“You think I had a choice?” he finally answered Kai.
He understood how hard it would have been to ignore the wishes of a sick mother, though. He even understood Win’s fear of walking away from the family fortune. Their lives would be more precarious at Base Camp than in her parents’ mansion.
Still, she’d deliberately cut off their relationship in such a way as to make him think he needed to marry someone else. That took a kind of cold calculation that didn’t fit with his sense of who Win was.
So who was she really?
And what had made her so afraid of living beyond the protection of her parents’ money?
“All I’m saying is make sure Win knows how you feel. And don’t let Boone and Leslie railroad you into anything. You can’t marry her.”
“What if Win takes off again before the wedding?” Angus hadn’t meant to ask, but it was one of the thoughts that kept him up last night. He knew his loyalty to Win was absolute, but he also had to consider his promises to everyone else here at Base Camp, and as much as he hated to admit it, he didn’t know anymore where Win’s loyalties lay. He didn’t think she’d put her parents ahead of him, but a mother’s first responsibility was to her child. What if she decided their baby was better off being rich? “What if she panics, runs back home and all the backup brides are so pissed off at that point that none of them will marry me?”
“That’s not going to happen,” Kai said, turning to the dishes. “Take a breath. Wait a few days and see what Win does. Don’t jump to any conclusions. Unless you like Leslie better,” he added.
“I do not like Leslie better,” Angus asserted. He knew that much already.
Since she wasn’t answering her phone, now her mother was texting. Win had woken up to a string of them, which Vienna must have sent overnight.
“We’ve gotten word of a credible threat against our family. I know you won’t talk to us, but you need to keep safe. Don’t go anywhere alone!”
In the past Win would have taken the information seriously. She knew the kind of people who came after a family like hers. This time she simply shook her head. Vienna wanted to scare her, and she refused to let it work.
She couldn’t help feeling a frisson of fear, however, when she stepped outside the tiny house into the gray of dawn. Fields and woods surrounded their settlement. The men took turns patrolling in the night, but there was so much land; they couldn’t be everywhere at once. She covered the ground between the tiny house and the bunkhouse briskly, feeling foolish the whole way but relieved when she was inside again.
Several people were already sipping cups of tea in the main room, but she didn’t see Leslie. When Angus came up behind her and touched her arm, she gasped. She hadn’t seen him come out of the kitchen.
“You’re jumpy today,” he murmured.
“Mom says they’ve had a threat. That always makes me jumpy.” They got in line as Kai and Addison served breakfast, the room filling up fast as the rest of the inhabitants of Base Camp arrived.
“Does your family get a lot of them?”
“I suppose, but we increase security only when there’s a serious one. She was just warning me.”
“And you believe her?”
Win turned to face him, irritated that he’d put her thoughts into words, even though that made no sense. “She might have lied about…” She looked around to see if anyone was listening. The crew hadn’t gotten it together yet. “About her cancer, but she wouldn’t lie about this.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
Win felt a surge of impatience. “It doesn’t matter anyway; I’m always careful.”
Before Angus could respond, Leslie appeared by his side and linked her arm with his. “What a wonderful morning. Don’t you think it’s a wonderful morning?”
And she was off and running. Win decided she didn’t need the aggravation of Leslie’s presence so early in the day and went to sit by Avery as soon as she’d filled her plate with food. As far as she could tell, Leslie kept up her commentary through the meal. Win escaped to the greenhouses as soon as she could, then had to groan when Angus and Leslie joined her there.
The morning passed by slowly, with Angus showing Leslie his hydroponics system and Win working with the seedlings, trying not to show how uncomfortable she was. She felt like the baby had grown overnight, too. Her lower back ached after several hours, something that had never happened before. It had been hard to get comfortable on her pallet last night. She decided to steal a few pillows from one of the guest rooms at the manor today. By the time lunch rolled around, she was grateful to sit down, and Avery, who must have sensed something was wrong, fetched and carried her food for her.
“You could go lie down,” she pointed out.
And leave Leslie alone with Angus in the greenhouse? That didn’t seem smart.
“Rival, you’re darn good at potting plants,” Leslie remarked cheerfully that afternoon when they were back at work again.
“Rival?” Boone asked, looking from Leslie to Win. He’d joined them after lunch, and the three of them were standing at a long table in one of the greenhouses, transferring tomato starts into larger pots while Angus worked to trim yellow leaves off a set of plants he was growing hydroponically. Angus had informed Leslie—and therefore Win as well—that they were comparing the rates of growth and fruit production between the potted and hydroponically grown plants.
Win wasn’t sure why Leslie had opted to work with her instead of Angus. Possibly to suss out the competition. Possibly
