Grateful there were no reporters around to witness the encounter, Gibson disregarded the offered hand. Too bad he couldn’t ignore the indignation—no, the anger—he felt on Lark’s behalf.
“Paying off your witnesses already? Your case hadn’t even started yet.” Tension strung his shoulders tight as he stared the other man down.
Not missing a beat, Mateo shoved his hand in the pocket of his blue jacket and jingled his keys.
“I’m sure you’re not referring to my business dealings with my mother’s tenant,” he said easily, rocking on his heels and toes. “Our association goes way back.”
“I think your daughters’ attorney will be interested to hear about the shared business interests.” For a moment, Gibson wondered how any parent could so actively work against the kids they raised.
But then, his own father had no use for him, preferring to belittle and berate his sports endeavors, until Gibson reached the highest professional level of hockey. And while Gibson had thought he’d outgrown the need to please his absentee father, hadn’t his lifelong commitment to his sport and his team been a leftover attempt to fulfill his dad’s wishes? He regretted every time he’d put his team before his wife.
So yeah, he understood that it was all too common for people to use their offspring to work through their own baggage.
“Not being a man of business yourself, you might be surprised at all the ways I try to give back to the community where I was raised.” Mateo gave a fake, too-jovial wave to an older couple exiting the diner as a few fat raindrops of a summer storm began to fall.
Could the guy really get away with bribing witnesses to give testimony in the court case? Maybe it would have been helpful if there had been a few reporters following Gibson around today after all. It would have been nice to have someone else’s word about the shady conversation he’d overheard. Or better yet, to have to it on film.
“Generous to a fault,” Gibson muttered, backing up a step since his appetite had fled.
“How about I buy you dinner and we can discuss how I can help you, too?” Mateo jerked his head toward the Cowboy Kitchen behind him. “I hear you have plans for ranching the property near Crooked Elm. I’d be glad to invest, especially since you must have known my mother intended Crooked Elm for me.”
Another lightning bolt scissored across the sky as the rain accelerated. The shower pattered onto the brim of his Stetson and the tops of his shoulders while Mateo Barclay’s hair molded to his head.
“You’re asking me to lie under oath for the sake of a payday?” Gibson couldn’t believe his ears. The unmitigated gall of the guy. “I think my finances can do without the bribe.”
A steely gleam lit Barclay’s avaricious gaze as he jingled his car keys faster. “You’re out of hockey now, son. It’s not going to be easy maintaining the lifestyle of a sports star now that you’re...not.”
Gibson’s fists tightened at his side. Not that he was tempted to deck the guy. He’d taken cross-checks to the kidneys from vicious blueliners and skated away without saying a thing. But if he could be this insulting to someone who’d once been married into his family, how must he have treated Lark? That ticked him off a whole lot.
Unwilling to waste words on someone like Mateo, Gibson pivoted on his heel and walked to his truck, the rain drops steaming off him as he fumed quietly. Lark had never confided many particulars about her family dynamics. She wasn’t one to dwell on unhappy parts of her past. Gibson had known that her father was a liar and a cheat, and that he’d shamelessly hidden financial assets to make sure his wife and daughters didn’t receive their fair share of spousal and child support. He’d played the daughters against one another, showing a different side to Jessamyn than he had to Lark and Fleur, capitalizing on a rift between Jessamyn and their mother. But hearing those spare details didn’t compare with experiencing the manipulation for himself. Sliding into the driver’s seat of his pickup, Gibson tossed his hat in the back and fired up the engine.
He couldn’t wait another day to see Lark. Not when he needed to share the news about Cranston’s testimony with her and her sisters.
Pulling out onto the county route that would take him to Crooked Elm, Gibson was still pissed off. Yet he couldn’t deny that just the thought of seeing his ex-wife again, of watching her green eyes darken when he stood a little too close or hearing her fast gulp of breath when he found any reason to touch her, lifted his spirits.
He’d thought about her often, even dreamed of contacting her after his retirement, but his focus had turned to caring for his mother. And he’d come to realize that with all his doing for others, he hadn’t taken the time to figure out what he really wanted.
Letting the possibilities play out in his mind, Gibson pressed the accelerator harder, more than ready to close the distance between them.
Rain battered the windows of the ranch house at Crooked Elm while Lark finished a telehealth visit with one of her older teen patients, Misty. The autistic high school sophomore had been seeing Lark for over a year, and her life seemed on track after her parents’ divorce to the point that Lark had told the girl’s mother they could end their sessions. But Misty herself had lobbied to extend the visits, and between that display of faith in Lark as a counselor, and the lower pressure conversations now that Misty had worked through her most difficult challenges, Lark really enjoyed the talks.
In fact, she’d purposely scheduled Misty’s session for the end of the day in the hope of shoring up her personal defenses before the inevitable wedding planning.
Even now, Lark could hear her sisters charging up the staircase, laughing and juggling packages from a shopping outing to Denver. Plastic bags crinkled as they tumbled through the open door to Lark’s bedroom, half falling over from the burden of dress bags, accessory boxes and paper sacks bearing designer labels.
“You won’t believe all the good stuff we found,” Fleur announced, dropping her armful of purchases onto the bed where an old-fashioned chenille spread and handmade quilt that dated from Lark’s childhood still covered the full-size bed. “Rehearsal dress, honeymoon outfit—”
“All vintage,” Jessamyn interrupted, dropping to sit on the cedar hope chest at the foot of the bed. “The store was stuffed with treasures.”
Lark took in the sight of her siblings, damp from the rain but overflowing with good humor, and wondered how she could resist the lure of being part of her own family again. She’d once thought that her anger at Jessamyn’s defection would last forever, but if she were counseling herself about a grievance as old as theirs, she would have to say that holding a grudge was only hurting herself.
“Very cool. Am I getting a fashion show?” She sat in the bedroom’s window seat, folding her legs beneath her, content to watch them and maybe even a little grateful they’d pulled her into the fun. She’d excused herself from the outing in her ongoing attempts to avoid too much romance.
The evening planning hours with her sisters reached her personal threshold of love and marriage talk. Especially now that she’d foolishly agreed to a date with Gibson. She couldn’t allow herself to get soft with her boundaries around him.
“Actually, no,” Jessamyn replied, a sly look stealing over her face as she glanced at Fleur and then to Lark. “We were hoping you’d put on the fashion show for us.”
“What do you mean?” Trepidation tickled her spine faster than the rain tapping the windowpane at her back.