Can't Hurry Love by Molly O'Keefe Read Free Book Online Page A

could feel him in the air. She stepped away, but the sensation stayed. She couldn’t run from him.
    “Well? I’ll pay you a fair price.” Those grass-green eyes were so focused and intent it was as if everything he had, and everything he was, was at play in this moment.
    Unable to look away, she started to shake her head. His eyebrows clashed under the wide brim of his hat.
    “I’m … I’m sorry, Eli. I’ve leased that land.”
    “What?”
    “I’ve rented—”
    “I know what a lease is. To who?”
    “The McDougals.”
    He swore loudly, glanced back at the map, and took his finger away from the wall. “All of these x ’s?”
    “Leased.”
    It was as if someone had left a door open in the room, letting in an ice-cold draft—that was the power of his anger. He turned on her, every muscle in his lean body tensed, his hands in fists at his sides.
    She tried not to shake in the face of his emotion, atbeing the unholy focus of all that anger. But it was impossible. So that she wouldn’t look like the coward she actually was, she lifted her chin. Which for some reason seemed to make him more angry.
    “Is this a joke?”
    “You tied my hands, Eli. When you sold that herd you took half the value—”
    “I know what I did.”
    Of course he did. He’d set out to ruin her family. Ruin her. A brush fire eradicated any sympathy that might have lingered in the tiny vessels of her heart. And it definitely took care of her fear. Now she felt nothing but the strength born of righteousness.
    “I have no intention of leaving this ranch.” Her anger inflated her body. She was three times her size, towering over him. “I told you that.”
    “I just never thought you’d screw me like this.”
    She could only gape at him. Was every man so blind, so stupid? “Likewise, Eli.”
    He stared at her, right into her, and for a second she couldn’t breathe for the pain of it, the intimacy. And as much as she wanted to look away, she didn’t. She stared right back, right into him where he’d shown her his secrets. His disappointments.
    Which were not so different from hers, if he could just see that. They both wanted to be useful, do the right thing. They could bury the grudges between their families right now. Right here. If he could understand that, then maybe they could move on from here. As friends. Co-workers.
    And if the skin of her wrist burned for more, that was her problem.
    “You don’t belong here!” he said, and she leaned back against the desk, slightly light-headed with hurt. She should stop being surprised by the malice of men. Of this man.
    “And it’s not your place to decide.”
    He looked back at the map, the skin of his neck red, the muscles in his jaw practically bouncing against his skin.
    “We’re not done here, you know that, right?”
    “Yes, we are, Eli. You just need some time to see it.”
    Thunder shook the room as he walked out, his long legs in dark denim eating up the distance between her and the door. He didn’t glance back, didn’t even pause, and he threw open the door so hard it ricocheted back and closed behind him as he stepped into the shadows of the hallway.
    She collapsed backwards into the chair, feeling like a popped balloon. The grilled cheese didn’t seem half so inviting and she pushed it away.
    What was done was done, she thought, spinning to look up at the map. She imagined, all things considered, that her father would be proud of her in some way. She’d made a strong business decision, thwarted an enemy’s plan, and in essence had done exactly what he would have done.
    Somehow, the thought didn’t make her feel any better.

chapter
    5
    Celeste was in crisis. Or rather, that old woman staring back at her in the mirror was in crisis. Sixty-three. Yesterday. Using her fingers she lifted her eyebrow practically up to her hairline, pulling the crepey skin of her eyelids as taut as she could.
    In the mirror, they still looked crepey.
    And her neck. Good Lord, don’t