Southern Seduction (56 page)

Let me tell you—Uncle Zeke doesn’t joke around about his stuffed trophies. His office walls are covered with animal heads, and it’s a little freaky to have fifty sets of glass eyes taking in your every move. From the deer heads, the bear, right on down to the mountain lion that’s mounted behind his desk, the room is an ode to taxidermy. Raising my hands in a show of surrender I reply, “I’m sorry, Uncle Zeke.”

Nodding at me, he smirks. “That’s what I thought, you little whippersnapper. Don’t forget who taught you most of what you know. You need to understand that your granddaddy took this seriously, and he would want you to take it seriously as well. I suggest you spend less time worryin’ about
why
he did it and start focusin’ on how you can comply with his final orders.”

It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him to go fuck himself, that I’m a man who doesn’t take orders, but I’ve been raised to respect my elders and I know my granddaddy would roll over in his grave if I cuss out Uncle Zeke. Along with the third member of their trio, Jonah Hammond, they were best friends for their entire lives. I know Uncle Zeke and Uncle Jonah almost as well as I had known granddaddy, and I know that if I give Zeke shit, I’ll regret it. Taking a deep breath, I try to harness my frustration.

“I’m trying to focus Uncle Zeke, but all I can see is that granddaddy got a burr up his butt and decided to make this ridiculous stipulation. We only knew his condition had worsened and that he was dyin’ for less than seven days. When did he get this idea? Why did he decide to run with it? And where in the blazes did he even think I would go to look in this town to find a wife that he’d approve of?”

I don’t miss that my question causes Uncle Zeke to sit up straighter and smile. “I don’t know where he got the idea or why he put it into motion, but it’s all on the up and up. As for where you’ll be findin’ yourself a filly—consider this your lucky day, Ryder. You don’t have to look at all. Your granddaddy had someone all picked out for you. He loved this girl like she was his own kin and he knew that you would have a good future with her.”

Grimacing, I bite the inside of my cheek so hard that I taste blood. Judging by his words and the look on his face, I’m pretty damn sure that I’m about to be hog-tied and married off to Mary Jane Bartholomew, Uncle Zeke’s granddaughter. Now don’t get me wrong, Mary Jane is a perfectly beautiful and lovely girl but, to me, she’s about as exciting as Amish dancers at a bachelor party.

Still… maybe that isn’t such a bad thing, all things considered. I have nothing left to give anyone else, and I know that I never will. Everything that I am, everything that I have, I gave up a long time ago. I’ve been wildly and overwhelmingly in love with one person ever since the moment that I understood what love is, but that all went to shit with no warning. If the love that I believed in, down to my very bones, could implode with no warning—then anything can happen. I never want to go down that road again. Three months later, the scars are still as raw as if the wound was just acquired. If I
have
to take a wife, having it be someone that I have no emotion for is the only option.

“Let me guess—I’ll be seeing Mary Jane at the end of a church aisle real soon. Am I right?”

The old coot has the gall to laugh right in my face. “Son, do I look like a stupid old man to you? Of course I’m not marryin’ you off to Mary Jane. That girl’s my treasure—I’m hardly going to hand her off to someone who doesn’t have the ability to love her. No, if you want to keep the ranch, you’ll be marrying the one and only girl that you have ever loved. You’ve got sixty days to get your ass hitched to Violet Hammond.”

My jaw hits the floor about as fast as the bottom of my stomach drops out. Lurching forward in my chair, I slam my hand down on the edge of Uncle Zeke’s desk in shock. Of all the people in the world, my granddaddy chose the
one
that he should have known would destroy me. I should’ve known that something was up when Uncle Jonah didn’t show up for this will reading. Zeke, Jonah and my granddaddy did everything together. When granddaddy changed his will, there is no way that Uncle Jonah wasn’t in on it, and I see his fingerprints all over this edict. Violet’s his granddaughter, and he refuses to accept that we’re really over. All thoughts of keeping my cuss words contained fade away as I glare at Uncle Zeke.

