“Fuck that.”
Before she could get off the bed, Nico was on his feet, standing directly in front of her.
“Move, Nico.”
“No.”
She would’ve scrambled off the other side, but Jäger was laid out on the mattress, snoozing as though it was a lazy afternoon, completely oblivious to the chaos that was making mincemeat of Stevie’s heart.
“Let’s go over there,” Nico said rationally.
“For what? So we can wave at him when he’s drivin’ down the road?”
“No. So we can talk to him. See what’s goin’ on.”
Stevie clamped her teeth together. She didn’t give a shit what was going on. She didn’t care if Stone was already halfway to Houston.
Maybe if she repeated it a few thousand times, it would be true.
Forty-One
After he managed to usher Reilly outof the house, Stone attempted to do the same with Leah. Unfortunately, she was proving to be a bigger pain in his ass than he remembered.
“Your sister set me up, Stone,” Leah insisted. “She twisted my words around.”
He huffed a mirthless laugh as he downed one of the beers he’d brought back from his parents’ house.
“We were talkin’ about you, and she started makin’ fun of you for not havin’ a degree.”
Stone stared at her. “Reilly made fun of me?”
“She did.” Leah moved closer. “I was tellin’ her how I wanted you to come back to run the ranch, and she said you weren’t qualified.”
Even if he hadn’t heard every word they’d exchanged, Stone wouldn’t have believed her. Leah was good at many things, but lying wasn’t one of them. She tried. God, she tried. The majority of words that came out of her mouth were fictitious. He didn’t know why she resorted to lying, but that was her knee-jerk response.
“It doesn’t matter,” he told her, exhaling heavily. “I’m not goin’ back to the Double J.”
“You have to.”
“Why?”
“Because…” Her eyes went wild, and he knew she was trying to come up with a reason.
“Come on,” he goaded. “Spit it out.”
“Daddy … he’s…”
“What? He’s sick?”
Stone could tell she was trying to find a way to use that, but her eyes gave her away, and she knew it.
“He’s not sick, Leah.”
“No. It’s … um … Not him. It’s…”
“You’re sick?” he said, hating that he was playing this game with her.
“I … uh…”
