The Cowboy's Promise: Love Triangle Billionaire Romance (The Wentworth Cowboy Billionaire Series)

by Elizabeth Grey

  “Of course I am.” Dad huffed as though the alternative were preposterous. This was another common tactic—blowing off my concerns with his behavior as feminine hypersensitivity and drama. “And I need you to know something. You might think I’m cruel, but everything I do, I do for our family. I do it to protect you.”

  You only do it to protect me because you think I’m weak.

  “People have been trying to run us out of business or break up our land ever since your grandfather staked his claim. It’s ugly. I don’t want you to go to war alone.”

  “Would you be having this same conversation if Zane or Daniel had wanted the ranch? Would you still want to protect them and give them allies?”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  I rubbed the line above my brows where a headache was forming. “What do you want from me?” I’d lost any filter or decorum I might have had to fatigue and frustration. “Why did you ask me here just to play games?”

  Dad glowered at me, his heart rate rising on the monitor next to his bed. “I’m not playing games.” He lifted the edge of his blanket and let it fall. “Obviously, I am not in good health, as you can see. I don’t have time for nonsense.”

  “Then, I don’t know what else to do to show you that I’m ready for the ranch.” I had followed his instructions to the letter. Leave Will Blythe. Go to a good school. Find a job that wouldn’t embarrass the family. I’d gritted my teeth and left behind the love of my life to follow the prescribed path. And what had it gotten me?

  “Marry Sam,” Dad said, stripping away all pretense. “I know he has feelings for you. I suspect that he always has. You’ll make an unbeatable team with his business acumen and your name.”

  He didn’t choose to highlight my status as one of the finance world’s most renowned attorneys. No, of course not. It was just my name that mattered, something he’d given me at birth.

  “Sam can help you protect the ranch,” Dad reasoned. “And one day, once you’ve had your own children, you’ll understand why you need a man to run this business the right way. That’s just the way things are. It’s always been like that. It took your mother a long time to learn it, too.”

  I wanted so badly to tell him about the dozens of deals Mom had made with his suppliers and partners behind his back when they’d grown sick of my father making foolish gambles. But I wouldn’t sully her memory with that. Dad would find some way to rewrite history, making her out to be some meddling shrew. “So, that’s the real reason you invited Sam? To make sure someone will babysit me and help me run this place? It’s the 21st century. Arranged marriage is dead. Women are… We’re not ornamental.”

  “I didn’t say you were ornamental!” Dad’s heart rate spiked again. “Women just need a little help. That’s all. It’s not natural for you to be taking on all of the responsibility of the ranch. What if you get emotional and make a mistake? You can’t take it back. You need a man there to reason with you when you get in a mood. I’m doing this to protect you.”

  I stopped listening halfway through his little speech. Instead, I thought about what my mother would often tell me when I was growing up. She told me that I would always need to work twice as hard to still be considered lesser than my brothers. I remembered being filled with rage at the time, a little girl who hadn’t yet learned the truth of what it means to be a woman. I protested to her that I was just as good as any boy.

  Mom had simply nodded. She told me that she knew I was, but I’d have to work to show it. Men wouldn’t see it. She said people would tell me to worry about girly things like dresses or children or makeup. That I’d have to fight for the life I wanted.

  And here I was, over thirty years into the battle, and I was still being told to find a rich husband and shut up. I looked away from Dad, unable to stomach the pity in his eyes. “Really? You only want me to marry Sam because he can protect me and help my silly little self with the ranch? It has nothing to do with the fact that he’s a millionaire? If Sam had been just as middle class as his father, would you still be hearing wedding bells?”

  The question was rhetorical. I didn’t even bother waiting for him to answer. “I don’t need to marry Sam, and I won’t. I’m perfectly capable on my own. I won’t marry someone I don’t love.”

  “Love,” Dad sneered. “You’re too selfish and naïve to know anything about love. I’ve already heard all about what you’ve been doing. Did you think I wouldn’t find out that you’re running around with that Blythe scum again? It’s time to stop this madness and act your age.”

