I smile, unable to resist tempting her a bit more. “The kind you tell your grandkids about.”
“Oh my God,” she mutters, looking away like that’ll keep me from noticing how red she just got. But she also doesn’t look all that upset about the idea of us having grandkids one day, either. “Seriously?” she says, looking back at me. “You’re doing this now?”
I shrug. “Well, yeah. What do you think? Want to give starting over a shot?” I hold up my fingers in a pinch motion. “Maybe just a little one?”
Taryn stares at my hand like there’s something other than just space between my fingertips. Then she starts sputtering, her words struggling to keep up with her rapid-fire thoughts. “I think…I think I expected you to pull something like this for a while, but I guess it says something that it took you this long.”
I bite the holy hell out of my tongue to keep from grinning.
“Though I don’t know if that’s actually a good thing or a bad one,” Taryn rambles on, “because it still seems like you’re putting Mason and everyone else ahead of you and me. But you still waited…and you’re still asking. And you’ve been…clearly working on trying to be more honest with me, which I appreciate. So…” She swallows, shrugging a shoulder and giving me just a hint of a smile. “I guess. Yeah. We can go on a date.”
I let my grin break free, though it doesn’t begin to compare to what’s happening in my chest. This is like winning Valencia all over again. Nah, better. “Thank you.”
Her smile ramps all the way up, fully blushing now. “Stop, okay? And when is this big important date happening?”
“Christmas Eve?”
She tilts her head at me, seeming more curious than ever. “That’s, like, a week from now. You don’t want to do this tomorrow? Or, like, Friday?”
“Well, Christmas is your favorite holiday, right?”
“Yeah…”
“Then it’s definitely gotta be Christmas Eve.”
Taryn bites her lip, looking just as nervous as she did while dancing with me on our first date. But in a really good way. “What are you up to, cowboy?”
I consider that. “Nothing I shouldn’t have done a long time ago.”
She seems to like that answer. “Okay, well, do I need to get dressed up or anything?”
“Yeah,” I agree, “that would probably be good. You never know when pictures happen.”
Taryn laughs, looking over her shoulder like she’s embarrassed. “All right,” she says, leaning over to grab her truck keys.
Still on my best behavior, I don’t even try to steal a peek at her ass. Not a long one, anyway.
“Christmas Eve it is, then. But I doubt it’s gonna earn you any points with my mama.”
We’ll see about that.
* * *
My heart’s beating straight out of my chest the whole way up Duke Bricker’s driveway, which I take as slow as my transmission will allow. My eyes catalog it all: the patched-up fence, the depth of the ditch lining it, the type of gravel, and the tree branches overhanging, sure to be heavy soon with the ice storms we’re expecting.
It all looks so different now.
As the driveway turns, it opens up into rolling acres with a barn way back in the distance, the farmhouse dropped right in the middle of the clearing, and a grand old oak tree guarding it. I blow out a breath, giving my engine a little more gas and heading up to the house, telling myself I can do this. Plenty of people do. And I’m not even most people.
I’m a MotoPro World Champion. And I used to ride bulls for fun, damn it.
Still, it takes me more than a few minutes to get the guts to get out of my truck once I park. And I’m not even done closing the door before I have to go back for my hat.
I take the front porch steps easily, feeling pretty natural as I stroll up to the door.
So far, so good.
I knock politely, then clasp my hands in front of me and wait. The door opens a moment later, and a grin stretches across my face as I tip up my hat. “Hey, Annie.”
“Hi, Billy.” She steps back with a warm smile, opening the door for me. “It’s good to see you. Come on in.”
* * *
“So what do you think?” Annie says, standing by the kitchen table.
I blow out a breath for probably the fiftieth time in the last two hours, back in the main farmhouse after crawling every inch of the property with her and my head full with too much stuff to keep it all straight.
