Kira to sell. I wasn’t using her or sleeping with her to get the cottage. I was sleeping with her because I love her and want to be the kind of man she respects.”
“So, no new plant?” Izzy asks.
“I’m guessing not, Izzy,” I exhale a pained breath. “I would never ask Kira to sell the studio. I know what Gram means to her, and I told the lawyer to stop with the offers.”
Izzy nods. “Kira’s leaving. I don’t even think she’s going to wait until she gets an offer on the B&B. She said she’d fly back to finalize when an offer does come through.”
I nod. “I need to talk to her.”
“I don’t think she’ll listen. You didn’t even tell her who you were, or your real last name, and after what your father did to her mother…” She shakes her head. “She was warned about the Lancaster boys.”
“I need to talk to her. I’m going to make this right. Somehow, someway, I’m going to make this right,” I say, even though I have no fucking idea how.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Kira
My heart sits heavy against my ribs as I drop another log into the fire and head back to the kitchen for a cup of tea. I can’t believe I have an offer on the place. It came through twenty minutes ago. The buyer had already been to the real estate office to sign the papers, and then Phillip emailed them to me. I electronically signed the contract and sent it back, which means nothing is keeping me here anymore.
While I hate to sell the B&B after everyone had tried so hard to save it, I can’t stay here. Not anymore. Tears blur my vision as I boil the kettle and drop in a teabag. No matter how hard I try not to think about what happened yesterday, the betrayal, I can’t push it from my brain, and my damn heart breaks just a little bit more every second.
Nate was using me to get the cottage.
I pour a dash of milk into the mug and go back to the fire. From the other room, the kitchen door opens, and I’m surprised to hear everyone voices. I glance at the clock. It’s only eleven in the morning—what are they all doing back so soon? I turn, and one by one, my friends—family—meet me in the living room and drop down into the cushiony chairs.
“What’s going on?” I ask. I turn to Jason, who looks like he’s been roughed up. My hand goes to my chest, and I gasp. “Jason, what happened to you?”
“Your boyfriend beat me up,” he says with a smirk. “To be fair, I went after him first.”
My pulse jumps in my throat. “What are you talking about?”
“Sit down, Kira. We have to talk,” Izzy says, her voice so serious, every muscle in my body tenses.
I lower myself into Gram’s old rocking chair, and with a shaky hand, I set my tea on the small table beside me, being careful not to spill it on the sun-yellowed doily.
“We were pretty pissed off at Nate, as you can imagine, and we went to his office this morning to show him exactly how pissed off we were,” Izzy begins.
Shock rockets through me. This is my battle, not theirs. “You shouldn’t—”
Izzy holds her hand up to stop me. “I’m not here to patch things up between you two. You’re both adults and need to have a conversation.”
“Won’t happen,” I say.
“Fine, that’s your choice, and one you need to think about, but there is something you need to know, and what you do with the information is your business. We won’t judge you, either way.”
I sit up a little straighter, having no idea what she’s talking about. “What information?”
“The plant Nate was building. It wasn’t about cutting jobs and streamlining. It was about increasing them and investing in the community,” she says. “Yes, of course, it will be higher profits for Hooked, but that’s not Nate’s final goal.”
After everything I’ve ever heard about Hooked, about what the men in the family did and