Her Cowboy Billionaire Birthday Wish

by Liz Isaacson

  If she’d come out in this weather without a coat, as she had earlier, she would’ve definitely frozen on the ten-minute walk back to the cabin.

  They made it back to the glowing energy in the lodge, and Elise gave her a quick smile before slipping away to help Annie get plates and cups out. Bree felt a little lost, because she didn’t have a job at the lodge right now. None of them did, but Annie and Elise seemed to know exactly what to do.

  “Hey.” Someone touched her elbow lightly, a quick tap that was there and then gone.

  Bree turned toward Colton and looked up at him in that white cowboy hat. “Hey.” She tried to give him a smile, but it felt a little shaky. “Thanks for helping me get back to my cabin okay.”

  “Of course,” he said. He didn’t smile either, and Bree wished she felt even the glimmer of a spark with him. But she did not—and besides, she’d seen the tension and chemistry between Colton and Annie as they’d sat on the couch to eat dinner last night.

  “I feel kind of useless,” he said, turning to face the activity in the kitchen.

  “Yeah, I hear that.” Bree nodded to the other doorway that led into the other half of the kitchen, where most of the family gathered. “None of them feel like they need to help get the meal ready, though.”

  “None of them crashed the party,” Colton said.

  Bree did smile then as she shook her head. “It’s impossible to crash a Whittaker party,” she said. “They love everyone, and they have the attitude of the more the merrier. Trust me.”

  “They are extremely kind,” he mused, almost like he couldn’t believe that people could be so kind.

  “Do you have brothers?” she asked. “Sisters?”

  “Four brothers,” he said.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Colorado.”

  “Time to eat,” Annie said, poking her head out into the hall, where Colton had approached Bree. She looked between the two of them and then ducked back around the corner.

  Before Colton could move, his phone rang. Bree saw the name Wes on it, and noticed the way Colton’s eyebrows drew down into a frown.

  “Brother?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He swiped on the call and put the phone to his ear. “Give me five minutes, please.” He didn’t sound upset or frowny, and he’d said please. He listened to Wes say something, and then he nodded before hanging up.

  Colton gestured for Bree to go into the kitchen first, almost the beginning of a smile on his face. Bree stepped into the kitchen with Annie and several others, immediately migrating closer to Elise than Colton. She didn’t want Annie to think there was anything happening between her and Colton, because there wasn’t.

  In fact, Bree wasn’t going to have anything happen between her and any man for a long time. Maybe never again, she told herself as Celia started detailing the food and what they had to choose from and Colton slipped out of the kitchen again, silent and unnoticed by most.

  Maybe never again.

  Chapter Eight

  Wesley Hammond didn’t have five minutes, but he was honestly surprised Colton had picked up the phone in the first place.

  He stood at the window of his office, which wasn’t hard as it filled the entire back wall of the expansive space. He needed his executive marketing director back, and Wes’s stomach squirmed as if someone had filled it with snakes.

  He’d given Colton the benefit of the doubt for the past two months. Yes, his brother had been stood up by his bride on their wedding day. Yes, the press had been relentless and cruel, resurrecting the story after weeks and weeks. Colton should’ve expected as much, as the media had been following generations of Hammonds.

  Wes sighed, because he was tired of sneaking out side doors and meeting bodyguards at the elevator just so he could get to his car without getting mobbed by reporters—or worse, women.

  He’d been engaged twice himself, but he’d always ended things long before it came time to stand at the altar. So he didn’t truly know what his brother was going through. He just knew he needed Colton here to go over the new logo for the company, as well as put the last touches and approval on the catalog that had to be finalized by January third.

  Impatience beat against the back of his throat, but Wes clenched his phone in his hand so he wouldn’t call his brother again.

  Gray, the brother that sat between Wes and Colton, had said he was in Wyoming, at a place called Whiskey Mountain Lodge, and all Wes could think about was what his life would be like if he allowed himself to drink.

