The Patriot A Small Town Romance - Jennifer Millikin Page 0,22

and kiss her until our lips felt bruised.

Reflexively, I reach out. My fingers barely brush her arm, and she lets me touch her for the most excruciatingly short second before she yanks her arm away as if my touch were acid.

“Don’t you dare,” she hisses.

“Dakota, I—”

“Wes?” Jericho’s voice breaks through layers of tension and resentment, anger and humiliation.

I turn and watch her teetering across the dirt in high heels. Did she not understand where she was meeting us?

“Wow,” she says, laughing lightly. “I called your name five times. You two must’ve been deep in conversation.”

Neither Dakota or I respond. What’s there to say?

“Anyway…” Jericho’s gaze flits between me and Dakota, trying to glean something from our collective silence. “What do you think, Dakota? About the property?”

Dakota’s posture relaxes, her shoulders softening, and she looks back out at Sierra Grande. “I love it. I think I could do something really special here. I need to meet a few more people and get some ideas, but I already have a couple.”

“More people?” Jericho asks, catching on to the word Dakota used.

Dakota glances at her, her eyes moving down to the heels, and her mouth moves like she’s trying to hide her laughter. “I met a man last night at the Bar N. He had some thoughts about who I could talk to.”

“Who?” I ask.

Dakota regards me with frosty eyes, and I think it might be worse than when they’re on fire. “Waylon Guthrie.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

She smirks. “Don’t worry, he knew plenty about you. And your family.”

I ignore the little dagger she just threw my way and look out over the valley where Sierra Grande sits. Up above the scrubby desert, where the landscape turns to pine, that’s where the Hayden Ranch sits. It’s commanding in its place, like a castle watching over the town. Some people appreciate the position, feel safe because of it. Others resent it. That’s the thing about being on top. Everyone thinks they know you, and what they think they know is almost always far from the truth.

“Whoever buys this property, they’re going to have to get a crane out here to remove all those pecan trees,” Jericho says, one corner of her top lip curled up in disgust. I follow her gaze out to a grove of sad-looking pecan trees. They don’t grow naturally here, and nobody ever knew how they came to be. Gramps says someone passing through tossed some seeds on the ground, and that was all it took.

Dakota levels me with a steely stare, but she speaks to Jericho. “Wright Design + Build wants the property, Jericho. I understand you have other interested buyers, but let me be the first to throw my hat in the ring.” She strides back through the desert, headed for my truck, not waiting for anybody to follow.

Jericho says, probably to me but I’m too busy watching Dakota’s retreating form to look her way, “I can’t tell if I like her.”

No worries, Jericho. I’m afraid I like her enough for the both of us.

I start for my truck too, but I’m careful to walk at Dakota’s pace to maintain our distance. It seems best that way.

8

Dakota

I knew it.

The asshole remembers me. I almost feel like calling Paige, one of the friends I went to the party with that night, except I haven’t talked to her since the morning after my night with Wes, when I showed up at her lake house. I don’t even have her number anymore.

Our falling out was my fault. I was sad about Wes, and somehow what he did brought into question for me all the decisions that I had been making. That’s when I decided that I’d worn out my welcome in that phase of my life. It was finally time to go home. Too chicken shit to call first, I’d showed up on my parents’ doorstep only to learn that my mom had suffered an aneurysm two days prior.

Two days.

Two fucking days.

What had I been doing on that day? Nothing. I should have been with my mother. I should’ve never left my parents’ house. I shouldn’t have been so headstrong and wild, acting like I had the market cornered on being a teenager and wanting freedom, as if my parents had never felt such feelings before.

After I came home, I read up on everything I could find about aneurysms. I kept seeing the word stress. And hadn’t I caused my mother enough stress over the years? In my grief, I saw this