“He wanted me to fucking marry
Vanishing Violet
? Nope, I’m not doin’ that. No way, no how. My granddaddy must’ve forgotten that he didn’t raise a fool. Guess y’all better get used to the new shoppin’ center that I’m sure will go up where the ranch used to be. Granddaddy overestimated his reach with this one—I’ll offer to marry Violet Hammond again over my dead fucking body.”

Surprisingly, he completely ignores my outburst. Lifting his shirtsleeve, he looks at his watch. “That’s fine, son. I’ll have the necessary paperwork drawn up stating that you’re not going to meet the conditions of the will and we can get the sale underway. I figured you might go this way, so Jonah is on notice that he may need to put in a call to Trapper Jones. If I call Jonah within the next hour, I’m certain he can get him on the phone today. He’s been lookin’ to get some land out this way for years for some development, so this is the quickest way to make a deal.”

Gnashing my teeth together, I stifle a string of cuss words that would make a sailor blush.

“Uncle Jonah and Trapper don’t get along one bit, and don’t think I don’t know that. Why is he suddenly okay with selling a piece of land in our town to him?”

Shaking his head, Uncle Zeke smirks at me. “You got sixty days to marry the girl. Your granddaddy had the will written so that if you refused, Jonah and I got forty days to find a buyer. I can’t be sittin’ over here playin’ hopscotch, boy. If it doesn’t sell within forty days of you puttin’ your signature on the contract sayin’ that you decline the inheritance, then it goes straight to your cousin Davis. Now, we all know that no one wants that land goin’ to Dirty Davis Douglas.”

Leaning back in my chair, I stare at Uncle Zeke in shock. These choices suck! Either I’ll be losing my family home to Trapper Jones—the asshole that buys people’s land and turns it into tract housing—or losing it to my cousin Davis. Davis is a well-known hoarder, and he’ll destroy the home that’s been in my family for five generations lickity-split. It will be worse to watch the house turn into a dump than it will be to watch it demolished. I’m totally screwed either way, really. If the house is knocked down, generations of memories go with it. If Davis gets it, it’ll be a shrine to hoarding within a matter of months. That house is my true north—the one thing that has always been my constant. How can I possibly just walk away?

The air in the room is thick and my heart is pounding almost out of my chest. Of all the women in the world, why did they have to choose Violet? I’m not fucking
over
her yet. Hell, I don’t think that I’ll ever be over her. She vanished without a goddamn trace—so completely that even her grandfather didn’t know exactly where she was at first. By the time that he found out and tried to tell me, I shut him down. My dreams of a future with Violet are gone.

“Uncle Zeke…. How do you think this could possibly work? Even if I cave in and allow myself to be bossed around—think about it. Violet’s already demonstrated how she feels about marrying me. She’s not going to agree to this. Hell, even if she does, we all know damn well that it’s more likely than not that she won’t show up at the church. I’ve already got one Dear John letter from her—I’m not lookin’ to start a collection.”

Uncle Zeke smiles at me like I just told him that all systems were go. “Good news. Violet is already on her way home with Daisy. They’re fixin’ to move into their grandpa’s, but Vi will obviously be movin’ in with you instead. You leave getting’ her to the altar up to Jonah. If you agree to this, he’ll get her there. If, for any reason, she doesn’t agree or fails to follow through—there’s a back up plan. I’m not at liberty to tell you what that is, but it does exist.”

I’m shocked that Violet’s coming back to Harmony—and I’m upset that she’s comin’ to live here again but didn’t even care enough about me, about my granddaddy, who she called Uncle Weston—to contact me and pay her respects. A little over a month after she disappeared off the face of the earth, she started sending me letters each week. I didn’t open even one, because in my mind, the original Dear John was enough. If she really wanted to talk to me, really cared about what she did, she would have called or showed up to do it face-to-face. How ‘real’ was our relationship if she never bothered to do me the courtesy of talking to me in person?

It’s been three days since my granddaddy passed and I haven’t heard a damn word from her. My stupid ass thought for sure that this time, she would call me, and when she didn’t, I was broken all over again. Her lack of contact right now just shows me, one more time, that she isn’t who I thought she was. It’s like a nail in my heart to realize that what I thought about Violet and the truth are poles apart.

