Page 7 of Rival Heart
My smirk doesn’t faze her in the slightest. “I think you can handle it, Margot. What do you want? I’m kind of busy.”
“Still a charmer, huh, Jace?” Louise grins at me, her lined blue eyes twinkling like a woman decades younger.
I roll my eyes, fighting my grin. These two, if you give them an inch they’ll take a mile.
“We don’t have time for this, Louise. Rebel is in big trouble. She needs help.”
I snort and cross my arms over my chest. “Rebel Hawthorne can take care of herself.” But underneath my clipped words, I feel a tiny niggle of unease. No matter how annoyed I am, I don’t want her hurt. But I push that thought down. She’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.
“Not against her father she can’t.”
I know Rebel’s father intimately well. I also know how single-minded and scary he can be.
“What exactly do you think you know?”
“We don’t think it. We heard him telling her right in front of us.” Louise snorts. “He’s a real piece of work. I’ve never liked him no matter what some people say.”
Rolling my eyes, I try to keep my snort to myself. It won’t help a damn thing. Sure won’t make the two troublemakers get to the point.
“We were over at her father’s today to visit her. He wasn’t there when we got there. We just wanted to talk to her about some things.”
By the shifty look on their faces, I’m pretty sure what they wanted to talk to her about is not something I even want to know about. These two!
“Anyway, before we left, he showed up and started yelling at her about her trust because she’s trying to buy this property. But everybody in town knows what the expectations of her trust are. She doesn’t get control of the money until she marries. Her mother was a little old-fashioned,” Louise snorts.
“Surely that wouldn’t hold up in court. I mean, Rebel is well past the age of consent. She’s in her thirties for crying out loud! She’s old enough to know her own mind and stand up to her father.”
Margot sighs. “I think that the man is a little dangerous. I would be afraid of him if I were her. He looked unhinged when he was yelling at her.”
“It takes a lot to scare Rebel,” I mutter under my breath.
“You know how she is with her dad. He’s done his level best to keep her under his thumb all these years. He told her that she’s not getting control of her trust until she agrees to marry a man he’s chosen. Some friend of his that he wants to give his land to. Along with Rebel.”
Still with this shit?
Is he ever going to give up?
Louise gets a shifty look on her elderly face. “I know exactly what would fix all of Rebel’s problems and get her trust released.”
I know I’m gonna regret it. I sigh. “And what might that be, Louise?”
“If she marries someone else, her dad can’t do a damn thing to her or her husband. She’s a grown adult. She doesn’t have any mental shortcomings so he can’t try and get it overturned.”
“You must be kidding me. That’s the same thing as what her dad is trying to do to her. How is that better?”
“Because it’s her choice who this man is. She should have the option of picking who she’s going to spend the rest of her life with.”
“Ugh. You guys aren’t going to draw me into the fiasco you’re spinning. Rebel’s a full-grown woman. She can take care of herself.”
But can she? Against her father? I remember his words well when I left.
“Don’t you think I know what’s best for my daughter? And that’s not a guy like you. You’ll just drag her down to your level. She deserves a lot more than that in her life. Don’t you want her to be happy?”
I left before to make sure that she had the life I knew she deserved.
But now that I know how her father tricked me… can I let him get away with it again… and possibly ruin her life for good?
SIX
