when she first got here, but she quickly reminded herself that Alexander’s opinion meant nothing. “Well, you’re free to think anything you like, but my decisions are none of your business.”
Alexander smiled, and for once it looked real. He actually looked relieved.
Rylee rolled her eyes and pointed between the two of them. “This isn’t going to happen.”
“Oh, come on, Rylee. You’re tired or something. You’re not thinking straight,” he insisted. “We make sense, Rylee. Same world. Same people. We’re meant to be together.” His eyes shifted to a spot behind her and that was when Rylee sensed someone behind her.
Roxy was no doubt eavesdropping. She probably had a whole bunch to say about that little performance.
But Rylee wasn’t going to let either one of them get into her head.
If there was any chance of Rylee finding the kind of love her father had described, Tate was the only one she could even imagine having that place in her life.
Before she could answer Alexander, Roxy stepped closer. “Unfortunately, Mr. King, Rylee doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
Rylee whirled around to glower at her aunt. “I told you, I’m leaving. I’ll stick around until the end of summer, but I’m not going to change my mind.”
“I think I know you better than you realize, dear.” Roxy smiled sweetly. “And I might not know that boy very well, but even I could see he’s only got eyes for you.”
Alexander blustered at Rylee’s back. “That cowboy?”
Rylee ignored him, folding her arms. “Tate did nothing to fight for me. He just… walked away.”
“That’s because he’s guilty,” Alexander insisted. “Your niece deserves better.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Mr. King.”
There was something new in Roxy’s voice. Rylee had heard her aunt charm a ballroom and freeze a waiter with equal ease, but this was a tone she didn’t recognize. Pleasant on top, granite underneath was new for Roxy.
“I beg your pardon?” Alexander said.
“You should beg my pardon.” Roxy stepped fully onto the porch, and from her handbag she drew a folded sheaf of papers.
“I told my niece you came from good breeding. I vouched for you, Mr. King. I do not enjoy being made a fool of. I won’t stand for more of it.
So after that circus you just staged in this yard, I made some calls.
I know your mother’s people, and I know your accountant’s people, which turns out to be considerably more useful. ”
Alexander had gone very still. “I don’t know what you think—”
“Sweetheart. Don’t.” Roxy unfolded the papers with the air of a woman opening a menu she already knew by heart.
“King Holdings is leveraged past its eyebrows. The Manhattan property carries two liens. Your father has been quietly shopping the Hamptons house since March, and unless a very large amount of money marries into that family soon, you will be filing for bankruptcy protection by spring.” She looked up at him over the top of the pages.
“Rylee, darling, remind me what I told you your inheritance would come to, once everything settles?”
Rylee couldn’t speak. The porch had gone airless.
“That’s slander,” Alexander managed, but his face had drained to the color of old paste.
“It’s arithmetic,” Roxy said. “Slander would require it to be false, and we both know it isn’t, because you have known it longer than anyone.
That is why a man who never crossed a bridge out of Manhattan in his life has spent his whole summer in Montana, chasing a girl who told him no the first week.
” She refolded the papers, unhurried. “All of this would be far too easy to fact-check, Mr. King. One call.”
“You—” Alexander’s jaw worked. “You can’t—”
“What in the world is going on out here?”
Rylee’s head snapped up, and her heart forgot its rhythm.
Tate was here.