Cowboy in Colorado (Fifty States of Love)

by Jasinda Wilder

  “Gotta give ’em a good drink and a rest, and then we can head on out again. Walk and trot from here on out, though.” He gestures in the direction we’ve been going. “Another hour or so, I figure, and you’ll be back at the Big House.”

  “And then you have to get back to Alpha Camp, and the herd you guys are working on?” I say.

  He nods. “Yep. The herd is pretty much culled, but we’re gonna go through them again, and then run them down to Charlie, where Tanner and his boys will start breaking them.”

  “So you had to ride across the ranch to get me, and now back across it to deliver me back to the Big House, and then back across it again to get back to work?”

  Clint nods. “Yep, that’s about it.”

  “All to do Will’s dirty work for his cowardly ass.” I shake my head. “And the Big House is straight this way?”

  He frowns at me. “Ain’t doing nobody’s dirty work, Miss Brooklyn. We lost a whole day on that storm, and he had to check the other herds, so he couldn’t spare the time.”

  “I can make my way back alone, Clint. You can go about your business.”

  He shakes his head slowly. “No, thank you, ma’am. I’ll see you all the way back. You could fall and hurt yourself, and have no one to help you.”

  I sigh. “You’re too good a man, Clint.”

  He spits, laughs. “Nah.” He’s quiet a while, and the only sounds are the drinking of the horses and the chuckle of the stream, and the twitter and singing of birds, and the wind. “He’s a good man, Miss Brooklyn. Never seen him this upset before, so don’t take it personal.”

  “But that’s just it, Clint. He’s not taking it personally enough. I wasn’t asking for…” I trail off. “He ran off like a scared dog, tail between his legs. He’s a good man among men, maybe, but he’s not so great from where I’m standing.”

  Clint sighs. “I’ve worked for the Auden family my whole life, and so did my dad. Grew up with Will, and I’m closer to him than the others. He’s never let a woman settle him down, though plenty have tried.”

  “I wasn’t trying, and I’m not going to. Not now, not ever. I didn’t want to. But he owed me more than to just…vanish in the middle of the night, leaving me with wet clothes, no horse, and no clue how to get home, much less breakfast or even fucking coffee.”

  Clint rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, that wasn’t his best move.” He tugs his horse back from the stream when it’s done drinking, and mounts up; I follow suit, and we move across the stream, walking our horses. “I won’t defend that decision, but I’ll just say that it’s not like him, not at all.”

  I don’t answer that, but my mind is whirling. What happened last night was scary. I’m freaked out myself by what happened, and if he hadn’t left, god knows how the situation would have devolved. We would have had sex again, for sure, and that would have confused things even more…

  I don’t dare dwell on the sex—it’s far too much to sort through here and now, and even thinking about sex with Will has me feeling unsettled and squirmy.

  When Clint trots his horse, I follow his lead, and we spend the next hour trotting for a while, and then walking a while, and eventually I start to recognize some of the landscape. A fence line comes into view, with a dirt road on the other side, the hills rising and falling with familiar rhythm—the approach to the Big House.

  Sure enough, within another ten minutes, the house and the massive barn rise from the horizon, and grow larger as we approach.

  When we’re at the crest of the last hill before the descent into the valley where the house and barn are, I rein Molly to a stop. “I’m good from here, Clint. Thank you—for everything.”

  He nods. “You’re a hell of a woman, Miss Brooklyn. Don’t know many who could get through what you’ve been through in the last twenty-four hours.” He scrapes his hat off his head and rubs his black hair till it stands on end. “Natural with a horse, too. That business with Demon was the damndest thing I ever seen. Even I’m scared of that big ol’ brute.” Another pause. “Just so you know, next time I see Will, I’m gonna tell him I think he’s a damned fool.”

  I shake my head. “The only fool in this situation is me—for ever coming here.”

  “All the same, I’m going to tell him.” He replaces his hat, lifts his chin at me, and pulls his horse around. “Best of luck to you, Miss Brooklyn.”

  “You too, Clint.” I wave at him, and then trot Molly back down the hill toward the barn.

