“That was good,” I said, shaking my head. “Here’s one. What do you call birds that stick together?”
“I don’t know,” she said, giggling.
I laughed. “Vel-crows.”
“Ohh,” she groaned and giggled at the same time.
We traded more jokes and laughed through breakfast. I was already disappointed that we had to leave so soon. I could have stayed there for a week and not gotten tired of it. In fact, with as beautiful as the place was and with as much as I loved it there, I could probably stay there for an eternity. Hell, I had enough money to do it, to retire and never want for anything. Maybe I should buy the place, and we could stay there together, ignoring the rest of the world and just enjoy the sunshine and the peaceful quiet of the place. I wasn’t sure if she would go for that, but I sure felt like I was down for the idea.
I sat up in my chair and cleared my throat, shoving another piece of bacon in my mouth and chewing like crazy. My own thoughts had caught me off guard, and I didn’t know where they had come from. One of my main rules in life at that point was not to get tied down, not to find myself pinned into a situation with a woman. With Sara, though, it wouldn’t be her pinning me down and might possibly be the other way around. Which was something completely shocking to my psyche. My mind did not work that way at all, at least on a normal basis.
I had never, in my entire life, had thoughts like that, forever thoughts, about a woman. I knew one day that I would eventually settle down, maybe have some kids, but it hadn’t ever really crossed my mind like it had just done. I figured when I finally did bite the bullet, it would be with some rich socialite, the kind who were constantly trying to tie me down, the kind who already knew how to live with wealth and would be happy with simply having a fat bank account and a successful husband. The kind of woman who ended up like the innkeeper, alone and bored in her late forties or early fifties and running a bed and breakfast just to see if she could do it. That wasn’t Sara, though, not in any way, shape, or form. Sara was independent, didn’t care about money, and had goals and dreams for the future beyond finding a husband and raising some kids. I couldn’t believe how much this one woman had completely thrown me for a loop. Seriously, she had pulled the rug right out from under me, and I didn’t even see it coming.
“You okay?” She giggled. “You went to another planet.”
“Yeah.” I laughed. “Sorry. I’m back.”
“Good,” she sighed. “We should probably go get packed.”
“All right,” I groaned. “If we must.”
“We must,” she sighed, standing up and reaching down for my hand.
We went back to the room and packed up our bags in silence, both of us feeling the sting of the reality of having to go back. When we were all packed, I carried the bags down to the SUV and loaded them into the back while Sara signed out at the front desk. I leaned up against the car and watched as she walked out onto the porch, the sun hitting her perfect, pale skin. I shook my head, not believing how lucky I had gotten. She walked up, and I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her in close to me.
“Thank you for joining me for the night,” I said. “I had an amazing time. Like, beyond amazing.”
She smiled. “This place is pretty magical, isn’t it?”
“You’re pretty magical,” I replied, unable to stop myself from leaning forward and giving her a deep, passionate kiss.
She melted into my arms as we stood there in the morning sun, getting ready to head back to reality. When I pulled away, she kept her eyes closed for a moment, a smile moving over her lips. She was really something else, and I had to fight myself to let her go. I did, though, and helped her in the car before jumping into the driver’s seat. She reached down and grabbed my hand, smiling and nodding her head. I nodded back and pulled down the dusty dirt road, making our way back to Bonanza.
Chapter 20
Sara
I sat in my kitchen on Tuesday morning, staring down at my coffee. I looked up out the back window and put my chin on my hand, sighing deeply. I already missed Ryan, and he had just dropped me off the night before. He had some really crazy phone conferences in the morning, so he thought it better not to stay the night, and with Janson back in the picture, I had reluctantly agreed. Things were getting serious really fast between the two of us, and I couldn’t seem to find the willpower to slow it down at all. It was too perfect in each moment. I found myself thinking about him pretty much during every minute of the day and night.
