“I’ve known Abigail my whole life. I’ve always had feelings for her. When I came back to town, yes, I moved quickly. I knew that I belonged here in Crooked Creek, on this ranch, and she belonged by my side as my wife.”
Ty turned to Clayton. “While we’re on the subject, how long have you known Ludmilla?”
“A year,” Ludmilla sneered. Clayton winced; he clearly hadn’t worked on his story with Ludmilla before coming out here.
“Really?” Ty smiled like a man about to lay down his winning hand at poker. He turned from Clayton to Ludmilla with a slow smile spreading across his face.
“Because my private investigators say you only arrived in America three months ago, and I’ve got plenty of pictures of Clayton with other women over that time period, and even after you arrived in America. It appears that you two only met about a month ago.”
Clayton shot a look of dull fury at Ludmilla, and Ludmilla actually flinched, and then abruptly hurried from the room. It looked as if she were blinking back tears.
A shiver of alarm rippled through Abigail. Was Ludmilla actually afraid of her husband? She was a bitch and a gold-digger, but no woman should live in fear of an abusive spouse.
Unfortunately, she doubted that Ludmilla would take very kindly to Abigail offering a helping hand or a sympathetic ear.
Winston sighed loudly, bringing her attention back to the three men in the room with her.
“Both of you men have brought up some pretty convincing evidence that the other’s marriage could be fake. So far, Ty, you did indeed get married first, so the trust and the law would appear to favor you. But I just don’t know what to do at this point.”
“Stick around the ranch for as long as you like. You’ll see that what Abigail and I have is real. I can’t think of what more to do other than that; I’m sure as hell not going to invite you into our bedroom to watch the marital act.”
Winston’s face flushed. “I’m not asking for that, Ty. That was uncalled for.”
“So are accusations that my marriage is fake. And I’d like Clayton and the gold-digger off my property, tonight.”
“I can’t do that until the trust is finalized, Ty. Until then, you both have the right to live on this property. I’m going to stay in the guest house; my suitcases are already there. I’ll make my recommendations to the board of trustees in a couple of weeks.” Winston, face puckered and unhappy, turned and left the room.
Clayton flashed his brother a look of triumph. “I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other over the next few weeks. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go spend some time with my wife.” And he also turned and left.
Ty turned to Abigail, who backed away from him, hurt flashing in her eyes.
“Ty, I’m headed in to town to visit my mother for a few hours. I’ll be back later.”
“Abigail, come on. You’re going to believe the lies of Clayton and my bitter ex-girlfriend? Clayton would say anything to get his hands on this ranch. He doesn’t care who he hurts.”
But Abigail just shrugged and turned away, without meeting his gaze.
He grabbed her arm and turned her back to face him. “This is your insecurities messing with your head, and you’re smarter than this. Yeah, I gave you grief in high school, and I screwed around with a lot of bimbos. I was a teenaged boy. I’m a different person now, and so are you. The way you stayed perfectly calm when Ludmilla jabbed at you at dinner? You’d never have done that in high school.”
“I need to go now, Ty.”
His stomach twisted itself in a knot. He released her arm.
Just when he’d thought things were turning around for them. Why couldn’t she have more faith in herself? And in him?
As she drove away, he groaned in frustration. He wished Clayton would come back in and say just one more thing to him; he needed an excuse to punch someone. Blow off some steam. He was boiling over with frustration, with nowhere to turn.
He’d roped Abigail into this marriage of convenience to save the ranch, but he was coming to realize, the ranch wasn’t the only thing that he was fighting for.
Chapter Ten
The next afternoon…
Edna Vale was sitting at the bar, deep in conversation with Cheyenne, who was working the lunch shift at the Dry Gulch saloon when Becky, Abigail, and Carlotta walked in. Becky had just spent the morning covering the story of a stray elk who’d wandered into town and tied up traffic for two hours, Abigail had written a historical column on ranch life in the late 1800s, and Carlotta had spent the morning sewing curtains for the twins’ room.
