The Love Triangle (BWWM Romance) (16 page)

“And do what? I’m a lawyer. I can’t suddenly decide to take up riding lessons or something.”

He chuckled at that and the tension lifted slightly.

“I know,” he said. “All I’m saying is that you don’t have to keep going down this road. Elijah is a tyrant, everyone knows that. I’m pretty sure no other company is going to blame you for leaving him. You’ve been working there for over a year already, that’s got to be enough.”

I sighed. “It does count for something, but anything less than a year looks bad on a resume, and the longer I stay, the better. Besides, Elijah’s not such a bad person once you get to know him,” I said.

Justin’s face changed. The softness bled out of it and his eyes lightened, got harder, until the sexy face he’d been wearing until now was gone. He was irritated with the idea of Elijah. I guess I couldn’t blame him. If I were in a relationship where the guy had another woman, even if it was just casual business flirting, I would be upset too.

“You know I can’t leave,” I said softly.

“Then just move here with me. You can still work there, do what you need. It’s not that much further than your place.”

“Justin…” I started. He had no idea what kind of hours I worked. He had no idea how much time I really spent with Elijah. And part of me didn’t want him to know.

“If I do this, I’m going to lose my job.”

“If you’re with me completely?”

I nodded. I hadn’t made anything official with Justin. Elijah was a demanding man. He was charming and flirtatious and he wanted a woman’s attention all the way. Justin and I had agreed in the beginning that this wouldn’t go any further until I was finished with my work there.

“We talked about this. You knew that this was how it was going to be. I can’t go back on that now.”

Justin looked away from me. He clenched his jaw, like he wanted to stop himself from saying something really inappropriate.

“I don’t understand what you see in him,” he finally said. “He’s arrogant and a pain in the ass. He works you into the ground and he doesn’t treat you right when it doesn’t suit him. And you want to run back and fall at his feet, giving him everything he needs?”

“That’s part of the job,” I said. “That’s how things are. You knew this. I told you this when we started all this.”

He nodded. “I just didn’t love you then the way I do now. I don’t want to have to share anymore.”

My heart constricted when he told me he loved me.

“You don’t have to worry about it. With him it’s really just about work. If I have to smile sweetly and stay after hours to get that extra step up in my career, it’s a small price to pay.” I leaned my head on his shoulder. “You know you’re the only one for me.”

I concentrated on speaking normally, breathing normally. My gut twisted when I said it, because I was lying. Justin was the one I liked the most, the one I loved. But things weren’t strictly business. There had been times I’d gone home with him after a business meeting, and we’d slept together.

He wanted sex from time to time, and I always ended up giving it to him. He was charming in a dangerous kind of way, and I could never help it. But I didn’t tell Justin that. I told myself I wasn’t cheating. Justin and I weren’t exclusive. Elijah and I were just sleeping together, nothing more serious like that. Nothing that resembled a relationship the way I had with Justin.

“I can’t keep doing this,” Justin said. “I can’t keep going, knowing that you go to work and you’re flirting with him the way you do. Even if it is just casual. I want you all to myself. I want you to date me, really be my girlfriend. I want you to tell Elijah that, so that he knows.”

I lifted my head from his shoulder and looked at him.

“I can’t do that. I can’t tell him that. I’ll lose my job and he might ruin my career. You know what kind of influence he has.”

“I don’t want to be trailed along. I want you to be with me, or not at all. I can’t keep sleeping with you and knowing you’re not a hundred percent mine. I can’t keep loving you if I don’t know you love me back. A hundred percent.”

“Justin…” I said again. He was asking me to choose. Between him and the rest of my life. “I can’t do this. I can’t choose. There are parts that I can’t give up now.”

His face hardened, and the look scared me.

“I don’t have what it takes to share. Even if it is only a part of you. I need to know.”

“Know what?” I asked.

“Who you want to belong to.”

That got my back up. I was suddenly angry. It had taken the whole conversation to get here, and I’d been calm all the way through, but now I was angry.

“How can you make me choose? You’re setting an ultimatum for me. How can you do that and still tell me you love me?”

“Because I want to know, Grace. I want to know who’s more important to you.”

“You know you are,” I said, but I was starting to get scared. I felt hollow, like something terrible was about to happen, and I couldn’t stop this thing from running away with me. This conversation was getting out of hand, and Justin was insisting.

“Then show me, Grace. Show me how much you care. Let it all go, and just be with me.”

I got up and looked for my clothes. I found them scattered across the room. I dropped the sheet even though it suddenly felt wrong to be naked in front of Justin.

“You can’t make me do this,” I said. “If you’re going to make me choose, I might make a choice we’re both going to regret.”

“Then make your choice. I don’t want to be your side dish. I want to be the main course. The whole meal, actually. I want to be everything. It’s up to you. Everything or nothing.”

I took a deep breath. Tears were burning behind my eyes. My chest felt tight and I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t want him to do this. I wanted to choose him, but I couldn’t just wash my career down the drain. It was the one thing that had defined me since I started college. It was my life before I met the two men.

“Don’t make me do this,” I whispered, but his face was hard and without emotion. So I swallowed hard, and shoved everything that was welling up inside of me down and locked it away. If that was what he wanted, two could play at this game.

