Billionaire Mountain Man

by Claire Adams

  “Morning,” she grumbled. She got up early in order to put in a full day’s work, but she’d never been a morning person.

  “Howdy, Lace.”

  She sank into her seat. “You and Emma seem to be getting along well.”

  She didn’t waste time getting around to what was on her mind if she had something to tell you. It was one of the best things about her. And, one of the worst.

  “I reckon we are.” I couldn’t have been happier with the way things had gone over the last two weeks. Emma and I had gone to breakfast every morning, always sitting with the old timers and playing the numbers game. We went out a few nights a week, too. She wouldn’t come inside on work nights, but that didn’t stop me from kissing her as deeply as I could before she drove off in the direction of her little house a few miles away.

  “I like seeing you happy like this,” Lacey said. “Even if it does mean putting up with you grinning like a moron all day every day.”

  I chuckled at that, grinning like the moron she’d just called me.

  “Has Emma brought me up much?”

  I looked over at her. The sun wasn’t due to come up for a good hour, but there was enough light to see how serious she was, her brown eyes fixed on my blue ones and lips pressed nearly flat. She’d taken her hat off and set it on the floor next to old Riley. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a tight braid to keep it out of her face.

  “She mentions how easy the two of you work together, if that’s what you mean,” I said.

  “It isn’t.” She narrowed her eyes the way she did when I got to acting thick. “Has she brought up how strange it is that I’m always around?”

  I frowned, my eyebrows trying hard to meet each other above my nose. “What?”

  “Goddamn it, Pete,” she said, exasperated. “Has she questioned why we’re so close to each other?”

  “Why would she do that?”

  Lacey’s face tightened, and she looked even more disappointed in me. “She will at some point. It’ll become an issue.”

  “I don’t see why that has to be.”

  “She’s your new girlfriend, and here I am, hanging around the ranch and just a little too close to you. I just want to make sure you’re sensitive to how much that’s going to bother Emma in the very near future.” Her face relaxed a little, but she didn’t get any less serious. “Not that I blame her. Things between us are confusing to outsiders. Shit, even people we’ve known for years.”

  I shook my head as I sat back in my seat. “Emma ain’t like that. She likes you and knows you’re like a sister to me.”

  “I hope that’s true, Pete. I really do.” She swung her head around to meet my eyes again. “But I doubt it.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. If Lacey said it would be a problem, I was inclined to believe her. I didn’t know shit about women, really. Mama died before I could really pay attention to how she took things, and the handful of girlfriends I had in high school and after hadn’t stuck around long enough to let me even begin to solve the puzzles they were to me.

  Emma was completely different from anyone I’d ever met, man or woman. She was letting me in a little at a time, but there was still so much about her I didn’t know. I wanted her in my life — but I wanted Lacey in it, too. It hadn’t occurred to me that this might not be realistic. I didn’t like the thought of losing one of them, especially considering they were no threat to each other.

  Emma’s little blue car pulled off of the main road and drove up the driveway, her lights cutting a path in the dirt ahead of her. I got up to meet her.

  “Morning,” she said, smiling as she climbed out of her car. She had on her regular outfit — jeans, cotton short-sleeved shirt, and dusty old boots — but, damn, did she make it look good.

  “Morning.” I was grinning like the happy fool Lacey’d just called me. “I came to escort you to the barn, Ms. Flowers.”

  She swung her car door shut, and we walked side by side to the barn. I wanted to take her hand, but she’d made it clear that work was work and we needed to keep things professional between us. No kissing, hugging, puppy eyes, or hand holding during work hours. But I could do what I wanted afterward. Or at least, as much as she’d let me.

  I slid open the barn door and stepped back to let her go in first. The horses stuck their heads out of their stalls, eager to get Emma’s attention. The damned things loved her more than they did me, and I’d been around some of them for years. She reached to scratch the Appaloosa behind her ears. The horse whinnied softly, pleased with the attention.

