Page 36 of White Collar Rancher

He folded his arms and leaned against the doorframe. “What I don’t get is why you’re like the CIA about it. We’re friends.”

She lifted a shapely brow. “Want to talk about what happened in Denver?”

Touché. Her challenge was too hard to pass up. He should just bypass the subject, but…he couldn’t. His curiosity about his friends wasn’t usually so strong. “Denver. Okay. It started in college. Still in Denver. I met Gabrielle. She had an entrepreneurial spirit, and my weaknesses in business were her strengths. We created a little marketing startup.”

Priya peeled off her gloves and dropped them in the tub before folding herself on the floor. Isaiah was content. Justin didn’t plan to go to into too much detail. That’d be humiliating. But the twist of the knife was all he needed to recollect. Not the hints that his country-boy persona was a hindrance and Gabrielle’s offer to shop with him. Her encouragement no matter how high the price tag. Or the way she chided him about how he said “ain’t” occasionally.

“Our first accounts were campus clubs, done for nearly free. But we used them to promote ourselves, and people bought into the millennial new grads who could do the same work for better, faster, and cheaper than the others.” Gabrielle’s networking had been first-rate. Probably still was. With her new fiancé and business partner. “We were skyrocketing to the top of our field. We hired assistants, paid benefits. And we were even older than our employees.”

Interest came off Priya in waves. He didn’t want to keep talking. To see that pride she harbored for him fade.

“We broke up. ‘Better business partners than bed partners,’ she said. Then when a headhunter from a firm in Texas contacted me, we got back together.” Only at the time, he’d been too naïve to connect the dots. Gabrielle hadn’t completely changed the country boy in him. “Sound familiar?”

“It’s okay not to give up on someone, Justin.”

She would say that. His passionate, considerate woman. Friend. “But we kept the company strong through another breakup. Every time I thought about the future and it wasn’t in Denver doing her bidding, she lured me back in.”

The travel. The parties. The isolation. He hadn’t known the people he signed paychecks for. As Gabrielle’s fetch dog, he’d been on the go constantly. He’d missed his family and he’d missed farming and ranching.

Priya cocked her head, the hair from her messy topknot spilling to the side of her face. “How did you break free?”

He didn’t offer up a clarification for her. Break free? No. He’d been replaced. “She found someone else who was already at the top, not clawing his way there. Divorced. Grown kids. CEO. We sold the company and…” He lifted his shoulders. “Here I am.”

“So when you called Maisy up, that was when you found out this Gabrielle was engaged, or when the company papers were final?”

Shame slicked a sour patch down his throat. He swallowed, but it didn’t help. “The sale was final. I had to keep traveling back until it was over. That was when she wore the ring.” And Gabrielle had driven away in her new Lexus. The company that had bought out his? Her new fiancé owned it.

He’d been thoroughly duped.

“What was your company called?”

“Loud Paint.” At her incredulous expression, he explained, “Her idea.” He’d had no say. “Trendy, I guess.” Now that she was mollified, he pushed. “Your turn.”

She huffed a hunk of hair out of her eyes. The look on her face was exactly how he’d felt when he told his story. Just when he thought she wouldn’t live up to her end of the deal, she spoke. “It sounds so insignificant compared to what you went through. My parents didn’t tell me they were going to be gone an extra week.”

He bobbed his head. Annoying. But enough to rage clean his house?

“The whole clinic knew, though. And Devya.”

“Isn’t she in France?”

She nodded once. “Paris.”

“Ah.” That explained more of it. Ouch.

“And Devya.” She waved her hand like she could conjure a word out of thin air. “They all coddle her. All of them. But still, my problems don’t compare to yours.”

He mulled over what she’d said. She was downplaying how much it hurt her. She’d probably cooked and cleaned for her family, and they’d jetted off to the tropics. The slight seemed minimal until she looked around and had no one to talk to. “You’ve made it your career to heal people. Who do you go to when you need to talk?”

The flash of stark vulnerability in her eyes floored him. He’d hit the bull’s-eye and she hadn’t been ready. Her eyes glistened. “There was a group in college. I keep in touch, through social media and stuff, but we’re all over the country.” Her expression darkened, and he sensed another story there. Had she told anyone that one? “Maisy…had her issues. But I could talk to her. Kind of.”

“And she’d just say fuck them and talk about herself?”

A laugh sputtered out of her. “Right. But oddly enough, it made me feel better.”

He wasn’t prepared for his next question, but it left his lips before he’d thought about it. “Did she tamper with the condom?”

Justin’s demeanor changed with his question. Anxiety churned in her belly. How did she answer? They were opening up to each other, like real friends. Forget the sex. She wanted someone to talk to. The way Justin glossed over what Gabrielle had done to him—and he was lying to himself if he thought for one minute that he’d done anything more than skim the surface—it was probably still more than he’d told anyone else. She didn’t miss the shame in his eyes. He hated how he’d succumbed to this Gabrielle.

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