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stubborn.”
    â€œYes,” she said, peeling herself away from the wood. Because why the hell was she shrinking away from him as though she should be afraid of him? She wasn’t. She shouldn’t be. He had been a monster in her closet when she was a girl, but right now, he was just a man. And she was going to treat him like any man who was on her property when he shouldn’t be. “I have to be damn stubborn. Sometimes my stubbornness is the only thing that has gotten me through life. And I’ll be damned if I back down just because you showed up and told me to.”
    â€œThat’s where you have yourself a problem. Because I’m not exactly known for my easy disposition and temperament.”
    â€œAre you actually fighting to give me something? I don’t understand you.”
    â€œYou don’t have to understand, just be reasonable,” he said.
    â€œNo. I don’t know how to be reasonable. I only know how to be right.” This, this right here, her inability to give on anything had gotten her in trouble more than one time over the years. But life was hard, so she had to make herself harder. She didn’t regret it. She didn’t regret learning to insulate herself from hardship. It was a necessity.
    â€œYou don’t want to be in debt to me, that’s your main issue. But the way I see it, you already are.”
    â€œGet off my property.”
    For once, he complied. Turning away from her and heading toward his truck. She watched him get in, watched him drive away. And then, her knees did give out. She slid down the side of the house, shaking, feeling every inch like the little wimp she was.
    The fact that she wasn’t stronger than this was a blow. At least she had held her own when he was here.
    Her head was spinning. She was trying to work out exactly what all this new information meant. Gage West was her benefactor. The man she attributed the ruination of her life to was actually responsible for the way that she lived now. He was the reason she had a business. He was the reason she had a house. He was the reason that she had enough money to hire employees and was now indulging in a completely ruined day off.
    It all started with him. Even though her business was completely self-sufficient now, without that injection of cash, she wouldn’t have any of it. And yes, whether it should or not, it mattered that it was from him and not from the insurance company.
    Like the monster had reached out of the closet to offer a piece of candy for everything he’d put her through. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to be bound to him. Didn’t want to be tied to him completely.
    There was only one option. Only one option that was acceptable to her, anyway.
    She dumped tepid coffee out into what would be flowers, if she ever bothered to plant any. Then she took a deep breath. She was going to get dressed, and then she and Gage West were going to meet on her terms.
    * * *
    G AGE HAD BEEN going over paperwork for hours. The text on the page was starting to wiggle, numbers beginning to reverse themselves. He was not a paperwork guy. He had a brilliant understanding of numbers and how investments worked. It was the reason he had any money to call his own. And he had quite a lot of it.
    But, having a good head for business often meant knowing exactly which tasks you needed to farm out to other people. And that was another area he was expert in.
    He had people to take care of the actual act of investing, people who managed his finances. Meanwhile, he continued to work with his hands whenever he could. Most people who had come into contact with him over the past few years probably imagined that he was destitute. And, he couldn’t really blame them. He tended to live in motels; he traveled from place to place; his truck wasn’t anything to write home about.
    Of course, he’d owned this property on the lake for years. But no one knew that. He