Eighty acres. Fenced mostly with high tensile wire. Ten acres of meadows and pasture, hot wire. Two wells. Stock pond with bass and catfish. Barn, stables, warehouse for farming equipment. Underground water and electric lines. Second farmhouse on the back forty—three bedrooms, one bathroom, tin roof, wood stove. Main house is four bedrooms, two bathrooms, two gas ovens, nine closets, ten minutes from the interstate, fifteen from the elementary school, and oh my God, I can’t breathe. I need Taryn.
I turn toward the microwave and swallow a gasp that tastes like 2.5 million goddamn dollars, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing out here.
Duke Bricker’s ranch. I must’ve lost my damned mind.
Too bad the devil on my shoulder keeps whispering how I’m making good money now, my winning bonus from Valencia and making the World Champion podium more than I’d planned to earn in a lifetime. And I’ve tried to be smart with it, and I’ve been saving. But there’s no guarantee how long that career’s gonna last me, especially when they’ve been talking about me retiring since the first time I hurt my knee, and I can’t even ride my bike right now with my ankle the way it is and…
Damn it.
Worst part is…I want it. I want it bad.
Taryn was right. It’s not just everything we talked about. It’s more. It’s fucking perfect. And with the way things have been going between me and her…I think it’s a real possibility that she could still want this, too. Maybe not tomorrow, but someday. And I don’t want to risk this place getting sold to someone else in the meantime.
She said she loved it out here, and she told me she wanted to feel safe. I know Taryn, and safe to her is feeling committed to, like she has a future she can count on. And this is the biggest way I can think of doing just that. A mortgage is gonna matter a hell of a lot more to her than any words I could ever say.
“Tell you what,” Annie says, and I turn to find her gathering up her purse from the table and slinging it up her shoulder. God, I feel like such a piece of crap for wasting her time when this is all so clearly out of my league. “And I would never do this for anyone else, but seeing as I’ve known you since we were kids, and as long as you promise not to tell”—she winks at me—“I’m gonna go show some other houses to some other clients, and I’m gonna leave the keys with you. Stay as long as you like, look around, maybe have your dad come over and look at it with you—just a suggestion. And you just…drop the keys off tomorrow when you’re done, okay?” She smiles like she isn’t being way sweeter than she needs, considering the way she dumped me at the Freshman Winter Ball.
“Thank you,” I tell her, meaning every letter of every word. “That’s real kind, Annie.”
She blushes, batting my words away. “You’re too much, Billy King. But you always have been.” She walks away with a wave over her shoulder, her wedding ring shining in the sunlight coming through the front windows. Because she ended up marrying Jack Henley about two seconds after we graduated high school, like we all reassured him she would.
The front door shuts behind her, and I lean against the kitchen counter, smoothing my hands over the linoleum countertop and trying to take it all in.
The carpet’s gross, but I’m not worried about it. The cabinets are in good shape, which I was concerned about, because replacing cabinetry is a bitch. Not too bothered about colors or paint, because it’s all old and needs to be redone anyway. But the roof on the
main house was reshingled five years ago, drywall’s in good shape, and the plumbing is almost all brand new.
Six spacious horse stalls and a good-sized shed that could hold plenty of tools, farming equipment, trucks, four-wheelers, and lots of motorcycles.
Eighty raw, natural acres.
Two houses, seven bedrooms between them.
And all for the low, low price of 2.5 million dollars.
“Fuck me,” I groan to the house, alone enough to use the worst of my words before I pull out my phone, doing what I always do when I’m about to do something stupid: I call my brother.
“Hey,” he answers on the second ring, sounding all sorts of pissed off. Goats are bleating in the background like they’re having some sort of bovid rave party. “I just cut the hell out of my thumb on the edge of the damn trash barrel because those damn stupid goats wouldn’t stop kicking it as I was trying to move it over to where Daddy wanted—how you know when you need stitches?”
I sigh up at the ceiling, wondering how smart it is to bring his big mouth into my plans. “Wash it out, get a damn Band-Aid, then come meet me out here at Duke Bricker’s ranch.”
Mason snorts. “All right. I need to bring your lariat?”
