The Tycoon

But why had he kept the watch?

7

VERONICA

Bea, when I found her, was pushing gnocchi around a small plate and hiding behind a post in the ballroom.

“Have you seen Trudy?”

“Shhhh,” she said. “Don’t scare them away.”

“Who?” I asked and pulled some gnocchi off her plate. It tasted amazing and like cardboard at the same time. The wonder of funeral food.

“Sabrina and Sheriff Garrett Pine.”

“Shit. He’s sheriff now?” That made total sense, actually.

“And, like…super hot. It’s classic. Both of them are trying to ignore that the other is here, but they are constantly sneaking peeks at each other.”

I looked over Bea’s shoulder to find Sabrina, as Bea had said, glancing over at her long-time crush, Garrett. Who, Bea was right, had grown into a very handsome man. But in the clean-cut, slightly rigid way of police officers. He had been like that even before he was a cop. And just looking at them, you could see that they were so wrong for each other.

And yet Sabrina, who had dated two members of One Direction when they were the biggest thing on Earth couldn’t let this guy go.

“What did he do to Sabrina?” Bea asked. “A spell of some kind?”

“I think he broke her heart. Where’s his wife?” I asked.

Bea looked over her shoulder at me. “Holy shit, you didn’t hear what happened to Garrett Pine? He got left at the altar. Like, literally.”

Huh. There must be something in the water around here. Too much betrayal in these wide-open spaces. But nothing about it was funny; I knew how it felt to be hurt like that.

“Sorry to hear it, but now is not the time. We need to talk,” I said to Bea and pulled her and her gnocchi into the long screened-in porch along the back of the house.

This used to be our mother’s favorite place. Every evening after dinner she’d bring us out here to play in the evening cool. She would read, or make our dolls elaborate ball gowns or suits of armor out of thin pieces of tin. She was a miracle, our mom.

And when night fell, she’d crowd us into her lap and we’d watch the fireflies fill the long grass and it felt like we’d be happy like that forever. She died when I was six and Bea was barely four. I don’t know if our mom was happy.

In her marriage. Or on this ranch.

But Bea and I were happy and that had to count for something.

That was something Clayton and I had shared, I suddenly remembered rather unhappily. His mother died when he was young, too. A hole he said that would never be filled. He told me that the night we slept together for the first time.

“Hey,” Bea took my hand. “What is happening with you?”

“He kept the watch, Bea.”

“What watch?”

“The watch I gave him for our engagement. The watch I found and bought with my own money. The watch with that corny inscription…”

Words I’d meant but could never, ever say to him.

For you, forever.

The embarrassment and the outrage were making me lightheaded and sick to my stomach.

“I’m sorry, Veronica,” she said. Her beautiful face folded into familiar lines of apology and regret.

What am I doing? I have bigger problems than the stupid watch.

“It’s not your fault he kept the damn watch. I took it back, anyway. You know anyone who needs a watch?”

“Don’t make jokes. I’m sorry about everything. All of it. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even have to talk to that asshole.”

You’re twenty-five, I wanted to say to her. You’re not a child. You keep making mistakes like you’re some teenager and not a grown-ass woman.

But maybe the problem was I kept saving her. Maybe she’d grow up if I wasn’t always there with my safety nets.

“What are we going to do?” Bea asked. She sat down on the swinging bench seat, which creaked and groaned under her very slight weight.

“We?” I asked.

She looked away and I knew I’d hurt her.

“I’m sorry,” I breathed. “That was a low blow.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I’m so tired of being this person, you know? The one who jumps in with both feet only to get them broken. I’m tired of being the fuck-up.”

“You’re not a fuck-up,” I told her, it wasn’t a lie, but it was mostly hope. “Here’s what you’re going to do. Call the police, tell them what’s happened. See if they can find out what you’ve stepped into.”

“What about the money?”

“I’m…I’m going to see what I can do about the money.”

“Do you think Dylan is going to come through?”

“Maybe.”

Bea sighed, the chair squeaked. “Yeah. Me, neither.”

I went to bed that night with my phone beside my bed. Every notification was turned off except for email. If Dylan emailed me back, the ping would wake me up.

Except there was no sleeping. My old bed was lumpy with bad memories and I felt both too big and too small inside it all. My only relief was that Clayton had left the ranch with only a quick, terse goodbye.