Rodeo Rebel, page 13
“We disagreed about you, actually.” Lifting her eyes to his face, she studied him for a moment before raising the cup to her lips again. Sipping. “He and my mother are refusing to attend Studs for Sale because I’ve asked you to be one of the bachelors.”
Disappointment weighted his shoulders. And yeah, maybe even a little embarrassment, which was crazy. He was long past the age of needing a father’s approval to see his daughter. Still, the sheriff’s disapproval stung. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Your father has never made a secret of his dislike for me since that day with the four-wheeler.”
“But why?” Lauryn shrugged, the loose topknot on her head slipping sideways. “He has encountered teenage hijinks without holding a grudge before. Why go out of his way to give you a hard time for years?”
He had insights about that, but before he could answer, she continued.
“For that matter, my former foster mother told me that she saw Dad pull you over before when you weren’t speeding or doing anything wrong.” Her speech quickened, her brow furrowing as she related the story that had troubled her. “Ellen even phoned the station to let them know they got the wrong person because it was her who was speeding that day, and her car was close to yours. But she said no one seemed to care.”
Gavin covered her knee with his hand, squeezing lightly. “It’s okay. Your father and I have a long history, Lauryn. But there’s more to it than you might realize.”
“I don’t understand.” She frowned. “How so?”
In that moment, her goodness—her belief in people—put him to shame. She genuinely didn’t know what he was about to tell her. And seeing that made him regret that he’d ever thought she could have swayed his father against him. Or knowingly withheld information about the disinheritance.
“Duke Kingsley paid your dad to hassle me in an effort to steer me straight. Or, depending what day Duke told the story, he might say that he was simply paying to have me watched and protected. My dad wanted to be the first to know if I was making trouble.” He rubbed the ache that started in the back of his neck, the frustration and anger with his father residing there in a tense tangle. “Although sometimes I think he only requested that information to justify why he always made me feel like an outsider in my own family.”
Lauryn remained quiet for a long moment. Coffee temporarily forgotten, she had swiveled her stool to face him fully. Her eyes were wide. Disbelieving?
“Are you suggesting...” One hand went to her temple. Massaged. “I can’t believe this. You’re saying my father took bribes from your dad to give you a hard time?”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” he rushed to reassure her, not wanting to paint her father in a harsh light. Gavin knew how much she loved and respected her parents. “I don’t think it was any different than your dad moonlighting a security job to make extra cash. Plenty of police officers do that.”
“Not during the same hours that they’re collecting a paycheck from the municipality where they work.” Her fist clenched on the dark quartz counter. Squeezing. Pounding. “That would be completely unethical to use his uniform that way.”
Had it been a mistake to tell her?
“I’m sorry, Lauryn. I thought you knew about their arrangement.”
“How?” She slid off the counter stool to pace around the kitchen. “How would I have known that? I thought Dad gave you a hard time because he was bitter about his cornfield all these years.”
His stupid, misguided effort to visit Lauryn that first time had resulted in him driving over newly planted fields with his friends.
“That’s when it started.” Gavin knew because his father had been practically giddy to tell him that he’d better watch his step going forward. “And I’m sure your dad was an easy sell for the job because he was righteously pissed about the cornfield. With good reason.”
He wasn’t sure how he’d become the defender of Caleb Hamilton all of a sudden, but he knew it wouldn’t do him any good to be the one to come between Lauryn and her father.
Blinking rapidly, she looked from him to the floor-to-ceiling window where the very first rays of dawn brought a rosy glow to the sky and the water reflected it.
Then back to him again. This time, her face was a mask. But her eyes were clear. Determination glinting in their depths.
And a distance that signaled their night of intimacy was over.
“I think I’d like to go home now.” She brushed a touch along his upper arm. “I know we need to talk about what happened last night, but right now I’m too upset to think straight. I really need to talk to my father.”
His gut clenched. That wouldn’t go over well with the sheriff. Especially when he learned the source of Lauryn’s information. Maybe it would be better to stick with her a while longer.
“I’ll drive you.” He’d left a truck here in preparation for their trip. And he’d need it later to disassemble the glider enough to transport it back to the airfield. “But if it’s any consolation, now that Duke has passed, your father won’t have any reason to keep tabs on me anymore.”
The sheriff’s payday had stopped when Duke died.
“Except he’s still refusing to attend my event because you’ll be there, so maybe there’s more to his enmity than you know.” Anger simmered in her words. Picking up her coffee mug, she walked it over to the sink and dumped the contents down the drain before switching off the machine. “Either way, I need to talk to him.”
Gavin understood she wanted to leave sooner rather than later. But he regretted that they hadn’t had a chance to sort out where things stood between them. With the bachelor auction around the corner, he would be leaving Silent Spring soon. Tomorrow, he had an appointment with a Realtor in Wyoming to look at potential ranches so he could start over without the long shadow of the Kingsland legacy hanging over him.
Part of him longed to remind her of that; once he was gone, she needn’t worry about what her dad thought of him.
