Her Cowboy Billionaire Beast

by Liz Isaacson

  Patsy drew herself up as straight and as tall as she could. “We had to sell those acres,” she said.

  “Would it be possible to put me in touch with the new owner?” Richard looked up, hope shining in his eyes. “I’ll take all of your Honeygolds and whatever Snowsweets you can get me. Maybe if I can talk to them, I’ll get what I need for our Idaho stores.”

  “I can put you in touch with him,” Patsy said coolly. Pure humiliation romped through her though, and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could hide it. If she’d just accepted Cy’s proposal for the acreage, she’d be able to close this deal right now. Richard wouldn’t have to go to another orchard to get what he needed. He wouldn’t have to doubt that Patsy and Foxhill Farm could provide what he needed.

  “Great,” Richard said, finishing his apple just as his phone rang. “Oh, excuse me. This is Neil.”

  Patsy nodded, because if Neil Hammerstein had been calling her, she’d have answered no matter what too. “I’ll go get the paperwork ready.”

  Richard nodded as he said, “Hey, Neil,” and Patsy left the two of them alone to chat. In her office-shed, she clicked on her computer and printed out the documents she’d need Richard to sign. He’d get a copy; she’d keep one; one would go in the files.

  A sense of pride filled her as the printer whirred. She’d just sold two full crops of two varieties of apples in one meeting. She’d been working toward this day all summer, and a smile lifted the corners of her mouth. She couldn’t even imagine Betty doing something like this.

  True joy touched her heart, and she couldn’t wait to tell Cy—her thoughts stalled. No, she couldn’t wait to tell her father that she’d done exactly what she’d said she’d do—restore the orchard to their full glory and bring the farm back to profitable.

  Cy lingered in the back of her mind, long after she and Richard had shaken hands, and long after she’d filed the paperwork, and long after she’d gone inside the farmhouse to celebrate the sale with her father.

  She wanted to call him—she ached to call him—and tell him her good news. She could hear Cy’s sexy, deep voice as he said, “You’re amazing, Patsy,” and she could smell the musky and mechanical scent that was uniquely his.

  She reached up and touched her lips, feeling the gentle pressure of Cy’s there when he’d kissed her the first time. A sigh came from her mouth, and she remembered the way he kissed her when he was feeling a bit more passionate. She felt the strands of his hair between her fingers, and the bumping thump of her pulse whenever the man so much as looked her way.

  Patsy didn’t even realize she’d started to cry until she sniffled and reached up to touch her eye, which itched. It wasn’t itchy—tears were pouring down her face.

  She leaned her head back and looked right up at the ceiling. “I miss him so much,” she moaned. “What do I do?”

  God didn’t answer her, at least not in a way that Patsy understood. She didn’t understand anything anymore, least of all herself.

  “Why did I do this?” She bent over the desk now and cradled her head in her hands. “How did it come to this? How do I fix it? Can I get him back?”

  She kept asking questions, and she wasn’t sure if they were for herself or for the Lord, but they helped ground her and kept her thoughts moving.

  Patsy had to keep things moving. Being stagnant was the kiss of death for a woman like her, and she knew eventually, she’d seize onto an idea that would be the answer.

  “Please,” she kept whispering. “What do I do?”

  Later that evening, Patsy climbed the steps to the cabin where she used to live. She’d been in touch with Sophia, of course, but she’d been ignoring her best friend since Cy’s departure from her life.

  It was time to bring in the reinforcements. Sophia had been there for all the break-ups over the last four years, and Patsy needed her desperately now.

  “Knock, knock,” she said as she opened the door. She hadn’t called ahead, but Sophia would be done at the lodge by now, as darkness had already fallen. Patsy didn’t expect dinner, as it was past time for that, and Sophia didn’t like to cook at home after she’d put together a meal for twenty-plus people at the lodge.

  In fact, it had usually been Patsy who’d feed them in the evenings when Sophia finally got done in the kitchen at the lodge.

  Tonight, though, the scent of something brown and delicious hung in the air, and Patsy stalled as she took in the living room in front of her.

