Page 84 of One More Kiss

Peyton

He was leaning backin a chair, his smirk in place as I angrily strode into the shop, our gazes locked.

“How’d it go?” he asked me casually.

“You complete bastard. You couldn’t tell me?” I asked him as I clenched my jaw to stop the anger spilling out.

“Did you expect more?” Ethan was looking at me in amusement, but I saw the genuine spark of curiosity as he considered me.

“I didn’t expect anything, but a heads-up would have been nice.”

“Hi, I’m Rhett.” The dark-haired guy at the table spoke up. “I don’t think you’ll remember me.”

“Peyton,” I said as I kept my eyes on the smirking asshole across from him. “Nice to meet you.”

“Ohh-kay, so, Ethan, we’ll talk about this when you’ve had a chance to consider the offer,” Rhett spoke as he pushed his chair back and started picking up documents from the table.

My hand snatched at the papers. “This is the ranch land,” I said as I looked up at Ethan. “What is this?”

“This,” Ethan told me as he rose to his feet and took the paperwork off me, “is none of your business.”

“You bought the land. You bought the land, knowing I still owned the house. That’s why Donna wanted to buy the house from me, so you could own it all.”

I knew Rhett left us, but it didn’t matter. All of my attention was on Ethan, who stood looking back at me with that shuttered look I knew so well.

“You have nothing to say?”

“I have plenty to say, Peyton,” he told me as he picked up his jacket. “I just don’t want to say it to you here.”

I knew he had a point, but it didn’t make a difference, not to me, not right now. “Is this why Milly picked me up? Did you want her to browbeat me into putting the house on the market so you could swoop in and steal it?”

Ethan huffed but said nothing as he headed to the door. He called out a goodbye to the woman behind the counter, but I was solely focused on his back as he walked out of the shop in front of me.

The attorney said I had been left everything, and even though I wasn’t expecting riches, I did think the land would be mine. The house and land came together. The fact it was in separate ownership when my parents passed mattered little, because the house was mine, passed down to me through their deaths, and the land was my aunt’s. It was kept in the family. The house was integral to the ranch because it sat dead centre in the surrounding acres. Donna was no rancher, and she solved that by carrying on what my dad had done for the ranch: rented out small parcels of land to neighbours, who worked the land and kept it maintained.

That’s how it was.

How it had always been.

But now Ethan had bought the land.

Years ago.

Donna wasn’t even sick when he bought it. I couldn’t even contest it. Not that I really wanted to. If anyone was going to own it, I was glad in a way that it was Ethan, but what I didn’t like was the secrecy. He could have told me. Donna should have told me.

Dad may not have owned it, but it was part of him. Part of them both.

“Are you getting in?” Ethan’s voice broke through my haze, and I nodded before I yanked the handle on the truck, ignoring his hiss of annoyance as I manhandled it roughly. He waited until I had my seat belt on before driving away from the parking spot. “You can let it out now.”

He was giving me permission? To speak? Was he out of his mind? “Your arrogance is overwhelming,” I snapped at him.

“Okay.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Tell you what exactly? I had a business agreement with your aunt?” Ethan snorted. “It’s none of your business. I told you that already.”

“It is my business; that’s my ranch.”

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