And Audrey would try to go for it.
She loved seeing me suffer and would go out of her way to make sure that I was never happy. Even if she had to go through my dad to do it.
Before Nettie had left, it was split between the two of us—Audrey’s hate for the two of us was a palpable thing—but when Nettie had left, she’d only had me to set her sights on.
It was exhausting sometimes.
“Go sit down, Audrey,” a forceful male voice said from somewhere beyond where we were sitting. “Don’t embarrass yourself further.”
I looked toward the sound of that voice to find my electrician drinking a beer and glaring hard at Audrey.
Whoa.
“Marry him. Right now,” Nettie whisper-hissed.
I looked away before he could turn his gaze on us—because Nettie hadn’t been quiet—and pulled out my phone to pretend like I wasn’t listening.
“What are you talking about, doll?”
Doll.
Gag.
“Denver,” Weaver growled, sounding even less patient than his earlier obvious impatience. “Do me a favor since you know her father so well…deal with her.”
I could hear the absoluteness in Weaver’s voice, even over the loud pounding of Lynyrd Skynyrd coming through the jukebox’s speakers and the yelling of the patrons of the bar.
Audrey, however, played the victim card well.
“Denver?” I could practically see Audrey’s lip quivering. She was about to pull out the waterworks. She was good at that. “What’s his problem?”
Jeez, she was good at that. Though, I’d known that since middle school when she’d cut my hair off while seated behind me and then had gotten me in trouble for punching her in the face.
Whomever Denver was, said something low, and then Audrey was covering her face and hurrying toward the bathroom.
“Sweet Mary Mother of God,” Weaver spoke. “Where the fuck do women like this come from? It’s because they were fed bad shit while in the womb, isn’t it?”
Nettie giggled.
And even though Weaver wasn’t talking to either one of us, we still heard his every word as he spoke with the man beside him.
A man named Beau.
I, at least, knew Beau.
Beaufort Abraham Vanderbilt had graduated the year that I’d been a freshman. He was rich, the hottest guy in school, and so far out of everyone’s league that he hadn’t dated a single soul in the four years that I’d known him.
His father was a rich oil tycoon who owned a twenty-nine-million-dollar, thousand-acre horse ranch just south of Sawtooth. It was so big and beautiful, in fact, that you could see it jutting out the side of the Crazy Mountains.
I hadn’t even realized he was back, but seeing him now, he looked like he wasn’t the same person.
The only reason I knew it was him was due to the V tattooed on his left bicep and the pale amber eyes.
Every Vanderbilt had them.
Oh, and the dimples.
But Beau had a thick beard covering the lower half of his face, saving the female population of Sawtooth from those panty-dropping dimples.
