He was a buttoned-up city boy. It was all the more reason to dislike him. And the way he’d looked down his condescending nose at her suggestion he bring Cara to the ranch—like she lived in some backwater shack. Sure, the ranch house was a little run-down, but it was clean and comfortable and she did her best to maintain the place.
This is comfortable. That’s what he’d said about the hotel. Like her home wasn’t. Pompous, patronizing, elitist snob!
“Oh...hell.”
“What?” she asked when Kayla spoke. “What is it?”
Her friend looked up, both brows high. “Do you have any idea who this guy is?”
Her stomach sank. “Not a clue.”
“Big-time New York corporate lawyer,” Kayla said and sighed as she read from the screen. “He works for one of the city’s most influential firms and he rarely loses a case. Ice-man, wolf, shark...they’re all words that have been used to describe him. He’s serious stuff.” Her friend smiled a little. “There’s a picture here, too. Wow...and he looks like—”
“I know what he looks like,” Brooke said, cutting her off. “And that’s got nothing to do with the fact that he’s a condescending jerk.”
Ash moved around the counter to look at the screen. “Oh...my...that’s a really handsome face. Does the rest of him look as good?”
“He’s a condescending jerk,” Brooke said again.
“He’s really rubbed you up the wrong way, hasn’t he?” Kayla remarked, smiling.
“He hasn’t ‘rubbed me up’ in any way,” Brooke said, ignoring the innuendo. “He turned up on my doorstep last night with a baby he says is my niece and demanded to see Matt. This morning all I did was suggest he stay at the ranch while we wait for Matt to make contact and he wouldn’t even consider it. I know for Cara’s sake I have to be civil, but being nice to him makes me want to smack him over the head with a shovel.”
Both women laughed and it made Brooke grin.
“It’s been a long time since any man has made you have this kind of reaction,” Kayla said. “Or any reaction, come to think of it. Since Doyle.”
Brooke huffed out a breath. The last person she wanted to think about was her ex-fiancé. Both women had been there for her when Doyle Sharpe walked out the door. Sprinted out, really. Five years together—three on the show circuit and two back in Cedar River—and she thought they would settle down and make a home together. But it wasn’t to be. Doyle wanted something else. Something more. Children. The one thing she could never give him. One surgery after another when she was younger had made that impossible. He’d told her it didn’t matter...that he was prepared to forgo children if it meant they could be together. Until Deedee Price, his former girlfriend, showed up in town with a six-year-old son in tow. A child that was his. Doyle had hung around for three days before he packed up his things and followed Deedee to Texas.
“Let’s not bring that up. And I haven’t had a reaction to him. All I want is for this lawyer to realize that as Cara’s aunt I have some rights and would like to spend some time with her. All I have to do is get him to agree to come and stay at the ranch.”
Kayla frowned. “Are you sure you want him living with you?”
“I don’t want him,” she replied hotly. “This is about the baby. She’s a Laughton and she belongs at the family ranch. With me, until Matt gets here. After that...well, we’ll work it out as we go along. Except Tyler Madden is being stubborn and hateful.”
“He’s only doing his job,” Ash said gently. “You know that, right? I’m sure it’s not personal.”
Maybe not, but it sure felt personal. “She’s my niece,” Brooke said. “My family. Not his. She’s nothing to him.”
“But they clearly come as a package deal,” Ash said. “If he’s her legal guardian and he won’t simply leave her there with you, what can you do? He has the law on his side, and he’s a high-powered attorney with a whole lot of resources.”
“I’m not about to kidnap her,” Brooke reassured her friend. “So you won’t have to arrest me anytime soon. I just have to get him to see that living in town in a hotel isn’t what’s best for Cara. And that living at the ranch with me is.”
“So, you need to change his thinking?” Kayla suggested.
“Precisely.” Brooke raised her brows toward her friend as an idea formed. “If only I could influence Liam O’Sullivan in some way so that he’d kick Mr. Corporate Lawyer out...like, say the room has been double booked or something and there are no other rooms available in the hotel all week?”
Kayla grinned. “Liam would never go for that. Unless...”
“Unless?” Brooke prompted.
“Unless he didn’t know about it.”
Ash shook her head. “I don’t think I should be listening to this.”
Kayla laughed. “Oh, where’s your sense of adventure. It’s not illegal...and it would really only be a teeny white lie.”
A teeny white lie...
Brooke could live with that.
Double booked?
Tyler stared at the tall blonde who was standing at his door. She wore a loose-fitting corporate jacket with the name of the hotel on the pocket and had just spent over two minutes explaining about some mix-up involving a conference that had been booked months in advance and the guests were due to check in today, which meant a mess of double bookings—and no free rooms.
She looked vaguely familiar but he was certain they’d never met before. By the time she was done speaking his patience was frayed. Under normal circumstances he would have argued the point, demanded a full refund or asked to speak to the hotel manager. But he’d spent an hour trying to get Cara to take a nap and was inexplicably rattled by Brooke’s visit, and hadn’t done any one of those things. He was tired, irritable and simply wanted to rest for a while. With everything else he had to deal with, Tyler wasn’t about to get strung out about a hotel room.
He grabbed his cell phone and looked up the numbers of other motels in town. There were two, plus a place called Rusty’s and a pub called the Loose Moose that each had a couple of rooms to rent. He called them all. But nothing. Rusty’s no longer rented rooms, the Loose Moose was under renovation and the two motels were fully booked. Not one room available.
Right. What now? The next closest town was thirty-odd miles away and he certainly didn’t want to be that far from Cedar River if Matthew Laughton decided to turn up.
He looked at Cara’s things, all packed up and ready to go, still amazed at how much stuff a baby needed to get through the day, and then headed downstairs. The tall blonde was nowhere to be seen and the clerk at reception seemed confused by the whole double-booking scenario.
“Are you and your daughter leaving us already?”
Tyler was two steps from the reception desk when a man spoke to him. He stopped and turned. A suit. And an important one by the look of things. He was about to explain that Cara was not his daughter, but figured it didn’t matter. And the less people who knew about his reason for being in town, the better. The man in front of him didn’t wear a hotel jacket, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out he was probably the owner or manager.
“I’m sure the pretty blonde with the nice smile and the ill-fitting jacket can explain it to you.”
“Blonde?”