Cowboys Don't Believe in Fairy Tales

by Jessie Gussman

  “Maybe you can find me a drink, and we can relax and chat a little.” Michelle’s chin tilted ever so slightly. It wasn’t a request.

  Ryder lifted his own chin. Interacting with Michelle felt like a complicated chess game. There were hidden traps and false turns just waiting to trip him up. Points for her each time he did. But she knew how to mingle, knew the company he kept, and was comfortable in it. She might not be interested in spending a year in North Dakota, but she was very interested in his position and his money.

  She was on his short list of women he’d consider choosing at the ball. He was almost certain she’d say yes.

  What he wasn’t sure of was whether he wanted to spend the rest of his life in a constant state of stress and mind games.

  He didn’t mind a woman who could beat him. What he minded was a woman who wanted to.

  He could do business with that—it made things challenging in a way he loved, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to come home to that, go on vacation with that, or spend Christmas with that. Like traversing a landmine with no downtime.

  Michelle’s glossy lips turned up, and she gave her hair a little toss. She might have been travelling all day, but she didn’t look like it. Her pants were perfectly pressed. Her cashmere sweater draped artfully over one shoulder. Her hair fell in a light blond, wavy waterfall, and her makeup was classic and perfectly applied. Yeah, Michelle was exactly what he wanted.

  “Nell has a cut on her arm. I told her I’d help her with it, then I’ll be right in.”

  It was the wrong thing to say. Her lips flattened. He’d be paying for it. But he couldn’t not do what he said he was going to. It was a gamble for now, though, because he didn’t want to anger Michelle to the point where “getting ahead” of him meant saying “no” to his proposal.

  “Thanks so much, but I’ll clean it up in the shower, and if I need a bandage of any kind, I’ll come back down and grab one.” Nell moved over toward the door that led to the back steps.

  “We have a first aid kit somewhere. I’ll have Mary set it on the table,” Roxie said, referring to the night maid. There was a decided frost in her tone.

  Nell stiffened then moved away. The joy in the room seemed to go with her.

  Michelle’s smile was fake. Most people might not notice, but they’d dated on again, off again. Nothing exclusive. She’d also been friends with Roxie for years, so he knew her as well as anyone, he supposed.

  “If you don’t mind, Michelle, Ryder will be right in to pour you a drink. But I need to speak with him for just a moment.” Roxie had her nicest face on, but Ryder wasn’t fooled. She was going to yell at him.

  Michelle’s face hardened, and he thought for a moment she was going to decline and just go to bed—his punishment for not jumping to her side immediately.

  He wasn’t going to be pushed around, but he didn’t want to lose his best opportunity to keep his business and money. Although when he thought about it like that, it seemed mercenary. Funny he’d never considered it in that light before tonight.

  The lingering scent of springtime soil and honey drifted by his nose. Nell’s scent still clinging to his arm and chest. Her spell still woven around him. Maybe that’s why a business decision that seemed practical and mutually beneficial yesterday now made his conscience twinge.

  As soon as Michelle’s footsteps had faded away, Roxie turned on him. “What are you doing? You knew Michelle was coming! And there you are, kissing the hired help with her three seconds away from showing up in the kitchen. You could ruin everything.” Her voice hissed, and her cheeks flared red. “Michelle is your best bet for saving the company and the money. Don’t screw this up.”

  He knew, of course, that Roxie didn’t want to lose her lifestyle, which was dependent on him. She wouldn’t have a problem finding another job, but not one with the lucrative benefits and relaxed schedule she enjoyed with him. But her issue really wasn’t that.

  “If I screw it up, the opportunity goes to you.” See how she liked that.

  “Yeah.” She didn’t look amused. “At least you get to have a ball. We both know if the opportunity goes to me, I have to put myself up for auction.” She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t even laugh. If Uncle Andrew weren’t dead already, I’d kill him myself for his stupid stipulations.”

