Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Tate took the porch in at a glance. Rylee, the love of his life, rooted at the railing with her arms wrapped tight around herself.
Roxy, holding a sheaf of papers the way a gambler holds a winning hand.
And Alexander, the man who ought to be escorted to the state line and never seen again, wearing the expression of a fellow watching his own funeral go by.
Roxy laughed from the doorway. “Oh goodie, the crew is all here.”
Rylee shot her a disapproving look. “Can you just…”
Her aunt shook her head. “Not a chance, sweetheart. This is better than the opera.”
“You heard her,” Rylee said to Alexander. Her voice wasn’t entirely steady, but it held. “You should go.”
“That’s right.” Roxy patted the folded papers against her palm, gently, the way one pats a sleeping dog that might still bite. “We wouldn’t want to tie up what little holdings you have left in court, would we?”
Tate stayed where he was. His name had been wrecked in this same yard by this same man, and there was part of him enjoying the scene.
“Court?” Alexander squeaked. “I haven’t done anything—”
Roxy’s eyes flicked to Tate briefly. “I’d say slander is definitely something worth exploring, wouldn’t you, Mr. Dennison?”
Tate straightened, a wicked grin forming on his lips even as Alexander’s frosty glare pinned him.
“I would, Mrs. Carter.” He could sense Rylee watching him and he sobered.
This wasn’t a side of him she’d likely seen.
And if he were honest, he wasn’t sure how she’d react.
It was all in jest. Of course he’d never take action, but did she know that?
Alexander continued to stammer as his eyes darted from one of them to the next. Then they narrowed into slits and he pointed a finger at Roxy. “I could just as easily drag your name through the mud. You claimed your niece was ready to get married. You made everyone believe—”
Roxy crowed with laughter. “Throwing parties to introduce my niece to eligible men is hardly a promise of betrothal. Even you must understand something as simple as that.”
Tate schooled his expression the second Alexander’s furious gaze found his.
He didn’t have to help the man dig his own grave.
Clearly, he’d been pushing Rylee into something she didn’t want, and all because he had ulterior motives.
Tate had always known there was something off about that man. Now he knew what.
Alexander turned from Roxy, and when he came back around he had stopped looking at her altogether. He was looking at Rylee, and his face had gone almost kind.
“Sweetheart.” Gentle. Reasonable. The register he had been saving.
“Look at where you are. Mud to your knees and a barn you paid to put back up and a man who won’t answer a question.
This is not a life. You do not belong out here, you have never belonged out here, and every person on this porch is too polite to tell you so. ”
Rylee didn’t move.
“I’ll tell her. She belongs here.” He came up onto the bottom step so the man had to turn to keep him in view.
“She belongs here more than I do, and I was born on this road. Her father’s name is on that mailbox.
She put that barn back up out of her own pocket.
She’s been in the west field cutting eleven years of scrub off ground nobody else would trouble themselves with, and she feeds those animals before she feeds herself.
You’ve had plenty of time to figure it all out, but you don’t know one thing about her that isn’t written down somewhere. ”
Alexander got as far as one syllable.
“And that picture you’ve been hauling around.
” Tate didn’t raise his volume for it. “The woman in it is the developer’s daughter.
I’ll tell Rylee the whole of it the minute you’re off her property, and I’d have told her the day you put it in my hand if I had the sense God gave a fence post. So put it away. It isn’t worth what you paid.”
Nobody on that porch moved.
Alexander got his arm halfway up, and Rylee got there ahead of him.
“I’m staying.”
She wasn’t looking at Tate when she said it. That was the piece he would take out and turn over later, on nights when he needed proof. She was looking at Alexander, and she said it flat, a fact and not an argument.
“Not for a season. Not to think it over. I’m staying, and I’m keeping every animal on this property, and I’ll be standing right here when the snow comes this winter and every one after that.”
“Rylee—”
“You came out here for a girl who was going to give up and go home.” She let that sit. “She isn’t here.”
Alexander threw up his hands, muttered under his breath, and stalked off toward his car.
They watched the rental car spit gravel the whole way down the drive.
It was Roxy who broke the silence, sounding deeply satisfied.
“Well. I haven’t enjoyed anything that much since the Vanderbilt divorce.
” She gathered her papers, gave Tate a look that took his full measure—top to bottom, slow, the way a woman sizes up a horse she’s deciding whether to bet on—and swept toward the door.
“I’ll be inside. Making sweet tea. Very loudly. ”
The front door clicked shut.
And they were alone again.
Just Tate and Rylee.
“So…” Rylee fiddled with the hem of her shirt. “That was…”
“Yeah.” Tate rubbed the back of his neck, but he didn’t look away. After what had just happened, he wasn’t going to blurt out how he felt. But she needed to know exactly where he stood.
She offered him a meek smile, and it nearly undid him, because he hadn’t earned it yet.
“I need to tell you something,” he said. “All of it, straight through. Then you can decide what to do with me.”
Her smile faded into something careful. She nodded.
“Her name is Cecelia Williams.” Saying it to her, quiet, in an empty yard, was a different animal than saying it to Alexander, and it took more out of him.
“The morning after our fight, I drove out to the lodge to have it out with her father. Didn’t make it past the front desk.
She came down, headed me off, told me to save my breath, and sent me home.
Five minutes, start to finish. That’s the whole story. That’s what I threw us away over.”
