Page 8 of Rescued Hearts
When we got to the cash register, I whipped some cash out and paid before Tess could even reach for her wallet. “I got it.”
“Oh,” she said softly, semi-frozen. And when she looked up at me, she was blushing. “Thank you, Levi.” Her eyes searched mine. Wide and trusting and the kind of light blue that made me think of a wintery morning.
Boundaries, boundaries,boundaries.
Her mouth twitched, her brows quirking with amusement.
Right. Words. I was supposed to speak now. I cleared my throat. “You’re welcome.”
We sat down at a table that had ice cream residue older than me on it, but that was part of the charm. Luke was on a tangent about dinosaurs, while I did everything I could to stop myself from watching Tess lick her ice cream.
I’d be lying if I said I was shocked she ordered vanilla. I obviously didn’t know her, but she was clearly the type to fly under the radar. Simple clothing, simple makeup, simple ice cream.
But there was nothing simple about how beautiful I was beginning to think she was.
Tess was the soft, understated, breathtaking kind of beautiful. The kind you couldn’t prepare for, so it hit that much harder.
I was completely screwed.
And watching her with Luke…that was a whole different story. She was doting and fun and warm with him. She talked about dinosaurs with genuine interest and knowledge because it mattered to him, so it mattered to her. She stared at him in awe, even though he was practically covered in ice cream.
She was agoodmom. Better than good. Certainly better than mine ever was.
I never wanted for anything growing up, and my parents thought that was all it took to raise a child, but they missed the one component Tess had in spades: love. Real, true, unconditional love a parent was supposed to have for their child. I’d wager that my parents probably cared about my well-being, but even that was probably a stretch.
And lucky for me, I had to have dinner with them tonight.
Family dinnerat the Hollis house was like treading through a minefield. One wrong step, and you’d get blown to bits. The table was set with the finest china, silver, and crystal. The napkins were folded into some indiscernible shape. And my tie was so tight, it felt like a noose. But I was expected to wear one at the table as one of the members of the wealthiest families in Texas.
My father sat at the head of the table like a king on his throne, and my mother, with her Botox frozen face, was his queen. My brother, Preston, was beside me, while my sisters, Rachel and Greer, were across from us. The three of them were from my father’s first marriage. All older. All colder.
Sometimes it felt like I was the only person with a pulse in this family.
Rachel and Greer were housewives despite their Ivy League educations. Their husbands were…somewhere. They were always traveling for work and likely had mistresses, but we didn’t talk about that; it was uncouth. Preston, the eldest, was a land developer. He was currently working with our grandfather to stop the merging of Golden Bridle and Circle M because they wanted to make more money. And they seemed to have no issue with the fact that the McLeods, my family, ran Circle M.
Oh, and the cherry on top was that Tess’s family ran Golden Bridle.
Safe to say, I was in-between a rock and a hard place. Made even harder by my sudden, inconvenient, and wildly overwhelming attraction to Tess.
Preston leaned back in his chair, taking a healthy sip of scotch. “So, how’s our favorite couple?” he asked.
“Ryle and me?” Greer tilted her head in confusion. I think all the bleach for her hair might’ve soaked into her brain.
I picked at my salmon. “Think he’s talking to me,” I murmured.
“You always were the smartest of us,” Preston beamed, clapping my shoulder condescendingly. “Yes. How are Claire and Beaumont?” The way he said their names as if they were somehow beneath him had me clenching my jaw. “They still think they can keep that land?”
“Don’t see why they wouldn’t.” My voice was low, barely calm. But Preston wanted me to react, and after thirty years of practice needling me under his belt, he knew exactly how to do it.
He scoffed. “You should convince them to sell it. We all know it’d be in their best interest to.”
“And what? Replace it with a strip mall?” I snapped, glaring at him. His hazel eyes flared with victory.
“Don’t tell me you think they should merge,” Dad said from my other side, sounding horrified.
“I don’t see the issue with it. It’d bring more tourism traffic and revenue to the city. More than a strip mall would. And Circle M supports local businesses with their beef production.”
“I heard they want to bring crazies here,” Rachel added, grimacing. “Some kind of rehab.” She did a full-body shiver.
