Her Cowboy Billionaire Butler

by Liz Isaacson

  She stood up, her determination written on her face. “I do trust you, Wes. But this really will change everything between us. You’ll…you’ll think badly of me even if you don’t want to. And I’ll know that you know, and every time you look at me, I’ll wonder what you’re thinking, and if you really want to be with me.”

  She raised both of her arms to the side and let them fall again, a mirthless laugh coming from her mouth. “I fight against that inadequacy already. I just—I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”

  Wes stood as she spun. “Bree, wait.”

  But she was already moving toward the door, and there was no hesitancy in her step. She even ran the last few steps, and Wes just let her go.

  He let her go, because the only thing his body could do was keep his heart beating as it broke in half, and then those pieces cracked again. Finally, when it shattered completely, Wes fell back into his chair, everything from his toes to his fingertips utterly numb.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Bree could not stop crying. She sobbed the whole way back to the cabin from Wes’s, but then she couldn’t go inside. Not while Elise was still awake. She couldn’t explain to anyone what she’d just done, because she didn’t even understand it herself.

  I’m in love with you, Bree Richards.

  The words tortured her, and she pulled out of the parking lot at the lodge and went back down the canyon as if she’d go to town. She parked at the first pullout, left the air conditioner running, and cried.

  She couldn’t tell him about Bronson. She couldn’t. He was so good, and so kind, and so perfect, and despite what he said, he would think differently of her once he knew. She couldn’t stand the thought of Wesley Hammond knowing she’d been responsible for her brother’s death, because that would ruin everything they’d been building.

  She’d just calmed enough to think semi-clearly, and she had the distinct thought that she might have just ruined everything they’d been building by not telling him.

  And that only made her trickle of tears turn into sobs again.

  She stayed in the car for a long time, finally flipping around and going home. Only one light shone from within the cabin, which meant Elise was likely already in her room, fast asleep.

  Bree looked at the place she’d called home for the past couple of years, admiring the long porch that spanned the whole front of the cabin. Laney had been so generous in letting Bree and Elise live here for free, though Bree knew it was part of her salary for working at the lodge.

  She didn’t want to go inside yet, so she got out, the chill in the mountain air sinking right into her lungs. She’d brought a light jacket with her, because she’d anticipated being with Wes until long after dark and needing it for the drive home.

  She put the jacket on and zipped it up, a fresh wave of emotion threatening to overcome her. The urge to drive back down the canyon to Wes’s house made her question every step she took toward the stables, the lights from the lodge shining the darkness too.

  She went in the side door, the scent of horses, straw, and dust meeting her nose. She loved the outdoorsy smell, and she took a deep breath of it, the soft sound of a horse snuffling bringing new comfort to her.

  “Hey, CC,” she said to Cookie Crumble, and the black-and-white horse lifted her head over the door of the stall. Bree ran her hands up the sides of the horse’s face and smiled at the beast.

  “I really messed up,” she whispered. “I just don’t know how to tell him.” She leaned her forehead against the horse’s face, about halfway down from her eyes. CC had very long eyelashes, and Lionel must’ve given her a bath recently, because she smelled like the lavender animal soap they used in the wash shed.

  “If he knows, he’ll never look at me the same,” Bree added. She couldn’t stomach the thought of anyone knowing about Bronson and the true reason he’d died.

  She often wondered what her life would be like if everyone knew. Would they hate her as much as she hated herself?

  She believed they would, so she’d always put the brakes on any conversation, any question, from anyone, about her family.

  Tears filled her eyes, and she let them fall. She didn’t like imagining what people would think of her if they knew, because it felt like a hot knife slicing through the fleshy parts of her heart.

  Several minutes later, her tears dried up again, and Bree pulled in breath after breath until it stopped hitching in the back of her throat. “Thanks, CC,” she said to the horse. “You’re such a great listener.”

  She backed away from the horse, and added, “I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon, okay? Don’t go telling anyone I was here, or about the crying.” She smiled at her own joke, though it wasn’t very funny, and left the stable.

  The next day, Bree immersed herself in her work. Sometimes she and Willie didn’t have long, in-depth conversations, so nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Willie didn’t ask any questions, and Bree waved as she left the employment office.

  Her stomach swooped to the right and then the left the whole drive back to the lodge. She didn’t keep track of Wes’s schedule, because he normally told her what he was doing when they made plans for the day.

  She pulled into the carport and sat in the car, wondering if she’d ever just be able to get out and go inside somewhere without bracing herself for who she might see. She wondered how long it would take for the news of her and Wes to spread through the lodge, and down the canyon to Colton.

  She gasped, her breath automatically hitching at the thought of Colton Hammond. She’d enjoyed his friendship, and now everything would be different.

  Bree felt like she’d lost everything, all of it floating away like ashes on the wind though she tried to grab at whatever pieces she could find.

  She eventually did go inside the cabin to eat a quick lunch and change her clothes. She had work to do in the stables, and that would keep her away from Wes. In fact, most of what Bree did around the lodge didn’t involve her going anywhere near the podium at the front of the building. She’d only gone there to find him.

