Like for him to stay away from Aubrey? He wouldn’t tell her about Chels’s miniature tirade yesterday. It’d hurt Aubrey’s feelings. Plus, Chelsea was wrong. He wasn’t causing any harm sitting on a bench outside an ice-cream shop and talking with Aubrey. Hell, he was helping. Being with her was as good a destressor as any. No, the best. Which was likely why he let his guard down and bitched about his day rather than carefully tiptoeing around what was happening with his family. He’d never held back with Aubrey and didn’t much care for it now.
As they finished eating their ice-cream cones, he shared about coming across the surveyor, who he’d learned from his father was named Ruby Rose Bennett. She’d been hired to poke around on the Grandin and Lattimore land in search of actual oil beneath it. “Heath is trying to carve out a piece for his family, but what he doesn’t realize is there are other families he could destroy in the process.”
Aubrey slipped her palm into his and wove their fingers together. The weight of her hand in his and the other resting on his biceps took his anxiety down a few more notches. “It’s awful someone’s threatening your ranch. I can’t imagine the tension it’s causing both your family and the Lattimores.”
Always thinking of everyone else, that was his Aubrey. She wasn’t his, per se, but they were overlooking that inconvenient fact for the moment.
“Chelsea and I have always butted heads, you’re right about that. But not on this topic. She and Nolan have agreed to be neutral parties and let the legal battle play out without a fight.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.” Vic’s laugh was dark. “Don’t be fooled. She has plenty of fight left in her.”
“You mean over who inherits the ranch,” Aubrey said, proving she’d retained quite a bit of memories from when they were younger.
“Chels has always believed she should be in charge because she’s firstborn.”
Aubrey hummed in thought.
“What?” he asked, unable to stand the suspense.
“Do you think it’s fair?”
“That Chelsea gives me hell when it wasn’t my decision to run the ranch in the first place? No, I don’t.”
“No. Do you think it’s fair that Chelsea was passed over simply because you’re a man?”
He opened his mouth to argue, but rather than trot out a defense about how it was not only fair, but also deserved since he’d worked damn hard at the ranch, he paused. The fact was Chelsea worked damn hard, too. She always had. Vic hadn’t seen the ranch issue from Chelsea’s point of view very often over the years, if at all. He’d been too busy smugly declaring how he’d been handpicked by his father and grandfather to be in charge.
Damn. That’d been the same guy who had pushed Aubrey away. Was it any wonder she left and never turned back?
“What if you and your sisters ran the ranch together?”
“Ha!” His grin faded fast when Aubrey regarded him sincerely.
“Sharing responsibilities is a plausible compromise, Vic. The three of you are smart and care deeply about the family ranch. No one would work harder to keep it running for generations to come.”
“If we can’t stop these interlopers, there won’t be a ranch to fight over, Aub. If there’s oil on the land, they’ll destroy every inch of it searching for black gold.”
“All the more reason for the Grandin siblings to work together.”
He’d always loved her sweetness, but he hadn’t always appreciated her pragmatism. He placed his free hand over hers in a show of appreciation. The idea of a compromise with his sisters, especially Chelsea, used to seem like defeat to him. Young Vic would have sooner died than admit his oldest, bossiest sister was right. Admittedly, there was a version of him that still didn’t want to cede control over what was destined to be his. Then again, hadn’t he been thinking earlier today how stressful it was to handle everything on his own? Losing the ranch was too steep a price to pay to preserve his pride.
“You’re right,” he said.
Aubrey gasped, clutching her chest as if she were having a heart attack. “Did Vic Grandin admit that I was right?”
“Stop it,” he told her when she drew the attention of surrounding patrons with the mini scene she was making.
“Look forward to an end to this heat wave, folks,” she announced to no one in particular. “Hell has frozen over!”
She opened her mouth—to say what else, he had no idea—so he leaned in and stamped a hard kiss onto her parted lips. She softened beneath him, and a hum worked its way up her throat, where it reverberated against his lips.
It was heaven.
Kiss complete, she folded her arms and did her best to look inconvenienced. “You win this round, Vic.”
But she wasn’t inconvenienced. He could see how much she’d enjoyed that kiss by the blush staining her cheeks.