Hometown Family. Mia Ross
too. He seemed to be wrestling with something, and she didn’t want to intrude. To her surprise, he turned to her with a pensive expression.
“This is—was—Dad’s favorite place on the farm.” He glanced out over the hill toward the wheat fields becoming gold as the sun rose behind them. “He had all that, and he liked this old tree more than the rest of it.”
Caty took that as an invitation to come closer, and she paused a few feet away. Judging by Matt’s anguished memories of his own past, she suspected that, while he respected Ethan’s fondness for the old tree, he didn’t share it.
“Y’know,” he said with a scowl, “you’re really easy to talk to.”
The warm blue of his eyes took some of the sting out of his comment, and she smiled. “You make that sound like a bad thing.”
“It usually is. For me, anyway.”
She wasn’t sure what to make of that, so she decided to ignore it. “Want some?” she asked, offering the mug.
When he hesitated, she thought he’d refuse, but he took it from her. “Thanks.” He swallowed some coffee with obvious difficulty and pushed the mug back at her as if it held something poisonous. “What’s in that? Frosting and whipped cream?”
“Creamer and sugar,” she answered, taking a sip to prove it wasn’t nearly as bad as he made it out to be.
“Any coffee at all?”
“Sure. At the bottom,” she added with a smile.
He looked as if he hadn’t slept a wink all night, and she was hoping to lift his spirits with some humor. Not that it should matter, considering the way he’d treated her. The problem was that it just wasn’t in her nature to stand by and let someone suffer. Her supervising partner had knocked her for that very thing on her last performance appraisal. He’d called it “excessive sympathy.” She called it being human.
Shaking his head, Matt gave her a flicker of the lopsided grin she remembered from high school. “Lemme guess. You’re one of those hot-fudge-sundae-in-my-coffee types.”
“Mmm, sounds perfect. Don’t tell me. You’re one of those high-test, straight-up caffeine types.”
“Most men are.”
“I know lots of guys who like gourmet coffee,” the lawyer in her had to argue.
“Your boyfriend likes it that way?”
“I don’t have one.” She had no intention of telling anyone in Harland about David. She’d left him—and those awful memories—behind in Boston. That was exactly how she wanted things to stay.
Matt grinned at her. “Why am I not surprised?”
“Because you’re a cynic who can’t see beyond Friday night.”
“At least I enjoy Friday night,” he returned evenly. “I’m not chained to a desk somewhere waiting for my life to start.”
Appalled by the very personal attack, Caty didn’t know what to say. She glared up at him, but he deflected it with an I’m-smarter-than-you-think-I-am look.
“Go ahead,” he goaded. “Say it.”
“Not in a million years.”
“Okay,” he conceded with a chuckle. “But I know what you’re thinking. It’s written all over that pretty face of yours.”
She knew he was baiting her, but she wasn’t a trout. Inwardly seething, she cautioned herself against getting too close to this guy. He might not realize it, but he was now her client. That meant she had to be friendly but professional.
Tucker doubled back and ran circles around them, flopping on the ground so Matt could give him a belly rub.
“I’m real sorry I didn’t remember you,” he said while he scratched behind the Lab’s ears.
The quiet apology cooled her temper, and she decided to give him a break. “That’s okay. I was pretty forgettable back then. Invisible, more like.”
Matt glanced over his shoulder. “Not anymore.”
Feeling her cheeks start to burn, she turned away, pretending to watch Tucker bound back into the tall grass. “So this was Ethan’s favorite place. Why?”
“We’d have lunch here sometimes, him and John and me,” he explained. “Y’know, like they used to in the old days. We’d eat and talk, mostly about nothing.”
“That sounds nice.”
“It was.”
Matt seemed so distant from his family, Caty was amazed to learn how much he valued that simple memory. She’d have thought he’d do his best to forget everything connected to Harland. It was nice to discover she was wrong.
In his next breath, all semblance of nicety vanished.
“But I have my own life now.” Stepping closer, he glowered down at her. “Did you and Dad consider that when you boxed me into this little trap?”
Caty recognized that he was trying to intimidate her, use his size and considerable muscle to make her give in. She couldn’t miss the shift in his phrasing, dropping the responsibility for his predicament squarely on her shoulders. Fortunately, she had a weapon or two he hadn’t counted on, and she brought them out now.
She stepped closer, shrinking the distance between them to show she wasn’t afraid of him. Well, maybe she was a little, but she could fake it.
“Don’t get testy with me, Sawyer. I’m on your side.”
He opened his mouth, but she narrowed her eyes and cut him off with a warning look. Fortunately, he paid attention and settled for a disgusted sigh. It was insulting, but she let it go.
Pushing down her own frustration, she focused on the pain she knew he was feeling and softened her expression just a bit. “I’m trying to be patient with all of you. You’ve had a terrible shock, and I understand that. I’ll do my best to take some of the burden off you, but I can’t make it go away completely. The law works the way it does to protect everything Ethan worked so hard for. You have to be patient with me, too.”
That wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear, and he planted his hands on his hips like a petulant child, looking anywhere but at her. Quit being such a baby, she wanted to say, but she held back. It wouldn’t go over well.
When he did meet her eyes, she saw something she hadn’t expected. Fear. So quietly she almost didn’t hear, he said, “I don’t know what to do.”
Her heart tripped over the raw emotion in those few words, and she swallowed hard against the sudden lump in her throat. Hoping she appeared calm and dependable, she willed her most professional tone into her voice. “I know. I’ll help you all I can.”
The thought of working so closely with Matt didn’t thrill her, but she simply couldn’t leave him with the accordion envelope and letter of instructions that she gave most of her clients. Once the immediate crisis of bringing in the harvest was over, he’d have some big-time decisions to make.
Balancing his own wishes against the obligation he felt to his family simply wasn’t possible. He could put it off awhile, but eventually he’d have to choose between them. Someone was going to be incredibly disappointed.
* * *
After their little powwow, Matt and Caty headed inside for breakfast. As they came through the door, John and Lisa were already at the table and Marianne was dishing up some of the biggest omelets he’d ever seen.
“Where are the kids?” Matt asked, hoping they might give him a reprieve from the discussion he’d been dreading since Caty had outlined his father’s plans.
“The Millers invited them over to play, so I let them go,” Marianne replied