Page 28 of So Wrong It Must Be Right

She didn’t say anything more after that, and though he was tempted to ask her what had gone wrong, there was an invisible line between D and Dinah, between the woman he was having sex with and the woman who worked for Gallagher’s and wanted to buy his land.

Her job had to do with his job, in a weird kind of way. Asking about work brought Dinah Gallagher into the equation, and that’s not who they were supposed to be in the dark.

“It’s so weird working with your family. You think you know what they feel and you think you’re on the same page, and it turns out that you’re not.” She frowned, glancing sideways at him. “It’s weird for me to talk about work, isn’t it?”

“Weird? I don’t know. Complicated, definitely.”

She nodded, her eyebrows still all scrunched together.

“But if youwantto talk about it, you can.”

“It isn’t anything that has to do with you, really. It’s just, Kayla’s always the one I talk to about stuff like this. She’s my best friend and my cousin and we were always on the same page, and suddenly she just wants to give up.”

“Give up what?” He wasn’t sure he asked because he cared about what Dinah was upset about, or because maybe this meant her cousin didn’t want his land. But if Dinah ended up telling him something that could help him, how could that possibly be his fault? He wasn’t taking advantage.Shewas offering. So why did he feel so uncomfortably guilty?

“She wants to leave Gallagher’s. My uncle—her father—took over when my father left under . . . less than ideal circumstances. Craig Gallagher is not a particularly nice man, nor one who is too interested in the health of Gallagher’s, unless it equals the health of his pocketbook or, more likely, his ego.” She stopped briefly, pulling her hand away from his. “We shouldn’t be talking about this,” she muttered, returning to her breakneck pace toward his house.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he returned gently, irritated with himself forfeelinggentle.

“Craig is crazy for thinking I’ll let him take my spot, and Kayla is crazy for thinking she should give up,” Dinah continued, and Carter could tell she was in her own little world, wrapped up in whatever had wound her up today. “How could she stop fighting? This was our fight. She won’t fight anymore, and I don’t get it. How could she justgive upon us having Gallagher’s?”

What she said was uncomfortably close to his experiences. His entire life he’d wondered why no one would stand and fight with him. Which he shouldn’t share with her, but that was all a long time ago. What did it matter if he told her? “Do you have any siblings?”

“No.”

“I have three sisters.”

“Three?” She glanced up at him as they approached his gate. “You seem so . . .”

He knew what she was going to say. Alone. Isolated. Because that’s exactly what he was. “My oldest sister moved to Minnesota when she got married. The younger two went in opposite directions—California, New York, and my New York sister took my dad with her. Everyone left.”

They stopped at his gate and she rested her hand against the post, frowning. “Except you.”

“Except me. I’ve been fighting for something of ours my whole life, and losing because I don’t have any power, but it’s never shaken my resolve. At least not enough to make me give up. But no matter how much my family loved the farm too, except maybe my oldest sister, no one loved it enough to hold on.”

“Did you ever figure out why?”

Carter shrugged. “My sister in California works at a flower farm. My sister in New York went in with Dad on a whole new farm, using what they got for selling our family farm here. I never understood how . . . how it could be the same anywhere else, if it wasn’tourdirt. I didn’t have to turn this place into my own little farm.” He gestured at all he’d built, the yard full-to-brim with plants and produce. “But it was the only earth in this whole world that meant something, that my ancestors walked on and tilled and planted things in—even if it was a little kitchen garden. I guess they loved the work, and I loved the land. But as for why?” He shook his head because this was all so damn personal. It was downright friendly, or relationshippy, sharing pasts and troubles.

But he wanted to.

He unlocked his gate and ushered her inside his yard. Instead of leading up to the walk though, he led her around back.

The sun had completely set, but it was a clear night where the stars had started to shine and the moon was bright above. It was a nice night to sit out among the plants and . . .

He paused for a second when he realized he’d been about to think it was a nice night totalk. Because for all the sexmails he and D had exchanged, they had also talked about their lives and their problems.

They’d never gone into detail, but theyhadexpressed their challenges. So much so he had the fleeting thought that she might have inadvertently told him something in those old emails that might help him in his battle with Gallagher’s.

Jordan’s words about fighting dirty came back to him, and he frowned. He didn’t like it. Not the guilt it made him feel, and certainly not the idea she might have unknowingly given him the ammunition to hurt her.

But maybe he’d done the same. Maybe he’d given her the ammunition to hurt him. It wouldn’t hurt to check, it wouldn’t hurt tolook. As much as he enjoyed Dinah—D—whoever they wanted to pretend they were, she would never come before this place. Never.

He weaved his way through the rows of plants to the little slab of concrete that served as his back porch. It was surrounded by an arbor that he grew his blackberries against, making it a mass of vines.

He loved sitting here in the summer when the blackberries were ripe and he could just reach over and eat a few, but it was nice in the fall too, with the nights cool, surrounded by his handiwork.

He guided her to a lawn chair he kept in the back for nights when he liked to sit out under the stars and remember his old life. The old farm. The old days. She sat and he pulled a chair he kept for the random visitor, usually Jordan or Jordan’s grandmother, next to her.

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