Read Online Maverick (Star Valley Book 3) by Dahlia West - Free Book Online Page B

was okay! You said you were on the pill! ”
    “I never told you that.”
    “The hell you didn’t! I asked and you said—”
    “I said it was okay. And I thought it was. I never said I was on the pill.”
    Austin felt drunk again, like the world was tilting underneath his feet. “This is unbelievable. Absolutely unreal. In what universe did I not mean ‘Are you on the pill?’ ”
    “I’m sorry! I was drunk and a little overwhelmed. I was in over my head.”
    “Why haven’t you shown up before now? You didn’t even stay after that night. I woke up and you were gone. Why now? You saw my picture in the paper and thought you’d come find out how much you could get out of me?”
    Leah’s eyes widened. “No!”
    “Leah!” came the other girl’s voice.
    They both turned to see the girl sprinting off the porch. When the brunette was close enough she gave Austin a look poisonous enough to bring down a bison. “Don’t you dare yell at her! I’ll kick the shit out of you, cowboy !”
    Walker, who’d come out to of the barn at that moment, managed to get in front of her and head her off though he looked bewildered. “Whoa there, girl. I don’t know what the hell is going on or what kind of bee is in my brother’s britches, but—”
    “She wasn’t alone in this!” Candace spat from behind the large man corralling her. “It takes two to tango, asshole . This is your baby, too!”
    “Baby?” Walker bellowed, turning away from the girl and zeroing in on Austin. “ Baby? ”
    “That’s what she says,” Austin replied, glaring at Leah. “Though I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
    “I thought you’d want to know! Candace said—”
    “What did Candace say?” he shot back. “The two of you cooked up a scheme to get me all tangled up? Did you know who I was when you came up to me at the bar? Did you set your sights on me in the elevator?”
    “What? No! I didn’t know you.”
    Austin narrowed his eyes at her. “You go to bed with a lot of guys you don’t know?”
    “No, I do not! And you went to bed with me, too! You didn’t know me, either!” she shouted, though her voice was wavering.
    “And I’m still trying to figure you out.”
    It was one of his worst fears materializing right in front of him. God knew they all loved Cassidy now, but it hadn’t always been that way. Sawyer’s woman had originally been sent by her father to get her hooks into the Snake, their land and their bank accounts. She hadn’t been the first and she wouldn’t be the last. And now a girl Austin had taken for a sweet young thing was waving around what amounted to a gossip column that might as well have Eligible Bachelor for a caption below his smiling face.
    “Well…well… I’ll save you the trouble, Austin Barlow. You don’t ever need to figure me out. Just forget I ever came here at all! I don’t need you. I told you the truth. I did the right thing. I don’t need you. Or your money. Not that you have any. Everyone in town knows that mine of yours is empty.”
    Austin recoiled and stared at her. “How do you know about the mine?” He knew it’d barely gotten a mention in the newspaper she was holding.
    “We stopped at the diner in town and asked how to find you. Some people there told us.”
    “So you were asking around about me?”
    She narrowed her eyes into slits. “I was asking how to find you since you didn’t exactly leave me a trail of bread crumbs!”
    “Well, I didn’t know you were hunting me down!” he shot back. He ran a hand through his hair and tried to settle himself with a long, deep breath. He didn’t much like being the prey.
    “I’m not!” she shot back.
    “Then why are you here in the first damn place?”
    She seemed to have no answer to that, or didn’t want to give him one (as if he didn’t already know.) Leah turned away from him and just kept walking. “Let’s go,” she told her friend.
    The brunette looked back at Austin, confused. She didn’t move.