  A man sat on the couch while Sophia said something in the kitchen.

  Patsy’s hand flew to her mouth as a gasp pulled through her whole chest. “Cy?”

  The man rose, and it was apparent it wasn’t Cy. Foolishness hit Patsy in the chest, and her gaze flew to Sophia, who came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a towel. Her eyes were wide too, and she glanced from Patsy to Ames.

  “Patsy,” she said, plenty of surprise in her voice. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “I…I….” Patsy didn’t know what to say. Her heart hammered way too hard for it to be over Ames Hammond. What in the world was wrong with her?

  You’re in love with Cy.

  The thought was just there, and her heartbeat crashed like it agreed.

  Go talk to him.

  She shook her head as if Ames or Sophia had suggested it.

  “Hello, Patsy,” Ames said, taking off his cowboy hat. He shot a look at Sophia too, who seemed to get the message. She rushed forward and hugged Patsy, who couldn’t hold back the rush of tears then.

  “What’s wrong?” Sophia asked, her voice right against Patsy’s ear.

  Patsy couldn’t say, especially not with Ames here. Then, as if God had pulled back the curtain separating her and Him, she knew exactly what to do.

  She pulled in a breath and stepped back. She said, “Cy broke up with me, and I’m devastated.”

  She looked past Sophia, who’d sucked in a breath with wide, shocked eyes, to Ames. She asked, “Do you know how to ride a motorcycle?”

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  “Would you teach me?” she asked. “And help me figure out how to get Cy back?”

  “Why?” Ames asked, his voice as sharp as his gaze. “So you can rip him apart again?”

  Patsy pressed against a fresh set of tears. She couldn’t imagine what Cy was going through, and she regretted keenly that she’d been the cause of it.

  She shook her head, everything flapping in the wind now. “No,” she said. “So I can tell him I’m in love with him, and I want him back, and beg him to forgive me.”

  Sophia linked her arm through Patsy’s and said, “I’ll help you, Patsy.” They both looked at Ames, and he was so stoic and so dark. So much like Cy, and yet so different.

  “Please,” Patsy said, not above begging despite Ames’s glower. “I’m dying without him.”

  That seemed to soften Ames, and he finally gave one nod. “Fine, I’ll help.” He took a step toward her as he stuffed that cowboy hat back on his head. “But if I even think for one second that you’ll hurt him again, I will—”

  “Ames,” Sophia said, her voice sickly sweet but also firm. “Sweetheart, the timer is going off on those cheesesteaks. Will you please go check them?”

  Ames glared at Patsy for another second as the word sweetheart rang in her ears. Then he walked into the kitchen, giving them twenty feet of privacy.

  “Sweetheart?” Patsy asked dumbly, turning to look at Sophia. “And you made cheesesteaks after dinner at the lodge?” She felt like she was looking at a brand-new version of her best friend, and she didn’t know the Sophia Cooke standing in front of her at all.

  “Surprise,” Sophia said weakly. “We really don’t have time for this right now, though. Come sit down and eat with us, and we’ll help you figure out a plan to get Cy back.”

  “Do you really think I can?” Patsy asked, glancing over to Ames. “Has he told you anything?”

  “No,” Sophia whispered. “I mean, he’s here because he came to st
ay with Cy for a while. I guess it’s pretty bad, and Ames didn’t think he should be alone.” She tugged on Patsy’s hand. “Come on. His bark is just way louder than his bite, I promise.”

  Patsy wasn’t so sure, because when Ames turned from setting a sheet pan on the stovetop, he still wore a dark, growly look in those oh-so-familiar eyes.

  Do it for Cy, she thought, and she realized in that moment, she’d do anything—anything—to get him back into her life. Even lay all of her wrongdoings out on the table for his police officer twin to examine, judge, and criticize.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Cy stared out the windshield at the familiar office building. The drive from his house to town got shorter every time Ames made it.

  “Go on,” his brother said. “You can go in alone today.”

  Cy nodded, everything he felt behind an invisible barrier. That way, it didn’t infect his mind. His depression and anxiety and anger couldn’t rear their ugly heads and say mean, hurtful things.

