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“Maybe a little.” She winced as she slowly got to her feet, then limped toward a bale of hay. She only made it halfway before she was lifted off her feet and held against a hard, naked chest. Being surrounded by Corbin’s hot skin felt like diving beneath a heated blanket. She couldn’t help feeling disappointed when he lowered her to the hay bale and stepped away.
“I’m calling an ambulance.” He lifted his phone.
“No! Really. I’m fine. I just need a minute to—” She hesitated. “Tell you how sorry I am. I shouldn’t have pretended to be Liberty. I should have told you immediately who I was and explained things. I take full responsibility.”
He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You take full responsibility? I think I know who is responsible. Everyone in Wilder knows Liberty is the leader and you’re just her minion.”
It was the truth, but that didn’t stop his words from stinging.
“I’m not her minion.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Really? Tell me one thing you haven’t done that she’s wanted you to do?” She scrambled for an answer and came up with nothing. He snorted. “Like I thought. So don’t try to tell me you were responsible for the twin switch. You might have tried to execute it, but it wasn’t your idea.”
“It was my idea. I was only supposed to tell you that Liberty was sick. But when I came to the door and you looked . . .” She hesitated and he finished the sentence for her.
“Like an infatuated fool.”
“I was going to say like you had spent a lot of time getting ready.”
Anger hardened his face. “So you felt sorry for me.”
“No!” When his eyebrows lifted, she sighed. “Fine. I felt badly that you were going to be disappointed and when you mistook me for Liberty and handed me the flowers, I just thought . . . what would it hurt if I pretended to be her for just one night? I didn’t think you would figure it out.”
“Only an idiot wouldn’t. You’re nothing like Liberty.”
Since Liberty was gregarious, charming, and dynamic, he was pretty much saying Belle had been reserved, boring, and dull. And yet, he had continued to play along.
“Why didn’t you say something?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I guess I wanted to see how far you’d go.”
She had gone far. Too far. But that wasn’t something she was willing to talk about. And he didn’t seem to want to talk about it either. Although his gaze lowered to her mouth for a split second before he looked away.
“I’m not going to give your family’s ranch back. So if that’s what this confession is all about, you’ve wasted your time. Foreclosing on the ranch was never about the prank you pulled that night. It was about your family defaulting on their loan.”
She stood, trying not to wince when pain shot through her butt. “My brother-in-law, Rome, is willing to pay you what we owe.”
He shrugged. “I don’t want money. I want the ranch.”
“Then buy someone else’s. There are plenty of ranches for sale around here. This isn’t your home.”
In the depths of his blue eyes was the vulnerability that had been missing before—the same vulnerability that had pierced Belle’s heart on the night he had come to pick up Liberty and Liberty had already left on another date. Like then, Belle wanted to remove that look and replace it with something else. Happiness. Laughter. Hope. But then the look was gone and when he spoke, his voice held no warmth or forgiveness.
Just determination.
“It is now.”
Chapter Three
Corbin had vowed hell would freeze over before he touched a Holiday sister again.
Well, hell had frozen over.
And it didn’t look like it was going to thaw out anytime soon.
As much as he would love to order Belle off his ranch, he couldn’t do it. Not when she was injured and it was raining cats and dogs. But he wasn’t about to be nice either.
“Can you walk?”
