Stranded with the Cowboy Billionaire

by Elana Johnson

  Chapter Sixteen

  Mason sat in his car outside the sushi restaurant Ivy had said was her favorite. He was still trying to acquire a taste for raw fish, but he hadn’t told her that. He’d have done almost anything to see her again, and if he had to pretend to like a red dragon roll to do it, he would.

  But he knew he wouldn’t have to pretend. If he didn’t like sushi, Ivy wouldn’t care. At least he hoped she wouldn’t. They’d had plenty of differences on the island, and they’d gotten along fine then.

  He’d given no thought to what would happen to their relationship once they got back to the island, because Mason didn’t like to think more than a few days ahead. Maybe a week. But his momma had taught him not to worry too far into the future, because things changed.

  The tropical storm had certainly changed a lot for Mason out on Long Bar Island. And as he’d had time over the last few days alone to think about what had exactly changed, he knew what the biggest change had been: himself.

  And those changes had allowed him to see Ivy in a completely new light.

  A knock sounded on his passenger window, and he yelped as he twisted toward in that direction.

  Ivy’s beautiful face filled the window, and he hurried to unlock the car, thinking he’d get out. Instead, she got in.

  “Wow,” she said, looking around. “What kind of car is this?” She briefly met his eye. “I pegged you for a guy with a pickup truck.”

  “I have one of those too,” he said, his lungs not quite expanding properly. “This is some fancy sports car the salesman said I’d like.”

  “And do you like it?” She reached out and stroked the dashboard as if the car would purr under her touch.

  “It’s nice with the top down,” he admitted. “Driving along the coast.”

  “Let’s do that,” Ivy said.

  “You don’t want to eat?”

  “I ate just before you texted.” She looked at him then, apprehension in those lovely eyes.

  Mason needed to erase that. “You should’ve just told me.”

  “I just did.” Her eyes slid down his body. “You look great in regular clothes.”

  “Thanks.” He allowed himself a moment to take in the bright blue tank top she wore, with the tiny pair of white shorts. “So do you.” He flipped the car into reverse. “So we’re driving.”

  His stomach wasn’t happy about that, but he could feed it later.

  “Do you know the road that goes out by the cattle ranch?” she asked.

  “Yep,” he said. “I’ve worked out there a few times.”

  “Oh, right,” she said. “You said that on the island.”

  Mason had told her that, and a lot of other things. And he had more to say, which surprised even him. “I’m not going to leave Getaway Bay,” he said.

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “See, I kind of did this crazy thing. I bought a deserted island and I put out an ad to find someone to come live on it with me for a few months.”

  “Fascinating.” Ivy ran her hands through her hair as Mason pressed the button to put the top down. The breeze picked up, especially as he drove out of town, away from all the businesses, all the tourists, all the pressures of real life.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It was interesting. My servers went down almost immediately, and it took several days for all the messages that had come in to cache and then send them over.”

  Beside him, Ivy stiffened, but he continued anyway. “By then, I’d left the island. See, just one message made it through. I’m not sure how. My IT guys aren’t sure either. They think it came in at just the right moment, and it was a fluke.”

  “A fluke,” she echoed, her voice almost a whisper.

  Mason gathered his courage close and reached across the console to take her hand in his. “I don’t think it was a fluke. I think it was fate. Ivy McLaughlin, I belong with you.”

  Ivy said nothing, but she didn’t pull her hand away. Mason maneuvered them around the curves in the island, the beach on his left, and the woman of his dreams on his right.

  “I’m sorry about your house,” he said. “What have you decided to do?” He glanced at her and caught her wiping her eyes.

  Feeling helpless, he pulled to the side of the road. “Hey,” he said. “What’s wrong? I’m sorry I brought up the house.”

  “It’s not the house,” she said, her voice pinched and high. She turned toward him, and she wasn’t embarrassed that she was crying. In fact, she looked fierce and determined, while being soft and loveable at the same time. “Do you really think you belong with me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “That it was really fate?” she asked before he could even finish the word.

  “Yes,” he said. “Ivy.” He cradled her face in his palm. “I started falling in love with you out there.”

  She glanced down, her chin trembling. She pressed her lips together and shook her head. “You don’t think we’re too different?”

  “Why would we be too different?”

  “Well, I’m jobless and homeless, and you’re a billionaire. For one.”

  “I’ll hire you,” he said.

  “Oh, I got a job,” she said with a smile.

  “I was going to say you could come live with me too, but I thought you’d say no to that.”

  “I’ll find somewhere,” she said. “Now that I have a job.”

  “What’s your job?”

  “I got a job with an insurance company,” she said. “I went to apply for a maid job, but before I got to the interview, someone needed help with something, and I stepped over to the table to help them with the paperwork.”

  She tucked her hair behind her ear, and Mason heard the hint of pride in her voice. Ivy came off as confident, but she had a real self-conscious streak too.

  “And the agent hired me on the spot. Said I could start immediately, and I did.” She shrugged like it was no big deal. “I’m a good secretary.”

  “I’m sure you are,” he said, glad she felt good about herself. “And I could use someone like you.”

