Sassy Cowgirl Kisses by Kathy Fawcett

Chapter 39

“We need to talk, Kat.”

Gunnar’s tone was gruffer than he’d intended walking into his wife’s home office unannounced. After taking off his hat, he sat down across from her in one of the brocade upholstered wing chairs and looked around the room. This had been his mother’s home office years before, and her pride and joy.

Randi Lynn West made this a retreat from the dusty and rustic ranch, complete with plush white carpet and fancy chairs. It was his mother’s inner sanctum, and now it was Kat’s. Ridge had gifted this space to her shortly after their marriage as the most precious thing he could offer his new daughter-in-law.

Now, years later, it retained the same look; the same light and feminine fragrance.

And the same rules still applied—enter at your own risk.

Looking around and seeing his mother’s law books on the shelves along with Kat’s medical journals, Gunnar was grateful that his wife left the room as it always was, amidst the fervor of her redecorating over the past few years. He knew it was a sacrifice on Kat’s part; this wasn’t her style. The realization made him swallow hard and soften his tone.

He couldn’t read Kat’s face. She set her pencil down and folded her hands on the desk. Her eyes were guarded and her mouth set—but she was so damned beautiful that he almost lost his nerve. They had been at odd ends in the past few weeks, and this conversation wasn’t going to make anything better between them. Just the opposite.

“Sweetheart…” he started again.

“Oh, it’s sweetheart now, is it?” Kat’s voice held a touch of amusement in the steel.

“It seems,” Gunnar said cautiously, “that something very big is happening in your life this summer; in our lives. Looks like we got more than we bargained for when Sassy came to work at the ranch.”

Kat was silent as she watched him talk.

“That’s an understatement,” Kat said at last.

Gunnar was treading carefully.

“I hear you paid a visit to Rowdy up at the office, and I think you put him—put us all—in a sticky situation, between a rock and a hard place.”

“I disagree, Gunnar. Sweetheart.” As she spoke, Gunnar cringed. “The answer is very clear. I want Sassy Tate gone. Today. She’s not good for Ash. She’s not good for me. And I think we can agree that her presence hasn’t done much for our marriage.”

Gunnar regarded her words, and the way she spit out the word Tate, like venom from a snake bite. She sounded more like a prosecuting attorney than a medical doctor just now, and he wondered if she’d been reading his mother’s books.

He hadn’t seen his wife’s hard side since their ill-fated blind date, several years earlier. It was off-putting then, but he had the choice to walk away. Which he did. If they hadn’t been locked up together in a hospital quarantine for a week, he would never have seen her more vulnerable side and fallen in love.

But she had ghosts, Kat did.

She pushed them down, but they re-surfaced in ways Gunnar could see every now and then. In bad dreams and free-floating insecurities. It would be good to have them gone forever, and there was only one way that would happen. Kat needed to face Sassy and deal with the realities.

For that to happen, he would need to stand firm against his wife.

“Sorry, Kat,” Gunnar said, getting up to leave. “I don’t negotiate with bullies. Sassy stays.

Kat shot up from her chair in anger and surprise, but Gunnar stood his ground.

“She’s not leaving the ranch on my watch, Kat,” he said. “I can’t fire her just because she’s your long-lost sister.”

“There’s nothing lost about her… I was never looking for her. I didn’t know she existed.”

“But here she is. And she… this… isn’t going away, sweetheart, so I want… I need you to try and figure it out.”

“I’ll figure it out on my own terms.”

“Sometimes we don’t have that luxury,” he said. “If you recall, I was fighting mad when I got locked in the hospital with you during the quarantine.”

Kat looked up in surprise at his words.

“But it made me face some things I’d been running from,” he went on, “like how angry I was about my mother’s death.”

Kat was silent.

“That quarantine was a shortcut for me, painful though it was. It helped me move on. Sassy leaving now won’t help you move on, Kat. I didn’t engineer it, but here it is—here she is. I feel we ought to deal with what’s in front of us.”

“So that’s it then? You’re forcing me to face my past because you feel it’s time?”

Gunnar could see that his wife was angry with him.

“I’m your husband, Kat, not your enemy, and I love you. I’m the one who holds you at night when you have nightmares. I’m the one who reassures you when you have fears and doubts. And yes, I do feel it’s time,” he spoke steadily. “What you do is up to you. But Rowdy and I are not going to fire Sassy before her internship ends. She’s qualified to do her job, and it’s not a crime to be your sister. In fact, I like her all the more for it.”

“She deceived you, Gunnar—deceived us all.”

“Well true, she didn’t come to the ranch with guns blazing, declaring who she was. But can you blame her? Look at how you’re reacting?”

“What’s a normal reaction in this situation?” Kat spat at him. “I’d really like to know.”

“I guess I feel sorry for her. You’re practically the only family she has, since her… your… father died last year.”

At that, Kat’s head spun towards Gunnar and locked on his eyes.

“He what?”

“Wait…” he said carefully, “Sassy didn’t tell you?”

“She tried to, I think.”

“Your mama didn’t tell you? Surely word made its way…”

“I haven’t been… returning her calls.” Kat’s words came out in a hoarse whisper.

Gunnar nodded in stunned silence.

Good Lord.