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“Partly. I wanted to elope to get her off my back about needing to marry. She’s never supported my dreams of working at all, much less with something so ‘frivolous’ like a bridal shop.”
He furrows his brow, listening and waiting patiently for more.
“She wants me to marry someone of her choosing. Someone who meets her expectations. And also to ensure I won’t have the freedom to do anything with my trust fund.”
“The trust fund your father left you? The one you’ve been living on since his death?”
I shake my head. “My mother only gives me an allowance. She has a death grip on my funds that he set up for me.”
“How? It’s yours. It’s in your name.”
I shrug. “She’s manipulated it somehow so that I would only receive it after I’m married, but she’s determined to choose who I’m able to marry.”
Grunting an angry bark of laughter, he shakes his head and stands. “I don’t think that’s legal.”
“Oh, like a Rennard won’t have a mighty legal team to rely on.”
He sobers, almost deadpanning at me. “Never mind them. I’ll look into it. Caleb’s lawyers and mine. We’ll investigate this bullshit, Claire. I mean, why not add it to the mix…”
“What do you mean?” I ask, too pragmatic and defeated to let his promise make a difference in my mind. I’m not being stubborn or in denial. I believe very much so that Caleb and Dalton likely want to help me. But this is my mother they’re talking about. His last words are cryptic, and I focus on them. “What do you mean about adding something to the mix?”
“Caleb and I are already concentrating on a similar matter. Another trust fund issue, and a certain man who’s going to pay dearly for messing with our women. But don’t worry. We’ll look into this with Adelaide.”
I stand, tired of the topic that I’ve long since accepted as my unchangeable fate. There is simply no beating my mother. As I wave him off, I return to sorting out the items on the table. “I’ve got far more pressing issues at the moment.”
“Like what? Other than finding so many issues with this cabin that you need to hire Sawyer.” He chuckles. “Sorry about that. I’d only just gotten the keys to this place, and you needed to bolt from Paris.”
I nod. “And now, I need to find a way to get to Denver and secure the fabric samples I need Lauren to review.”
“You want to get a rental?” he asks as a familiar knock sounds on the door. This time, I know it’s Sawyer. He always knocks with four raps of his knuckle. I let Dalton answer the door and welcome him in.
“Hey, just the man I was hoping to catch up with,” Sawyer says, taking a moment to tip his chin up at me in a greeting.
My tablet dings with an email notification, and I hurry back to it, hopeful it’s one of the shops in Denver replying about my inquiries about their stock.
Dalton and Sawyer linger near the door, dropping into an instant conversation about projects.
“The road is done,” Sawyer says, and I roll my eyes.
A road? It’s a long, pressed gravel driveway that reaches to the far end of Dalton’s massive property.
“And we’ll start doing the demo on the old cabins way back there next week.”
“Perfect,” Dalton replies.
“I just have to run to Denver and pick up a different trailer, so I’ll be gone dealing with that, but after I’m back, the crew will be on it.”
Dalton snaps his fingers and points at me. “There we go. I see a solution to at least one of your problems.”
Oh, no. I tense, already guessing what he’ll say.
“You can go to Denver with Sawyer since he’s heading that way.”
My stomach tightens. It’s not anxiety but a funky sense of butterflies taking flight and causing tension.
Riding with Sawyer for how long of a drive? It’s one thing to be here at the cabin while he works on repairs, and I labor away with sourcing the things for Lauren’s dress. We can tiptoe toward being familiar with each other with the fallbacks of our work as a handy distraction.
But stuck in a truck with him, going out of town?