Forcing myself to stop thinking about her emotionally, I shut my emotions down and grab onto the lifeline that Uncle Zeke just gave me without even really knowing it. There is
no way
that Violet is going to agree to this insanity, and that means I’ll be off the hook. It’s simple, really. Vi will say no, and I’ll be free of this crazy ass request.

It’s been less than twenty-four hours since I left Uncle Zeke’s office, and things are moving at warp speed. My luck being what it is, according to Uncle Jonah he’s somehow managed to talk Violet into this insane plan. To hear him tell it, she’s on board and will be living here at the farm in Harmony with me now, as my wife. Yesterday I didn’t even know where she was or what she was doing, and today she’s coming home.

At any moment the traitor I once loved more than anyone else in the world comes back into my life, and it’s messing with my head.

I’m jumpier than a cat on a hot tin roof waitin’ for Uncle Jonah to arrive with her, and it’s pissing me off. Why am
I
nervous about seeing
her
? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? After all, she’s the asshole that left the ring I gave her, along with a Dear John letter, propped up on my kitchen counter before she hightailed it right the hell out of the South and disappeared off the face of the earth. That letter is my Achilles heel and I’ve read the damn thing so many times that I don’t even have to look at it to recall every word.

Ryder,

I’ll always love you, but I can’t marry you. We just aren’t meant to be together forever. Please don’t come after me. You need to accept this and go on with your life, without me. Find happiness, Ry. You deserve it more than anyone else in the world. I’m sorry. -Violet

Of course I went after her. Violet was my entire life—she had been since we were kids. I love—dammit, I mean I
loved
—Violet because she’s a part of my very soul. I never envisioned, nor did I want, any kind of a future where she wasn’t by my side. We shared everything with each other—first kiss, first love, first time. I believed in our forever. At first, even the letter didn’t change my belief that we were meant to be together. I thought that it was a bump in the road—a case of pre-wedding jitters. Her grandfather had no idea where she was and—in a surprise to absolutely no one—her mother was no help at all. I knew that Violet wasn’t at her mother’s house in New York City because I showed up there enough to be certain of that, but that was all I knew.

I spent a ridiculous amount of money and took a hell of a lot of time off from the ranch driving to New York trying to locate her, but I came up empty handed. After two weeks of looking high and low and not finding her, I finally had to admit defeat and accept the truth for two reasons. First, I’m not a millionaire and I didn’t have the money or the time to drive all over hell’s half acre searching for someone that didn’t want to be found. Second, I had to admit that Violet didn’t want to be my wife, had to accept that she didn’t love me the way that I loved her. If she really loved me at all, I’d have rated higher than a Dear John letter. I didn’t understand then, and I still don’t understand now.

I’ve known Violet forever, and losing her was like losing a limb. Even when we were kids, I knew that she was important. Back then, Violet, her older brother Dustin and their younger sister Daisy spent every summer at their grandfathers ranch, and for almost the entire time Vi and I were in high school, they had lived there full-time because their dad was ill and there was worry about their safety being around him. About a year after he died, Vi’s momma took Dustin and Daisy back to New York with her, but allowed Vi to finish out high school here.

It was inevitable that I would be close to the Hammond kids, and Violet in particular because we’re the same age. In addition to the fact that our granddaddies were best friends, her family ranch and my family ranch share a border. We were destined to be in each other’s lives—but we took that closeness to another level. At least I thought we had.

I can’t remember the first time that I ever saw Violet, we were just babies, but I’ll never forget making love with her for the very first time on a blanket underneath ‘our’ tree, the sunshine warming our skin as we took what I thought was our first big step to forever. Five years later, we took another big step when I dropped down on one knee under that same tree and asked her to marry me. It physically pains me to remember that moment, because there was absolutely no hesitation. She said yes before I had the question all the way out, and she cried tears of joy for hours. When I asked Violet to be my wife, we were just twenty years old. I did it during the summer between her sophomore and junior year at college, and we decided to wait until Vi graduated to tie the knot.