Page 82 of Breaking the Cowboy's Rules

She turned around and marched back up the hill. She kept her eyes on the haze of lights in the distance. She was so focused that the sound of someone running sent her curling into herself and freezing into place.

Bodhi, at a full run, skidded to a stop like a cartoon character.

“Did you mean it? You love me?” he demanded.

“Yes.”

“Then what’s the problem?” he demanded. “Why won’t you marry me? I know it’s been a week, but I live my life fast and intense and I know what I want. We can wait a few months if you want or longer. As long as I’m with you, I’m good. You were right about me. I was in love with the idea of being in love. That first night with you skipping stones and star watching was the most intimate thing I’d done with a woman, with anyone, ever, and I craved the connection with you. I want it. I need it. What can I do to change your mind?”

She gulped in a deep breath, her mind reeling.

“I’m Samara Nicoletta Reese Steel Wentworth,” she admitted in a rush and forced herself to not flinch as her attention burned over him, looking for a reaction.

He stared, clearly waiting for more. His energy crackled like bottled lightning. “And?”

“Wentworth,” she repeated. “Majority investors in one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, and currently one of the most reviled families internationally. Several branches of Wentworths are under state and federal investigations as is the Wentworth Company and Trust.”

He blinked, his face tense with thought. She saw the name click.

“Opioids?”

She nodded, ducked her head, miserable and humiliated.

She was supposed to be fighting. When had she ever looked down or away when she was in a boardroom or a courtroom?

“I worked with a team of lawyers my whole career, representing my family. I helped them fend off the lawsuits and prepared them for their depositions, and I also worked to take apart the opposing counsel’s cases during multiple lawsuits.”

“Isn’t that the job of a lawyer?”

She still couldn’t breathe, so she nodded.

“What happened? What brought you to me? The nightmares…” His hands covered hers, and that boosted her courage.

He was so smart. He cut to the chase.

“I didn’t have the relationship with my family like you have. I was a tool. I focused on the cases. Not on the people. My family never thought about people the way you do. The way you care about them…the kids at the rodeo when you’re teaching them skills and the way you saw that Ashni was unhappy and wanted to help her and Beck and the way you worry about your granddad. I never had any of that, and then one day—” Nico gulped.

“I got a massive class action case dismissed, and I was on the steps of the courthouse with the team. I didn’t make any comments to the press. I wanted to stay in the background. The nepotism accusations really burned me because I had worked hard. I knew my family had unbelievable pull, but I studied and worked harder than anyone in my law classes and then on the legal team.

“That day a woman approached me. She was crying and screaming that we’d killed her son and so many others and that we didn’t care. That we were bloodless. She said that. Bloodless. And then she pulled out a gun right in front of me. I thought she was going to kill me, and I froze. I couldn’t move.”

“Baby.” Bodhi held her. His warmth and steady beat of his heart centered her.

“I thought I was going to die, and realized I’d never lived. I’d never loved anyone the way she loved her child, and no one had ever loved me like that. The moment is so crystalized. She had loved her child just as so many others had loved their children and spouses and friends. The cases and the class action lawsuits became people who had been deceived and trapped in addiction with no services to help them get out and no true warnings to families. I thought maybe I should die as atonement. But she shot herself instead.” Nico shivered. But with Bodhi holding her, the scene had faded just a little. “Right in front of me. Parts of her went—”

Bodhi swore and pulled her even tighter, and she felt like she was thawing out.

“You make me feel safe,” she whispered.

“You are safe with me, always,” Bodhi said.

She couldn’t yet relax. She wanted to tell him everything. “I quit the legal team and cooperated with the FBI investigations to the extent that I could, although I couldn’t violate attorney-client privilege. I wanted to help. I wanted to make amends. I wanted the company to, if not acknowledge how addicting the drug was, set up a fund to help people safely rehab. It’s been my life for the past year, researching and being deposed and helping build a foundation that will eventually be national and help states attain more beds for drug treatment.

“Then I was free. My family won’t speak to me anymore, and I don’t yet feel it’s a great loss.”

“But you did what you thought was right?” Bodhi looked into her face, his expression intense and searching and so beloved. How had she found him in the crazy of her life? They were worlds apart.

She nodded. “It doesn’t feel like enough. I tried to talk to my family—my parents and my uncle, my cousins, but no one would listen. They called me Judas, and I am to them, but I want to be able to look in the mirror.”

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