  I watched her murmuring to Dusty, unable to wipe the smile from my face that seemed permanently planted there since our barbecue and steamy night on the barn roof. Looking at her made it difficult to keep my hands off her. But she’d taken to sticking around after our working hours were done and having dinner with me. On some nights she went straight back to her little house after. On others, we took a little roll in the hay before she drove off for the evening.

  “You like Lacey, right?” I asked, blurting the words out before I thought about how they might sound.

  She looked at me, her dark eyebrows scrunched up. She’d moved on to Elroy, rubbing him gently between his black eyes. “Of course. Why do you ask?”

  I wanted to just come right out with all the things Lace had said a few minutes ago, about Emma eventually getting suspicious and jealous of her. But I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to stir up trouble where there wasn’t any. If she didn’t see Lacey as a threat to our relationship, the last thing I wanted to do was give her the idea that she should be worried about how close I was to another woman.

  It was weird even thinking this way. I didn’t see Lacey as another woman. She was my best friend. My sister. I knew she felt the same way about me. I wasn’t a man to her. Not really. I was a brother and a friend.

  I shrugged, forcing a wider smile. “No reason. Just making sure y’all were getting along.”

  “Did Lacey say we weren’t?” Now she looked concerned, the worry tightening her face. Shit.

  “No, she likes you and can’t believe we ever ran the ranch without you.” All that was true. Lacey regularly praised Emma, which was why she hadn’t wanted me to get involved with her. She was sure I was going to do something to mess shit up. In her defense, I’d messed up just about every relationship I’d ever had for plenty of different reasons. But none of those girls had been integral to the running of the ranch, so Lacey hadn’t cared one way or the other.

  “Is she worried about me dating you?” Emma asked. She’d moved on to the pinto we called Lucy, stroking her neck.

  “Well…” I let my voice trail off. In a way, she was. But not the way Emma was thinking.

  She gave me a small smile, and it took all I had not to jump over to her and press my lips onto that sexy grin. “Tell her I won’t break your heart.”

  I had to grin at that. “Break away. I can take it.”

  She giggled and shook her head.

  “What are you doing this weekend?” I asked.

  She pulled her long ponytail over her shoulder and tugged at the auburn end of it, which I was learning was her way when thinking. “Nothing, I don’t think. Why?” She grinned up at me, her green eyes glimmering with a playful light that made me want to kiss her again. Hell, just about everything made me want to kiss her.

  “The rodeo’s this weekend in Austin. We go every year. Lacey competes and usually wins something or other. It’s a good way to get our horses seen and sold.” I pressed my lips together as I watched her and stuffed my hands in my pockets to keep them to myself. “Would you like to come with me?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’d love to see our horses in action. Lacey spends so much time training them. I want to see what they can do.”

  A smile broke over my face, much wider than before. “We’re leaving early on Saturday morning and staying in a hotel overnight. We could go out after the rodeo and have a little fun.”

  “I haven’t been ou
t much since college.” She swallowed a bit of her smile, leaving her lips curled up at the ends in a secretive way. “I really didn’t go out much then, either, but Kasey works at a popular bar on Sixth Street. We can stop by there. I’d love for you to meet her. And, boy, is she itching to meet you.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” I said.

  She nodded once. “Yes, it does. Now, scoot so I can get my work done.”

  “I could stand here all day just talking your ear off and staring at you.”

  “That’s just what I’m afraid of!” she said, laughing as she pushed me back a little, trying to shoo me.

  We were supposed to be hands off during the day, but she’d started it. So, I grabbed her wrist and pulled her in for a quick smack on the lips.

  “Pete!” she whispered, green eyes wide.

  “It’s just us and the horses,” I said with a shrug.

  She gave me a stern look, but her lips were twitching at the corners and trying hard to smile. I took that as my cue to leave, holding back my giggles until I was well clear of the barn.