But another part of Gavin already knew it would be tougher walking away from this town after last night. Whether Lauryn wanted to face it or not, things had changed between them.
And he understood that the kind of chemistry they shared wasn’t the sort of thing either of them would be able to forget.
* * *
Seated on the back deck of her parents’ house with a cold drink and her laptop that evening, Lauryn waited for her father to get home from work.
She’d seen her mother just long enough to exchange hugs, but her mom had plans with her book club friends and had rushed out the door. Now, trying to use her time wisely while she waited to confront her dad, Lauryn double-checked the scheduled content on the Hooves and Hearts social media properties to make sure the bachelor spotlights were ready for the next couple of days.
She also needed to fill the hours of her days now as the anniversary of Jamie’s death approached. For years, she’d had to pretend the date was just like any other so as not to upset her parents, who’d asked her to make a fresh start. Since moving out on her own, she’d tried to remember her foster sister in meaningful ways, but the day was never an easy one.
Scrolling through the posts now while a few hopeful robins hopped around the back lawn, she realized today had been Gavin’s profile day. The number of comments on his photo and Q and A were higher than for any of the other bachelors.
Some sixth sense told her not to linger overlong on the comments. Reaching to take a sip of her water from one of her mother’s World’s Fair drinking glasses, she reminded herself that she’d invited Gavin to take part in the auction because he was popular. A charmer. He had a huge fan following from his rodeo days, and even an underground drag racing following from his appearances at races around the state. Yet the wealth of fire emojis—with lips, kisses and hearts coming in tied for second place—she couldn’t quite look away from the reader reactions to the profile.
Gavin, I love you! I would bid everything I own for a night with you!
That was a common theme.
There were other, more graphic comments that, as the owner of the page, she needed to delete. Which was frustrating when she didn’t want to wade through all the responses. Deleting quickly, she tried to speedread her way through the rest, just to make sure everything else was page-appropriate.
Her eye snagged on a commenter’s name.
Camille7, with a white flower beside the moniker. Her senses tingled a moment before recalling that Gavin had dated Camille Jorgensen, the wealthy daughter of a British polo player who’d retired to a sport ranch nearby. Camille also happened to be an up-and-coming attorney, so she’d had dealings with the Sheriff’s Department. Hence, her father.
Camille’s comment read, Gavin, I have good news for you! Can’t wait to share when I see you at the auction. Get ready for a date you won’t forget when I win.
Lauryn’s skin crawled, and she had to glance up from the laptop to remind herself she was just sitting outside on her parents’ back deck. The robins were singing and hopping around playfully. An aspen tree fluttered in the breeze.
Anyone else would be thrilled to see Gavin had raised so much interest and potential money for Hooves and Hearts. That’s what Lauryn had wanted. Wasn’t it?
A sound from the house behind her startled her from her thoughts. A moment later, a shadow appeared at the door before her father opened the screen and stepped outside, his expression one of pleased surprise. He still wore his uniform—khaki from head to foot, a gold star on his chest. His head was bare, however. He must have dropped his hat in the kitchen on his way outside.
“Lauryn, it’s good to see you.” He clapped a hand on her shoulder where she sat, squeezing lightly over the place where her scars intersected. “I felt badly how we left things last time.”
Her stomach sank. It ran counter to all her natural instincts to argue with her father. The man who’d given her a permanent, safe and loving home. Yet she couldn’t forget what she’d learned about him. And she had to know if it was true.
“Dad, I have something I need to ask you,” she began, closing her laptop and setting it aside.
“I hope it’s not about the auction, sweetheart,” he said as he took the Adirondack chair next to hers, the wood creaking with his weight. “I can make a donation, if you like—”
“Did Duke Kingsley hire you to keep tabs on Gavin?” she blurted, her nerves strung too tight to wait another minute.
The look on her dad’s face answered for him: A slackness in the jaw that was normally a chiseled square. A shift in the blue eyes that usually looked right through a person. Then there was the long pause.
Her hand went to her lips, covering her mouth and the gasp of surprise. Not until that moment did she realize how much she was counting on him to deny it.
“Now, listen—” he began, but she shook her head, unwilling to hear a rationalization.
“Is that even ethical?” she asked. “Ellen Crawford saw you pull him over once when he hadn’t been doing anything.”
The chiseled jaw went granite solid again. “I suppose you heard this from the man himself?”
“Why do you dislike him so much? I’ve never understood—”
“I’ll tell you why.” Her dad sat forward in the chair so he could turn more fully toward her. “Because he plays fast and loose with people’s feelings, Lauryn. Breaking one heart after another. I’ve seen him do it, just the way his mother did before him.”
She felt her eyes go wide. “His mother?”
“Isla Mitchell was the same way before she married Kingsley. Playing with hearts and not caring—” He stopped himself, his face coloring in a way she’d never seen before.
Understanding dawned.
“You dated Gavin’s mother?” She wondered if Gavin knew. Clearly, he’d known about her father’s deal with his dad and had been aware of it for some time. How much more did he know about her family than she did?