  When I get there, Theo is standing in the open stable doors, wearing a chagrined expression.

  “Look, about Tinkerbell,” she starts.

  I slide off Molly and hand the reins to Theo. “Don’t.” I have no more kindness in me, at the moment. “That was a dirty trick, and you’re lucky I wasn’t hurt or killed. Your family would have been sued into poverty if that had happened, liability waiver or no.”

  She scuffs her foot, shrugs. “I’m sorry. I knew Tink would run, but usually she just runs a bit and then evens out. It was stupid, and I’m sorry. You just weren’t taking no for an answer, and I figured at the least it’d scare you off and you’d leave.”

  “I don’t scare off,” I say, my voice hard. I hear a noise, and see someone driving my car over from the house; I’m glad, as it means I’ll be gone sooner. “Your brother is a bastard.”

  She sighs. “He’s hardheaded, and won’t ever change. Doesn’t like change, and never will. Once his mind is made up, that’s it. You didn’t stand a chance.” She hesitates. “I honestly thought maybe you could convince him, if anyone could. God knows this ranch could use a little updating. The village is a hell of a drain on us.” She seems wistful, regretful. “I do wish it could’ve worked out.”

  My car arrives, then. “I’m not saying I’m withdrawing my offer, but I am moving on. He had his chance, and he blew it.”

  Theo frowns. “With the offer, or with you?”

  I keep my expression neutral—I don’t know what she knows, and I don’t care. “Take it how you want. My number is there, if he cares to call.” I waver, just for a moment, thinking maybe his sister may have some insight into the man, but then I shake my head to dislodge the idea. I don’t want insight. I just want to remember this, at best, as a night of memorable sex and some scary moments involving horses—which I’ll never ride again, thank you very much. “Not that I want him to, or expect him to.”

  “Brooklyn, Will is just—”

  I hold up my hand, and head for the driver’s side. “Save it. I don’t care. It would have been a beneficial arrangement for all of us, but he clearly has no interest in even hearing me out. I definitely found that out.”

  “I meant what happened between you and him—”

  “That’s personal.” I have no idea how much she knows, or how she found out, and I don’t care. I’m shutting down, out of the need to avoid a breakdown. “Goodbye, Theo.”

  “I—” She sighs. “Bye.”

  I climb into my car, and I hear Theo mutter to herself: “You really fucked it up big time, didn’t you, Will?”

  “Yes, he did,” I answer her out loud. “Big time.”

  And then, I’m gone.

  I rev my engine and spit tires, and my little German rental zips over the hills and carries me to my hotel, where I take a long, hot shower, and sleep for another twelve hours, and resolutely refuse to think about Will, or business, or sex.

  I don’t call anyone.

  I just fly back to New York, catch an Uber to my apartment, and once there, I let myself cry for exactly ten minutes.

  And then I push the entire situation out of my mind, head to the office, and call an impromptu meeting with my team in our conference room.

  I wait until everyone is settled with their iPads and notebooks and pens and coffee.

  “All-inclusive resort, somewhere tropical,” I say, to a conference table full of stunned, confused faces. “I want to hear your ideas. Let’s get started.”

  “Um, what about Colorado?” Ti
na is totally baffled.

  “That was a bust. They won’t sell.” I halt there, give nothing away in tone or expression. “We’re starting over.”

  She blinks. “I…I…”

  Jeremy to the rescue. “Costa Rica. I’ve done some preliminary legwork, as you suggested. We get a big chunk of coastline, set up stables with guided beach horse rides, infinity pools, the works. Easy profit maker, and we have no holdings in Latin America, so it’ll satisfy your dad.”

  I nod. “Good. Let’s get to work.”

  Tina’s eyes are doubtful, disbelieving. We haven’t worked together long, but she definitely suspects something.

  I ignore her, and dive into work.