Cheyenne gave them a cheery wave and set their usual drinks in front of them; diet coke for Becky, coffee for Abigail, and ice water for Carlotta, who had given up pretty much everything until after the twins were born; no alcohol, no caffeine, no sushi.
“I’ll let you girls enjoy your lunch,” Edna said, getting up and grabbing her purse as they sat down. “Now remember, if you don’t have anything nice to say about anybody…come sit by me.”
“We’ll remember,” Abigail promised her. How could they forget? It was the tagline on Edna’s gossip column.
The bar was packed, as usual, with ranch hands, tourists, and Crooked Creek residents who came in to town to gossip and chew the fat. Wood-bladed ceiling fans circled lazily overhead. Conversation flowed and merged into a pleasant din.
Normally, Abigail would have been happy as a pig wallowing in mud; there were few things she enjoyed more than an afternoon of gossiping with the girls. But today her nerves were frayed and she was exhausted. When she’d returned from her mother’s house the night before, she’d slept in Ty’s bedroom – she’d had no choice, with Winston and Ty’s brother there – but insisted on sleeping on the old Victorian style “fainting couch” he had on the side of the room.
Never again. Her neck was sore, she had barely slept a wink, and she was exhausted and surly and frazzled.
But what were her options? She couldn’t move another bed into their bedroom – not with Clayton and Ludmilla watching like hawks for any sign that her marriage was fake. And she couldn’t imagine sleeping in the same bed with Ty without ripping her clothes off and shamelessly begging her husband to ravage her until she screamed for mercy. She had no willpower when it came to Ty; that’s why she spent so much time trying to hide from him.
But she was not going to let him break her heart. She was only in this marriage to save the ranch and the town of Crooked Creek – and her mother’s frazzled nerves, for that matter.
She’d come dangerously close to believing that he wanted a real marriage yesterday – until Winston produced that picture. Just last month, Ty had been with the exact same kind of girl he’d gone for in high school. Skinny. Glamorous. Flashy. The kind of woman you could show off, who’d draw envious glances from all the other men in the room.
He hadn’t changed at all.
Or had he?
He’s with you, not her, a tiny voice whispered in her head. He could have asked her to marry him, and from the sound of it she’d have jumped at the chance – but he hadn’t. He’d dated all those women, and never settled down with any of them, but he’d asked Abigail to marry him.
Was he right? Was the problem here her own lack of faith in herself?
“Penny for your thoughts,” Becky said.
“I’m tired,” Abigail groaned. “I don’t have any thoughts.”
Her friends shared lascivious, envious grins. She’d convinced them, and her mother, that she and Ty had reconciled, that she’d been swept away in the throes of passion, and they’d believed her.
In fact, her friends had claimed that they knew it all along, that the attraction between Ty and Abigail was obvious, even back in high school. And her mother had just nodded knowingly and said “Of course, dear. I wondered when you two would finally realize the truth. Everyone else could see it from a mile away.”
Of course that was ridiculous.
She shook her head wearily and took a healt
hy swig of coffee. She was too tired to think about this right now.
“What were you and Edna talking about, Cheyenne?” she asked, to take her mind off Ty.
“We were trading oral sex tips,” Cheyenne grinned, which elicited a chorus of groans from her friends at the mental image she’d just created. “Hey,” Cheyenne protested, “Any woman who’s got that many boyfriends at age 70, I want to know what her secret is!”
“Change of subject. Where’s Dylan?” Carlotta asked. “I haven’t seen him around lately. He usually tags along at lunch. ”
“He’s been in kind of a funk this week,” Becky said. “Not sure why. He’s worked through lunch every day and…hey!” She swiveled to glare accusingly at Cheyenne, who had suddenly moved down the bar away from them, and taken to polishing the same spot over and over again.
“What?” Cheyenne asked, looking up with an expression of wide eyed surprise.
“Number one, never play poker.” Betsy skewered her with an outraged glare. “Number two, I seriously can not believe you did that.”
“Did what?” She was practically bug eyed, she was trying so hard to look surprised and innocent.
