The Rancher's Fake Girlfriend - Leslie North Page 0,40

happen to the water by temporarily coloring it neon green, but the dye they used was toxic in high concentrations—and they mixed it wrong. Within days of the stunt, dead fish and turtles started surfacing and the water-dwelling birds around the river were permanently stained. Even the riverbanks ended up looking like they’d been painted with toxic sludge. The resulting trial was a media sensation, thanks in part to the handsome, arrogant leader who refused to admit wrongdoing … and the added drama of the man’s partner turning against him to testify for the prosecution.

“The internet never forgets,” Tripp taunted. “It can get scrubbed, but if you dig hard enough, there’s always good stuff to find. She covered her tracks, or probably paid someone to cover them for her, but Amanda and Hannah are the same person.”

Tripp looked at Chad expectantly, like he was waiting for a bomb to go off, but the only thing Chad could feel was sadness. The woman he thought he knew, the one he was starting to care about in a way that made him want to smile all the time, was actually a stranger. She’d hidden so much from him that he didn’t feel he knew her at all. Memories he couldn’t square flooded back to him … her caginess about her history, the secret coding, her social media savvy … Hannah was a totally different person than the one he thought he knew.

But for some inexplicable reason, his instinct to protect her from Tripp never wavered.

“Who else have you told about this?” Chad asked Tripp, eyes blazing.

“No one.” Tripp paused. “Yet.”

“What do you hope to gain from this, Tripp? You think you’re finally going to win her by spilling the one secret she’s desperate to keep?”

He shrugged. “Not sure I want her anymore now that I know she’s damaged goods.”

“Don’t you dare —” Chad took a menacing step towards Tripp, then stopped himself when some of the older members drifted out the door to their trucks.

“You’d be smarter to worry less about me and more about yourself,” Tripp continued. “All along you’ve been pitching that we start adding eco-friendly, sustainable ranching initiatives. How would it look to the board members if they find out you’re sleeping with someone who was involved with one of the worst domestic environmental disasters of the decade?” Tripp paused and let his words sink in.

“You would do that? You would actually sink that low?”

“I would … unless you do it first.”

“I’d never—” Chad started to say, but Tripp cut him off.

“Look at it like this,” he said. “If you tell the board members yourself, you might be able to spin it; say that you didn’t know, that you were tricked, and that you told them as soon as you found out. You’d save face and might even get their votes … if you’re willing to out ‘Hannah’ in the process and wreck her life in Kingsley. Or you can wait, wondering every day if this is the day that I spill the beans, making you look as guilty as possible and blowing your chances of that chairman position straight to hell. So what matters to you more? Your lying little sweetheart, or that chairman member position?”

Chad recoiled, disgusted. “Why are you even doing this?” he demanded. “Do you really want to win the chair that badly?”

“I don’t give a damn if I win,” Tripp spat out. “I just want you to lose. That’s my idea of victory.” And with that, he turned on his heel and walked away.

Chad tried to figure out his next move as he walked back to his truck. He needed answers, directly from Hannah. He checked his phone. Almost ten, but he knew she’d still be up. Hell, he might find her sitting in her little closet office, coding the night away.

His heart was heavy with the knowledge of what Hannah had hidden from him. As he pulled out of Saddle Joe’s parking lot, one word echoed in his head.

Why?

15

“It’s late, you know,” Hannah said as she ushered Chad into her house and down the hall to the kitchen. She zipped up her hoodie so her thin tank top was covered up, like he was a repairman on a service call and she wanted to stay modest in front of him.

“Yeah, sorry about the time. But we need to talk this out in person.”

Hannah crossed her arms and stared at him without any of the warmth he’d gotten so accustomed to. Whatever had been