  Chapter Twenty

  Emma

  Saturday

  We’d brought two of the quarter horses with us — Max and Tucker — one to race and the other to sell. Lacey and I were in the corral saddling up Max after giving him a thorough grooming. I’d bathed both him and Tucker the day before, trimmed their body hair, and clipped their manes and tails. Each horse was stunningly gorgeous, strong and proud, their hair shiny in the sun from nose to tail.

  A few people had already asked after them, offering much more than Pete had hoped to make. I knew before the day was over that both horses would be sold. I hated to see them go — I’d always had a soft heart for the horses on our family farm, which, fortunately, we’d never had to part with for anything besides old age — but I was happy for Pete and Lacey. This was how the ranch stayed afloat.

  “Are you ready for this?” I asked Lacey once we had Max saddled up and ready to go.

  “I live for this shit,” she said, and we laughed, but she seemed a little nervous, too. She was dressed in a dark blue pair of jeans, a long sleeved red shirt with black accents and gleaming buttons, a shiny new pair of boots, and a black cowboy hat. Her light hair was pulled into a tight braid at the base of her neck, the way she wore it most days on the ranch.

  “I’m nervy, too,” she admitted. “I just need to keep my mind off of it until it’s my turn. Then all those nerves just go away.”

  I knew from Pete that Lacey’d been barrel racing since well before middle school. She could do just about anything on a horse: jump, rope, race, trail ride… I loved watching her work on the ranch. She loved the horses, and she knew exactly how to get each one to reach their maximum potential.

  “How’re things between you and Pete?” She wasn’t looking at me. She was going over Max’s coat with a body brush. There was no need of that — he was shiny and clean — but she needed something to keep her busy.

  I cleared my throat, not quite sure how to answer that question. Things were good, but telling Lacey about my relationship with Pete felt wrong somehow. I hadn’t quite figured out the relationship between the two of them. They said they were like kin, and I believed them. But, sometimes, the way they looked at each other wasn’t quite the way a brother would look at a sister.

  I chided myself for thinking that way. Lacey’d been nothing but nice to me in all the time I’d been on the ranch. And, she really seemed to care about Pete being happy.

  “Things are good,” I said.

  Lacey kept on brushing Max, who was loving the extra attention. Between all the primping yesterday and the extra attention today, both horses were hovering someplace close to heaven.

  “He really likes you,” she said, glancing at me for a second before going back to her work with Max. “I’ve never seen him like this.”

  My cheeks tingled, a blush creeping over them at her words. “I like him, too.”

  Lacey turned, the brush pausing over Max’s withers. He whinnied and shook his head, displeased with the sudden stop to the attention.

  “All I ask is that you don’t hurt him. He seems tough, but he ain’t. He’s lost a lot of people close to him.” Her brown eyes were fixed on me, a shadow falling over her face that made it clear how much concern she felt over this. “You’d think that would make him good at getting over being hurt, but it did just the opposite. He’s a lot more sensitive than he seems.”

  “He’s a sweet man,” I said, smiling as I tilted my head. “I won’t hurt him. I promise.”

  Lacey smiled, too. “You’re good for him, Emma. I’m glad he found you.”

  Before I could respond to that, Pete appeared outside of the corral. The moment passed and Lacey went back to grooming Max unnecessarily. Pete let himself into the fenced area full of riders readying their horses and walked over to us.

  “You ready, Lace?” he asked, grinning at her, his blue eyes lit up.

  She kept her face grim and determined. “Ready as I’m gonna be.”

  He clapped her on the back. “We’ll be rooting for you in the stands.” He turned to me, those blue eyes wide enough to weaken my knees a little. I just couldn’t get used to how striking his eyes were. “Are you ready, Emma?”

  “Good luck, Lacey,” I said; she nodded, not looking at me, her jaw clenched as she worried over Max. I could see she needed a few moments to herself. Pete held out his hand, and I took it. We left the corral and went to find seats high up in the stands where we’d have a good view of the action. No one was in the area below us, just three barrels set up in a cloverleaf pattern I’d seen duplicated more than a few times on the ranch.