  With all those things tucked safely away, he didn’t hurt. That was a good thing, Dr. Montgomery kept telling him. But what she didn’t understand was that Cy didn’t feel anything. Nothing at all.

  And that was not a good thing.

  He got out of the truck anyway, because he’d committed to seeing his counselor every day for the first two weeks. He was only on day six, but it didn’t matter. Nothing really mattered. He’d talk to her. He and Ames would get something to eat on the way back to the house.

  He’d throw a ball to Blue Velvet, barely feeling the chill in the air or the wind as it kissed his face and tried to chap his skin.

  No big deal.

  “Hey,” he said to the secretary there. He supposed some men would find her beautiful, but to Cy, her dark hair was the wrong color.

  “Good morning, Mister Hammond,” Sabrina chirped. “I’ll let her know you’re here.”

  “Great,” he said, though nothing in his tone suggested anything was great. He took a seat and stared at the wall across from him. He’d normally look at his phone while he waited. The first time he’d come with Ames, his foot had bounced a mile a minute, trying to keep up with his racing pulse and his frantic thoughts.

  None of that happened anymore. Cy did like that effect of the medication he was on, but he suspected that nervous energy was just buzzing around somewhere behind that barrier he couldn’t break through.

  He wasn’t as tired as he’d once been. He could sleep at night now. He didn’t sit and obsess over little things anymore, and his mind didn’t go in circles for hours.

  Cy hated all of it, honestly. But the meds also made it so he wasn’t a beast. They made it so he could laugh when things were funny and have real conversations with people without getting his feelings hurt or multiplying his doubts. They made it so he could focus when he needed to, and in so many ways, things were better in Cy’s life.

  He hadn’t gone to therapy when Mikaela had ended their relationship, and he’d survived then too. Talking about his feelings and his actions didn’t seem to be helping with the fact that he had an enormous hole in his heart.

  A Patsy-shaped hole that wouldn’t heal, no matter how many pills he swallowed or how many sessions he attended.

  At least he was down to one per day. When Colton had found him in the back yard, he’d wanted to take Cy to the hospital. Cy had steadfastly refused, saying he was fine. He’d calmed down by then, though he was jittery and exhausted at the same time.

  Colt had slept at Cy’s that night, on a cot in the same bedroom. It wasn’t until Ames showed up the next morning that Cy realized his brothers were worried about him taking his own life.

  He honestly hadn’t thought of doing that. It was more of a sense of anxiety and panic driving him to the edge of reason. From there…Cy didn’t even know where to go. In California, he’d put on a helmet and ridden his motorcycle down the coastal highway until he ran out of gas. He’d slept on the beach and showered at a campground. He’d plugged in his phone at a coffeehouse and filled up his gas tank before heading north again.

  He’d run away. In California, he could do that. He had an amazing shop manager, and no obligations. Here, he was still the shop manager, and he couldn’t run from his responsibilities. He’d been an absolute ogre to Marissa the day after he’d broken up with Patsy, despite Ames never being more than a few feet from him.

  He’d yelled at McCall…and maybe a client. Cy couldn’t exactly remember. He hated the beast inside him, but the pills tamed it, so that was nice.

  “Cy?” A hand touched his forearm and sent a shockwave up to his shoulder.

  He blinked and turned toward Dr. Montgomery. She never came out to the waiting room to get him, and he looked over to the door that led back to her office. Her assistant stood there, holding his folder, and she must’ve called for him and he hadn’t heard her.

  “Are you ready?” Dr. Montgomery didn’t smile as she stood up and gestured toward the doorway.

  “Yes,” Cy said, going with her through the door and down the hall. She held the door to her office for him, and he glanced at her as he passed. “Sorry, I zoned out.”

  Dr. Montgomery remained silent until he’d sat down and she’d closed the door. She settled into a comfortable chair across from him and crossed her legs. “Does that happen a lot, Cy? You zoning out?”

  “Yeah,” he said, his head starting to throb. “I mean, a little bit.”

  “I think we should adjust your dosage then. We don’t want you to be a zombie.”