“Really, Cheyenne? This is us.” Carlotta raised an eyebrow at her. “Don’t even try. You deflowered Dylan, didn’t you?”
“Wow, that’s a lot of D’s in one sentence.” Cheyenne moved on to polishing another spot on the bar, without looking up at them.
“Why in the heck would you do that?” Betsy glowered at her.
Cheyenne shrugged sulkily. “Franklin was busy at work for a few days and he didn’t even have time to text me. And what difference does it make anyway?”
“The difference is, I already told you, Dylan actually is a decent human being with feelings, and his first time ended up being with a woman who used him because she was bored and pissed off at her boyfriend for ignoring her,” Betsy hissed, eyes snapping with anger.
“Are you finished?” Cheyenne bit out. There was ice dripping from every word.
“Quite finished.” Betsy stood up, threw a five dollar bill on the counter to pay for her diet soda, snapped “Keep the change,” and walked out.
“Hey! He knew I was seeing someone!” Cheyenne called out after her, but Betsy didn’t turn around.
An uncomfortable silence settled over them, and Cheyenne kept scrubbing at the bar.
Finally she sighed and looked up at Abigail and Carlotta. “All right. I guess I shouldn’t have slept with him, especially because I’m probably going to marry Franklin.”
“What?” Carlotta choked out, genuinely astonished. “Since when?”
“Since we made up after he finished the latest chapter of his dissertation. And now he texts me like ten times a day and I’m at his cabin every night. Why do you look so surprised? You were the one who was all like, oh, you two should get married, you’d have beautiful babies.”
“I was pretty much joking,” Carlotta frowned. “I didn’t think you ever wanted to get married.”
“Why not? You’re married. Abigail’s married. Becky almost got married. What’s wrong with me that I can’t get married?” Cheyenne flashed Carlotta a look of challenge.
Carlotta was a prickly-tempered Sicilian, and normally she’d have bristled at Cheyenne’s tone, but today she just took a long sip of water and sighed. “Nothing’s wrong with you. You always said you’d never get tied down with one man.”
“Maybe I’ve changed my mind. You and Lorenzo are all lovey dovey all the time. Abigail’s so sexed up she can hardly talk. Why can’t I have that?”
The look of concern on Carlotta’s face worried Abigail. Carlotta should have been angry, not worried. “Just spill it, Carlotta,” Abigail sighed.
Carlotta looked at Cheyenne, then looked away. “I just don’t think Franklin’s the right guy for you.”
“Because?” Cheyenne’s tone was more and more aggrieved, and her fist had tightened on the rag she was cleaning with.
“Because Lorenzo was getting coffee the other day and he overheard Franklin talking about you, making it pretty clear that you’re a summer fling and there’s nothing more to it than that.”
“Says Lorenzo.” Cheyenne’s chin jutted out defiantly.
Now she’d hit a nerve with Carlotta, whose brown eyes snapped with anger. “Are you calling my husband a liar?”
“If the shoe fits.”
“I’m leaving now before this gets ugly,” Carlotta said in an even tone, and got up and walked away from the bar. Cheyenne, blue eyes blazing, opened her mouth to make a retort, and Abigail picked up her napkin and snapped it at her.
“Don’t,” she said, and Cheyenne pressed her lips together in a thin, angry line.
“You owe her an apology,” Abigail added.
“You too? So nobody has my back here?” Cheyenne’s eyes glittered with angry tears.
“Not when you’re wrong. Friends call each other out when they see their best friends acting like morons.” Abigail said in a calm, even tone.
“It’s so easy for all of you. You all grew up here. You have family. You belong.”
“It’s not so easy, everybody from the mayor on down to the school janitor has problems they have to deal with, which is just how life is, and you’ve lived here long enough that you belong too. Or you wouldn’t still be here.”
Cheyenne’s mother, a beautiful, blowsy drunk, had blown in to town one spring with a cowboy on the rodeo circuit, taken up with a ranch hand, then a bartender, then half a dozen dude ranch vacationers, then left town when summer was over and tourist season ended.