  In the stables, she found that her crew had cleaned out the required stalls that morning, and Lionel, her right-hand man, had everyone polishing the tack for that afternoon’s ride.

  “Hey,” she said to him, and her voice sounded normal to her own ears.

  Lionel didn’t look at her like she’d spent more of the last twelve hours crying than she should’ve, nor like she’d only slept for a few hours. “Hey, Bree. Listen, we’re almost out of self-adhesive bandages, and Double Mint will not stop chewing his off.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Bree said. She looked around at the few guys getting the work done. In the summertime, she hired a lot of teenagers, and they’d all gone back to school. A couple still came up to the lodge in the afternoons to help with horseback riding, but their activities were less, so she didn’t need as many people.

  “What about the hay loft?” she asked. “Did you guys check that?”

  “It’s next on the list,” Lionel said. “Patsy said someone complained about the condition of the saddles yesterday after the ride, so I thought we’d inspect it all today. Make sure there are no problems.”

  “They complained?”

  “Yep.” He shook his head. “We’ve found one pair of stirrups that should’ve been thrown away, but nothing else.” He too surveyed the few men working through the equipment. “I’ll let you know if we need to replace anything.”

  “Thanks,” Bree said. She moved away from the tack room, noting that the fans above the stalls were slowly rotating. In the summer, they used the fans a lot, but now that the weather had started to cool, they wouldn’t. It was quite warm today, and Bree started to sweat.

  She didn’t know how to act or be normal when she felt so out of sorts. Had Lionel noticed anything off about her? What would he do even if he did?

  “I hear you’ve been being bad,” she said to Double Mint. The big bay horse just looked at her with those almost black eyes. “You’
ve got to leave the bandages alone.”

  Bree opened the door and looked down at his front legs. The hair there had been scraped away too, and the skin was bright pink. “Bud.” She sighed and looped a rope around his neck. “You’ve got arthritis, okay? I know you used to be this amazing lead horse, who led all the winners out onto the track. But this is your life now.”

  She reached up and stroked her hand down the side of his face. “You can’t get rid of the pain by scratching your teeth over your ankles. Come on.” She led him out of his stall and down the aisle.

  Outside, she tethered him to a post and went to get the first aid supplies. Sometimes, she’d talk to the horse and tell him what she was doing, but Double Mint had been through the bandaging process many times.

  So had Bree, and she wished she could take the pain from his joints. He’d had a good career in Lexington, and he had worked at some of the premier training stables, where the thoroughbreds came through, race winners, Triple Crown horses that had been bought for half a million dollars.

  “All right,” she said to him once she finished. “Now, I put that chili oil on there, so you’re not going to want to taste that.” The oil made it look like he was bleeding through his bandages, but he wasn’t. Hopefully, it would stop him from taking them off and give his legs a chance to heal.

  “Come on.” She took him back into the stable, where she heard a man’s voice she didn’t recognize. She stilled instantly, panic welling in her stomach.

  Wes had come looking for her.

  What was she going to say? Would he press her to talk about her family again?

  She looked around, trying to decide where to hide. She had the wild idea to simply leap onto Double Mint’s back and set him into a gallop to get as far from here as possible.

  Boots sounded against concrete, and Bree was still frozen.

  “There you are,” Beau said as he came around the corner. “Listen, the boys and I want to go horseback riding, but Lionel says we have to run everything though you to make sure we have enough horses for guests.”

  “Yes,” Bree said, the word exploding from her mouth. “Let me put Mint away, and we can look at the calendar in the office.” She gave him a smile, and when she took a step, she felt sure her leg would snap right in half.

  He wasn’t Wes, but her adrenaline was still sky-high, and Bree hated it.

  She hated herself—and now she had two reasons and no way to ever stop.

  She worked things out with Beau, and he said, “Thanks, Bree. You’re amazing,” before he turned to leave.

  “Beau,” she practically shouted after him.

  He turned back to her, his eyebrows up. “Yeah?”

  She knew this man; she’d known him for years. She’d worked at the lodge for eight long years, a couple of them while he’d lived there personally.

  Her hands wrung around each other, and he noticed. “What’s wrong?” He was the first one to notice Bree’s complete unrest, and her eyes filled with tears.

  “What if…I don’t know,” she said. “What if something goes wrong?”

  “Wrong with what?” He took a step closer to her.

  “Everything,” she whispered.

  Beau seemed to know what she was really asking, because he said, “Well, when I feel like everything is going wrong, I know I need to get down on my knees and figure it out.”

  Bree liked that answer, but she also hated it. She nodded anyway, the nervousness in her heart only serving to send zips through her bloodstream.

  “Sometimes, if that doesn’t work that well, I call my mother.” He smiled and ducked his head. “She usually knows what to do. Never steers me wrong, at least.”

  Bree pulled in a breath and held it tightly in her lungs. Call her mother.

  “Anyway,” Beau said. “Let me know if I can help with anything, Bree.” He held her gaze until she gave him a single nod, and then he left the office.

  She couldn’t call her mother. She released the breath, and that caused her to sag into the chair behind the desk.

  She’d surrounded herself with friends to help in situations like these, and what she really wanted to do was call Elise and Colton, buy a lot of ice cream, and have a night where the three of them got together to figure out what she should do.