  “Why does it matter when you always treat me like a child no matter what I do?”

  Beth hurried in a moment later, her coffee sloshing over the rim. “What’s going on in here? I could hear you two all the way down the hallway.” She pointed an accusing finger in my direction. “Your father is not supposed to be under any stress!”

  “I know that!” I roared, too angry to lower my voice. “He’s the one sitting there provoking me, telling me that I’m too much of a stupid woman to ever accomplish anything without needing a husband!”

  Beth planted her feet. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” Normally, I would have objected to being thrown out of my own argument, but she did have a point. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt my father’s recovery.

  “Fine.” I gathered my things and snatched the vase from the table. On the way out, I threw the sunflower bouquet in the trash. He didn’t deserve to be reminded of Mom. He didn’t deserve any of us.

  Chapter 16

  I stopped at the coffee cart in the lobby, still seething too much to drive safely. I didn’t want any caffeine, so I opted for some juice slushie concoction that I wished had booze in it. I plopped into one of the lobby chairs by the floor-to-ceiling windows, letting the swaths of sunlight warm my face.

  Like usual, it didn’t take long for me to start complaining to Hailey. I probably owed her some kind of therapist’s fee after all these years of listening to me. My dad is such an unbelievable asshole. He really thinks that I’m not good for anything except selling off to the highest bidder.

  She responded a few minutes later. Do you remember when he thanked me for “doing my duty” the first time I gave birth?

  I sent her a picture of me pretending to vomit. Did you expect anything else from Charles Wentworth?

  At least my brothers didn’t share that philosophy, or I would have beaten Zane away from Hailey with a stick. I was so tired of having to justify my value as though I were some commodity.

  I tilted my head to peer out the window at two figures sprinting across the parking lot. I lurched forward as I recognized Will and Jessie, nearly spilling my slushie onto the floor. I dunked it into a trash can and hurried over to the main entrance.

  They both stopped short. “Did someone call you?” Will asked.

  “About what?” Icy dread crept up my spine. Crystal and Remy hadn’t responded to my texts this morning. What if they’d never discharged her? “Is it Crystal? Oh, God, I didn’t even go to check that they sent her home.”

  Will shook his head, his chin quivering. “It’s Bella. She… They airlifted her.” He pressed the side of his fist against his lips, his jaw tight. “She tried to kill herself.”

  “What?” Of all the terrible possibilities running through my mind, I’d never considered that one. “But we just saw her. She was so happy.”

  “I have to get upstairs,” Will choked, pushing past me and ignoring the sign-in process entirely. “You can come if you want to.”

  “What about your dad?”

  Will scoffed. “He isn’t coming. My siblings are on their way, but they won’t give you any grief.”

  As we waited for the elevator, Jessie nudged my arm. “I’m glad you’re here,” she whispered. “I’ve never seen him like this. I don’t know what to say. His family is a disaster.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  I wanted to ask how serious it was and whether Bella was severely injured, but t
here wasn’t any time before the elevator opened to admit us. “Her boyfriend, Andy,” Will muttered. “I’m half ready to kill him with my bare hands.”

  “Why?” I asked. I typed a message to Jessie in the notes section of my phone and held it out to her. When Will’s upset like this, he doesn’t want a real conversation. He just wants an excuse to keep talking it out.

  She nodded, looking grateful as she passed my phone back.

  “He wouldn’t tell me anything except that she’d been airlifted, and they were admitting her. Took him over an hour to call me.” He shoved his knuckles against the elevator wall. “I’m her brother, for God’s sake.”

  Will read the sign on the wall and pointed to our right. “She’s in 503.”

  I laid a steadying hand on his shoulder. “At least this is a regular floor, Will. She’s not in the ICU.”

  He nodded. “I know. I know. I’m just… This is all my fault. I should have paid more attention. I should have been there.”