  “Better be nice to me, sis.” A sly grin stole over his face. “I got a dollar, folks, anyone wanna give me two?” His country auctioneer imitation was very poor, probably because the auctions he might go to were normally silent, regal, reserved things. East coast snobbery and Yankee reserve. He was comfortable with his people—he was that way too—but even he could admit they did take themselves pretty seriously.

  He had a feeling they did things a little differently here in North Dakota.

  “Go into the room, and make sure Michelle is very, very happy.”

  Something in him rebelled at that. “Maybe I don’t want Michelle.”

  If Roxie’s brows weren’t attached, they would have hit the ceiling. Then her lips pursed. “I hope you’re not thinking about Nell.”

  “She’s nice.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  He was kind of surprised Roxie agreed with him, but really, no one could ever say that Nell wasn’t nice. Or happy. Or sweet. Or...

  “But you know as well as I do that Michelle will fit seamlessly into your world. She’s already in it. But Nell...” Roxie’s mouth flattened.

  It surprised Ryder, because he got the impression that Roxie actually really did like Nell. A lot. This wasn’t about Roxie being a snob. This was Roxie being practical.

  “Surely you’ve seen her enough this week, spent enough time with her, that you know not only would she not be able to schmooze her way through the benefits, dinners, and galas that you must be a part of, she wouldn’t want to anyway. I think, not only would you be hard-pressed to get her out of North Dakota, but she would hate downtown Manhattan and would be brutally homesick.” Roxie tilted her head. Her voice softened. “There’s something really sweet and special about Nell. Don’t take her to the city and ruin it.”

  He heard her. Knew she was speaking the truth. But there was something she seemed to be implying that he couldn’t let go.

  “You’re talking like...Nell...like Nell would even be interested in me.”

  Roxie’s expression showed disbelief. “Really, Ryder? Nell’s a simple country girl. There’s no guile in her. Her eyes follow you when she catches a glimpse of you out the window. Her cheeks get red when you walk into the office for a few minutes. You’re handsome, successful, and you have a commanding way about you that attracts much more experienced girls than Nell. She would never be able to resist you.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “That doesn’t make it a good idea. I’m really hoping you know that.”

  “I do.” Something odd had happened to his insides when Roxie had said that Nell watched him. Was maybe even attracted to him. Saint Peter and all the angels surely knew he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

  But Roxie was right. The potential was high, but it would cost more than he wanted to pay. Not just for himself, in not having the kind of woman he needed on his arm and by his side, but for Nell. She might like him, but she would hate his lifestyle.

  Roxie nodded at him, satisfied he knew what she was saying and agreed. With his stomach feeling tight and hot, he walked into the living room to entertain Michelle.

  Chapter 11

  Ryder was up early the next morning, not having slept well. The sun hadn’t made it up over the horizon when he stepped out of the house, restless. He headed toward the barn. There was always work to do there, and he felt like he needed to get his hands dirty and his body busy to try to drown out the issues in his head.

  He slipped in the end door and walked into the tack room which doubled as an office of sorts, with a small refrigerator to keep medications and dewormers along with a book to write dates and numbers of cows in heat and jot down what was bought and sold. All that information eventu
ally made it up to the big computer in the house office, but it wasn’t always practical to run to the house every time they saw a cow in heat or needed to make a supply list.

  Preacher sat at the desk, the flowery paper Nell had given him spread out in front of him. Three pages of single-spaced writing. Ryder could clearly see the “Dear” and a name that started with “A.” His curiosity spiked.

  Preacher wasn’t writing poetry. He was writing love letters.

  Ryder’s shocked gaze went from the papers on the desk to Preacher’s face. In all the years they’d known each other, Preacher had been nothing but calm and collected, never flustered, angry, or upset.

  He wasn’t angry now, but his cheeks were red, obviously so, even with the permanent tan the sun had etched on his face.

  In their teens, Ryder had ribbed Preacher more than once, and Preacher had always taken it with a steady attitude and never hesitated to throw it back. But over the years as Preacher had lived everything he professed to believe, and his reputation in work and personal life had remained true and untarnished, Ryder had stopped teasing him. If anyone was the real deal, it was Preacher.