I scrub a hand over my face. “Nah. Bring, uh…” I rack my mind. Food? Music? Got plenty of fresh air… “Bring us some beer. And use the front door, not the back forty fence.”
Mason waits a beat, then pointedly clears his throat. “I’m sorry,” he drawls. “Did my sober-as-a-judge brother just ask me to bring him a six-pack? In the middle of a Wednesday? To Duke Bricker’s ranch?”
I glance around at the counters, the double oven and the kitchen chairs, and the worn old furniture still in the living room. “Yep.”
Mason’s voice drops low, appropriately serious. “I’m on my way.”
* * *
“So what do you think?”
Mason smiles sloppily from the second rocking chair next to me on the back porch, snuggled in his jacket against the cold night air and happily rocking back and forth. “I think I’m drunk.”
I snort, taking another sip of my beer. I’m buzzing off the beer and a half I’ve had; Mason’s already finished the rest of them, along with the flask he swore he stopped carrying more than a month ago, after the incident. “Yeah.”
“Yeah,” Mason says, sniffling and picking up speed. “I’m also thinking it’s no fucking wonder we always got busted with that Arabian, because with any bit of moonlight, you can see that fence clear as day from where we’re sitting. Billy…I think Duke told on us!”
I laugh, tipping my beer his direction. “You know, I think you’re right.”
“Man.” Mason shakes his head, rocking in his chair. “That isn’t right.”
I can’t believe him sometimes. “Mason. What. Do. You. Think?”
His head snaps my way, his eyes glassy and his tongue loose, which is exactly what I was hoping for. The honest truth from the person I trust second-most in the world. “Huh? Oh, right. Well…” He shrugs, looking out over the ranch. At the fields where that Arabian used to roam and the fence I know we busted at least once trying to climb over it. “Mama’s gonna cry, but Mama always cries.”
I take another sip, giving him that one. “Yeah.”
Mason nods to himself, then his nose scrunches. “Daddy’s gonna be pissed.”
For some reason, this cracks me up something awful, Mason joining in until we’re howling and crying with the force of it. I guess because it’s the story of our whole laughable lives: Mama’s gonna cry, and Daddy’s gonna be pissed.
“Oh man, all right,” I say after a minute, trying to catch my breath and get us reined in. Mason reaches over and swipes my beer, and I’m too tired to do anything but let him. I fold forward, patting my hands over my hair and groaning until I find the balls to get out the words I’d only ever say to him. And maybe Taryn. But she isn’t here. For exactly this damn reason. “For real, though. What if…what if I can’t do this?” I risk a glance up at my brother, who’s already shaking his head and rolling his eyes as he stares out at the back forty. But he doesn’t know what it’s like to think you have it all and watch your time at the top fall away while someone else does it better. “What if this doesn’t work? For people like…us?”
For me. I mean people like me.
Mason’s eyes dart my way, then he slouches farther in his rocking chair. “I don’t know, Billy. I mean…it’s risky. Sure.”
I cough out a scoff. “Ya fucking think?”
“Really fucking risky,” he agrees, chugging the rest of my beer then looking around like he doesn’t know what to do with the empty bottle. Gotta give him credit, at least he didn’t chuck it.
I hold out my hand, and he passes it to me, collapsing back and shrugging his jacket closer around his shoulders, looking like he’s close to passing out.
“Still, though,” he slurs, his arm lazily rising to point at me. “Hell of a way to make a stand, Brother.”
“Yeah, well…” I lean back in my chair, slowly rocking as Mason starts snoring.
After I double-check he isn’t faking, I look out over the land, tickled green with the rays of moonlight filtering down. The meadows, the stalls, the fences, and the stock pond. The second house in the distance, barely visible from here.
I dare to risk the barest hint of a smile. “That’s kind of the point.”
Chapter 12
Taryn Ledell—Back Then
“So, no bullshit, you’re a real effing cowboy?” Sophie’s eyes were huge, her grin even wider, and she’d been so enraptured with meeting Billy that I think her British accent had somehow gotten thicker. Lunch was all but forgotten as she sat across from us on the paddock in sunny Monterey, California—home of the incomparable Laguna Seca raceway and its famous corkscrew I couldn’t wait to tangle with.