  When we tried to go into the room, the nurses shooed us away. “She can’t have visitors until she’s had a psychiatric evaluation. It should only take an hour, and then we’ll have an update.”

  We went to the waiting area at the end of the hallway, where Will’s siblings were already hunched over in chairs, sending text messages or staring at the floor. Will went to greet them as I heard Bella start screaming. “I want Will! I want Will right now!”

  The hospital had bent the rules for Dad and Crystal, but this was a different situation. There was only so much flexibility when it was clear that Bella needed professional help. Will hadn’t even asked for an exception.

  That was what set him apart from men like my father. To him, family wasn’t just a surname. It meant something far more than that. He cared about what happened to Bella enough not to puff up and throw around his reputation. I respected that.

  Will’s siblings acknowledged my arrival and then proceeded to pretend I wasn’t there. I wasn’t too offended given that they were largely ignoring each other as well. I’d gleaned that Bella wasn’t too popular with her other half-siblings, always viewed as proof of their father’s infidelity. Judging by the tension in the room, my assessment was correct.

  When the nurse appeared to inform Will that Bella could have visitors, no one else made a move. “I’ll talk to her,” he said to the others, earning a grunt from his older brother. With his constant fretting about his family, I always forgot that Will wasn’t the oldest.

  When Jessie and I looked up at him to see what he wanted us to do, he jerked his head towards Bella’s room. We followed at a distance, giving him support without crowding him. He stepped inside. “I’ve got Jessie and Sky here, too. That okay?”

  “Sure. Anyone who hates our father is a friend of mine.”

  Will held her hand. “Bella.” He bit his lip as he looked at her. “What were you thinking, Bella? Don’t you know that I love you?”

  “Of course.” She squeezed his hand. “I just snapped. I don’t want to do this anymore. Haven’t you ever just been sick of it all?”

  “It’s not worth your life,” Will insisted, sitting on the edge of her bed and wiping away her tears with his thumb.

  I didn’t want to interrupt, so I walked to the opposite side and took a seat. Jessie joined me a moment later, her eyes downcast. She’d been so confident during the search for Crystal that it was disconcerting to see her this nervous.

  I handed Bella and Will a box of cheap tissues that had been perched on the window sill. “I know what you mean about being sick of it.” Will frowned, but I wasn’t going to pretend that Bella was wrong for feeling trapped. “Hurting yourself isn’t the answer. That’s never the answer. But it’s hard to hold onto hope when you feel like no one cares about what you want or what you need to be happy. You’re not alone in that.”

  In the absence of knowing what else to say, I simply told her all of the things that I needed to hear when I was struggling. I’d had my share of dark moments when thoughts crept in that I didn’t like.

  Bella didn’t let go of Will’s hand, but she did shift slightly towards me. “Andy broke up with me today. He found out that Dad was blackmailing his family and threatening them. He was sending people to spy on us.”

  History was repeating itself. “Unfortunately, none of that is new.” The Wentworth list of restraining orders was impressive. I wondered how much money we’d wasted over the years buying dirt on Jacob Blythe or looking for weaknesses to exploit in business. “But if Andy truly wants to be with you, he’ll have to see past it. It’s not going to go away.” Because frankly, Will’s father could be relentless.

  I’d never forget the time Daniel called me in a rage, ranting about how Dad had deliberately sold some of our cattle for a razor-thin profit just to undercut the Blythes on a big contract. They were like unsupervised children.

  “I wanted better than this for you,” Will told her. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. I just can’t stand this anymore. It’s like if I don’t fit in this perfect box, Dad will keep pushing and pushing and pushing until I do. He doesn’t care if I’m happy. You’re the only one in the whole family who even loves me.”

  Will’s mouth dropped open. “That’s not true! You’ve got Jake, Hannah, and Ashley out there in the waiting room.”

  “They’re not here because they care,” Bella said, and I agreed with her. “They’re here because people will gossip if they’re not. And I notice Dad isn’t here. Or Andy.” Her chest heaved at the mention of the latter. “Oh, God, is he really gone? Forever?”

