Page 16 of Love, Hate, Love

“I’m not talking about it,” I said, knowing he wasn’t going to be scared away as easily.

As if on cue, he said, “That little girl of yours is?—”

“She’s not mine.”

“From the sounds of it, that’s not the way you acted last night. She wasn’t drinking. Missy said you knew because you picked up the full bottle. The guys all said you looked jealous. So what’s the real problem?”

“How was I supposed to know that? It might’ve been her second beer.”

“All I’m saying is that you seem a little unhinged around her, and you should probably think about that.”

As if I didn’t know that. As if that wasn’t why I was trying to avoid her.

He held up his file. “Okay, I’m off to go grab the new trailer. See you in a bit,” Chuck said, walking out as chipper as he walked in.

I got up and shut the door, locking it. I wasn’t taking chances on suffering through any more impromptu chats.

The phone rang as soon as I sat, Alec’s name flashing. He was one stubborn bastard when he wanted to get a hold of me. I either had to answer or turn my phone off.

“What’s up?” I asked, zero warmth in my voice.

“You sound like shit. What’s your problem?”

“Nothing. I have a long day. I need to get shit done, so tell me what you want or I have to go.” I wasn’t giving him an opening to dig into my situation.

“I heard about the vote.” He started laughing hard.

“How the hell did you hear about the vote?”

“I have to protect my sources. Not like it’s much of a secret anyway. You didn’t fare well, though. From what I heard, it was unanimous. Man, you must’ve acted like a real ass for them to call a vote and for you to not get a single one. Usually someone will feel bad enough to just throw you a pity vote.”

“I have work to do.” I hung up.

Leah was stirring up my entire ranch against me—even Missy, who didn’t used to want to catch my attention, was in here lecturing me. Now stories were leaking out to my brother, who didn’t even reside in the state. How was I ever going to make it through a year of this?

Chapter8

Leah

“You knowhow to ride one of these?” Missy asked as we walked into one of the smaller garages where some ATVs were parked.

“I might have moved to a big city, but I grew up here.” Kade had taken me on my very first ATV ride on an old piece of junk he’d fixed up. He’d fixed quite a few things to help pay the bills, both here and over at my house.

Missy swung to face me. “Youdid?”

“Yeah. That’s how I know Kade. My family lived in a house not far from here.”

“Really? How long have you known him?” She leaned against the one ATV, watching me as if she couldn’t get enough of this story.

“Long enough to have scraped knees together. Well, I was the one with the scraped knees. He’s three years older and was usually trying to clean off my blood in the creek.”

“Wow. I didn’t know there was so much history. I wonder if that’s… Never mind.” She straightened and shook her head, grabbing some keys off a hook on the wall and tossing me a set.

“Wonder what?” I asked.

She let out a sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m just being nosy, and I’m trying to not blurt out everything in my head anymore. I haven’t made much progress, though.”

“It’s all right. Blurt. I want to know.” I shouldn’t care what observations she’d made about Kade and me, but that wasn’t working out so well.

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