Page 31 of Playing Dirty
I slid into the driver’s seat and turned the key. It started on the first try thanks to Colt and the new battery he’d installed a few days ago. As I pulled out of the lot, I didn’t plan to drive past Rhett’s place.
It just... happened.
His ranch sat quiet and still, tucked against the slope like it belonged to the land more than it belonged to him. But the windows were dark. No porch light. No truck in the drive.
Gone.
My stomach dipped. Just a flicker. A flash.
I told myself it didn’t mean anything. I wasn’t hoping to see him. I wasn’t wishing that somehow he’d be outside, arms crossed, looking at me like I still mattered somehow.
But I noticed the emptiness. Noticed it hard.
Maybe he’d left town. Maybe he was out late. Maybe he’d realized I wasn’t worth waiting for.
Rhett Callahan—millionaire rancher, professional flirt, full-time pain in the ass—wasn’t the type to stay lonely long. Girls would line up for a shot at that smirk and those broad shoulders. Smart ones. Willing ones.
The kind of women who didn’t come with emotional baggage and a half-adopted cat.
I gripped the wheel a little tighter as I turned back toward Tessa and Colt’s place.
Let him move on.
Let him be done.
Because I wasn’t about to be the girl hoping for scraps. Not again.
But that didn’t stop me from checking the driveway one more time in the rearview mirror.
Just in case.
Chapter Nine
The Truth Ain’t Always Pretty
Rhett
We hit the edge of Casper just after seven, the sun slanting low through the windshield. Four hours of driving, mostly in silence. Not the comfortable kind either. More like the kind that settled between two men before one started asking questions the other would rather not answer.
Sawyer didn’t talk much, but I could feel him thinking, same as me. Both of us were stewing in what we might find, what it might mean—for Callie, for me, for whatever the hell Matt thought he was doing living two lives.
We slowed near the address on Matt’s license. I expected something dingy. Run-down. A little sketchy. Something that screamedI’m hiding something.
What we got instead was… normal.
The house across the street was clean and quiet, the porch swept, the blinds open, and the flowerpots on either side of the door. The yard was edged. The damn grass looked like it gotweekly trims. A silver SUV sat in the driveway, clean enough to be smug about it.
“So much for the secret villain lair,” I muttered. “This is domestic as hell.”
As if on cue, a yellow school bus rounded the corner and squeaked to a stop right out front. The front door of the house opened, and two kids—maybe seven or eight—came running out with backpacks bouncing and sneakers untied.
“Mom!” one of them yelled, laughing as they bolted for the bus. A woman’s voice called after them—something about lunches and don’t forget your jacket. I couldn’t hear the words exactly. Didn’t need to.
The pit in my stomach turned heavy.
Not a bachelor pad. Not a weekend crash spot. Not even some secret man cave where a guy might hide from the world for a while.
This was a home.
