Chapter Twenty-Three
Brand
Instantly, Roxanne deflated.
That was unacceptable. She sat, still on the couch but now looking defenseless and defeated after she’d just stood up for herself. For us.
It wouldn’t do. She deserved better than to feel belittled on our date.
She could already tell something was bothering me, and I hadn’t said a word about Dixon’s phone call. No one else could tell. Not Gina standing five feet away, not my family. Roxanne already knew me better than all of them combined.
I held my hand out to her, and she looked up at me, uncertain and insecure, the lines around her smile tight, her beautiful brown eyes careful.
My family gawked, all of them looking back and forth between my ex and Roxanne.
With the exception of Bea, they’d never met Gina before, had no idea we’d dated, but the coy smile on Gina’s face and the way she ate me up with her eyes told them all they needed to know.
Roxanne took my hand. I tugged her up and to my side, and she relaxed a fraction as I tucked her beneath my arm, like a weapon.
“Gina. Nice to see you again,” I said. “Why are you here?”
She had dressed to kill in a short, black skirt and a soft, pink top that accentuated her tan complexion. The deep neckline showed hints of her breasts and black-lace bra, and she’d worn expensive, high, black heels, which were utterly ridiculous on a ranch.
“Brand,” Merv admonished. “Don’t be rude. Gina came to see the new the cabins you built. She was thinkin’ of rentin’ one, and she knocked on my door earlier to introduce herself.” Merv looked at Roxanne, confusion clouding her blue eyes. “But you didn’t tell me your friend would be stoppin’ by, and you failed to mention you’d be bringin’ someone tonight.”
I had to stop myself from snorting out loud. Gina in a cabin alone, treating herself to a rugged getaway? Right. “That’s because I didn’t know.”
“Oh.” Merv seemed completely befuddled now, her excitement at surprising me quickly waning.
“Didn’t I mention it?” Gina said. “I’m sure I brought it up when Brand took me to dinner the other night.” She let out a breezy laugh, but I knew her game.
“When you met me for a work dinner, Gina, to go over the plans for the new contract.”
Fixing her eyes on Roxanne, Gina waved her hand in front of her. “That’s what I meant.”
When I lowered my arm and wrapped it around Roxanne’s hip, Gina’s eyes followed.
“I feel like I’m missin’ somethin’,” Merv said.
“Mama, Gina, say hello to Roxanne, my girlfriend.”
Roxanne and I hadn’t discussed the label, but I felt her confidence rising as I said it, so I knew it was okay. I wanted her to be my girlfriend. If I was being honest with myself, she was fast becoming my everything.
Gina flashed a smile. It appeared genuine, but I knew better. The rigid set of her jaw gave away her true feelings about seeing me with Roxanne. She wasn’t pleased. Roxanne had become the fly in Gina’s ointment tonight.
“Deputy,” Mama said, nodding at Roxanne, but then she turned back toward Gina. “But I thought?—”
“Who’s hungry?” Bax interrupted loudly. “It’s such a nice evenin’. We set up the table outside on the fantastic patio my wife just built for us. We can eat and watch the sunset by the fire.”
A knock on the kitchen door startled everyone, and then I heard Tab’s voice. “Hello? Bea, Abey, are you in there?” She squinted through the mesh screen. “Y’all said seven for dinner, right?”
Bea grabbed my arm and pulled me to a stop around the side of my brother’s house as everyone followed Bax out back. Abey had taken Roxanne and Tab by their hands and dragged them away from me.
“What’s Gina doin’ here?” Bea asked in a whisper. “I thought you broke that off a long time ago.”
Bea and Gina had only met a few times up in Sheridan, but Bea probably remembered Gina stomping around my office, rearranging everything and tapping her high heel impatiently while I hurried to finish whatever I’d been working on so we could get to the important things in life, like eating at expensive restaurants, but only if they were Michelin-starred, which posed a problem since there weren’t any in Sheridan. None existed in the whole state of Wyoming, which led me to charter a helicopter to Montana twice in the beginning of our relationship, when I’d still been in the wooing phase. It died quickly, not surprisingly.
“I did,” I whispered back. “She’s here ’cause she’s the lead architect on the project we’re startin’ in the spring, but she’s here”—I looked around my brother’s back yard and at the big cedar table in the middle of the brick patio Bea had just finished—“because she saw an opportunity.”