  Hope pricked his heart. “We can do that?”

  “Yes,” she said with a quick smile. He’d never seen her with her hair down. She always wore it in a bun near the top of her head. Big earrings always dangled from her lobes. She always wore the same makeup, and a blouse with a skirt. Never a dress. Of course, this was only his sixth day with her, but he could tell she was organized and routine.

  Like Patsy.

  No matter what he did, Patsy was always right there in the back of his mind. She’d creep forward from time to time, like she just had, and Cy would have to figure out if he wanted to push her away or embrace the thought of her.

  “So let’s try thirty milligrams,” Dr. Montgomery said. “Instead of the thirty-seven-point-five. I’ll have Rhonda call it in right now.” She tapped on her phone a few times and then put it back in her lap. She looked at him and said, “Tell me how your thoughtfulness exercise went yesterday.”

  Cy took a deep breath and tried to remember what he’d done. “Okay, well, I started out pretty good. I went through a specific situation, like we talked about. At the shop, we’re building this custom bike for a guy who lives in Jackson Hole, right?”

  He continued the story, and he outlined how he’d been thoughtful in his approach with McCall, the lead mechanic on the project. He’d been thoughtful about what to say to Marissa when she’d interrupted his meeting, as she often did.

  “And I think it went well,” Cy said. “I identified what was happening, how I felt about it, and I thoughtfully chose how to respond.”

  “Excellent,” Dr. Montgomery said, her pen never ceasing in its motion. He’d asked her to see what she was writing, and she’d shown him. It was all just lines and swoops though, and she’d called it shorthand. She, apparently, could read it. Cy could not.

  “Did you journal it?” she asked next, and Cy hated that he hadn’t anticipated the question. The pills sometimes made his brain a little too slow.

  “No,” he admitted.

  Dr. Montgomery nodded as if she didn’t care one way or the other, but she did. Cy knew she did. She was simply exceptionally skilled at hiding how she really felt. He’d been like that once too, but it was a very heavy burden that he simply couldn’t keep carrying.

  “If you could type out your journal, would you do it?” She looked up from her notebook.

  “Maybe,” he said, shrugging. “I just don’t get the point.”

  “The point is to make you slow down and analy
ze how you’re feeling.”

  “I know how I’m feeling,” he said, feeling everything sharpen around him. “I’m living behind waxed paper now. I don’t feel anything.”

  “Cy—”

  “Everything is so slow already, Doctor Montgomery. I don’t need things to slow down.” If anything, he wished they’d speed up again. He hated being trapped in moments of agony for such a long time. Thankfully, the meds also made it so what was agony was really just a dull ache to see Patsy, hold her hand, dance with her, and kiss her goodnight.

  “We definitely need to adjust your medication,” she said. “I want you to get this new prescription right after you leave today, and I don’t want you taking any more of the pills you have, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, looking at his hands. Whatever she said. Didn’t matter.

  “And I’m going to make a note that in three days, we need to talk about the changes, if any. We might need to step you down even more, and we can. It just has to happen pretty gradually.”

  “Okay,” he said again, ready for this session to be over and it had barely begun.

  Dr. Montgomery gave him another one of her tight, professional smiles. “All right, let’s talk about your strategy for coping with stress….”

  Cy needed to play this game with her, because if he had any hope of Ames going back to Colorado and getting the rest of his brothers to stop texting him and dropping by in the evenings, Cy had to figure out a way to find the joy in his life.

  He knew it was there, somewhere. Hiding. Lurking just out of sight. He spoke about prayer and his faith, and he realized it had been a while since he’d had an open, honest, out-loud talk with the Lord.

  He finished his session, got more homework, and made Ames drive through the pharmacy to get his new prescription. Back home, he said, “Come on, Blue,” and the two of them took off into the trees that stretched toward the highway.

  The scent of apples and wet earth accompanied them, and Blue Velvet enjoyed herself as she darted from object to object, her nose working overtime. Cy enjoyed how carefree she was, and how much joy she got from barking at a bird sitting in the tree. He smiled, and for that one moment, he experienced happiness.