  He didn’t, because his mother would be horrified, and his father would disown him. Bad things happened when people got drunk, and the last name of Hammond was simply too high-profile for Wes to even take a sip of alcohol. He didn’t mind all that much, because he liked being the only businessman in the group with all his wits about him. He’d managed to get several lucrative deals because he’d been present while someone else was hungover.

  His phone rang, and he checked to make sure it was Colton as he raised it to his ear. “Exactly five minutes.”

  “They were just sitting down to dinner,” Colton said. “And there are a ton of people here, and if I don’t get anything to eat because of this call, I’m going to send a curse to that office of yours.”

  Wes burst out laughing, because Colton meant every word of the threat he’d just issued. Thankfully, Colton chuckled too, but Wes knew better than to stand between the man and his dinner.

  “I’ll be quick,” he said. “When will you be back?”

  “I’m not sure,” Colton answered, calm and confident, as always.

  “I have projects that need your stamp of approval.”

  “Kacey said she was going to email me everything.” Colton wore a frown in his voice. “Wes.” He blew out his breath. “I don’t know if I’m coming back.”

  “What?” Wes laughed again, but Colton didn’t join in this time. “Dear Lord, you’re serious.” He immediately sent up another prayer that the Lord would please, please, please help Colton see that he was needed here. Wanted and needed, no matter what Priscilla had done.

  “Yes,” Colton said. “I’m serious.”

  “Dad and David want me to run for governor,” Wes blurted, all the panic and anxiety he’d been holding in exploding out with the words.

  “Wow.” Colton let out his breath slowly, ending the exhale with a whistle. “Well, we knew that was going to happen.”

  “In five years,” Wes said. “I don’t want to run for governor right now.”

  “Stacey is a weak candidate,” Colton said, and Wes had already been over all of this with his father and the public relations director at HMC. “That’s why they want you to step in now.”

  “Yeah,” Wes said. “The timing is right, they said. We could sweep the primaries and basically have no competition all the way to the seat.” He sighed, wondering why he’d never aspired to anything political.

  He loved running the multi-billion-dollar company his great-grandfather had founded and grown. Then his grandfather had brought them into the twentieth century with sophistication and billions more in profit.

  His father had survived the changes in technology, invested in all the right things, and retired to leave Hammond Manufacturing Company in Wesley’s hands, poised to make them the largest producer of dozens of products in the twenty-first century.

  Wes liked that work. He liked pushing himself to meet ridiculous goals and raise the bar ever higher. But he’d never wanted to be governor.

  It had been David Pointe who’d first come up with the idea, about three years ago, and Wes had gone along with it, because the possibility of it actually happening had felt far off in the future.

  But the future was here now.

  “So just say no. Cite them some number or data fact about how the company can’t survive without you, or outline whatever project you’re right in the middle of.” Colton made such a thing sound so easy.

  Wes knew it would not be as easy as simply texting, Y
ou know what? I don’t want to run for governor. Thanks for the offer.

  He’d have to handle this delicately, though his first thought had been to jump in his truck and follow Colton right out of town.

  “I don’t know,” Wes said, and something scuffled on Colton’s end of the line. He said something to someone else, and a loud clunk almost broke Wes’s eardrum.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Colton said. “Listen, can you talk to Bree for a second?”

  “What?” Wes said. “Who’s Bree?”

  “Um, hi,” a woman said, and Wes’s annoyance sang like a bird. “Colton had to run after—he had to take care of something real quick.”

  Well, Wes wasn’t thirteen, when he’d used to like to talk to random girls on the phone. His memory flashed to a time when he, Gray, and Colton had all been home alone while their mother was out with the younger boys, and Gray had called a girl he liked. They’d all talked to her, and since Wes was the oldest—and three years older than Gray—he’d asked Marta out.

  Yeah, that hadn’t gone well at all.

  “Where are you guys?” Wes asked, thinking he could at least get some information out of this woman.

