by Liz Isaacson
“Thatta boy,” Cy said, and when Ames looked at him, he wore such a happy smile.
Guilt pulled every muscle tight in Ames’s body, but he’d committed to this charade and he’d have to see it through now.
“That’s right,” Ames said. “I just picked them up. We’re on our way to the farm now.”
Another scuffle, and then Sophia said, “Ames? Are you there?”
Sneak Peek! Her Cowboy Billionaire Bad Boy Chapter Two
Sophia Cooke pulled the phone away from her ear, and sure enough, she’d called Ames Hammond. And the call was still connected.
“Yes,” he said, and she hurried to put the phone back to her ear. “I’m here.”
“I guess I called you,” she said, trying to figure out why her heartbeat was sprinting through her whole body. She glanced at Bailey and Stockton, who’d been helping her set up the hot bar for that afternoon’s movie event.
There would be coffee, tea, and hot chocolate, and Sophia had bought some flavored syrups and creams to go with everything.
She ducked out of the kitchen—the hub of activity at the lodge—and moved down the much quieter hall toward Patsy’s old office.
Julianne Wallace had taken Patsy’s job, and therefore, she’d taken over the office too. She liked scented candles and lots of knickknacks, so the office wasn’t the same at all anymore.
“How’s your Christmas?”
“A lot of driving,” he said. “What are you up to?”
“The afternoon movie is starting in a few minutes,” she said. “So I was putting together the hot bar with the teenagers.”
“Ah, the hot bar,” he said, and his voice strummed something inside her that no one else ever had. They’d spent three amazing weeks together, but Sophia couldn’t let those twenty days dictate her whole life.
Ames obviously hadn’t.
He hadn’t called or texted her once since he’d left Coral Canyon in September. Of course he hasn’t, she told herself. They’d agreed that they weren’t dating, and they could text if they wanted to.
She hadn’t reached out to him either. She’d coached herself relentlessly to allow him to be the one to make the first move post-break-up, and he hadn’t.
She blinked, realizing the conversation had stalled completely. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m a little swamped.”
“I’ll let you go then,” he said. “I’ve got everyone in the car with me, and I’m driving, so.”
“Ames,” she practically shouted.
“Yeah?”
“Can I…maybe you’ll be free to…call me later?”
Heavy silence came through the line, and Sophia pressed her eyes closed as she pressed her back into the wall behind her. “Never—”
“Sure,” he said at the same time. “I’ll text you first to see if you’re still swamped.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay.”
She didn’t hang up, and neither did he. Finally, the line beeped, and Sophia pulled the device away from her ear to see Ames’s handsome face on the screen. He wasn’t smiling in the picture, because everything about Ames was so straight and proper. So laced up tight. So right at the speed limit.
In fact, she couldn’t believe he’d answered the phone while he’d been driving at all. That was completely out of character for him.
A sigh passed her lips, and she was aware of what it held. Longing and bliss. The kind of sound she used to make after he’d kissed her goodnight for the final time, settled that cowboy hat on his head, and ducked out the door of the cabin.
She’d liked Ames Hammond very much. She still did, if she were being honest with herself. A hint of humiliation hummed through her though. She wasn’t going to be yet another female to fall to the charms of the Hammond brothers, though. She’d watched all of her friends do that, each of them falling in love one by one while she got left behind.
Sophia gave herself a mental shake. She was happy here in Coral Canyon. This was the first place she’d ever truly made real friends and found that happiness, and she wasn’t going to give it up for just anyone.
“There you are,” Julianne said as she entered the office. “Celia was just asking where you went. I think she might get on the PA system to find you.” She picked up a piece of paper from the desk, a smile on her face. “The cake is ready, and I guess that means it’s movie time.”
“It does,” Sophia said, glad her voice came out normal. Julianne was a very nice woman, and she was the same age as Sophia. She lived with Melinda, the new event coordinator, in the cabin where Elise and Bree had once lived.