  “Listen,” Will said, distracting her before she could meltdown again, “I’ve got some experience of that sort with Dad. It’s awful. It is. But sometimes people leave us, and then something much, much better happens later.” He didn’t bother to wipe the tears streaming freely from his eyes. “You just have to trust me that there’s so much more to living than what you’ve seen.”

  Bella clenched her free hand into a fist and slammed it against the mattress over and over. “I hate it here. I hate this.” She bent her head and sobbed. “I used to hate my mother for abandoning me, but now I don’t blame her. She was the smartest of all of us. She got the hell away from Dad when she still could.”

  I glanced at Jessie in my peripheral vision and wondered if she would be the better thing that Will had mentioned. Despite his insistence that they were just friends, I could see the love she carried for him. Here she was, again, in his hour of need. It wasn’t a coincidence. She would never leave him like I did, and she would never need to, either. She’s not a Wentworth.

  “I should go. There’s a lot going on with my father.” I bent and wrapped Bella in the tightest hug I could muster. “Don’t let your father rob you of your life, Bella. You’re a beautiful, incredible person. And once you get out of this town, you’ll be able to breathe. I promise.”

  I held it together until I got outside to the parking lot. It was only when I was safely in the confines of the truck that I allowed myself to cry. I wondered how long it would take Bella to realize I’d lied.

  The house was in chaos when I got home. The maids were dashing all over the place with miscellaneous cleaning products and armfuls of linens. Leah froze in apparent panic when she spotted me in the circular foyer. “Miss Wentworth! You’re—you’re home!” She called it loudly enough to reverberate through the various short wings branching off of this main area.

  Suddenly, the noise stopped. Conversations ended abruptly. I think I even heard a vacuum cleaner power down. “It’s okay. Just pretend I’m not here.”

  Leah hesitated. “I’m so sorry. It’s just that no one told us Mr. Wentworth was coming home today.”

  “Ah.” I didn’t blame them for the pandemonium. My father wanted every inch of the house to be spotless at all times. Beth, from what I could tell, did not share that level of fastidiousness. “Hi, y’all!” I shouted. “This is Sky. I’m the only one here! Feel free to run around like chic
kens with your heads cut off. I won’t tell!”

  I barricaded myself in the sitting room and audibly shut the doors. The noise resumed slowly until they were back at the previous pace. One of the maids stumbled in through the far door, squeaked at the sight of me, and disappeared again.

  It was just another unwanted reminder that I’d always be separate in Bellfield. When I’d first arrived in Boston, I marveled at being able to blend into a crowd. No one treated me any differently. When I’d thrown on a pair of sweatpants and trudged down the block to the diner around the corner from my college, I was one more exhausted student coming in for a late meal. Nothing special.

  Choosing to remain here was also committing to a life where I didn’t recognize myself. In New York, the idea of hiring a maid had never even occurred to me. It still made me uncomfortable to think of how many people cared so intensely about our opinions and preferences. Their livelihoods counted on it.

  I was stuck between two opposing worlds. Did I want to be the Skyler Wentworth, heiress, and forever distant? Or did I want to be Skyler Blythe, that nice lady in the trailer around the corner? Were those my only options?

  I must have fallen asleep on the sofa because I woke to the sound of Beth and Sam at the bar. I rubbed my eyes and combed my disheveled hair with my fingers. “Sorry, I must have been sleepier than I thought.”

  Sam held up a rocks glass, and I shook my head. “I could use a nap myself. We just got your dad settled in his room,” he said.

  “Is he going to come out here?”

  “Not right now,” Beth said, still a bit terse. “He’s resting. The drive over was hard on him. I don’t know how we’re going to manage with so much work piling up. Did Remy tell you that he’s taking a leave of absence?”

  It took me a moment to realize that she was talking to me. “Yeah. He told me the other day at the hospital. Do you know how Crystal’s doing?”