  “Whiskey Mountain Lodge,” she said. “It’s been snowing for hours and hours.”

  “Yeah, I think we’re supposed to get that storm tomorrow,” Wes said, realizing how fruitless his attempt to get Colton home really was. He gazed out the window at the gray sky in the west, kicking himself for talking about the weather. The weather.

  This was what his life had come to—talking about the weather on the phone with a stranger.

  Maybe he should run for governor.

  “Anyway,” Bree said. “We think we’ll be able to start digging out tomorrow. Where are you? Somewhere warm, I hope.”

  “Denver,” he said. “How well do you know Colton?” His suspicions fired, and he couldn’t help it. Everyone wanted something from Wesley Hammond, and perhaps this Bree woman was a reporter who’d followed Colton as he’d left town.

  “I just met him yesterday,” Bree said, trilling out a high-pitched laugh afterward. She had a good vibe in her voice, and Wes found his shoulders relaxing. “He showed up at the lodge just before the snow hit, and we served him cake and dinner and somehow got him to stay.”

  “That is amazing,” Wes said, though he would never air his brother’s dirty laundry. “Tell me about this lodge.”

  Bree started to talk about the thirteen rooms at the lodge, and how she was the activities director, and she planned “amazing hikes” into the foothills of the Grand Tetons, and horseback riding, and archery.

  “Horseback riding?” Wes asked, trying to remember the last time he’d been out to Ivory Peaks to ride a horse—or see his parents and grandmother.

  “We have seventeen horses here now,” Bree said, and she sounded a bit like a brochure. “You should come, Wesley.”

  He chuckled, thinking it had been a very long time since he’d put on a cowboy hat and spent an afternoon in the mountain sunshine. And he needed that escape. Maybe then he’d know what to do about this governor’s race.

  “Oh, Colton’s back. Here he is. It was nice talking to you, Wesley.”

  “You too,” he said, but Colton said, “Sorry,” over him, so Bree was already gone.

  “Whiskey Mountain Lodge, huh?” Wes asked.

  Colton groaned, and Wes chuckled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t come up there and crash your party.”

  “You know what?” Colton asked. “You should. It’s a great place, and it’s relaxing, and you’d like it.”

  “I’m sure I would.” Wes didn’t say the things streaming through his mind. As the CEO, he didn’t get to just jaunt off to Wyoming for an afternoon of horseback riding. As the oldest brother, he carried more responsibility than Colton.

  “Anyway,” Wes said. “I guess I just needed to find out when you’d be back.”

  “I don’t know that,” Colton said. “I can approve stuff via email. I’ll talk to Kacey and find out where the break-down happened.”

  “Just don’t leave me hanging.”

  “I won’t,” Colton said. “And Wes, seriously, you do a ton of stuff you don’t want to do. Running for governor isn’t a little thing. It’s not something you can call off if you ultimately decide you don’t want to do it.”

  And Wes knew why he’d called Colton. “You’re right,” he said. “Thanks, brother.”

  “Anytime,” Colton said. “Except for dinnertime, bro. Aren’t you ready to eat?”

  Wes laughed, though he nodded. “Yeah, I suppose it’s time for dinner.”

  “Past time, Wes. Go eat. Text me later if you need to.”

  “Have fun with Bree,” Wes said, but Colton just laughed and hung up. Wes sighed as he twisted and tossed his phone on the desk behind him. The sky settled deeper and deeper into darkness as Wes’s thoughts went round and round and round….

  And he hadn’t even told Colton about the cousins who wanted to take over the company, and how seriously Wes was considering letting them.

  Chapter Nine

  Foolishness filled Annie from head to toe, and she couldn’t get herself to leave the bedroom she was sharing with her daughters. She’d felt so much in the past hour, but the worst thing of all was how out of control she felt. How immature.

  Jealousy had flowed through her when she’d seen Colton and Bree chatting in the hall just outside the kitchen. She’d interrupted them just so she could hear what they were talking about.