She’d taken her two suitcases and her VW bug with her, but conveniently forgotten her daughter, who was 12 at the time. Cheyenne and her mother had been boarding at the Bickerson’s horse farm, and after her mother left Cheyenne stayed there and went to school in town, grooming horses and mucking stalls to earn her keep. She’d saved up to buy her own horse, dropped out of high school and started working at the Dry Gulch Saloon when she was 16, and worked her way systematically through the town’s male population with carefree abandon.
Or maybe it wasn’t so carefree.
“Cheyenne, you’ve got this chip on your shoulder from your mother leaving you, that makes you think you’re not good enough. You are good enough. But you’ve never even given a man a chance to have a relationship with you, it’s like you have to leave everyone before they get a chance to leave you. And now you’ve got one guy who adores you and you used him and cast him aside, and you’ve set your sights on another guy for all the wrong reasons.”
“Oh really? What are the wrong reasons?” Cheyenne’s face was stony, but Abigail plowed on.
“His money. His family background. Like that’ll prove something or make up for whatever it is you think you lack. Are you even in love with him?”
“How the hell would I know? Does a light bulb go off in your head, does a sign pop up that says “He’s the one?” I’ve had enough of my so-called friends attacking me for one day, thanks. I’m going to go drink my lunch.” And she threw her rag down on the counter and stalked off.
Abigail stood up, her heart heavy in her chest. Her own words rang through her ears.
You’ve got a chip on your shoulder because you think you’re not good enough…
Crud.
She needed to take the rest of the day off work, go back to the ranch, and work things out with her husband. If he still wanted to be her husband.
Shaking her head, she walked to the lady’s room, with had a big sign that said “Heifers”, washed her face, used the bathroom, and walked back out.
Cheyenne and Dylan were standing at the bar together, scanning the room, clearly looking for her. When they saw her walk out of the bathroom, they rushed over to her, concern stamped on their faces.
Panic flashed through her. Ty. Oh god, something had happened to Ty and she’d never even gotten to apologize to him for not trusting him.
Cheyenne grabbed her arm. “We’re giving you a ride to the eme
rgency room. Your mom fell off the roof of your house.”
Chapter Eleven
The sky overhead was an endless blue, with curls of white clouds suspended motionless. In the distance the mountains loomed blue and gray, capped with snow that never completely melted.
Ty was on horseback, checking fences. His father had neglected the ranch; numerous fence posts were rotting and needed to be replaced. Carlton had insisted on riding along with him; he’d even shed his suit for once, donning a new pair of designer jeans and a pair of boots which had never been worn before.
Sun beat down on the two men as they rode in silence, and the clear air filled their longs and tasted like heaven, and birds competed in song. Off in the distance, a family of deer grazed, glancing at them curiously before trotting off at a leisurely pace.
Finally Ty broke the silence.
“You would really destroy all this?” Ty asked his brother.
“No, you would,” Clayton snapped.
Ty turned to stare at him, surprised.
“You can quit being so fucking self righteous,” Clayton snapped. “The economy is in the dumpster and it’s hurting local business. After the tourists leave in August, business in this town dries up and the merchants hang on by a thread all winter long. My plans could bring hundreds of jobs and tens of thousands of tourists to the area. The hot springs on this property are a treasure. Native Americans knew they had healing properties, but the Jacksons have always hogged them for themselves instead of making them available to the people who could benefit from them.”
“The ecosystem here is too fragile to sustain tens of thousands of visitors. And you’re really trying to tell me that you think that slapping a five story hotel on top of the hot springs is the best thing for this town? And what about tearing down the ranch house, for no reason at all, other than you had bad memories growing up there?”
“You have no idea.”
“I’ve got plenty of idea. He was my father too, unfortunately.” Ty twitched at his horse’s reins, turning it away, headed back to his house.
Curvy Girls: Claimed By The Cowboy (The BBW and the Billionaire Rancher) Page 7