I had gone to bed the night before thinking about him and the weekend that we’d had. I dreamed about him during the night, waking up and wishing he was there beside me. In the morning, he was the first thing that popped into my head, and the butterflies in my chest got me moving with a little extra pep in my step. Still, having him on my mind was not nearly enough to satisfy me. I needed him to be close, to feel those big, strong arms wrapped around me. I had never felt so safe than I did when I was with Ryan, especially after he’d saved me more times than I could count at that point. He was like the white knight who stuck around because I was a bit of a damsel in distress.
When I had broken up with Janson, I’d put the idea and thought of a man in my life completely out of the picture. I focused on my future, on making the practice bigger and better, and of taking care of those horses at the stables. I wanted to not think about love or relationships or men at all, especially after I’d gone through what I had gone through with Janson. It didn’t come to be a hard task, though. Before Janson, I had been asked out on a regular basis, but after him, not a single man came around looking for a date. I really hadn’t even noticed until right then when I started to think about it. In fact, Ryan was the first guy who had pursued me since Janson. Part of my ego was a little bruised by that revelation, but at the same time, it didn’t really make sense. It had to be connected.
Janson hadn’t wanted to break up, but he was too stubborn and too cocky to ever say that to me. From what it looked like with Ryan in my life, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out the sheriff had been scaring off any man who was in the least bit interested in getting to know me better. Now that I realized it, I was shocked anyone had bid on me at all during the auction, especially with Janson lurking around. Ryan had, though. He’d stood right up and saw the worry in my eyes, saw the awkwardness that ensued when the sheriff was bullying everyone out of bidding. He didn’t take Janson’s shit, and he didn’t fold to the pressure of it all. He knew what he wanted, and no one was going to talk him out of it, not even the mega-asshole Sheriff Janson.
It was crazy how I felt when I thought about Ryan. It was like I already knew him, like I had known him all my life. It was the strangest feeling, especially since he had only been around a little over a week. I felt more comfortable around him than I ever had with Janson, and I knew everything about that man. There was one thing about Ryan, though, that I could tell from the first time I met him. He had a really good heart. He cared for people, and he wanted to protect people, protect me from the dangers of the world. He wanted to help people and make the world a better place. He was a billionaire, sure, but he was a man, a human being, first and that was really what drew me to him.
On top of that, his personality was to die for. I had never met someone over the age of ten who I could sit at the breakfast table with and crack corny and terrible jokes, but that was exactly what we had done at the vineyard. He was playful with me, not taking things too seriously, and his sense of humor was perfectly matched to mine. Most billionaires, not that I knew more than one, who happened to be Ryan, but most, I would assume would be pretentious, rude, and snobbish. Not Ryan. He was more down-to-earth than most of the people in that town. He never turned his nose up at anything, and he was happy with fancy dinners or barbecue with plastic tablecloths. He never made me feel like I wasn’t enough or like what I had wasn’t enough.
I picked up my coffee and took a big gulp, shaking my head and laughing at myself. I was sitting in my kitchen all a
lone, talking to myself about how amazing Ryan was. I definitely liked him way more than I ever thought would be possible. In the beginning, I’d assumed it would be a fling of sorts with him, something fun, not too heavy, but I had long since spiraled past that level. Either way, it was what it was, and if I didn’t get back to reality, I was going to be late for work. I stood up and took my coffee cup to the sink to rinse it out. I went back upstairs and started puttering around my room, getting dressed, and putting my things together for work. As I turned toward the bed to pull the covers up, I heard my phone ring by the bed.
“Good morning, best friend,” I said, seeing Alison’s name on the screen.
“Oh. My. God,” Alison said in a panic. “I cannot believe what is going on. Did you look at the news today? Do you know what this means? Sara, holy shit, you need to say something. I am totally freaking out over here.”
“What?” I said, shaking my head.
Alison was talking so fast that I could barely understand anything she was saying. She was in a complete tizzy over something, but what that was, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me. She started all over again, going on a complete rampage, saying something about the news.