“Yes, and she thought nothing of moving on when a better opportunity came along. Like mother, like son.” The bitterness in her dad’s voice was unmistakable.
Her heart felt a pang of sadness for her mom that her dad would still harbor such strong feelings about another woman.
“So you’ve paid him back by hassling him since he was a teenager.” Gathering up her laptop, she rose from her seat, not sure she could hear anymore today. “I came here to learn the truth, Dad, but I think I’ve had more than I can take today.”
Especially when her father’s image of Gavin as a player fell so closely on the heels of all those social media posts she’d just read—including Camille’s assurance she would win him and share good news on their date. Not to mention, she was shaken to think her parents’ marriage might not be as solid as she’d once believed. Had her mother been a rebound relationship rather than true love?
Her stomach knotted as her dad rose to argue with her, but perhaps he recognized the expression on her face as that of a woman who had all she could take today, because he huffed a heavy sigh and nodded.
“Gavin Kingsley will be leaving town soon enough anyhow.” Her dad folded his arms over his barrel chest as he watched her walk down the steps of the porch. “Then he won’t be our problem anymore.”
Shock and disillusionment chilled her.
When she reached the grass, she turned to glare back up at him. “Did you have anything to do with getting him disinherited?”
Caleb Hamilton’s bushy eyebrows shot up, the sun glinting off his sheriff’s star. “Of course not. But I’ll bet I know who did.”
She waited. Curious. She might be angry with him for a lot of things, but there was no denying her father had his ear to the ground for happenings around Silent Spring. “Who?”
“Duke’s other son, Clayton Reynolds, had a huge blow-up with him before he left town for good,” her dad explained, leaning his elbows on the deck railing as he looked down at her. “I heard from more than one person that Clayton said he and Gavin would get even with their old man one day when they destroyed the legacy he’d groomed for his other two sons.”
Frowning, she tried to make sense of that. “And you think Duke wrote Clayton and Gavin out of the will to ensure that didn’t happen?”
Her dad shrugged, scrubbing a hand along the back of his neck. “He probably figured it would be better not to chance it than to leave his estate to a pair of hooligans who were only out to wreck it.”
Indignation fired through her. “Gavin Kingsley is not a ‘hooligan.’ He’s a good person, Dad, and I’m disappointed that you were too busy holding an old grudge to see that.”
Her father opened his mouth as if to refute her or make excuses, none of which she had the least interest in hearing. Not when she didn’t know how she could trust a word he said. So she held up her hand, shook her head.
Pivoting fast, she stalked away, ignoring the sound of him calling out her name, because she didn’t want to argue anymore today. Learning what she had about her father hurt.
That’s what she felt foremost.
And yet, as she slid into the driver’s seat of her truck and contemplated everything else that had come to light today, she couldn’t deny a tiny worry about Gavin. Or, more to the point, about her feelings for Gavin.
Their night together had been nothing short of epic.
Not just because the sex had been blow-your-mind amazing.
But because she’d woken in the middle of the night to all kinds of feels. He’d taken her for a glider ride. He’d wanted to show her the garden his mother made. He’d held her during an anxiety attack and hadn’t demanded explanations later.
He’d even felt the scars on her shoulder and hadn’t pressed, giving her time to share her story when she was ready.
Gavin had become special to her.
While that was exciting and gave her all kinds of butterflies, she also remembered that her father’s distorted vision of him was based on at least a few shreds of evidence. Gavin had dated widely. He had a reputation for thrill seeking—both in life and love.
And no matter how much Lauryn had loved every minute of their night together, a part of her worried about Camille Jorgensen and all the other women who couldn’t wait to bid on him at Studs for Sale. Her faith in her own judgment right now was shaky at best, considering what she’d just learned about her dad.
Gavin would be leaving town soon, as her father pointed out. So if she had feelings for him that needed resolving, she needed to do it soon because the bachelor auction was coming fast—just five days away now. And then Gavin would leave Silent Spring forever to start over somewhere else.
A thought that turned the butterfly feeling into a lead ball in her gut.
Twelve
Driving home from Wyoming after a day spent walking potential ranch properties, Gavin steered his truck toward the Hooves and Hearts Horse Rescue and the woman who had been on his mind nonstop since their passionate night together.
Since dropping her off at her house the day before, he’d tried to give her space. She’d been agitated after discovering the news about her father, so they hadn’t spoken about where things stood between the two of them. Had it been wrong of him to share what he had about the sheriff?
The thought troubled him, along with the fear that he’d let things spiral out of control between them too quickly. As much as he’d wanted her—craved her—he’d known that acting on impulse when it came to their chemistry could have negative consequences, given their past.
He’d wanted that date with her to show her another side of himself. Instead, they’d ended up in bed together, and he worried that he’d proven all her original concerns about him. That he was a player and a ladies’ man, a reputation from his bull-riding days that he hadn’t done a damn thing to squash even though it was vastly overrated, since he’d been hell-bent to get under his father’s skin.