  Ryder wasn’t sure where Gina fit in to that. No one ever had breathed a word of her parentage. But even Gina, whatever had happened to produce her, had to be on the up and up. Ryder was positive of it.

  But the papers on Preacher’s desk, with their flowery borders and the “Dear” at the beginning, were definitely a love letter.

  Preacher could write a love letter if he wanted to. Of course he could. But why was he hiding it?

  Ryder’s first instinct was to ignore the papers, turning his back and giving Preacher his privacy. With any other man, that’s exactly what he’d have done. But Preacher was different. Ryder didn’t feel betrayed, exactly, because Preacher hadn’t done anything wrong—that he knew of so far, anyway—but his illusion of Preacher living on a higher plane had been shattered.

  He nodded at the papers. “Girlfriend?”

  Preacher looked him in the eye and didn’t attempt to hide anything. “No.”

  Ryder’s brows shot up. “I’ve never heard you lie.”

  “Not lying now.”

  “That’s a love letter.”

  Preacher didn’t blink. “Maybe.”

  Ryder was trying to process it. A love letter, but not a girlfriend. He grasped at the first thing his brain could make sense of. “You’re in love with a married woman.”

  “If I were, I’d put an ocean between us.” Preacher’s eyes didn’t waver.

  They stared at each other. Ryder trying to reconcile this new side of Preacher with what he’d always known. He wasn’t sneaky, he didn’t lie, he was open, friendly, guileless. Always ready to lend a hand.

  Ryder had needed a foreman in a pinch, and Preacher hadn’t even asked how much it would pay before he said he’d help until he went to Texas in the spring.

  “Or a continent?” Ryder asked.

  Preacher shook his head slowly. “Wouldn’t be enough. Not gonna risk breaking God’s law. Not for anything.”

  Ryder had to believe that. Obviously something was going on, something that wasn’t quite square. But he’d already pried way more than he would have with anyone else.

  Business he knew how to do. Making deals, making money, always striving to grow and get bigger. That was easy.

  Life, on the other hand, was messy.

  Even Preacher, who saw everything in black and white, had a gray area when it came to romance.

  Ryder had boundaries—the ball—and a timeframe. Sometimes working within certain parameters made things easy. It should be straightforward. He needed to find a girl who would agree to marry him for his money and live in North Dakota for a year. He could afford to pay her more than enough to make it worth her while.

  Without saying anything more, Ryder turned and walked back out the door. He could make this simple. It was a cut-and-dried business transaction. Nothing more. Whatever these odd feelings that had been shifting around in his chest since he first saw Nell with a flat tire along the road were, he was going to ignore them and focus on the plans he already had made for his life.

  If someone like Preacher could get mired up in romance, Ryder had better stay far, far away from it.

  TO BE HONEST, NELL was a little disappointed that Ryder didn’t take them home on Thursday evening. It didn’t surprise her, though.

  On Friday, Elaine and Rem took her shopping for a dress. They insisted because of how she’d helped them with their kids. They didn’t realize it was all her pleasure.

  She hung the dress, wrapped safely in a white plastic garment bag, in the rafters directly above the box with the shoes Ryder had given her.

  The next week was a hard one as the landscapers came, ripping up the yard. Roxie insisted on overseeing every detail, and most of the time, she wanted Nell beside her.

  Roxie had a hard outer edge but a soft inside, and Nell liked her. She didn’t mind working with her. If she had to guess, she’d say that Roxie had been hurt sometime in her past, and that hard outer shell was her protection to keep it from happening again.

  With all of the workers there, everyone had been taking their lunches together in the barn. Vinton, Gina and Spencer included. Sometimes they were even done with school, since they’d talked their tutor into getting up at six and starting so they could have the afternoon to work with everyone else.

  Wednesday afternoon, Roxie had assigned the boys to work with Nell filling pots with soil and flowers that had been specially ordered to be ready to bloom the week of the ball while Gina helped her grandmother in the house.

