Lone Star Holiday Proposal

“Don’t you dare try to make a joke of it. You used me.”

Nolan couldn’t refute her accusation. “I’m sorry about that. Believe me, I—”

“Believe you?” she interrupted with an incredulous expression on her face. “No way. Not ever. You may have missed this in Lawyer 101, Mr. Dane, but where I come from belief comes along with trust, and I don’t trust you anymore. Not now. Not after what you’ve been doing.”

“Raina! Please? Listen to me.”

“No way. Do you even understand what you were doing to me? You were working to take away my sole security. If I can’t run my business at the Courtyard, JJ and I will lose everything I’ve worked to provide for us—we’re barely making ends meet now as it is. My son deserves a bright future, one that only I can give him because God knows there’s no one else there for him. By doing what you were doing, attempting to buy out that land, you threatened everything I hold dear. So, no, I won’t listen to you. Not now and not ever again. Get out of my house. I don’t want to ever see you here again.”

Her voice broke and there were tears in her eyes as she finished her impassioned speech.

“Look, Raina, you have to let me explain—”

“The time for explanations was when you met me. Before you started pumping me for information about the Courtyard and about Royal. Not now.”

The fact that she was totally right made her scorn no less galling or painful.

“Can I at least say bye to JJ?”

“No, you may not.”

Raina stepped toward the front door and hauled it open. The chill air outside rushed in, enveloping them both in its icy swirl. He stared at Raina’s face for a moment, but her expression remained implacable. He knew he had to pick his battles. This was definitely not the time to press her.

Silent, he passed her and went out the door. Before his feet had even struck the paved path to the road, he heard the door slam resoundingly behind him. He didn’t look back, not even when he climbed into the SUV and pulled away from the curb.

On the drive back to his hotel and during a lonely dinner, he couldn’t stop thinking about those bruises Raina had so swiftly hidden and who might have been responsible for them. The very idea that someone had felt they had the right to harm her like that made his blood boil and roused every protective instinct in him. Who was the bad man JJ had referred to and what was he to Raina? Was it the ex she’d said so little about? Nolan was suddenly reminded of the shadowy figure he’d seen the other night. Was it him? The thought left a sour taste in his mouth and made him determined to get to the root of what had happened to her, one way or another.

Nine

Raina was still bristling mad about Nolan’s lies two days later. It had been tough breaking it to JJ that Nolan wouldn’t be staying for dinner. He’d gone to bed that night grumpy and woken yesterday morning in the same state. It seemed her little guy could hold a grudge, and he laid the blame for his new idol not being around very firmly at her feet. She could only hope that the rehearsals for the pageant would distract him from his disappointment.

She thanked her lucky stars that she hadn’t had time to let things go any further with Nolan than they already had. One kiss, that’s all it had been—but what a kiss, her subconscious reminded her uncomfortably. She shoved the thought to the back of her mind and tried to focus on her preparations for the mosaic class she had scheduled tonight. Her group had enjoyed getting started on their mirror frames last week and she had no doubt that a few of them would finish gluing their pieces tonight and be ready to grout them.

She felt another flush of anger at Nolan as she remembered how his actions, if successful, would have taken all of this away from her. She hadn’t been kidding when she’d told him on that first night that the Courtyard had become a symbol of hope for so many people. But then hope was obviously a cheap commodity for a man like him, along with belief and trust.

No matter how angry she was, though, she couldn’t help but feel a numbing sense of loss. Her attraction to him had come out of the blue, startling her with its intensity. “Hormones, just hormones,” she growled under her breath as she did her final checks around the room. Obviously she’d never learned her lesson about the kind of guy she should be attracted to. In the future, if there was any spark at all, she’d take it as a warning and then run a mile in the opposite direction. Fast.