The Cowboy's Texas Heart (The Dixons of Legacy Ranch 3)

“Daisy gave these to me,” she whispered when she caught him scrutinizing them, before turning her attention back to her call. “Okay, I understand, but…am I hearing you correctly?”

Heather’s brow pulled together, voice tightened, an irritated inflection he’d never heard from her before. She hurried out of the room, up the stairs, thundered overhead in their bedroom, returning a moment later with a…scrap of cardboard she’d jotted notes on? Wait, their bedroom?

He peered over her shoulder. All of the info from her calls with insurance were scribbled upon it. He honed in on the faint thread of Chet’s voice through the receiver, unable to make out what he was saying.

“Okay, but you’re gonna total it, right? I mean, it’s not drivable. Like, it’s completely, 100 percent not—didn’t the adjuster take pictures?”

Tyler’s irritation spiked. The impulse to snatch the phone away and flex his lawyer muscle overpowered him. He forced himself to pace to the kitchen to refill his water jug and consider everything he’d learned about Fossyl’s bank records and acreage miscalculation, yet his ear remained trained on the door down the hallway as the floorboards creaked beneath her pacing—

Everyone of her rock specimen boxes sat out, spread across his kitchen table, labels rewritten, a pile of storm-ruined labels in a wadded clump, and cuts of paper littered in a pile from the new labels she’d made. A package of archival pens sat open, cast in a pile. Were these for the adjunct classes she taught?

“Chet, man, I’m not understanding, make me understand.”

He paced over to the rocks, not wanting to return to his office and make Heather worry he was hovering, like he had when her new truck had been dropped off.

Basalt…obsidian…igneous rocks.He glanced at the note cards in front of the specimens.

Dirt flecks littered the table, having dusted off other sandstone samples. Heather seemed to live for her job in the dirt. The way she’d breezed inside just now, all fresh air and sunshine and sweat seemed right. She fit with him.

“You want me to go live in the dirt and mud with cows? To be a fucking farmer’s wife?”Isabella’s accented words in the wake of his granddad’s death, when he’d been back and forth with probate to acquire the farm, grieving and debating his pops about giving up his law firm to save this history on his mother’s side, snaked through his mind. He’d wanted Izzy to keep modeling. He’d even contracted a private jet so she could travel abroad whenever the jobs arose, paid for her personal trainer to whip her body back into shape. “I married a lawyer, not this. I came to this sweltering hellhole for you already. He’d bought a beautiful modernist mansion in West Austin overlooking the lake. Hardly the real, gritty Texas. Don’t you dare make me move out to the sticks. My life is in Paris and New York. I never should have even slept with you. I never should have told you about that pregnancy test. That was my first mistake…

Would his marriage have worked out, had he not vied for this farm? No. Something else would have tipped the scales. He’d caved to Pops’s pressure that he get married: “Don’t call back unless it’s to give me the wedding date.” Pops’s gruff words, when he’d admitted he’d gotten a girl pregnant. That same frowning disappointment, slow to praise, quick to judge. To feel so cut off had stung. He’d put a ring on Isabella’s finger, convinced her she could still graduate, that he’d help with the baby wherever needed, help keep it secret, that he’d send her to every shoot she was hired for…and she’d been unable to accept that his granddad had just died and the family was going to lose a piece of heritage 140 years in the making? She’d never seen him. Hell, the scales had already been tipped. The farm had simply made the imbalance obvious—

“Help me understand. This is what I have insurance for…right?” Heather said.

Frustration was climbing in her voice. He paced. Fought the urge again to take over and ask Chet for his supervisor. Swooping in and taking over and making assumptions and forcing the result he wanted had gotten him into so much trouble before. He needed to listen to the voice in the back of his mind, telling him to let her handle this. He took off his hat and raked his fingers through his hair.

“Okay, but…” There was heavy dismay in her voice. Floorboards creaked again. She’d resumed pacing. “You’re not going to cover the cost at all?”

Tyler’s control snapped. He was annoyed with Fossyl. Annoyed with whatever was happening with Seth. Annoyed with memories of Isabella that had been latent but were now revived. Annoyed that Heather sounded annoyed. He lumbered out of the kitchen, unable to stop.