Sophia’s heart shrank, though she wasn’t sure why. She still got to see Bree all the time. She lived here in Coral Canyon. Elise did too, at least in the summertime.
Sure enough, the speaker system that ran through the lodge crackled to life, and Celia’s voice said, “The cake is ready, and the kids are telling me the hot bar is too. Let’s gather in the kitchen for our celebration.”
The Whittakers got together every Christmas season. Since Sophia had no family in town, and no desire to go visit her anyone in her family, she stayed at the lodge with them.
She’d enjoyed their family traditions. She loved participating in the good-natured contests they had. Yes, she had to work, because it was a big job to feed thirty people, but she didn’t mind. If she weren’t cooking, Sophia wouldn’t even know what to do with herself.
She’d always adored cooking, even when her father had warned her against the idea of becoming a chef. You’ll have to work long hours, he’d told her. You can’t have a family and be a chef.
Turned out, she didn’t have a family yet. She knew she was a great disappointment to him, but Sophia couldn’t make a man fall in love with her. If she could, she would’ve done so with Jake Cyprus, the quarterback Sophia had spent the better part of her teenage years crushing on.
She followed Julianne down the hall to the kitchen, others streaming in from downstairs and the living room. The Whittakers had expanded the kitchen and dining room so the gathering area was twice as big now. The guests loved it, and it definitely fit the whole family better than the table for twelve had.
Sophia stayed on the fringes of the family, but she didn’t mind. She was loved and accepted here; she knew that.
Celia made a big deal about presenting the triplets with the immaculate cake she’d made. A thread of jealously moved through Sophia. She’d gone to culinary school, and she certainly had a chocolate cake recipe memorized. Celia had never gone to culinary school, and she still made a better cake and better meals than Sophia.
A sense of failure moved through her though she cheered when the triplets managed to get their candles blown out. It wasn’t their birthday for another month or so, but their parents were taking them on an extended vacation, and they’d wanted to celebrate at the lodge this Christmas.
She stepped forward to help with plates and forks, trying to strike up a conversation with a couple of the children. But she’d never been all that great with kids, and they seemed to sense her awkwardness. In the end, she found herself with a delicious-looking piece of chocolate cake on a plate, alone.
She looked around at everything going on in the lodge. The dozens of conversations. The laughter. The cowboy hats. The teenagers and children.
And then there was her.
Even Julianne sat next to some of the younger children, happily helping them make bibs out of a couple of napkins she’d unfolded.
Sophia hadn’t felt this level of isolation for a long, long time, and she wished she could erase it. She wished she could go back in time and fix some of the bridges she’d burned. Or at least not light those matches.
She turned away from the dining room and headed outside. Down the sidewalk that the Whittaker brothers were religious about clearing for her, and across the back yard, Sophia marched toward her cabin.
Once up the steps and inside, her heartbeat felt like it was trying to flee from her body. She hadn’t felt like
this in a while.
“Since the day Ames found you on that trail.”
She had the sudden urge to call Patsy, but her best friend was gone to Colorado.
Still, her fingers fumbled as she tried to set down her cake and pull out her phone at the same time. She managed to do both without dumping the cake on the floor, and she sent a text to Patsy.
How was the flight? Are you nervous to go to the farm?
She knew Patsy was nervous about meeting Cy’s parents as his official fiancée. She’d met them in group settings before, but this was different, and they both knew it
You called Ames?
Sophia took a long breath, something steadying inside her. She didn’t want to say it was an accident, because what if it hadn’t been? What if somehow, the Lord had allowed that pocket dial to happen?
“It’s just because his name starts with an A,” she told herself, dismissing the feeling of divine intervention.
But it kept creeping back, and Sophia looked down at her phone again, trying to figure out how to answer Patsy.
You don’t have to tell me, came in. Forget I asked. The flight was great. Not terribly long, and Cy had all these treats.
