The Cowgirl Ropes a Billionaire

by Cora Seton

  Bella took a deep breath as she considered Hannah’s words. Five million dollars would go a long, long way. If she didn’t have to worry about money every minute of the day, she could do so much good for the animals of Chance Creek.

  “Right? It’s a good idea, isn’t it?” Hannah prompted her.

  “Maybe,” Bella conceded. “But filming a whole television show? That must take weeks. I have to come to the clinic every day.”

  “It only takes one week,” Hannah said and held up a hand to forestall her protests. “Yes, you can take a week off. When was the last time you took any vacation at all? If you keep working like this, you’re going to have a heart attack, and then where will the animals be? Look, I’ve already moved all your appointments for the next two weeks back and I’ve put a notice in the paper that we’ll be closed until you’re done. The volunteers and I will take care of the rest of these beasts while you’re gone, and your brother’s agreed to take any emergency cases that come up.”

  Bella grimaced. She hadn’t talked to Craig in months. He probably thought she should just close down her clinic for good. Her older brother was the real veterinarian in town—at least, that’s what she’d heard more than one rancher say—the veterinarian who wasn’t deathly afraid of horses. You called Craig when your cattle had hoof rot. You called Craig when your mare was foaling for the first time. You called Craig for any and all problems concerning livestock—the bread and butter of the ranches that ringed Chance Creek. She was just the pet doctor—the one who gave Spot and Mittens their shots, rid them of their fleas, and made their last days a little easier. She knew no one took what she did seriously, but she also knew someone had to care for Chance Creek’s pets—they couldn’t all be hotshot livestock vets like her brother.

  “We’ll all help out while you’re gone,” Morgan said.

  Rob nodded and put an arm around his wife’s waist. “Don’t you worry about a thing. We’ve got your back, Bella.”

  “The show’s coordinator is coming in twenty minutes,” Hannah said. “She’ll ask you a lot of questions, go over the paperwork and you’ll have to sign a bunch of forms. Your flight to Canada leaves tonight at seven.”

  “Tonight?” Bella squeaked. This was all happening way too fast. “I haven’t even agreed I’ll do the show! And why Canada?”

  Hannah bent forward and gripped her face in her hands. “Five million dollars, Bella. Focus on the five million dollars. All you have to do is win a couple of contests. It’s in Canada because it’s located in Jasper National Park—you know they use a new exotic location for each show. Just be grateful you don’t have to fly to Australia.”

  “Although Australia would be pretty cool,” Morgan put in. “But Jasper’s great, too. I’ve been there a bunch of times.”

  Fine, she was grateful. Not. She couldn’t believe Hannah and Morgan were ganging up on her, and just because Morgan—a Canadian by birth—vacationed in Jasper, didn’t mean it would be any fun at all to film a reality television show there. In fact, it sounded downright cold. “What if I lose?”

  “Uh… you’ll have to…” Hannah held the clipboard in front of her face and mumbled something unintelligible.

  “I’ll have to what?” Bella demanded.

  Hannah’s face grew red again. “I already agreed to that part—there’s no way to change it now,” she said, lowering the clipboard slowly. “If you lose, you have to marry the billionaire for a year.”

  * * * * *

  Evan Mortimer picked up his cell phone on the first ring. “Speak to me.” He sat at an oversized mahogany desk in the plush headquarters of Mortimer Innovations and he’d been waiting for this call from his longtime personal assistant, Amanda Hollister. Amanda was the one person he could count on—he knew this because he paid her ten times her worth, footed the bill for all six of her grandchildren to attend private universities and matched her contributions every year to her rather hefty pension plan. Every expense was worth it. He had to have an ally he could trust implicitly in this cutthroat industry. He’d learned the hard way that people like Amanda were few and far between.

  “I still can’t believe you’re doing this crazy show,” she said.

  “We’ve been over all of that. What’s the dirt on this Bella woman?”