“Fine, Justin. You don’t want just a part of me then you’re right. But I’m not giving it all up just for a relationship that might not last.”

He gasped and he looked surprised. It wasn’t the emotion I liked to see on him, but it was better than nothing.

“You’re not choosing me,” he said like he couldn’t believe it.

“You wanted to give me an ultimatum, you have to live with it,” I said, and I sounded cold and hard. Good. I didn’t want him to know how much I was falling apart inside. No one gave me an ultimatum. I could make my own choices without someone enforcing that kind of control over me.

I turned and walked to the door. I didn’t look at him. If I looked at him, I was going to change my mind and throw it all away for him. But I couldn’t let a man rule me like that. So I opened the door and stepped through.

“Grae...“Justin started but I slammed the door behind me before he could say anything. I walked to my car, and got in. Only after I turned out of the ranch gate onto the main road did I let myself fall apart. I kept driving until I was on the other side of Fort Atkinson, the road stretching toward Dayton, and I cried.

Chapter 16 - Justin

It was my day off. I got one twice a week, but sometimes it felt like I was working myself to death anyway. I heard the tourists on the ranch, getting ready for one of the other wranglers to take them out.

It didn’t matter how many times I did it, it was always a laugh. Some of the tourists were so unreceptive to nature it was ridiculous. But I was glad it was my day off. I’d been struggling with a lot of thoughts and emotions, and when I had to take care of ten guests there wasn’t time to think about it.

Grace confused the hell out of me. After we’d slept together I’d left, and she’d been messaging me, but with Elijah back she didn’t want me to come to her again. And she was too scared to drive to me.

And she was still living there, which made it worse. Why didn’t she come live with me? Or at least, if it was about her job, go live with Shonda? At least until everything was cleared?

But I knew the answer to those questions. It was because Elijah was a controlling son of a bitch and wasn’t going to let her go. She would never get away from him unless she was willing to cut all ties and run. And she wasn’t willing to do that. She’d never been willing to do that.

I wanted her all to myself. I wanted to be able to see her, and call her my girlfriend, and hold her hand and not care that anyone knew about it because of her stupid career. But she wasn’t working yet, and if she did want to go back, she would need Elijah’s approval.

And I doubted he was going to give her that if she left him. Not now that he had her right where he wanted.

I got up and got in the shower. I wished the water could wash away more than just the sweat and dirt that accumulated when you lived on a ranch. I wished it could wash away the past. I wished it could wash away bad choices and clean everything up so that it was easy again.

I was sitting on my porch, looking out over the part of the ranch where the tourists weren’t allowed to go. It was calm and peaceful, with rolling fields that looked like it stretched to the horizon. I heard a car approaching before I saw it. A slick silver BMW parked next to the cabin. I picked up my shirt from the floor where I’d dropped it and pulled it over my head so I wouldn’t meet whoever had come to the cottage without a shirt on.

When I walked down the steps, the car door opened and a woman stepped out with sunglasses on. When she took them off I recognized her.

“Alice?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”

“Surprise!” she said and hobbled to me on cork wedges that didn’t work on this kind of terrain. She stood up on her toes and kissed me on the lips. “This place is amazing, I can’t believe you get to work here,” she said and turned around, hands on her hips, looking out over the same fields I’d been looking out over.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. She turned to me with a brilliant smile. She wore a pinkish lipstick and thick mascara.

“I wanted to surprise you. You’re always driving out to see me, and I thought it’s not fair considering how long we’ve been seeing each other. So I phoned around to see if I could find which ranch you work at, and this was the only one that wasn’t private.” She smiled at me again and looked pleased with herself.

“Well, it’s definitely a surprise,” I said. One I could have done without, but she looked so happy with the idea and it would be rude to tell her I wanted to be alone. She climbed the two steps to the porch and walked into the house without an invitation.

“This is so quaint! Very picturesque. You really are living a fairy tale,” she said, looking around. The place was a mess and it annoyed me that she used quaint, fairy tale and picturesque all in the same sentence. She turned to me, put her arms around my neck and pulled me in for a hug.

“But of course you’re the best part of this. The woman at the house was surprised when I said I was your girlfriend. She looked me up and down like she’d expected something else.”

“You were at the house?” I asked. How had she suddenly wormed into my life like this?

She laughed, a giggle that belonged to a school girl. “Well, I had to find you. This ranch is huge, and I wasn’t even sure you worked here. So I asked at the house.”

“Did they say anything else?”

She shook her head and frowned slightly, the smile starting to falter at the edges, like there might have been something that should have been mentioned.

“Well,” I said, relieved that none of them had mentioned the fact that Alice wasn’t Grace. They didn’t know what we’d broken up. They knew her well, and they liked her, and she was the one they classified as my girlfriend. The owners were almost like family to me, in a way.

“So, aren’t you going to show me around?” Alice asked. She looked at me expectantly.

“Around the ranch?” I asked.

She nodded and smiled again. She wasn’t exactly wearing ranch clothes. She wore beige capris with a white blouse and the cork wedges. Her hair fell in ringlets over her shoulders and her nails were long and bright red. She didn’t belong on a ranch at all. But I shrugged.

“Sure,” I said. I pulled the cottage door shut and we walked around and toward the ranch house.