“Alison,” I shouted to calm her down. “You have got to take a deep breath and slow down. I cannot understand you.”
“Okay, okay,” she said, breathing heavily. “I’m sorry. I’m just so excited. I could barely believe my eyes.”
“What happened?”
“So, I woke up this morning and made my coffee and sat down to peruse the internet like I always do,” she said. “I looked through Instagram, and it was boring as usual, and then Facebook, but that was boring too. I completely ignored the trending stuff on the right, which probably would have led me to the discovery much sooner.”
“What discovery?” I said annoyed.
“Sara, just go check out the news, Twitter, Facebook, whatever,” she said. “You, my friend, are freaking famous.”
“You’ve really lost it,” I sighed, grabbing my laptop off the shelf and opening it up on my bed.
I signed into my Facebook and started slowly scrolling through, realizing my inbox was full of messages. I opened another tab and did the same with Twitter and with Google News. It turned out that the media was filled with stories about a billionaire bad boy’s new girl toy. I was completely mortified as I pulled up one of the pictures and blinked at it. There must have been a photographer somewhere around the vineyard because splashed across every page was a photo of Ryan kissing me in front of the bed and breakfast. It was right before we were leaving, when he took me in his arms and kissed me passionately.
“I’ll call you back,” I said in a monotone voice before hanging up the phone and dropping it in my lap.
I sat there on the bed just staring at the picture, the colors, the way he was holding me tightly around my waist. For god’s sake, even my leg was bent, and my foot was in the air like some romance novel cover. It immediately brought back a very visceral reminder of that amazing kiss. I could almost feel his lips pressed to mine. I shuddered, bringing my hands to my mouth and gasping. It had been an amazing kiss, one that almost everyone in the world had probably seen by that point. One that showed my face perfectly, and there was no mistaking that it was me. Anyone who looked at it, anyone in the town would see it was me being kissed by Ryan.
I opened the story all the way and started reading it, trying to cringe at every savory word the author of the article had used to describe me. The story itself hinted that Ryan was a lady’s man, one who found a girl at every port, one who had picked me as his next girl du jour. I was being painted as nothing more than the flavor of the week or month or, maybe worse, the flavor of the day. I slowly shut my laptop and sat there with one hand across my chest and one touching my lips. I felt shattered, broken, exposed, even from that story and that picture. I felt like everything I had thought to be true was nothing more than a love affair while he was off playing in Oregon. I felt completely and utterly shamed by the people who’d written the articles. They had no idea who I was or what Ryan and I had.
Not only did it make me look like a joke, it splattered my private life throughout the public eye. I had even had a conversation with Ryan about that, about how I could never deal with being pulled apart and judged by everyone out there. I saw the comments on social media. They were not kind, and they definitely weren’t defending me in any way. If that was the way the media immediately portrayed Ryan’s relationship with me, then maybe I was wrong about everything. They didn’t report that he had a girlfriend or that he was seeing someone. They reported that I was just one in a steady, revolving door of women. Maybe things weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Maybe what we had wasn’t what I’d thought in the first place, and I really was just another girl in the line. Maybe, just maybe, I let love blind me to the point where I didn’t know Ryan as well as I thought I did.
I shook my head and took a deep breath, figuring the best thing to do was to get to work and get my mind off things. But as I pulled into the parking lot of the practice, things went from bad to even worse. The sheriff’s car was parked out from, and Janson was waiting for me outside. I got out of the car and tried to keep myself calm, but he cornered me, a look of anger on his face.
“What the hell are you doing with your life?” he said. “I wake up and find that my ex’s face is splashed all over the tabloids like some common whore.”
“I have to go,” I said, pushing past him into the clinic.
I felt like total shit, like I had been completely humiliated. My day was terrible, and it had only just begun. I was starting to think I should have stayed in my bed.
Chapter 21
Ryan
“Over here is where all the computers are being set up,” I said, pointing to the right.