  Colton had left while Celia explained the food, and Bree had scampered off after him. Annie really thought something was going on, and she’d ducked out right after the prayer to see where they’d gone.

  It’s nothing, Annie.

  She heard those words in Colton’s voice after she’d found him and Bree on the front steps. He’d been on the phone, and he’d practically shoved it at Bree and followed her downstairs as she’d fled from him.

  Literally, she’d run away from him.

  And he’d followed.

  Annie drew in a slow, deep breath through her nose, thinking of the confrontation that had happened in the living room only steps outside of her bedroom.

  “Can you wait?” he’d said, and she’d spun back to him.

  “If you like Bree, it’s fine.”

  “What? I don’t like Bree. I mean, I like Bree, but it’s….” He’d never said what it was, and Annie’s heart beat irregularly just thinking about it.

  “Listen,” he said. “If you saw something between Bree and me, it was just friendly.”

  “Okay,” Annie had said, and she knew Colton could see that what she wanted between the two of them was more than friendly.

  And that was when the foolishness had started. He’d said he needed to talk to his brother, and he’d gone back upstairs, tossing her a small smile from the landing before turning and leaving her in the basement.

  Annie had waited until her heartbeat had evened out, and then she’d gone upstairs too. Dinner had started by then, and she’d been able to blend into the crowd. Bree had come in before Colton, and he’d integrated himself into the crowd without a big scene.

  She’d escaped the moment she’d finished eating, despite Laney announcing that the four Whittaker brothers were going to have their ice cream making contest that night, and a winner would be chosen by anyone who tasted all four concoctions.

  Annie normally loved the cooking contests at the lodge, and she didn’t hide out in her room. She drank in the energy, cheered for everyone, and usually tasted everything but rarely voted.

  “Mom,” Eden said, poking her head into the bedroom. “They’re trying to set up some tables on the landing, but the closet is locked.”

  “I’ll come,” Annie said. She turned back to her purse and fished out her keys for the lodge. She followed Eden upstairs to the main level and then to the second one. The storage closet in the hall opened easily with her key, and she stepped out of the way as Vi and her husband Todd roun
ded the corner.

  “Thanks, Annie,” Todd said with a smile. “We’re going to set up a puzzle at the end of the landing.”

  “And Colton wanted a table for cribbage,” Vi said, almost smiling afterward. Annie wanted to return the smile, but something had frozen inside her with the words “Colton” and “cribbage.”

  Todd slipped by her and pulled out a table, taking it around the corner. “Just around the corner,” he said, and Colton appeared there. He froze, his eyes locked onto Annie’s, and her heart did a full spin and then stopped in her chest.

  “They said we could put a table up here,” he said, moving toward her and adjusting his cowboy hat. She followed the movement, trying not to think how the whiteness of it cast a reflection into his eyes.

  But she did think it, and she couldn’t make her mind not think he was the most handsome man she’d ever laid eyes on.

  Vi left, and Annie had no buffer between her and Colton. “You can,” she said.

  “You’ll still play with me, right?” he asked, pausing and peering into the closet.

  “If you want.” Annie knew she sounded cool, but she couldn’t help it.

  “I do,” he said, edging past her and pulling out another table. “Do you have the game?”

  “It’s in the closet downstairs,” she said. “I’ll go get it if you’ll get the table and chairs ready.” She walked away without waiting for him to answer, and Annie honestly wondered how she’d managed to get married the first time.

  Everything between her and Colton felt ten shades of awkward, and she knew it was because of her. Forty-six-years-old and acting like a complete fool. She shook her head as she went down the stairs, and she determined that this game of cribbage would clear the air between them.

  She collected the game and climbed the steps again. Colton unfolded the second chair, and he’d placed them so neither had to sit with their back to the railing.

  “Annie,” a little girl said as she came down the hall. Annie paused and grinned down at Chrissy, Andrew and Becca’s little girl.