Christmastime Cowboy. Maisey Yates
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started to walk past Finn up the porch and into the house, then turned and caught sight of his brother’s expression. It was just a little too hard. A little too insightful. “Did you have a comment, Finn?”
“I have a lot of comments. But because I’m not entirely sure what went down with you and Sabrina—or really, what went on in your life at any point when you weren’t on the ranch—it’s tough for me to pare it down to the most effective one.”
“Good. You’re easier to deal with when you’re at a loss for words.” Liam let out a breath. “I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have a history with Sabrina. I do, in that she hates me.” It wasn’t that he didn’t know why. And, no matter how committed he was to the denial of having led her on, he did have to admit at least to himself that he hadn’t been neutral about her.
No matter what she’d thought, when he’d left he’d done the right thing. He couldn’t regret the way he’d done it either. She might be mad at him, and he could even understand that. But it had been the right thing to do. The fact that she was still angry at him thirteen years later for about the most honorable damn thing he had ever done didn’t really seem fair.
Honorable and self-serving, maybe. But the honor was definitely present.
“And you’re going to be able to work with her in spite of that history?” Finn asked.
“I don’t think it’s the history you think it is. When I worked for Grassroots she was seventeen, Finn. I never slept with her. She got her hopes up that I would. That’s it.”
“So she turns and runs the other direction every time she sees you coming because she had a crush on you thirteen years ago? That’s it?”
Liam gritted his teeth and spread his hands. “That’s about the size of it. Apparently, I’m ruinous to women even when I don’t have sex with them.”
“I feel like you meant that to sound badass, but mostly, I just think it’s true.”
Liam shrugged, not even caring if his brother was insulting him. Not even caring if his words had been chosen poorly enough that he’d insulted himself. “We had a meeting today, and everything seems like it’s going to be fine. I don’t think she’s going to spend the entire time plotting my downfall.” He took a few more steps and walked into the house. Then stopped and turned. “Unless this is all an elaborate ruse to get revenge on me by destroying the Laughing Irish. In which case, Finn, I’ll go back to New York and leave you here in the smoldering wreckage.”
Finn glared at him and slammed the door behind them, enclosing them in the large entryway of the custom log cabin their grandfather had built about five years ago.
“The funny thing, Liam,” Finn said, sounding like he found nothing at the moment funny at all, “is that I think you believe that. But I know you wouldn’t. I know that you actually want this to succeed. Maybe not because you love the ranch. Maybe not because you love me. But most definitely for your damned stubborn pride.”
Liam rubbed his chin. “I do like my pride.”
“Yeah, you do. And I don’t think you would ever allow a ghost from your past to be responsible for your failure.”
They were just ribbing each other, and Liam knew it. But there was something a little too close to the truth in those words, and they gouged him in tender places. “Whatever the reason,” he said, “I’m not going to hang you out to dry.”
“You’ve gone soft.”
“If I have, it’s because of your wife’s cooking,” he responded. Then he slapped his hand against his stomach—which was still rock hard, thank you very much—for good measure.
“What’s your timeline to get the shop up and running?” Finn asked, crossing his arms over his broad chest, clearly done with the banter. Finn had limited patience for banter when it came to discussions of the ranch.
“I’m not sure. We’re going to look at property sometime this week. I have to get in touch with Gage West. I think once we start in on it we should be able to get the sale to go through quickly. But if something happens with the loan, I have the cash to front it.”
“I’m not having you do that, Liam,” Finn said. “I’m not putting your finances at that big of a risk.”
Liam bit back a frustrated curse. His brother didn’t understand because to him, that amount of money had more value. And Liam could understand that. He’d come from poverty. But now he had money. And he didn’t know how the hell else he was supposed to contribute. “What do I care? Do you see me spending money?” He looked down at his boots and lifted them up, tapping them on the floor, a sprinkling of mud landing there on the hard wood. “How old do you think these boots are?”
Lane, Finn’s wife, appeared from the kitchen, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, her brown eyes glittering. “I don’t know how old your boots are, Liam Donnelly, but if you want to live to be any older than you are, I suggest you clean up that mud mess because I sure as hell am not going to do it. I’m not your maid.”
He bit back a comment about her being the cook. He had a feeling that right now, she would launch rockets from her eyes and leave him reduced to nothing more than a pile of ash. He didn’t know what the hell Lane’s problem had been lately but she’d been in kind of a mean mood for a while.
“I’ll clean it up,” he said. Though, not anytime soon. “I was just telling your husband that I don’t need all the money I have sitting in my bank account. I can afford to invest in the expansion of the ranch.”
That turned Lane’s focus to Finn.
Finn shot him a deadly glare. “Just because you can doesn’t mean I’m going to let you. This venture is ours, it’s equal. We can all put the money back into the storefront that we’re making on the ranch. We don’t need you to invest that much capital up front.”
“But I can,” Liam said.
And damn it, there had to be some use for that money. For that money that just felt like a weight. He had busted his ass, worked himself blind from the time he had been given the money to go to college. Twenty years old, coming in late, working up from a deficit, and he had done every damn thing he could to make sure that he succeeded. He didn’t graduate early. He didn’t graduate at the top, but it didn’t matter, because when it came to work, nobody was more willing to beat their knuckles bloody pounding the pavement than he was.
He worked long, and he worked hard. And he had amassed a fortune for himself working at large corporations and major cities. Investing in start-ups that became wildly successful, funding businesses and increasing profits.
And then one day he had stood in that corner office and looked out over Manhattan, in a position in life a boy from the sticks certainly had never imagined he’d be in, wearing a custom suit and honest-to-God Italian leather shoes and he had felt...
Exactly the same as he had twelve years earlier.
He didn’t feel better. He didn’t feel different. He didn’t feel healed. He didn’t feel any different from the boy who’d been stuck in his home. Afraid to make too much noise. Afraid to breathe wrong in case it brought his mother’s wrath down on him.
That was when he had gotten word that his grandfather had died and left him a quarter of a ranch in Copper Ridge, Oregon, and he had thought it might be time for him to go back.
For him to go back for the first time since Jamison Leighton had sent him packing with a bribe.
There was more here. More here than in that corner office. He wasn’t exactly sure he liked it or wanted it, but at least it offered a change of pace.
And his brothers.
He hadn’t grown up with Finn or Cain, and living with them, getting to know them had been... Well, there was something in that. Being around Alex again, the brother he had been raised with... That was always a little bit of a mixed blessing.