I was doing a group interview with a bunch of journalists and showing them around the facilities. It was only an hour after I had a ton of conference calls to take, so at first, I wasn’t looking forward to it at all, but it wasn’t actually going that badly. Everyone was attentive, listening to everything I said, snapping pictures of everything, and walking along quietly. Not a single one of them even so much as mentioned Natasha or any of her bullshit allegations. I figured that maybe it had finally blown over or maybe my PR rep had finally sent me a bunch of professionals to look over the facility. But, as always, there was another surprise waiting in the wings, one that I was not expecting in the least. I stopped and turned toward the group, about to take another round of questions from them. A young woman in the front raised her hand, and I nodded at her.
“This question is just a little off the topic of your company, but I know everyone wants to ask it,” she said.
“If it’s about the Russians, I’ve already said my piece,” I said.
“No,” she said with a smile. “Not about the Russians. We wanted to know about the identity of the woman you were photographed kissing in the vineyard not far from here.”
“I’m sorry? What picture?” I said, looking down as the journalist showed me on her tablet. “Uh, I would really prefer not to comment on that. Next question?”
“The woman has been identified as a local veterinarian,” another reporter shouted out, looking down at her notes. “A Sara Baxter. She’s apparently considered a pillar of the local community here in Baxter. Would you like to give a statement on your relationship with her? Are you dating?”
“Listen,” I said, shaking my head. “I think that I have revealed enough about my life over the last six months with the Russian scandal. I want to ask that you and other journalists consider respecting my private life. Now, if there aren’t more questions about the facility, I’ll show you the way out.”
I ignored the questions flying at me and nodded at the security guard standing close by. I turned right down the hall, but he stopped them from following, showing them back out the front doors. I headed down to my office and closed the door, sitting down behind the desk. I le
aned back in my chair and closed my eyes, shaking my head. Just the mention of Sara’s name brought back all the thoughts and feelings that had not been far from the front of my mind since I’d dropped her off the night before. She never really left my mind, and apparently, now she was on the mind of a whole lot of people.
I turned in my chair and pulled up my Facebook account, scrolling through the picture of us kissing. Every major outlet had run the story, and they didn’t make me or her look good in any kind of light. I slammed my fist down on the desk and leaned back again, looking up at the ceiling. I had really enjoyed my time with Sara, maybe too much, in fact. I had found myself thinking about forever with her at the vineyard, kissing her like I planned on doing it for a lifetime. All the while, the real world was lurking right around the corner, popping up to remind me I wasn’t the kind of guy who got the happily ever after, no matter how much money I had in my pocket.
Sara was too wholesome, too good of a person to end up with someone like me. She had a heart of gold, the kind of woman who would give her last dollar to someone to help them out. She wasn’t the kind of girl I was known to be with, and now everyone was going to see her in a completely different light. None of them were going to know how amazing she was and how I didn’t deserve even a second glance from a woman like her. No one was going to give her the benefit of the doubt. I had been an asshole for my entire life, no matter what my intentions had started out to be. I had done things I was not proud of, especially back in my old neighborhood. I’d had to help my mom keep the lights on, and I’d had to do anything I could to help put food on the table and keep things flowing in that house. I grew up long before I was supposed to, and I learned how to live life and how not to live life, and all because of the situations I’d found myself in through the years.
Sara had a future ahead of her, a life, a future family, a practice that she had built, and she did all of without ever treating anyone poorly. If I stuck around in her life, I would do nothing but drag her down, down, and down until everything she had worked so hard for was ruined. That was what I did, that was what the media did to unsuspecting people like her. They pushed and pulled until they had taken the last bit of a person, and when the story was done, they walked away, never looking back. No matter how hard my life had been, my mother had taught me better than that. Hell, just seeing how she wasn’t treated fairly was enough to make me know better. Sara deserved a good man, better than I could ever be. The least I could do was try to be a good person and call things off with her before she lost everything and everyone.
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