Rugged Fire [Rugged Savage Valley, Colorado 4] by Edith DuBois Read Free Book Online

Lianne,” Seb said in a chastising tone, “we were talking about you . Do you think Cherie Crawford would have marched into the bank with a perfect ten-year business plan? Hell, do you think she’d even have the brains or the gumption to start a business in the first place?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t really know what she’s up to these days.”
    “Me neither, and I don’t care to.”
    “Oh. But still, you must get hit on all the time by gorgeous women. Both of you are handsome, successful men in a small town. You’re like catnip for single ladies.”
    “Please. Don’t ever compare us to catnip.”
    “Whoops. That’s right. What would it be? Bearnip?”
    Seb and Will sighed at the same time, but Seb spoke first. “I had a feeling you knew. Did Noah Strong tell you?”
    Lianne laughed. “Yeah, when I was seven.”
    “It’s so odd to me that you’re related to the Strongs.”
    “Why is that?”
    “That family doesn’t exactly have a golden reputation around here, yet you seem to fit in well enough.”
    “My, how generous of you to say that.” She leveled a hard stare them. She’d come here thinking they were going to apologize to her about judging Jamie before they even knew her, and here they were getting all uptight about her cousins. There had to be something going on with that. There had to be some explanation for why they always kept themselves closed off from the rest of the bear-shifters.
    Growing up in Savage Valley, she knew a little bit about all the shifter families. The Kinmans were lawmen. The Ashleys were doctors, and the Greenwoods ran the preservation center. The Carsons were known for their work at the bank, but she knew the rest of the shifters left them alone most of the time. They kept themselves to themselves, which was pretty difficult in a small town like Savage Valley. She wondered if there was something deeper going on with them.
    “Why are you so concerned with reputations anyway? The town already loves you.”
    “Everyone has their place, Lianne,” Seb said. “You of all people should know that.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “It means you’ve lived here most of your life. You know how things work.”
    “I’m not sure that I do. I’m beginning to think we have very different ideas about how things work. Maybe you should enlighten me.”
    Seb looked at her for a long moment. She thought he was annoyed and that he wouldn’t answer, but then he lifted a “what the hell” brow. “Living in Savage Valley, everything we do is scrutinized, discussed, and dissected. In that type of environment, we prefer to keep ourselves as far away from gossip as possible. If that means avoiding people with questionable histories, so be it. We handle people’s finances, their money, their livelihood, and we take that responsibility very seriously. Does that make sense?”
    “Yes.”
    “And I didn’t intend to speak poorly of your cousins, but even you must admit that Carter and Noah can get out of control. They’re wild. But they like being wild. They like pushing people’s boundaries and thresholds of tolerance, so I can only conclude that they like being outcasts. I’ve seen nothing that would make me believe otherwise. Do you agree?”
    Lianne forced herself to suck in a deep, steadying breath. Noah was her best friend. They’d spent hours and hours together as kids, and in high school, he’d always been the one to cheer her up when her self-confidence sank to the ground. “Seb,” she said, forcing her voice to remain calm. “I’m sorry, but I do not agree. Not at all. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I respect you. I think you and Will manage the bank extremely well, but you are wrong. You are so wrong. I think that maybe, if you opened your mind and lowered your nose a little bit, you’d see that it isn’t the Strongs with the tarnished reputation but with pigheaded people like you.” Well, she’d gotten a little intense at the end, but she was