  Men were outside adding shelves to the greenhouse where the plants were going to be kept for the weeks until the ball. It was Nell’s job to make sure they didn’t die. The responsibility weighed heavily on her.

  They had a good system going with Spencer filling the pots half full, Nell planting the actual plant, and Vinton filling the pot the rest of the way up with soil and lining them up, ready to carry to the greenhouse when the shelves were finished.

  About half of them were potted when the barn door opened and Ryder stepped in. They’d seen each other at lunch but not spoken since the evening of flashlight tag.

  “Hey, Spence. Your mom wants you and Vinton to go give her a hand. She needs a couple of little bodies to go under the foundation. She’s stringing lights and running water hose, I think.”

  The boys jumped up. “Hey, that sounds like fun. Maybe we’ll discover a dead body.”

  “That’s not a good thing, Vinton,” Nell admonished.

  “But it would be exciting,” Spencer called as he followed Vinton out the door.

  “Got to give him that much, at least,” Ryder said before closing the door behind him and stepping over.

  Nell wasn’t usually uncomfortable or at a loss for words. Typically she just focused on being kind and helpful, like her mother, and awkwardness didn’t have a chance to spring up.

  But his presence as he walked over beside her stirred her stomach like leaves in the wind, and her hands trembled as she tucked roots into the soil.

  “I just sent your help away. I don’t know if I can do the work of two, but I can give you a hand.”

  Nell shoved the awkwardness that tightened her chest aside and gave him her sweetest smile. She really liked Ryder. Anyone who would stop along the road in weather like he had just to help change a tire had to have a lot of good in their soul.

  But she wasn’t fooling herself. There might be a ball, and yeah, he was supposed to “choose” a bride, but it was all carefully choreographed. Michelle was here for a reason, and it wasn’t because she was such great friends with Roxie.

  “Thanks so much for offering.” She brushed her hands together. “But this isn’t hard, and I love doing it.”

  Very conscious that she was on her knees and covered in dirt, she looked away, reaching for another pot.

  He had reached for it at the same time, and their hands met. After a s
econd, somehow he held her hand cradled in his.

  “If you wore gloves, your hands wouldn’t get dirty.” His voice came out with an edge.

  She paused. They were so different. He would never understand why she didn’t wear gloves, because pretty hands, nice nails, and smooth skin were important to him. But she found her mouth opening anyway. “I love the feel of the soil in my fingers. I love touching the plant, the leaves, the roots. I feel a connection that’s almost spiritual, and gloves take that away from me.”

  She couldn’t look at him. Partly because she was embarrassed. Maybe there were a few new callouses on his hands. He’d been out working with Clay every day in addition to helping Roxie, but his hands were still smooth—the hands of a wealthy businessman—and hers were red and rough, belonging to a poor girl who had never had a choice about whether or not she wanted to work.

  But the other reason she didn’t look at him was because she didn’t want to pull her hand away. She wanted it to stay cradled in his. Even if she could barely stand the stark differences between the two. When she closed her eyes, it didn’t matter anyway.

  If she looked at him, he might see that reflected in her face.

  “I guess I’ve been missing out all my life.” His voice was soft and low and made her heart tremble.

  “You should try it sometime.”

  “I just offered.” His thumb ran over the back of her hand. “You turned me down.”

  “I think it’s for the best,” she murmured softly.

  “You’re probably right.”

  Was that disappointment in his tone? She couldn’t be sure.

  “I think you should let me help you anyway.” His tone was soft but compelling, and she couldn’t find it in her heart to refuse him again. She hadn’t wanted to to begin with. She supposed that made her weak. The story of Lazarus begging for crumbs from the rich man’s table ran through her head.

  She shook the thought. Ryder had never done anything to make her feel less than he was. It was all in her head. Except it really wasn’t, because she knew he might be here, kneeling with her and holding her hand, but he wasn’t considering choosing her at the ball in a few weeks. And her lack of money, lack of social skills and connections, lack of sophisticated polish and elegance had everything to do with it.