  “She’s a cowgirl,” Amanda said flatly. “Wait until you see her photograph—hat and everything.”

  A cowgirl? Evan stifled a chuckle. “What else?”

  “She’s thirty-one, lives in Chance Creek, Montana, and seems like a nice girl,” Amanda said, making the adjective sound like a dirty word. “Smart—graduated top of her class in Chance Creek Senior High. Did well in veterinary school, too. Attended Montana State University for undergrad, Colorado State University for the vet program. Came back home to Chance Creek to start her own clinic. Specializes in house pets.”

  “House pets? You said she lives in Montana—shouldn’t she be handling livestock? I bet she’d make more money.”

  “You’d bet right,” Amanda said. “Here’s where it gets interesting. Bella has an older brother, Craig. Five years older. Looks like big brother sewed up the livestock veterinary business and left Bella to take care of the cats and dogs.”

  “You’d think Montana might require more than one livestock vet.” Evan ran a hand through his thick, dark hair and gazed out the window at downtown San Jose. If he lived on the east coast, he’d be high over some city in a penthouse office, but no one built skyscrapers in earthquake country. Still, this was home—always had been. San Jose suited him. Some of the best minds in the world toiled away just minutes from his office, and he was positioned to capitalize off the fruit of their mental labor. Mortimer Innovations bought up patents from aspiring scientists and inventors and held on to them until the market suited his exact needs—only then did he resell the patents; right at the point he could make the most money off of the companies dying to get their hands on them. The millions he made each year went to funding his own innovative projects. Evan had a dream that one day instead of factories that ate up resources and produced waste and products that ended up in landfills, he would build closed systems that produced useful objects whose components could be reused again and again.

  He remembered the day he’d stumbled on the concept of a factory cleaning the water it used; returning it to the surrounding watershed in better condition than when it entered the plant. He’d been in college, his growing awareness of the damage his family’s holdings were doing to the environment piling up on him like so much trash in a dump, and the idea that it could be different—that industry could help the environment instead of hurt it—fueled him to study engineering and put his family’s money to good use.

  Nate thought he was crazy, but while there might be money in oil and natural gas, Evan was sure there was money in green technology, too, and it was the kind of innovation that could put Americans back to work. He saw himself as part of a new breed—both environmentalist and capitalist. He intended to make his money work—for himself, his family, his company, and the rest of the good ol’ U.S. of A.

  This Bella person was an idiot if she’d let her brother push her out of the most lucrative segment of her business. But most people were idiots when it came to money. He’d realized as a teenager that his grandfather and father didn’t have any special characteristics that set them above the crowd; they were just willing to think about money morning, noon and night. “What you focus on is what you get,” Grandpa always said. By the time he was fifteen he’d decided to focus on his dual loves of cash and nature. A shy child, and an awkward teenager, he was never happier than when he was either alone in the wilderness, or supervising experiments.

  “I don’t know about that. What I do know is Bella isn’t a businesswoman. I managed to get a hold of her tax returns for the last five years—she’s losing money fast.”

  “Losing money?” He wrinkled his nose. “A vet should turn a profit, even if her specialty is pets—what’s the problem?”

 
; “A tender heart,” Amanda said sarcastically. “People bring her strays, but she won’t euthanize them.”

  “Can you blame her? Putting down kittens doesn’t sound like a fun time.”

  “Maybe not, but it’s part of the job,” Amanda countered.

  Evan shrugged. She was right. “So she keeps every stray she sees, feeds them all, provides medical care….”

  “And the money going out tops the money coming in. Her bank account’s nearly empty. She’s got a couple more months and it’s good-bye clinic, good-bye trailer, see you later, cowgirl,” Amanda finished for him.

  “Trailer?” Evan rolled his eyes. He owned a five-bedroom, five bathroom luxury home in the San Jose hills, complete with a pool. Who the hell lived in a trailer?

  “Trailer—at the back of the same lot her clinic is on. We’re talking white trash here, Evan.”

