Page 33 of My Three Rivals

Tegan scoffed and pretended to scan whatever she was reading, but I could tell she was listening to me. “I thought it was something that only kids in foster care developed so… artfully. But I know you weren’t in foster care.”

“I might as well have been,” she blurted out. Her pale cheeks blushed crimson, and she bit on her lower lip.

I nodded in understanding. “Your brother was a piece of work. I imagine your parents must have been… something else.”

Her eyes narrowed. “He’s my half-brother. My mom died just after I was born. Will was a piece of shit, off spreading his seed to anyone he could stick his dick into. Maybe I have dozens of half-siblings that I don’t know about, but Emerson is the only one I know of that stuck around.”

I grimaced, sitting back on my hands. “I used to romanticize who my parents might be when I was a kid. But the older I got, the more I realized that all parents have problems.”

Her eyes relaxed, and I caught a gleam of sympathy in the depth of her irises.

“You’re… you’re like a real orphan?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Dropped at a fire station in nothing more than a stained towel. Not even in a box or anything. My mommy just dumped me like a cigarette butt. I was two days old. It was the dead of winter. I think she was trying to kill me without having the balls to do it.”

Her face completely changed, sadness and disgust overtaking her face. “I’m sure that’s not true…”

I waved my hand dismissively. “It really doesn’t matter. Whatever the case was, she obviously wasn’t cut out for motherhood, and I likely dodged a bullet—even if it didn’t feel that way at the time.”

Tegan settled back, her knees falling to the side as she cocked her head. “Why are you telling me all this, Maverick?”

I shrugged again. “Maybe to let you know I’m not truly evil. Not everything is what you see on the surface, Tegan. You had us pegged from the minute you met us, remember?”

She pursed her lips. “I could say the same about you.”

I laughed and drew my knee up, turning my body fully toward her. “Yep. I thought you were a spoiled little bitch, pissing away your daddy’s money.”

“Daddy didn’t have any money. He was just really good at making people think he did.”

I hesitated. “And Emerson?”

She frowned. “What about him? I told you. He was related by blood, but he really did follow in Will’s footsteps.”

God, I hope that’s not true,I thought, gulping.

“Why do I feel like you’re in here trying to pry information out of me?” Tegan asked, suddenly defensive.

I sighed heavily. “Tegan, you might not believe this, but I’ve been the only one who has wanted to talk to you reasonably from the start. If it had been up to me, I would have handled this all much differently.”

“No,” she said, and I blinked.

“No, what?”

“No, I believe it.”

Our eyes locked, and we shared a smile. For the first time since I’d met her, she didn’t seem defensive and angry. She wasn’t my enemy, the nemesis that Atticus had made her out to be.

She was a beautiful woman, alone in the world and struggling to keep what was hers. Suddenly, I was very, very turned on by her, more so than I’d ever been previously.

“Is this the part where you try to convince me to give up the vineyard now?” she asked, breaking the silence between us.

I shook my head and leaned in, unable to stop myself. She didn’t resist as I drew her toward me, my breath hot against her face, our lips inches apart.

“No,” I murmured. “This is the part where I do what I’ve wanted to do from the first moment I laid eyes on you.”

CHAPTER14

Tegan

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