Sophia smiled, because Patsy didn’t leave Coral Canyon very often. She’d grown up here, and been raised here, and she wanted to say here and raise her family on her generational orchard.
Sophia thought that sounded like a fairy tale. To stay in one place for longer than a year or two, to always have somewhere to belong, to have a place that brought peace to her soul.
She’d never had that, and she’d spent plenty of years bitter about it.
“I’m not bitter,” she whispered to herself and to reassure God that she wasn’t ungrateful for what He’d done for her. “Thank you for bringing me here and for letting me stay for so long.”
She’d been in Coral Canyon and at Whiskey Mountain Lodge for almost five years now, and she didn’t want to leave.
What kind of treats? she asked Patsy, because that mattered. As she started an easy, non-important conversation with her best friend, Sophia left her chocolate cake on the side table and settled on the couch.
Every once in a while, when Patsy wouldn’t answer for a few minutes, Sophia looked up from her phone, her thoughts centering on one person only.
Ames Hammond.
She’d been so resistant to a relationship with him, because he’d been very clear that he wasn’t going to relocate to Coral Canyon. She’d told him about herself, including that she hadn’t enjoyed moving often. Even now, her dad and step-mother moved all the time, always searching for the next place to be. Sophia didn’t even know where her father lived right now, as she hadn’t spoken to him in years.
Sophia had found her place, and it was right here. She looked around the living room. Yes, it was small. But it was hers, and she’d felt the first inklings of God’s love here, and she didn’t want to leave the cabin, the lodge, or Coral Canyon.
With that between them, her relationship with Ames had become about companionship. Friends. They could probably be friends, if either of them made an effort to speak to the other.
“Maybe I can still be friends with him,” she murmured to herself.
Text him then.
The thought appeared in her mind, and Sophia knew exactly who it had come from and what to do with it.
She backed out of her texting conversation with Patsy and started a new one with Ames. Hey, she started, trying to think of what else to say. I sure do miss talking to you. Today was an accident, but I liked hearing your voice. Maybe we could be friends?
She read the words over and over again, trying to decide if they were too needy. Too desperate. Too cold. Too much of anything.
In the end, she decided they were fine, and she sent them flying the five hundred miles between Coral Canyon, Wyoming and Ivory Peaks, Colorado.
She drew in a deep breath, feeling strong and sure. The ball was in his court, and Ames was very good at bouncing it back. He was surely still driving, and Sophia would just have to employ her patience until he wasn’t surrounded by his family and he could text back.
She could do that….
She could.
Oh, I can’t wait to see what happens when he calls back…
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About Liz
Liz Isaacson is a USA Today bestselling author and a Top 20 Kindle All-Star Author. She is the author of the #1 bestselling Three Rivers Ranch Romance series, the #1 bestselling Horseshoe Home Ranch Romance series, the Brush Creek Brides series, the USA Today bestselling Steeple Ridge Romance series (Buttars Brothers novels), the Grape Seed Falls Romance series, the Christmas in Coral Canyon Romance series (Whittaker Brothers and Everett Sisters novels), the Quinn Valley Ranch Romance series, the Last Chance Ranch Romance series, and the Seven Sons Ranch in Three Rivers Romance series (Walker Brothers novels), and the Christmas as Whiskey Mountain Lodge Romance series (Hammond Brothers novels).
She writes inspirational romance, usually set in Texas and Montana, or anywhere else horses and cowboys exist. She lives in Utah, where she teaches elementary school, taxis her daughter to dance several times a week, and eats a lot of Ferrero Rocher while writing.
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HER COWBOY BILLIONAIRE BEAST
Book Four in the Christmas at Whiskey Mountain Lodge Romance series
by Liz Isaacson
Copyright © 2020 by Elana Johnson, writing and doing business as Liz Isaacson
Published by AEJ Creative Works
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book can be reproduced in any form or by electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the express written permission of the author. The only exception is by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in, or encourage, the electronic piracy of c
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