  11

  A week becomes two, and the Costa Rican all-inclusive resort concept is getting some legs. We've got our options narrowed down to three plots of beachfront; one requires demolishing a pair of aging condo buildings, one contains nothing but a few mom-and-pop shops that would move for the right price, and the last one is more remote, undeveloped, in a lush jungle area—requiring more permits and more upfront work so as to not step on too many local toes or piss off ecological preservation groups. In those two weeks, I’ve been down to Costa Rice twice, for two days each time, and each visit was wonderfully boring—Moscow mules by the pool, visiting locations, talking to owners and neighbors and officials, meeting with local architects and contractors…the closest I get to horses are the ones that locals use as transportation.

  At no point do I look at those horses and think about Will. Nor do I ever consider borrowing or renting a horse. I definitely do not think how romantic a beachside horse ride could be.

  The third visit to Costa Rica is the clincher—Tina, Jeremy, and I take a tour of our third option together, the remote jungle location. There are some small, two-track roads to access the area, but the real access happens from the water. And as we make our approach in a locally captained motorboat, I know this is the place. The water is cerulean—not in any way the same shade as Will’s eyes—and the beach is a white crust between the surf and the jungle.

  “Slow down, please?” I say to the captain.

  He nods, and pulls back on the throttle. “Yes, yes. Slow go in, much better. No splash, see more beautiful thing.” He’s an old man, the captain, weathered and wise, calm and confident—he reminds me of Will’s father, actually. He points. “Monkeys, you see? Parrot.” Another gesture, this one at the water. “Many fish. Good wave for surf. You like this, very nice.”

  We’re tooling along at a crawl, the waves rocking us. There’s no sound but the waves crashing in the distance, and the faint hoot of monkeys and the squawk of parrots.

  The captain glances at me with one curious, speculative brown eye. “For sale?” he asks, pointing at the shoreline with the unlit stub of a cigar. “You buy? For big house?”

  I shake my head. “I’m buying it, yes, but for a resort.”

  He frowns. “Big hotel? Tourists, big road?” His tone is openly disapproving.

  I shake my head. “No, not a big hotel, no roads.” I sweep my hand at the shore. “It’s going to look just like this. Maybe a dozen or twenty little cabins, built by locals. Some staff and resource buildings back in the jungle, but only what is needed.”

  “No roads, how you get them here?” He guns the throttle and swings the tail end of the boat around, then cuts the power so we’re bobbing sideways, perpendicular to the shore perhaps a hundred yards off the shoreline.

  I grin at him. “How many boats do you have, captain?”

  He snorts. “No captain. Just Señor Rodriguez. One boat, only me.” He arches one thick, bushy eyebrow at me. “You want many boats?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know for sure.” I give him an open, honest look. “What I know I do want this to be is an asset to Costa Rica, and an asset to the locals. Bring work, bring tourist dollars without an overload of excess humanity, or a drain on local resources. I don’t want to damage the jungle or pollute anything. A little resort, built and staffed by locals who would be paid a more than generous wage. They’d be ferried over here from a staging area in the closest workable marina—” I glance at him. “Where you dock your boat, for example.”

  Señor Rodriguez nods, considering. “I have friends, they have boat like me. You pay us, we bring tourist. A few, two, three trips every day? Good money, not so much work.” He fingers a place where the metal side of the boat is rusting. “Maybe better we get new boat, huh?” His grin is sly.

  I laugh. “I think we could work something out, you and your friends and me.” I consider. “Maybe not brand-new boats, but better boats.”

  He nods. “Is good. Brand new no good. No parts, I can no fix.” He eyes me again, waves at the shoreline south of us. “Not so far from this, there is a farm, many—” He halts, musing. “English…maybe not so good. Caballo? Sí?” He mimes his hands like clopping horse hooves and clicks his tongue in a remarkable mimic of the sound. “Like this. Many many. Tourist like to ride these caballo on the beach. Good money.”

  God, horses. Everything comes back to horses. I’d need someone who knows horses to tell me if the horses are good, and to negotiate, and train them, and find guides and stable hands, and this is something I know nothing about.

  I know someone who does, but I’ll be damned if I’ll call him.

  Ugh.

  All my thoughts seem to find their way back to William Fucking Auden.

  He grins at me, winking. “My lady, I take her to ride like this, on the beach? Celebracion for day we make wedding to each other. Veinte años. We ride caballo on the beach…” He wiggles his eyebrow. “Now, I have little boy, mi hijo.”

