Great. Her eyes drifted heavenward. Pile it on, why don’t you! “What’s the problem?”
“Oh, about three feet, ten inches, and sixty-five pounds of trouble,” Hailey replied wryly. “He was picked up for shoplifting and he told the cops that his foster mom worked here.”
Derrick. That little shit. “Can you drive him to his actual foster parents’ house?”
“I tried,” Hailey said in a near-whisper. “He told me he’d bolt if I took him back there.”
“I’m on my way back to the city.” She might as well deal with Derrick. What was one more disaster today? “Can you hang around for another half hour or so?”
“Sure. Why are you coming home early?”
Chloe didn’t acknowledge the concern in Hailey’s voice. If she did, she’d start bawling and wouldn’t stop until she rolled into Dallas. “I need to get some work done and Nate’s got ranch issues to deal with. No biggie.”
“All right,” Hailey said slowly. “I’ll see you in a bit. Drive safe.”
“Okay. Bye.”
A fresh wave of tears threatened, but Chloe swallowed them down. After what had happened between her and Nate tonight, there was no way she could move forward with Travis. She’d have Hailey call him tomorrow and cancel. With Christmas a week away, the chances of finding another donor were slim. She thought about Derrick. That cute, freckled pain in the ass deserved every leg up in life that he could get. Without the sports programs the foundation offered, it would only give him—and so many at-risk kids—more free time. More opportunities to find trouble.
Her love life had crashed and burned in glorious fashion tonight. Chloe would be damned if she let her professional life follow the same path. Tonight she’d get Derrick situated. Tomorrow, she’d hit the pavement and she wasn’t going to stop until she found someone—anyone—to help bail her foundation out. And then…? Then, she’d try to do something about mending her shattered heart.
ELEVEN
“Jesus, Nate. Why in the hell didn’t you tell me?”
Nate sat at the kitchen table, a bottle of beer clutched in his fist. Acid ate away at his stomach, burned a path up his throat. He’d really fucked up this time.
“Tell you what? That I hooked up with someone at Dad’s memorial service and have been fucking her ever since?”
Travis cut him a look. “I probably wouldn’t have put it that way, but yeah! You’re not an island for shit’s sake. It’s like you forget that any of us are around. Did you ever consider calling? Coming out to visit? Hell, inviting us out here? We don’t only have to talk when shit goes south, Nate.”
He knew that. But he’d been through so much shit over the past few years that he couldn’t ever seem to get out of his own headspace. Being with Chloe had finally started to coax him from that self-confinement. And instead of working through his anger like a goddamned adult, he’d lashed out at her yet again like a jaded kid. Said horrible things to her. He’d never wanted to take anything back so fucking badly.
“You’ve gotta let it go, brother.” Nate lifted his gaze to Travis’s. You’d think he was the oldest brother, the way he treated him. “She’s not Miranda.”
Nate hung his head between his shoulders. He’d been too much of a chicken shit to tell Chloe that the real reason he’d enlisted—had to get the fuck away from his father—was because he’d caught him with Miranda bent over his desk one afternoon. His fucking fiancée and his own dad, going at it as though the world were about to end and the future of the human race depended on their procreation. God. Even now thinking about it made his stomach turn.
Nate snorted. “You don’t know that.”
“Yeah, I do. The first time I talked to her, I asked why she’d come to me. She said that she knew about Carter’s situation and didn’t want to pile anything more on his plate. That Noah should be allowed to enjoy having money for a change. And when I asked why she hadn’t gone to you, she that you were signing your inheritance away and that she wasn’t interested in a piece of that pie.”
Another snort. “Doesn’t mean anything.”
“Listen to me, you pigheaded son of a bitch. If she’d been after you for your money, she would have asked you for it from the get-go. Believe me, she wasn’t even a little shy about shaking me down. Did she ever once tell you that her foundation was in trouble?”
“No.”