  “Lacey’ll come shooting out of there,” Pete began to explain, pointing a thick finger at the far side of the arena.

  “She’s got to cross an official standing at the start of the race with a flag. When she runs by, he’ll drop it so the timer starts. She’ll loop around that barrel first.” He pointed to the one on the right. “Then that one.” He pointed to the one directly across from it on the left. “And then that last one.” He pointed at the one set further back from the others. “She and Max’ll go back the way they came. As soon as she passes the starting line, the man will wave the flag again, and the timer will stop.”

  Lacey had explained all this to me on the farm, and I’d seen her trotting around the coral with Max, turning him in tighter and tighter circles, leaning so far I thought he’d topple over on top of her. But seeing the course in person was completely different. It was the size of the arena and all the people sitting around, waiting to see the riders begin. My stomach twisted with anxiety for her.

  “At a bigger rodeo like the one Lacey’ll do in a few weeks, they use an electric eye.”

  “Do riders ever get hurt?” I asked, cutting into his description of what an electric eye was. Lacey’d already told me about all of that, too.

  Pete shrugged in my peripheral vision, but I kept my eyes pinned on the cloverleaf pattern below us, imagining Max and Lacey running through them, leaning dangerously to one side and then the other.

  “Nah, not really,” he said. “Accidents can happen, but if you came to do this, you know what you’re doing.”

  That wasn’t very comforting.

  The announcer broadcast the start of the barrel racing event over the loudspeaker. My gut twisted harder, and I squeezed my hands together to keep from squirming in my seat. Lacey was the first rider. The announcer called her and Max by name. The crowd roared, then a hush fell over it as the official walked from the side of the arena, a large flag in one hand.

  “Here we go,” Pete whispered, nearly under his breath.

  Lacey walked Max through the entrance of the arena. She went to line him up and, without warning, took off at a dead run. She raced past the man at the start line, and he dropped his flag, starting the timer.

  “Go, Lacey!” Pete hollered. “You got this!”

  My hands tightened in my lap as she grabbe
d hold of the horn of the saddle with one hand and controlled the reins with the other, looping Max tightly around the first barrel. They rode hard for the second barrel, slowing just a little to make the second of three tight turns. My heart leaped into my throat and stayed there, racing hard.

  “Come on, Lace! Finish strong!” Pete screamed, beating his feet on the stands.

  Lacey and Max turned tight around the final barrel, her legs pressing against his sides to keep herself deep in the saddle. After clearing the last barrel, she took the reins in both hands and leaned forward, kicking both legs to get Max down the straight shot back to the finish line. As soon as she crossed, the official waved the flag, but she and Max kept going, slowing a bit as they shot out of the arena the same way they’d come in, Lacey grinning and rubbing the horse’s neck as they ran out of sight.

  The crowd roared their approval.

  Pete let out a triumphant whoop when the announcer reported her score. Eighteen seconds flat.

  I grinned as all those nerves left my body and turned my face up to receive Pete’s kiss when he leaned in for one.

  “She just beat her best time!” he said, his eyes sparkling with pride for his friend.

  Looking at how excited he was, I had to remind myself that Lacey and Pete were just good friends. Not that it guaranteed that was how things would stay between them.

  How many sappy movies had I watched with Kasey over the years where best friends ended up getting together after realizing, finally, how much they loved each other? I could tell myself I was being silly all I wanted, but maybe I wasn’t. Maybe something was growing between them that they didn’t even know about. It bothered me to think that way. But there it was.

  We went down to congratulate Lacey, who was all smiles after such a great run.

  “We’re going out tonight,” Pete told her. “Care to join us?”

  She shook her head. “I’m going out with the gals.” She’d made lots of friends in the rodeo circuit after all her years of competition. “I’ll see y’all tomorrow morning at the hotel for breakfast.”