  “Doesn’t matter. In fact it’s for the best.”

  “Seriously? You’re going to marry this Betty Bumpkin?”

  “I’ll do what I’ve got to do to keep control of the company, you know that.”

  Evan’s great-grandfather, Abe Mortimer, was a Bible-thumping, stiff-necked, pain in the ass by all accounts, but he started Mortimer Innovations and set up the corporation so that the family’s shares could only be held by one family member at a time—the oldest male, who was required to be married or forfeit control to the next in line. If the oldest male family member was under twenty-five, the stock would be held in trust for him until he reached his twenty-fifth birthday, at which time he had a year to find a wife. If he was older than twenty-five, but unmarried, he had six months from the moment he inherited to get hitched. Evan’s grandfather had already been married when he took the helm, as had his father. Now that his dad had passed away five months ago, Evan was running out of time to find a wife.

  Trouble was, he didn’t want one.

  After a whole lot of looking, he’d found a loophole within all the legal gobbledygook that was going to save him from that fate—the marriage requirement only lasted a year. Evidently women in Abe’s time often expired early due to complications of childbirth, and Abe had taken that into account. He wasn’t required to stay married, therefore. No—all Evan had to do was find a woman whose time he could purchase for one year, or better yet, win for free. Betty Bumpkin might not know it at the moment, but she was doomed to be Mrs. Evan Mortimer for at least twelve months, right after he beat the pants off her on this stupid reality TV show.

  “Yes, Amanda—I’m going to marry her.”

  “Thank God for prenups.”

  He’d made sure Hammer Communications, the parent company of the network that ran Can You Beat a Billionaire, knew there was no way he would expose half of Mortimer Innovations assets to some TV contestant. They’d fallen over themselves to agree—thrilled they’d managed to catch one of the West Coast’s richest bachelors.

  “Amen to that,” Evan said, leaning back in his chair.

  “Why don’t you just buy some prostitute? They’re a dime a dozen.”

  Evan rolled his eyes. They’d been over this before, too. “And let the newspapers have a field day when they figure it out? Nope—not into it.”

  The TV show gave him a bizarre, yet legitimate, excuse to get a wife no one had ever heard of before—someone his competition couldn’t possibly have tainted beforehand—and dump her a year later. The network assured him no one would care what actually happened to the couple once the show was off the air.

  “What if she refuses to divorce you?”

  “First of all, no court will make a couple stay married these days if one person wants out. Second, look at her résumé—the one time she left Montana it was for school, after which she made a beeline back home. She’ll hate it out here in California. The minute I let her go, she’ll be gone!”

  “If you say so—not many women will walk away from a lifestyle like yours.”

  “I’ll give her a nice donation to start her clinic back up again. I’ll give her some business tips, too.”

  “Like—you can’t save all the kittens in the world?” Amanda said dryly.

  “Something like that. What’s she look like, anyway?”

  “I told you about the hat, right?” Amanda laughed. “I’m sending over her photo right now.” She hung up on him and he turned to his computer and clicked the refresh button on his email. He clicked again on the image Amanda attached to her message and stared at Bella Chatham.

  Hello.

  A golden-haired beauty stared back at him. Well, maybe beauty was too strong a word. She was fresh, wholesome, wore little makeup that he could see. She stood in a yard filled with large enclosures, surrounded by dogs, cats, rabbits and other animals. She held a puppy in her arms that was obviously squirming and she was laughing—all bright eyes, thick, wavy hair, legs that went on for a mile, and a cowboy hat perched atop her head. She could be the poster child for middle-America—a healthy, happy, well-adjusted country girl.

  His total opposite.

  He’d never dated anyone like her, not that he’d dated much. When your family was worth billions a certain amount of suspicion crept into your personality. His mother, especially, thought they were surrounded by vultures ready to rip them apart at the slightest sign of weakness. She’d practically hand-picked Nate’s wife from the children of her small circle of friends. While Nate and Brenda seemed happy enough, Evan had no interest in marriage to a woman like that.