Billy chuckled at his folded arms on the table, then squinted up at my friend from under his big black hat. “Yes, ma’am.”
Sophie gave me a look that said there was no excuse not to be doing everything to him in bed I was already doing, thank you very much. “Girl, I know,” I said with a laugh.
“Bet he’s a whiskey drinker, though. Am I right?”
I smoothed my hand across Billy’s back, hugging his side and so in love with him, I was nearly gooey with it.
“Actually,” he drawled, “I don’t drink.”
Sophie scoffed, wiggling her finger his way. “Now that I don’t believe.”
“It’s true,” I confirmed, oddly proud as I breathed in Zest soap, clean sweat, Old Spice, and never a hint of alcohol.
My friend grinned wickedly, propping her chin in her hand and eyeing me. “Sounds like there’s a story there.”
I couldn’t help but laugh a little, teasing Billy some more. “With this one? Always.”
Billy groaned and tugged at his hat. Bingo. “All right, well, I was about…fifteen? Yeah, because Mason wasn’t a freshman yet, so he must’ve been about thirteen…”
“Brother,” I mouthed to Sophie. She nodded.
“So yeah,” Billy continued. “I was about fifteen the first time I got the guts to swipe one of my father’s beers from the fridge. Snuck me and Mason out behind the chicken coop to drink it, and of course, about two seconds after I finally get the top off, we get busted.”
I winced, but Billy shook his head.
“Damnedest thing, though: our father wasn’t even the slightest bit mad. In fact, he said he was proud of us. That me stealing that beer was the first step I’d taken on the road to being a man.”
I could not imagine the man I’d met saying these things. I looked at Sophie, her twisted brow confirming it wasn’t just me that found this totally strange. “You’re shitting me.”
“Nope,” Billy said. “He took us inside, sat us down, and gave us another beer each. When we
were done, we were feeling…pretty good. And then he had a real good idea: since we were trying beer, why not try out all the alcohols and find out which ones we liked best?”
Sophie perked up. “Oh bloody hell, I think I know where this is going.”
Billy pointed at her. “So being not just men now, but cowboy men”—Billy looked at me pointedly—“the most important thing for us to try next was—”
“Whiskey,” we said at the same time.
Sophie chuckled. “Oh, go on then.”
“So he poured us shots, and we knocked ’em back, and damn that whiskey burned good. And hey, if you like the burn of whiskey, you know what else you’ll probably like?” Billy glanced at me, and I covered my mouth with my hand, about to lose it. “Tequila.”
Sophie lost it.
“Turns out gin’s kinda okay too, once you get over the taste,” Billy went on. “And vodka isn’t that bad, either.” He blinked a little, his nose starting to scrunch like he was smelling something bad. “Champagne wasn’t my thing, though. And the red wine really did not sit well.” Billy shuddered, then looked back to Sophie, smiling brightly. “And that’s why I don’t drink.”
I finally gave up and burst into laughter, giggling into his arm and faintly registering a sweet, soft kiss to my hair. I felt so awful for the kid who got tricked so badly by his dad. And after having met Billy’s father, I could absolutely see the eldest King pulling such a stunt on his unruly princes. “How in the world does Mason still drink?”
Billy scoffed. “Mason was stealing more beer the very next night and claiming hair of the dog. In eighth grade. And who do you think got blamed for him even knowing that term in the first place?”
“Aww.”
Billy nodded, then stole a quick kiss.
Sophie groaned like she was going to be sick. “You two are so cute, it’s almost psychological warfare on those of us who are single.”
I leveled a look at Sophie, even though my cousin April had said something similar when she’d met Billy. But that was just ridiculous considering she and her fiancé, Kenny, were way worse when it came to PDA. “Then go talk to Miette, and try not to call her a cunt this time.”
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