Page 40 of The Billionaire Land Baron

Which is why she cried through the first two houses Gracie showed her.

“You’ve got a really spacious kitchen here,” Gracie said. “A nice island and a view of—”

“A lake? The baseball field?”

Shelby put her head down on the stupid island and let the sobs move through her. She couldn’t remember the last time she had cried like this, at least, not in front of another person.

“Aw, Shel. I hate seeing you like this.” Gracie rubbed her back. She sniffed and Shelby knew that she was crying as well.

“You always said you wanted to see me cry,” Shelby said, a small laugh taking over the sobs. It was a running joke between them, since Gracielynn cried at any moment and Shelby never did.

Gracie handed her a wad of tissues from the bottom of her purse. “I take it back. I’ll do anything to not see you like this again.”

Shelby saw that Gracie’s lip was trembling and her eyes were damp too. She patted Gracie’s hand and wiped her eyes. “I’ll be fine. I’ve lived through worse. But I hate this house.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Gracie asked.

Shelby looked around. The one-story ranch was roughly the same size as her house, but everything was brand new. New floors, new counters. Everything was too nice. There was literally nothing bad to say about it. And she hated its perfection and clean lines. She started crying again.

“It’s not home,” Shelby said.

Shelby could hear the tears in Gracie’s voice now. “I know, sweetie. I know. Nothing is going to feel like home. But you know what? You need to stop looking for that and start seeing these as houses. They’re just houses. Waiting for you to make them a home. The home part comes from people living in them. You fill it up and make it your home.”

Shelby looked at Gracie. “Is that a speech you memorized for all your clients?”

Gracie gave an apologetic smile. “Busted. But it works, right? I mean, it’s really true. Even if I say it to everyone.”

“Yeah, it’s good. I know you’re right, but this is so hard. I don’t want a new house. Even if I know it’s better than my own.”

Squeezing her hand, Gracie said, “Let’s keep going. Maybe after you’ve seen a few more places, you can go home and think about them when the emotions aren’t so strong. You can really think about what house might be that home.”

“How many more are we looking at?”

Gracie made a face. “Only two.”

“Two? We’ve only seen two so far. Four houses is all?”

“This is Lucky. There isn’t much here. I mean, in the price range you’ve got. And even outside of that, there just aren’t many places. The other option is to look at property. You could build.”

“We have forty-five days. Where would we go in the meantime?”

“Well, you’ve got the trailer. And you can always stay with me or something. I bet Matt would take your daddy. Actually, speaking of, the next house is really close to Matt.”

“The one right across the street from him?”

“Yep. So, really really close. Would that be good or bad?”

Shelby knew that Gracie had always had a thing for Matt. Even though he had always been after Shelby. Gracie had even encouraged Shelby to date Matt because he was such a good guy. Shelby knew it probably killed her to say that, but that’s the kind of friend Gracielynn was: always looking out for others first. Just like Matt.

Shelby felt guilty as she realized that was the opposite of how she treated Matt. Even though she had been clear in her words that she didn’t want to date Matt, she still let him drive her everywhere and do things for her. He was a good friend, too, but probably wouldn’t do half the things he did if somewhere deep down he didn’t hope she might change her mind about her feelings for him.

Shelby needed to let Matt go. The realization hit her with a fresh wave of loss. She knew that it was right and felt ashamed suddenly, realizing how much she had, without meaning to, used Matt. She hardly let anyone else help her, but had always let him. It needed to stop. And maybe with Shelby out of the picture, Matt would finally see how amazing Gracie was.

“I don’t know if I want to live that close to Matt,” Shelby said. “But we don’t have many choices, so let’s go see it.”

They drove in silence, Shelby trying to pull herself together. Besides the house search, she kept going back to Jake and how she’d run out on him the night before. First, there was her erratic behavior at the Line. And then he called her crazy. Logically, she knew that when he said “crazy,” he meant it as a compliment. But that word was a trigger for her. A big one that looked just like the memory of her mother. Of course Jake didn’t know anything about that, so her actions probably made her look actually crazy, the very thing she was trying to avoid.

“Oh no,” Gracie said. “Didn’t you want to avoid Matt knowing you were looking at houses? I thought he’d be at work.”

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