“Really?” Kate blinked at him. “I’m trying to think how that statement would ever come up in normal conversation.” She turned to Audrey, who still stood by the couch examining her Playdoh. “What else did Uncle Landon say about sweet-talking me?”
Landon sent his niece a stern look. “Nothing. And it’s time for Audrey to get ready for bed. Go put on your pajamas.”
Audrey’s mouth dropped open in protest. “Why do I have to? I didn’t say anything I wasn’t ‘posed to. I didn’t tell her about you influencing her to get her ranch. That’s what you told me not to say.”
Landon muttered something. Kate wasn’t sure what because Audrey’s words were still ringing in her ears. Funny, until now she’d always thought the termringing earswas just an expression. But no, for several seconds a loud tone dimmed everything else. She stood up, emotion making her movements jerky.
Landon grabbed her arm. She yanked it away from him. “Don’t. Just don’t.”
She stormed toward the front door, hating that she felt like she was stomping. She ought to be able to make a graceful exit, one that was cool and aloof. Instead each stomp revealed how upset she was.
Landon followed her but didn’t try to grab her arm again. “Kate, will you listen to me?”
He’d dropped her nickname but not the charade. “I’ve heard all I need to, thanks.” Did he really think she was going to believe that Audrey’s second statement had been taken out of context? Perhaps the worst part of finding out the truth was realizing that Landon had not only planned on influencing her to get Coyote Glen but also openly discussed it with his brothers. They’d offered to give him tips. She must have seemed so easy to fool, so completely gullible. Her face burned with humiliation. She felt sick.
Kate reached the front door and flung it open. Landon stepped in front of her. He was a broad-shouldered wall in flannel blocking her path. “I told my brothers I wasn’t going to influence you to get the ranch. Audrey got that wrong. She’s six.”
Kate glared at him. His blue eyes and perfect features seemed like a trap now. A beautiful trap that she’d willingly fallen into. “Get out of my way.”
“Nothing I say now will make you believe me, will it?”
“Probably not.” She was holding on tightly to her rage. Once it was gone she would be left with tears, and she didn’t want to cry in front of him.
His jaw clenched and everything about him seemed rigid—as though he had a right to be mad. Well, it was probably upsetting to see your mark walk away. She pushed past him and fumed down the porch, only turning back when she reached her truck. “I did tell my parents we were dating. They had a lot to say about that.” She opened the driver’s side door. “I hate it when my parents are right.”
She got in, slammed the door shut, and drove to the gate without glancing back at him. Once she was off his property, the sobbing started and didn’t let up until long after she’d reached Coyote Glen.
The first thingKate did when she got home was change the gate code so Landon couldn’t drive onto her property any time he liked. Then she made a batch of chocolate chip cookies and ate so many she wasn’t sure if her stomach hurt from crying or from sugar overload.
She’d fallen in love with Landon, and he’d been using her all along. She was like one of those pitiful women that scam artists preyed on, the kind that ended up on talk shows after having their bank accounts emptied. He’d acted like he’d cared and she’d overlooked everything else. What would a studio audience make of her? How much would they shake their heads at her stupidity?
The next day, Kate dragged herself from bed at the crack of dawn, even though she’d hardly slept. The animals needed to be fed, and due to Dewayne’s departure, she had no help. She was actually glad for the solitude today since it meant she could cry without worrying that someone would hear her.
Turned out, she should have worried about that anyway. Midday, while she was mucking out the stables, Jaxon sauntered up to her. He wore work clothes, his cowboy hat, and a tentative expression.
She hadn’t been crying, at least not in the last twenty minutes, but his eyes still widened when he saw her face. “You look terrible.”
“That’s a dangerous thing to say to someone who’s holding a pitchfork.”
“Do you want some help?” He held out his hand for the pitchfork.
She didn’t relinquish it. She was done getting help from the Wyle brothers. “I can manage on my own, thanks. What brings you here?”
“I came to vouch for Landon…and to ask you to answer the next time he calls.”
It wasn’t until then that she remembered Jaxon shouldn’t have been able to stroll onto her property. “Wait, how did you get here?”
He gestured behind him, and she saw his horse grazing on a patch of weeds by the side of the barn. Which still didn’t explain how he’d gotten by the gate. “I changed the code,” she said.
He shrugged like she shouldn’t have bothered. “I know your ranch like it was my own. You don’t think I know where it’s easy to jump the fence? I’ve been doing it since I was ten.”
The fences would be one more thing to put on her to-fix list. She sighed and made waving motions with her hand. “All right. Say whatever you came to say.”
“Landon told me what happened last night. I don’t remember the conversation my daughter overheard word for word, so I can’t give you an exact explanation for why she said those things, but I can promise you Landon has never been playing you. You ought to know him better than that.”
Right. Kate was not about to be taken in by the sincerity in Jaxon’s blue eyes. She’d already been taken in enough times by his brother’s. She planted a hand on her hip. “You’ve had the entire morning to come up with a convincing explanation, and all you’ve got is, I ought to know Landon better than that? You’re slipping.” She went into an empty stall, lifted some manure from the straw, and dropped it into a wheelbarrow outside the barn.
Jaxon stood near the stall door, arms crossed and so serious that he almost didn’t look like himself. “You want more detail? Okay. Here’s what I remember. Preston was worried about Landon dating you—not without reason, mind you, because ever since you came, Landon seems more concerned about pleasing you than seeing to our own ranch. I’m an optimist, though, so I told Preston that Landon dating you wouldn’t be a bad thing. I started joking with Landon about sweet-talking you and using his influence. I know, it’s hard to believe that I would joke around about things like that. Landon told Audrey not to repeat any of it because he was afraid she would say the wrong thing to you, which turns out to have been downright eerily correct.” Jaxon held his hands up. “That’s it. That’s what happened.”