  The inference is obvious, and I clear my throat. “Yes, I’ll keep that in mind, thank you. A wonderful idea.”

  He nods, pleased.

  Ride a horse on the beach with your wife, and she ends up pregnant on your twentieth anniversary. Nice.

  But, truthfully, I know providing horses would add a huge additional income stream to the whole concept. It’s just…too damn close to a sore spot in my heart.

  I tell myself to toughen up, that I’m being silly, that I’m holding on to something that clearly meant nothing, and shouldn’t mean anything to me. A night of good sex, and that’s it.

  Good sex? Try life-altering.

  I haven’t even had the courage to go to my favorite uptown club where I usually find my nightly boy-toys. I just can’t bring myself to go there mentally, because I know the second I get a guy naked, I’ll start mentally comparing him to Will, and he’ll come up short, and he won’t go down on me the way Will did, and he won’t feel the same inside me as Will did, and he just won’t cut it.

  I haven’t even masturbated since I got back from Colorado.

  What I have done is wake up sweaty and throbbing, fresh out of a dream where Will is crawling up the foot end of the bed, burrowing underneath a silk flat sheet, and kissing his way up my thighs, to my sex, where his talented tongue does delightful, sinful things to me—

  And then I wake up, and no matter how I try, I can’t fall back asleep, because getting back to sleep would mean relieving the ache in my core, and that would mean letting myself use Will as fantasy fodder, and if I did that, I’d start down a slippery slope of thinking about Will, which would lead to missing him, which would lead to admitting that I’d fallen in love with his big sexy stupid self—

  GODDAMMIT.

  I did not.

  There was no falling. Not me, not him, except me off a horse, and that’s it.

  “Señorita?”

  I blink, shake my head. “Yes?”

  “You go to shore?”

  I turn around, and see Jeremy and Tina watching me with odd expressions on their faces, and the realtor representing the property looking bored.

  “Yes, sorry. Just thinking.”

  We spend another hour touring the property, discussing the difficulty and expense of running plumbing and electrical, planning hut locations and outbuildings
…

  The decision is made, and I tell the agent a contract proposal will be on his desk in forty-eight hours. It’s already been written, as a matter of fact, but there’s no point in seeming overly eager; the property has been listed for sale for several years, so I anticipate getting a sweet deal on it.

  12

  “Brooklyn?” This is Tina, her head peeking through my door.

  “Yeah?” I don’t look up—I’m looking at some of the paperwork on the Costa Rican deal.

  “A couple of things. Your father’s secretary called and he’ll be down in ten minutes to see you. She said he would come by your office for an update…and he has twenty minutes.”

  I gulp. Dad is the last thing I need right now. “Crap.”

  “Is the PowerPoint ready to go?” I ask, gathering my papers.

  “Mostly,” she squeaks. “There are a few tweaks still to make.”

  “But the blueprints, the marketing materials, all that is in there?”

  “Yes. And the glossy foldouts are pretty much ready. They’re proof copies, but it’s something in hand.”

  “What are the sticking points?”

  She blows a breath between clenched teeth. “We’re missing signed contracts for plumbing work, and the ferry boats we’re trying to buy are harder to find than expected, given the fairly specific parameters. We have the captains on board—” she grins at her own pun, “but they all want newer boats. And, honestly, we need to know the ferries are safe, but they can’t use just anything. The approach is fairly shallow, apparently, so the boats have to have shallow drafts, but still be able to hold a decent number of people, and have enough fuel range to make the round trip at least twice before needing to refuel…that’s the biggest hitch so far.”

  “Decent, decent.” I stand up, steeling my spine. “Okay, thanks, I think I’ve got everything I need right now. You said you had a couple of things for me. What is the second thing?”

  Tina looks at me and simply says, “Some guy keeps calling the office asking for you. He’s spoken to everyone from reception to your dad’s office. We don’t know who he is, or how he got your number. I just wanted you to know. He’s been very persistent, enough that I’ve alerted security, and they are keeping a close eye on anyone who tries to get past reception on the main floor.”