Page 6 of Opposites (Never) Attract
I’d slayed captains of industry with that eyebrow. Not only wasn’t Tag intimidated, but he found it funny.
He was going to have to learn very quickly that I was no longer the ugly duckling school girl I’d been. I didn’t hide in corners with books on macroeconomics. I didn’t avoid people or parties anymore. I didn’t suffer bullies who called me nerd, loser, or, my personal favorite, un-fuckable.
Smarty Sunshine was dead. She was the shy little girl I’d buried when I got on the plane to New York and Columbia University. Armed with the healthy investment portfolio I’d been building with my birthday money since the eighth grade, I made myself into a whole new person.
Kaitlyn Calloway was a powerful swan. With teeth.
Columbia graduate at nineteen, Wharton School of Business graduate at twenty-one. She’d risen steadily through the ranks of one of the most prestigious brokerage firms in the city. She lived in the upper east side in an apartment with a doorman. She went to only the most high-profile parties. She was invited out for drinks nearly every Friday night.
And she was hit on regularly by very hot New York men.
Me. I was hit on by men. Stop referring to yourself in the third person.
I waited until the door was closed behind us. The soundproofed glass walls were tinted so I could see out, but no one could see in.
Billion-dollar decisions happened in this office. There could be no risk of eavesdroppers.
“What’s a qufor?”Tag asked.
“Huh?”
“Sounded like you wanted more money out of your qufor, but I don’t know what the hell a qufor is.”
It took a second until I realized what he was talking about. “Q. Four. It means fourth quarter of the year. October through December.”
“Why not just say that?” he asked.
“What are you doing here, Tag?” I asked, straight to the point.
“Leroy McGraw is dead.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I said.
You could take the girl out of Last Hope Gulch, but you couldn’t leave The Calloway/McGraw drama behind entirely. I knew what was happening back home, but I’d refused to engage with the insanity.
The last year had been beyond ludicrous from my vantage point in New York.
“Your sister is married,” he said. “To Ethan McGraw.”
My phone was silently buzzing in my hand and I hit the space bar on my desktop, waking up my Mac. The Asian markets were active and North America was responding.
Time was money in the trading world and Tag was costing me both.
“Again, not new information. I don’t care what Leroy McGraw’s will said, I told Harmony she was insane to do it.”
Old man Leroy McGraw apparently had been a drama queen in his will. Trying to right every wrong between our long-feuding families by insisting that one of his sons marry one of my sisters in order to save the town and the Feud Day Festival. Or, it seemed he was prepared to donate all of the McGraw land to the federal land bureau.
And, of course, my do-gooder, people-pleasing sisterraised her hand and ended up married to her high school nemesis, Ethan McGraw.
When Harmony told me about it, I thought she was joking, but no, that’s just the kind of stuff that happened in Last Hope Gulch.
“You should know, my vote was to tell Old Man McGraw and his sons to screw themselves and let the Bureau of Land Management take the ranch. Last Hope Gulch can figure its own shit out. No one agreed with me. Obviously.”
Tag had no response to that, so I answered an urgent email from one of my bigger clients. If I played my cards right, I believed that my client, a Singaporean tech entrepreneur, was the key to getting my partnership sooner rather than later.
I hit send with a flourish and looked up to gauge what the silent, broody cowboy thought about my utter disinterest in his small-town soap opera.
He was just standing there. Arms at his side, not moving.
