Colton grinned. “And when you don’t like it, you make it very known.”
“Yeah, your little tiger claws come out,” Tucker added.
“And there’s a difference between bossy and controlling. My father doesn’t think of anyone but himself. My mother’s a doormat to him and assumed I’d turn out just like her. Like I said, controlling.”
“Doormat? You?” Colton asked, grinning. He was teasing me and it was obvious.
I smiled at his playful tone. “I had to play piano, take ballet. He chose the private schools I went to, even my major in college. My friends, my activities. My schedule was always full of some enriching activity. The only time I was really free as a kid was the summers, when I was sent to the ranch to be out of his hair.”
“Ava here’s quite the cowgirl,” Tucker said. I could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “We might have to have our own little Duke rodeo one of these days.”
Colton told Duke, Jed and Kaitlyn about my lassoing, how I was a total ringer.
Jed whistled low.
“Didn’t you say your dad sold his ranch?” Tucker asked.
I looked down at my plate. Nodded.
“Instead of doing a summer internship at his company as I was getting my MBA, I’d decided to go to the ranch. To relax for the summer. Hell, lasso some steers. As his way of saying no to that kind of behavior—it had been fine when I was ten but not at twenty-two—and forcing me into the family business, he sold it.”
“Family business?” Colton asked.
“Yeah. Carter Financial Group.” I poked my fork in the lasagna on my plate as everyone remained silent. I didn’t share that I was rich. Like Midas kind of rich. I believed money couldn’t buy happiness and I’d walked away from it to find just that. I’d done so in Raines. A simple ag store. A simple life. And now, two men.
The Duke ranch was large and successful. The land alone was quite valuable. The family wasn’t poor. From the mineral and oil reserves that had to be on their land meant none of the Duke family had to work. As for Colton, I didn’t know the size of his bank account. I didn’t care. I just wanted him.
“God, Kaitlyn,” I said, filling the silence. “This conversation is depressing and ruining your delicious lasagna.”
“Your family owns Carter Financial Group?” Tucker asked, not paying any mind to my change of subject. “That’s not a family business, that was in… the New York Times last week.”
Clearly, he was well-read.
“Yeah, one I don’t want to run when my father retires, or at least co-run,” I added, not saying he’d wanted me to run it beside Perry. Side by side in corporate life, and married life, too. I had a feeling as soon as I popped out a kid, I’d be co-CEO in name only. “Can you pass me the garlic bread?”
Kaitlyn passed the platter to me and I took a deliciously greasy slice.
Tucker and Colton continued to stare. I sighed. “I didn’t intentionally not tell you about my family, but I didn’t really want to bring it up either. We don’t get along, to put it mildly. I was tired of being told what to do and I wanted out. They threatened to cut me off if I didn’t toe the line. I walked away, bought a little store in Montana. They cut me off like they said. It’s not that complicated. The Carters are nothing like the Dukes. God, your parents are so cool.” I took a sip of my iced tea. “Being a Carter doesn’t define me.”
“The hell it doesn’t,” Tucker countered.
I bristled at that.
He stroked his hand down the side of my face when he noticed. “Easy, tiger. Let me finish. Your family, the huge oil company, all of that, it does define you. If it’s as bad as you say, it makes you see what you don’t want. What you don’t want to be like. It shows you what’s really valuable.”
“Tucker’s and Duke’s lives were shaped by what my dad did. Mine, too.” Kaitlyn took a sip of her iced tea. “But we don’t let him, or what happened, affect us any longer.”
“That’s right,” Duke added, leaning over to kiss Kaitlyn, who sat beside him.
“We want to know everything about you,” Colton said, taking my hand and settling it on his thigh beneath the table. His hold was gentle, but his thigh was hard, well-muscled. It reminded me he was many things. Soft and tender, yet strong enough to handle my heaviest burdens. “Good stuff. Bad stuff. All of it.”
I nodded, blinking back surprising tears. Sure, they’d been trying to get in my pants for the past month. They’d been hot for me. But I’d missed the fact that they really were interested in so much more. They’d said as much. Practically hit me over the head with it like a big cartoon anvil. But now? I understood.
This was the long haul for them.
And the way my heart opened, for me, too.
8