  “I’d be your girlfriend,” she said, and Mason really liked the sound of that. He pulled back onto the road and kept driving, his heart filling with happiness.

  “I’m starving,” he said when he rounded the curve and saw the Cattleman’s Last Stop ahead. “Would you sit with me while I eat?”

  “Oh, if we’re stopping here, I’m in,” she said. “They have the best sweet potato fries.”

  Mason couldn’t imagine why anyone would like sweet potato fries more than regular ones, but he just smiled as he pulled his fancy sports car into the gravel parking lot and found a space.

  Ivy ran her fingers through her hair before getting out of the car, and Mason drew her right into his arms. “I missed you, Ivy,” he murmured, touching his mouth to her cheek, closer to her ear than anything else.

  “Mm.” She pressed into him. “It was a rough transition back to island life, wasn’t it?”

  He chuckled, his mind still thinking about one thing: kissing her. “Is that what you call this? Island life?”

  “Yes,” she said, reaching up and slipping his cowboy hat from his head. “Maybe that’s why you haven’t liked living on the island so far. You’re not doing it right.”

  “And you’ll show me how to do it right?”

  “Yeah.” She grinned at him.

  “Deal.” With that, he leaned down and kissed her, the thrill of it just as magical as the first time.

  Several days later, Mason once again picked up Ivy in his ritzy car. His nerves had been pinging him for hours, but he knew he looked good on the outside.

  Ivy ran her hands down the blue and orange plaid shirt he’d chosen and smiled. “Nice.”

  “Yeah?”

  She adjusted his hat and beamed up at him. “It’s just my sister.”

  “Your twin sister,” Mason said.

  “Are you scared to meet her?”

  “Out of my mind scared,�
� he said.

  “You’ve already met Justin,” she said. “And he’s more protective of me than Iris.”

  “You’ve mentioned that,” he said. “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know,” Ivy said. “But he really wants all of us McLaughlin’s to be happy. He takes care of my parents’ yard now and everything.”

  Mason nodded, trying not to be jealous. When Ivy had spoken about her relationship with her brother-in-law, Mason hadn’t been sure about it. He’d thought maybe Justin had fallen in love with both twins, as Iris was identical to Ivy.

  “Only in looks,” Ivy had told him a few times over the past week since they’d taken their drive down the coast, eaten hamburgers, and gotten back together.

  She’d started her new job, and Mason had been picking her up each evening so they could spend time together. No, they weren’t on the sand. Weren’t eating oatmeal or trying to fix a radio in the middle of the night.

  But Mason liked her just as much as he had out on Long Bar Island, pedicures and cute wedges and everything. And she seemed to like him too, though she teased him about what he did all day as a retired thirty-five-year-old.

  He was still trying to figure that out himself, but he knew he would. He’d spoken to the Holstein’s about their ranch, and he’d looked into buying something himself. On the island, there were avocado farms, macadamia nut farms, pineapple plantations, and plenty of other places that echoed a cattle ranch.

  Ivy could do his books, as she’d said once, and Mason was seriously considering doing something. That would get him out of the high-rise apartment he didn’t like. He needed land to call his. Somewhere to look over and feel proud about.

  “I have a confession,” he said as she buckled her seatbelt.

  “Oh, this is going to be good,” Ivy said in a teasing voice.

  “I’ve been looking to buy a farm or something.”

  “Oh.” Surprise coated the word now. “What kind?”

  “I don’t know. There are actually a couple of options, and I’m wondering if you’d come look at them with me next week.”

  “I’d like that,” she said.

  Relief filled him. She hadn’t laughed. Hadn’t said he should just enjoy retirement—what his older brother had said when Mason had called Donald to talk about it.

  He’d said, “It’s your money, Mason. Do what you want with it. But I’d love to be retired. You should enjoy it.”

  Mason had had almost a year without working, and he couldn’t say he’d enjoyed it. Sure, there were brief moments of happiness, especially with Ivy in his life now. But he liked working. He liked looking at before and after pictures of barns and land and homes and seeing the improvement his hard work had accomplished. Great satisfaction came to him through hard work, making things look better, function better, produce better.

  Ivy chattered about a new friend at work, and Mason listened to her while navigating according to his GPS’s directions. When they finally pulled into her sister’s house in a quiet suburb up in the hills, Mason felt more relaxed.

  Another blonde woman came out onto the porch before he could get out of the car, and Ivy said, “There she is.”

  Justin joined them, his arm slipping easily around Iris, and all of Mason’s fears about the other man disappeared.

  Ivy faced him. “Ready?”

  “So ready.” He got out of the car and waved to the couple on the porch before hurrying around the back of the car to help Ivy out of the car. It was low to the ground, and she wore high heels and had a hard time getting out without him.

  He liked that she needed him, that she wanted to rely on him. “Hey,” she said. “Iris, this is Mason. Mason, you know Justin. And this is Ivy, my twin sister.”

  “Good to see you again, man,” Justin said.

  “Mason,” Iris said, her voice a note or two high on the false scale. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “Likewise.” He shook Justin’s hand when he reached the top of the steps, and then Iris’s.

  “Come in,” Justin said. “We have dinner almost ready.” He went inside, and Iris flashed a look in Ivy’s direction that Mason didn’t miss.