  His own attempts at dating had been disastrous. A few girls back in college who made it clear they expected a steady stream of expensive gifts, and called him cheap when they weren’t forthcoming. Several more women in his twenties who didn’t mention money at all, but talked frequently of their friends’ impending weddings, all the while shooting him furtive looks from gleaming eyes that he swore held the reflection of dollar signs.

  He never got past a few weeks of dinners, dancing and trips to museums or concerts before he broke it off. A constricting feeling would build in his chest until the idea of seeing them again made him physically ill. He was ashamed to admit he broke up with most of those women over the phone, several by texting, but that feeling of being caught—of being trussed up with no way to escape… He couldn’t bear it, and couldn’t take the risk that if he met with them in person, he’d end up running away.

  That had happened once—only once—but he’d never forget it, and he’d never put himself in that position again.

  He shook his head and dragged his thoughts back to the present. His money was a blessing. No way Evan would feel sorry for himself because it hampered normal relationships.

  Bella was nothing like the sophisticated, calculating women who’d given him so much trouble in the past. He’d have no problem keeping her at arm’s length and controlling the outcome of the show.

  She’d do fine for his wife.

  Just fine.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Here she is,” Hannah blurted when Bella came through the front door of the clinic for the second time that day. She had raced home to the trailer to shower, pluck her eyebrows, throw on a little lipgloss and smooth her wild hair back into a barrette, but she was still shaking with anger that Hannah had done this to her—set her up on a show whose outcome was fixed, for all they knew. Sure, she might win the five million dollars and solve all her problems, but she might just as well end up some city slicker’s wife. The sick pit of fear in her stomach grew a little deeper. What if she lost? What if she had to give up her clinic and shelter—and had to leave Chance Creek and everyone she knew to marry a stranger and live in California for a year?

  What would the man expect of her?

  There was no way she’d go through with this if it wasn’t for the sad smile Hannah had flashed at her as she left the clinic to go get changed. Desperate times called for desperate measures. If she won, she’d save Hannah, too—the woman who’d worked for her for years at slave wages because she loved the animals as much as Bella did.

 
She’d do it; she’d go on this crazy show and she’d give it her best shot. At least then if she lost she’d know she’d done everything she could to save her business and her home. She now wore a sundress she’d found in the back of her closet and a pair of sandals, which were slightly dressier than her cowboy boots. Behind the reception counter, Morgan gave her a thumb’s up. Bella’s heart sank when she noticed three more cowboys had popped up in the waiting room. Rob’s best friends Ethan Cruz, Jamie Lassiter and Cab Johnson sat near him on the stark, plastic seats. Hmm, maybe she was closer to that inner circle than she’d thought.

  “Hi,” she said to them.

  “Don’t mind us, we’re just providing local color,” Ethan said.

  “Doesn’t get much more colorful than a county sheriff,” Cab added, pretending to polish his badge.

  Bella turned to Hannah for an explanation.

  “Bella, this is Madelyn Framingham, the director of Can You Beat a Billionaire, and her assistant Ellis Bristol. They arrived a few minutes ago,” Hannah said, waving to a woman who was just emerging from the corridor that led back to the shelter.

  “Ten minutes ago.” Madelyn stepped forward and offered her hand, although everything about her radiated displeasure. The woman was intimidating. Tall, bony, with ebony hair pulled back into a sleek chignon, she wore scarlet lipstick, a dark power suit with a skirt that stopped just above her knees and three-inch-high stiletto heels. No one dressed like that in Chance Creek. The cowboys in the waiting room watched her as curiously as if she were a leopard in a zoo.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Bella said and shook her hand.

  “So this is your…clinic.”

  “It is. We’re very proud of our facility,” Bella said. She didn’t like Madelyn’s attitude one bit. The director was now making her way around the room checking out the furniture, shelves—even the paintings on the walls, done by the local artist Ingrid Deck.