“Then why—” Rylee’s voice caught. “Tate, I stood in that yard and begged you to say something.”
“Because explaining it meant admitting it.” The words scraped coming out, but he kept going.
This was the part Jason had said mattered more, and Jason was right.
“You asked me to stop making this town my whole life, and I hollered at you for it, and before the sun came up the next morning I was chasing that man to his hotel. If I told you the truth, I proved you right—in front of everybody. So I stood there and let you think—” He couldn’t finish that sentence.
“I’d rather have been the villain than the fool, Rylee.
That’s the ugly truth of it. Faith saw it.
Jason had to say it to my face before I could. ”
The quiet stretched. Somewhere behind the house, one of the goats argued with the others.
“You let me think you were—” She pressed her fingers to her lips, and he couldn’t tell if she was holding in fury or a laugh, and then it came out and it was both at once. “You idiot.”
“Get in line,” he said hoarsely. “There’s a whole family of people ahead of you.”
And then she was crossing the porch, and he met her halfway.
With her warm cheeks in his hands, he kissed her like his life depended on it.
Her eyes flared wide at first, but then they fluttered closed and she leaned into his embrace.
He kissed her like this was the last time they’d ever see each other.
He kissed her for all the dumb things he’d done and every bad decision he had to apologize for.
And she kissed him back.
Rylee hadn’t withdrawn from him completely. She hadn’t given up on them yet.
He’d been wrong.
So, so very wrong.
She pulled back with a gasp, her lips curving into an embarrassed smile as she pressed her fingertips to their swollen surface. “Whoa.”
Tate grinned. “I’m so sorry.”
She lifted a single brow as if challenging him.
“Sorry for what I said. Sorry for staying away. Sorry for… everything. I know I get in my own way sometimes.”
This time she tilted her head as if to say, Sometimes? Her eyes glittered with question and mischief.
He groaned, closing his eyes as he pressed his forehead to hers. “Okay, I get in my own way more times than I care to admit. I need you to know that you can’t leave.”
“I can’t?” Rylee whispered.
“No, you can’t.” He opened his eyes and pulled back. He stared at her for a long moment, searching for any sign that she was still willing to stick around. He needed her to stay more than his next breath. “Because I’m in love with you.”
The amusement fled. Her lips parted in surprise—or maybe it was shock. “Tate,” she whispered.
No. He couldn’t let her push him away. Not now.
Not after everything. “Rylee, I think I started falling for you when we were kids. The first time you followed me to that treehouse. The first time you skipped rocks across the pond. The first time you made me pinky promise that I’d do something for you.
It all started coming back to me the second you stepped foot in Rocky Ridge again.
And this time I-I can’t let you go.” His brows pulled together as he waited for her response.
He hadn’t thought he’d destroyed the tenuous relationship they’d started to build, but then he’d been wrong about things before.
He was rambling now. He had the urge to fling more words at her—anything to help her understand he was going to be better. For her, he’d do anything. But when he opened his mouth, she placed her palm over it.
“You’re talking too much,” she whispered.
His brows lifted and she giggled. “I knew something wasn’t right when I saw that picture.
I knew you wouldn’t do something to hurt me like that.
” She frowned and looked away for a moment before returning her gaze to his.
“You did hurt me, though. When you said I didn’t belong.
And when you stood in my yard and wouldn’t give me the truth—”
He pulled her hand from his mouth and shook his head. “I was a big fool. I didn’t mean—”
Her smile was soft and it pulled him up short.
“We’re human. We’re going to make mistakes in the heat of the moment.
Under duress and when we feel backed into a corner.
That’s not an excuse, by any means, but I’d like to think I was raised with the ability to offer a little grace and understanding.
Heaven knows I’m going to need it myself.
” The light returned to her eyes and with it a little mischief.
“You haven’t seen that side of me yet, Tater. ”
Then she stepped back out of his hands. “I have to call your sister.”
“Faith?”
“I asked her to find homes for the goats.”
Tate went still. “When.”
“Before you got here.” She held his eyes the whole time she said it, which he decided later was the bravest piece of work anybody managed in that yard. “I told her the brown two were bonded and couldn’t be split up.”
He got a hand around the back of her neck and put his forehead down against hers and stayed there.
“Call her,” he said. “Tell her we’re keeping them.”
“We,” Rylee said.
“We.”
Tilting his head back, he chuckled. Tate returned his focus to her once more. “You forget I know just how wild you can be. You weren’t exactly the sort of kid who did what you were expected to.”
“No, I don’t suppose I was,” she murmured.
“Are you two done? I’ve fixed us some sweet tea and I want to get to know my future nephew-in-law.”
Rylee’s eyes widened and she whirled around to glower at her aunt, though there was little venom in it. “Roxy!”
“What?” she asked with a shrug. “September seems like a nice time of year for a wedding, don’t you think?”
Even from where Tate stood, he could see the pink spreading over Rylee’s face. When she cut him a look, he nearly stumbled. He knew her well enough to read that look. She was considering it.
But then she called out to her aunt, “Roxy, I don’t think—”
He stopped her by crooking his pinky with hers and pulling up their laced fingers to his lips. “Since I was a kid, I always knew I’d marry you one day.”
The way joy brightened her whole face filled him with a sweet sense of satisfaction and exhilaration. But when she leaned closer to him so their noses almost touched and whispered, “Pinky promise?” he knew without a doubt that their lives had just changed forever.
“Pinky promise.”