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“What if I tell you it’s got a comma in it?”
She winced, but repeated determinedly, “I’ll pay for it.”
She’s been saving almost all of her prize money.
His mother’s words came back to him, along with the part about Britt Roth’s dreams for the future. And the urge to get back at her faded a little.
“How do you know I won’t double the real amount or something?”
She met his gaze then, steadily. “Because you’re a Rafferty. You wouldn’t do something that would shame your father’s memory. Not even to get back at me.”
That she used the exact words he’d just thought delayed his reaction to the rest of what she said for a moment. And then he couldn’t speak himself, because his throat was crazy tight. He tried to swallow. It almost hurt.
He coughed. That was better.
“Please, I need to do this,” she said almost urgently when he didn’t speak. Please. A word he’d rarely if ever heard from her. “Like I said, I didn’t know you had a legitimate reason for that thing being there. I had no idea my father had hired it. You. Whatever. If I had, I never would have done it.”
“So, this is because your father got mad when he found out?”
“No.” A strangely soft note came into her voice. “It’s because he didn’t.”
In a crazy way that made sense to him. He let out a breath, trying to let go of some of the seemingly natural tension she set off in him as he did. “I’ll get the original invoice,” he said. He started to turn, to head back to his lair, as Mom called it. Then he looked back. “And there’s no comma. The basic ones are cheaper these days.”
He thought he saw relief flash in her eyes. No need to mention his modifications, which had probably doubled the value of the thing. As he walked back the way he had come, he had to toss that into the pot of new data on his oldest enemy. And he had no idea what kind of stew that was going to produce.
*
Britt tried to stop herself from pacing the floor, but the moment she stopped thinking about stopping, she was doing again. She wanted this over with. She wanted to pay this debt. She wanted to be able to tell her dad she’d made it right. She wanted to get back to working with Ghost.
She wanted Cody to put on a damned shirt. And zip up.
She’d spent more time than she cared to admit trying to put that image of him yanking off his shirt to gather up the drone out of her mind. It hadn’t worked, so she’d told herself she’d only imagined how good he’d looked.
He’d just blasted that thought out of the air as thoroughly as she’d blasted his precious drone.
It would have been impossible, with her friends pointing it out all the time, to deny he was a hunk. And if they’d seen him as she had yesterday, or as he’d been just now, with that bare, broad, muscled chest and obvious six-pack, that arrow of sandy hair heading from his navel downward, they’d never shut up about it.
The fact that he was also a computer nerd, as she’d often derisively called him when they were younger, seemed to fascinate them even more. She’d only wondered how he stayed in such shape when he seemed to spend most of his time in a chair in front of screens. But Mom said he worked on the ranch like the rest of the family, so she’d figured he must do enough.
Her friends didn’t understand why she disliked him so intensely. To which her standard answer was “You didn’t grow up next door to him.” An answer that didn’t account for the simple fact that both their ranches were big enough they probably could have avoided encountering each other anywhere but school without a lot of effort.
Effort neither of them seemed inclined to expend.
She was pacing again. She stopped in her tracks. Sighed. He’d only been gone a minute, maybe two, and she was already winding up as if for a second clash.
You will not argue with him. You will pay what you owe and go home. That simple.
She turned her head slightly, looking at the big painting on the wall. She’d seen it before. She’d actually been here many times, although she tried to time it when Cody was somewhere else. She truly had liked, although been in a bit of awe of his father, she genuinely did like his mother, and his brothers. And now their ladies as well. Sydney had such fascinating stories to tell, and Ariel was so kind and understanding. She’d only met Ry’s Kaitlyn twice since they’d connected a couple of months ago, but the quiet woman had the air of someone who saw much others overlooked, and she wanted to know her better.
Soon, she thought as she looked at the glorious explosion of color Cody’s father had captured so vividly. Soon her beloved Hill Country would look just like this, the luxurious swaths of bluebonnets softening the rough edges of the escarpment, looking like some kind of carpet unrolled by God.
She found her eyes stinging a little as she looked at the painting. He’d been such a nice, good man, but also as tough as he’d needed to be in the one-of-a-kind job of standing for them all in brutal places around the world.
Every Rafferty had one of his paintings, each with an aspect that related particularly to them, except Cody. Maggie had explained that to her once, and she’d seen genuine pain in the woman’s eyes as she spoke of how it hurt Cody, a lot, to be the only one without that one-of-a-kind gift, from a one-of-a-kind man. Their father had always waited, Maggie said, until he had a good idea of who his sons were, and what they would value, before setting out to do their painting. For Keller, it had been when he was ten, because his love for this place and his family’s history had been clear early on. Chance had also been pretty clear who he was by ten. Rylan had been trickier, Maggie had said, probably because of the talent Ry shared with him, and he’d been twelve.
But Cody never got his. Because Kyle Rafferty had been killed in action before he could do that last one.
Britt looked away, annoyed that she was tearing up even more at the thought. Why on earth would she care if Cody’s feelings were hurt? No, that couldn’t be it. It was his father she was feeling sorry about. Because she’d liked him.