  But she knew she wouldn’t do that either. All that was left was to put her head down on the desk, and cry. So Bree did that.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Cy Hammond inhaled the scent of concrete and grease as he finished replacing the carburetor on the motorcycle that had come in yesterday. It belonged to Curtis Hill, who’d served for sixteen years in the Air Force. He’d retired last year to California, and Cy had built him a motorcycle with the American flag painted on the gas tank and his plane’s name stitched into the seat.

  Cy loved everything about motorcycles. He didn’t normally spend a ton of time in the shop these days, but he needed a distraction that cruising the coastal highway just couldn’t provide anymore.

  Mikaela had broken up with him a couple of months ago, and Cy was just now starting to wake up in the morning without her on his mind. He’d been planning to take her home to Ivory Peaks and introduce her to his parents, Grams, and all his brothers.

  He’d loved her, plain and simple.

  He’d been lost the day she’d sat on his front steps, holding his hand, and told him that she didn’t think they would make it. He’d wanted to ask why. He’d wanted to argue with her. He’d wanted to lay out his case for why they would absolutely make it.

  He’d said nothing, because Cy wasn’t especially gifted with words and explanations. He was good with his hands, and he understood machines, which didn’t speak English.

  “Cy,” Wade called from the doorway, and Cy lifted his head from under the motorcycle.

  “Yeah?”

  “Your brother’s on the phone.”

  Cy felt his pockets for his cell, but he couldn’t find it. Maybe he’d left it on the front counter, as he’d done many times. Or in the shop office, where Wade worked to keep the orders flowing, the accounts balanced, the details just right.

  “All right,” Cy said, reaching for a roll of paper towels. He tore off a couple and wiped his hands as he walked through the shop toward the door. His cowboy boots made odd slapping sounds against the concrete, but he absolutely loved them. They made him stand out, and Cy—as the youngest brother in a family of absolute winners—needed to stand out.

  Not stick out. Stand out.

  The longer hair helped him achieve that. The leather clothes he’d managed to find. The cowboy boots and hat he wore while riding his custom-built motorcycle. Cy turned heads, and he liked it. He’d never had a hard time catching the eye of a pretty woman, though he wasn’t always interested in those looking.

  In the past eight months, he hadn’t noticed anyone but Mikaela.

  “Thanks,” he said to Wade, the burly, tattooed man who ran Cy’s shop office.

  “Yep.” Wade handed him the phone Cy had been looking for a moment ago.

  Cy looked at the screen to see which brother was calling. “Hey, Wes,” he said. He loved all of his brothers, but Wes was the biggest enigma. The mighty older brother. The powerful CEO. The man who always knew exactly what to do.

  “Hey,” said Wes, and though not everything could be conveyed over the phone, Cy definitely heard some measure of unhappiness.

  “What’s up?” Cy asked when Wes didn’t say anything else.

  “Wondering what’s going on with you,” Wes said. “I’m thinking I’ll be in California in, oh, I don’t know.” He sighed so heavily that alarms started sounding in Cy’s head. “Three weeks or so. Maybe a month.”

  “You’re coming to California?”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve never been, so….” Wes let his words hang there, and Cy knew instantly that something was very wrong.

  “I don’t really know my schedule a month in advance,” Cy said. “You tell me when you’re coming, and I’ll make sure I�
�m available.” He did love spending time with his brothers. He was instantly transported back two or three decades to when they’d play basketball in the front driveway or all stomp out to the farm to do the chores when their father was in a bad mood.

  He’d never longed for a friend, especially because Ames was only five minutes older than him.

  “Maybe I’ll be there for my birthday,” Wes said. “Could we get a cake?”

  “What’s really going on?” Cy asked, walking away from the desk toward the front wall of windows. He had a whole showroom full of motorcycles, with two salesmen who both happened to be with customers.

  He didn’t want anyone to overhear this conversation, even if it was only his side.

  “I’m just going to finish my state tour,” Wes said airily. “And I thought we could spend some time together in California. Then it occurred to me that I’m not one-hundred percent sure where your shop is.”

  Cy pushed out the front door and into the sunshine. Even September in Southern California was beautiful, and Cy drew in a breath of the warm air, knowing it wouldn’t be like this in the Mile High State. The air would be crisp and the leaves changing. Mom would be making peach jam and storing it for the winter, along with her famous Concord grape juice.

  A fierce sense of homesickness filled Cy, and he forced himself to focus on what Wes had said. “I’m in Solana Beach.”

  “That’s right,” Wes said. “I’m sure I can find you now that I know the name of the town.”

  “Great beach,” Cy said. “Great coffee shops. Great place for running.”

  “Oh, well, that’s Gray’s arena,” Wes said. “I still haven’t taken up the running.”

  “Gray will never leave Colorado,” Cy said, taking a seat on the low wall around the fountain in front of the shop.

  “He might,” Wes said. “Things change, you know?”

  “What do you know that I don’t?”

  “Nothing,” Wes said, his voice a bit higher now. “I’m just saying sometimes what we think is going to happen, doesn’t actually happen.”