  He followed Justin though, leaving the twins to talk if they wanted to. Because he knew who he was—and more importantly, Ivy knew who he was.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ivy hummed as she rinsed the dishes in Orchid’s sink. No, she didn’t have a place of her own yet. She did have a job, and she and Mason would be going to look at an avocado farm later that day, after she got off work.

  She’d considered not getting a place of her own, but she hadn’t told anyone that yet. She tended to make major life plans before she should, and she and Mason hadn’t had a discussion about marriage yet.

  But she was thinking that she’d just hang here with Orchid until she and Mason got married. Then she could move in with him….

  But she also knew she wanted a big, splashy wedding—and those took time to plan.

  “But when Orchid marries Maine, her house will be empty….” She mused. And Orchid wouldn’t want to give it up, Ivy knew that. She and her first husband had lived here for a couple of years before his death, and Orchid had been raising Tesla here.

  “So talk to her about it tonight,” Ivy told the now-clean sink. If she could stay here until the wedding in December, and even beyond, she would.

  After all, Mason had not declared his love for her while they drove along the coast last week. Yes, he’d said he belonged with her, and she felt the same about him.

  But there had been no I love you’s exchanged. She should probably hear that before she started planning nuptials.

  With the dishes done, she grabbed her purse and headed out to her car.

  She didn’t mind her job at the insurance office, but she didn’t love it either. She didn’t know what she would love. Probably not working, but she’d never been in a position where she didn’t have to work.

  Plus, she had a new friend in the office, and Bri was fun and fresh and she reminded Ivy so much of her former self.

  She knew where all the parties were happening, and who had gone out with who lately, and which jeans would get a man to look her way even on the beach.

  Ivy liked talking to her, but she hadn’t run right out to get new jeans or added any social events to her calendar. She spent her evenings with Mason, usually with a lot of silence, the scent of his cologne, and something sweet to eat while she told him about her day and he kissed her like his life depended on having his mouth against hers.

  Maybe she was reading too much into their evenings together, but she didn’t think so. And tonight, they were going to look at two places back-to-back. She was secretly hoping the avocado farm would be better than the macadamia nut orchards, because she’d heard horror stories about the mess those trees made.

  “Morning, Bri,” she said when she got to the office.

  The brunette rose from her desk, which sat just inside the front door. She met every person who came to the real estate office, and she had the perfect face and personality for it.

  “Yes or no question,” she said. “Are you seriously dating Mason Martin? The cowboy billionaire?”

  “That’s two questions,” Ivy said with a smile.

  “They’re the same question,” Bri said, following Ivy through the door and into the inner offices. Ivy put her purse on her desk, the first one there. She basically handled reimbursements for roadside assistance and other issues, and the job wasn’t busy but it had started to pay some of her bills.

  “Yes,” Ivy said.

  “He was the guy who bought Long Bar Island.”

  “Yes,” Ivy said as if she hadn’t anticipated this conversation. But Mason had made Internet headlines with his ad, and Ivy was surprised nothing had come out about his return to Getaway Bay earlier than anticipated.

  “Did you go out there with him?” Bri sat in the chair opposite of Ivy’s desk, her dark eyes shining like stars. “Just warning you, if you s
ay yes, I’m going to lose my mind.”

  “Oh, I can’t have that happen,” Ivy said, sitting down in front of her computer.

  “That’s a freaking yes!” Bri sucked in a breath and let out a squeal, apparently the noise she made when losing her mind.

  “Did you know me and at least ten of my friends sent him a message and he never answered?”

  “Wow.” Ivy cemented her smile in place. She couldn’t help the feeling of inadequacy that moved through her. If Mason had met or seen a picture of Bri, she felt certain that he’d have chosen her over Ivy.

  But there was no way to know for sure. Mason hadn’t gotten any of those messages. But that voice of doubt in the back of Ivy’s mind whispered, Did he pick you because you were the only one who responded?

  “Girl, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this,” Bri said.

  “It’s…nothing,” Ivy said. “We experienced some turbulence out on the island, and we’re obviously back before the three months ended.”

  “Obviously,” Bri said, leaning her elbows on Ivy’s desk, settling in for the story Ivy didn’t want to tell. “So tell me what happened.”

  Ivy looked past her computer to her friend sitting across from her. “You know what? I fell in love with him. That’s what happened.”

  And it was absolutely true—and she wanted to tell Mason right now.

  She picked up her purse and put her hand inside as if looking for her phone. Her fingers touched it and she pushed the volume button on the side to make it chime.

  “Oh,” she said as if surprised she’d gotten the text. She pulled the phone from her purse and added, “I need to make a call.”

  Bri followed her out into the lobby saying, “I see how it is.”

  Ivy tapped Mason’s name and then the phone icon, moving the device to her ear as she continued outside. Bri would have dozens more questions, but Ivy didn’t want to deal with them right then.

  “Hey, beautiful,” Mason said, filling Ivy with the bravery she needed.

  “Mase,” she said, her voice suddenly dying. “I….” She glanced around the parking lot in front of her. “I realized something just now, and I wanted to tell you.”