Lila Mae wouldlike to see him scruffy and dirty too, and she scolded herself strongly that she was not making a near cross-country move to find a boyfriend. No, she needed to find herself first, and her purpose, and something beneficial to do with the vast fortune the good Lord had blessed her with. Her parents didn’t understand why she couldn’t do that in Atlanta, and Lila Mae had given up trying to explain it to them.
Of course, no one knew the whole truth about Lila’s desire to branch out on her own while staying close to something familiar, and a flash of regret moved through her.
Thankfully, Cleo sat, and Lila beamed at the cat as Trap reached out hesitantly toward her.
“She’s a Bengal,” she said.
“She looks like a tiny tiger.”
“Yes,” Lila said. “They’re a beautiful and rare breed, and she came to me injured. I nursed her back to health, but couldn’t bear toadopt her out again. She has quite a bit of anxiety, but she made the flight here just fine.”
“You flew with her?”
“How else do you think I got here?” Lila Mae shot back at him.
Trap blinked his eyes, leaving Cleo and coming to meet hers. “You didn’t tell me you were coming.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “I said I might try if I could get a flight.”
“You couldn’t have texted me before you took off?” he asked.
“You didn’t have to leave your church service.”
“Didn’t I?” He pulled out his phone. “Did you read your text? It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t, ‘What are you doing today, Trap?’ It was, ‘Meet me here in sixty minutes. I’m on the ground in Amarillo.’”
Lila Mae swallowed, because yes, that was what she had done. Her brother had told her she was too demanding, but Lila Mae had grown up being demanded of, and she didn’t know another way.
“I apologize,” she said, because she needed this man’s help. He would be her only tie to Three Rivers and the success of this place, and she wanted nothing more than to show her family that she had good ideas and would do honorable things with their name. “This week happens to be the best time for me,” she said. “I apologize if that’s not the case for you.”
“You’re going to be here all week?” Trap asked.
Lila Mae nodded. “If it’s a terribly awful time for you, I understand.” She reached into her handbag and pulled out her phone. “Perhaps we should schedule some appointments right now for this week.”
“All right.”
Lila Mae tapped on her phone. “I’ll work around you.” She looked up, hope streaming through her at the reminder that she would be here in Three Rivers for a week by herself. No overbearing older brother bossing her around, telling her what to do and making her feel small. No mother sighing wistfully and saying she wished she had grandbabies by now.
After all, it seemed to only be Lila Mae’s job to provide them, as Kent had been engaged last year and unable to tie the knot, but her mother never talked about that. Oh, no. It was always about Lila Mae. She could hear her mother’s disapproving tone even from thousands of miles away.
Lila Mae shoved the thoughts out of her head. She didn’t have to deal with them this week, and she could finalize the plans for the build and the design with Ruby and Trap, and make the permanent move here come summertime.
“Well, what did you want to go over?” Trap asked, and Lila Mae blinked herself back to the conversation.
“I was hoping to walk through things with you today,” she said. “So we can meet and go over some designs later this week.” She looked up, hopeful. “I’ve been making a few sketches based on what you and Ruby sent me previously, but I need to see it for myself.”
Trap nodded and then indicated the chained gate connected to a fence that ran north and south for acres and acres. “How are you planning on getting through that?” He looked over to her again, his gaze dripping all the way down to her shiny black heels and then climbing back to her face. Heat filled her, and she wasn’t sure what kind of look Trap Walker wore on his face, but Lila had dated plenty of men in the past, and she recognized her own flash of attraction to this tall, dark, grumpy cowboy.
“You don’t have a key?” she asked.
“I don’t own this property, ma’am.” The words came with a hint of frustration embedded in them. “Don’tyouhave the key?”
Lila Mae huffed and surveyed the gate once more. It came together in two pieces of metal curved along the corners, each side with three rungs. It stood taller than her, to be sure, but surely she could duck between two of the slats and be on the property in a couple of seconds.
“I suppose I should have called the realtor,” she said.
Trap chuckled. “Yeah, probably while you were waiting for your flightto take off.”
She gave him a dry look and rolled her eyes. “Your point has been taken, Mister Walker. This morning was a bit of—well, it was a mess, okay?”
