Cowboy in Colorado (Fifty States of Love)

by Jasinda Wilder

  “So, what would the first biggest mistake have been, then, if I may ask?”

  “That also has to do with you, Brooklyn, but I’m afraid that part is…something I don’t want to discuss just yet.”

  I try to keep the ghost of a smirk away from my lips. “Carry on.”

  Will shrugs. “I asked her to be more specific, but she refused to say anything else. Just being stubborn, I figured.”

  I laugh. “Well, if I know your sister at all, I’d say that’s a fairly accurate assumption.”

  He chuckles. “Yes, you’d be right. But she’s a crafty one.” He gestures at the office. “She forced my hand. Said if I wanted to know what you would have said, I’d have to beg you to tell me.”

  I bite my lower lip. “Haven’t heard much begging, William.”

  He narrows his eyes at me, and his jaw clenches hard. “Stop calling me William.”

  “Why should I?”

  He sucks in a deep breath. “The fact is, keeping the village running is a drain on Bar-A Ranch resources. Times have been hard, and we’ve lost a few major clients through no fault of our own. We can ill afford the expense of the village, now more than ever. All Theo would say was that she knew damned well how tight our books were, how close the ranch is to…not bankruptcy, necessarily, but having to downsize significantly to avoid real trouble. And that your deal could have saved us.” He pauses, chews on the inside of his cheek. “Still could, maybe, if I could locate you, and talk to you.”

  “Sounds like you fucked up, Will.”

  Will turns his gaze to the ceiling, heaves a sigh, shakes his head, and then meets my gaze. “Yes, that would be about right.”

  “There is only one thing to do when caught up in blind male idiocy, Will.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Stop digging, look around, and find a way out of the hole.”

  “Sounds easier said than done.”

  “Well, who said it would be easy?” My voice is downright poisonous.

  Will lets out another hiss. “Brooklyn, come on.” His eyes, full of conflict and hurt, meet mine. “Enough of that.”

  I laugh. “Oh, is that right? Just like that? You disrespect me and then expect a free pass?”

  Will nods, inhales deeply, and lets it out slowly—and just like that, I watch him summon the stillness within himself. He sets the pen aside and sits up straight as a board, folds his hands on his lap, and addresses me, his gaze never wavering.

  “What I’m saying is, I would very much appreciate it, Brooklyn, if you would give me another chance to hear your proposed deal.” Will’s eyes fix on mine, searching, waiting.

  “I’ve already worked out a different deal, William.” I shrug. “My resources are committed, at this point.”

  His eyes, though—they’re what get me. “Please?” His voice is low and hesitant—this is a man who never begs, and rarely asks.

  I sigh, trying to at least set aside my bitterness and anger.

  “Look—” I pause, drawing deep on my reserve of professional objectivity. “The idea is that we would have purchased the land containing Auden Town, all the buildings therein as well as the related businesses and contents. We then planned to expand upon what your family has developed and maintained—a working historical village, with a period-specific feel. Expand, not change, I emphasize. This isn’t a big corporation taking over and turning it into a little Disneyland attraction. Yes, there would be an uptick in visitors, but that’s the goal—bring more business to the village. All this would take resources you currently don’t have, and which Bellanger Industries does.”

  “If you own the village and the businesses, how would we benefit?” Will asks.

  “We would own a majority stake, but you would retain at least part ownership. We would establish it as a business, and your family, the Audens, would retain a portion of the shares. Not a controlling majority, but enough that you would see profits, while running none of the risk.”

  Will nods, and I see his mind racing, working, and thinking through the many variables. “The main issue for me, off the top, would not so much be about having people coming into town—that would be fine—but people running wild all over the ranch. That would not be fine.”

  I wave a hand. “Right now, it’s easy to get from Auden Town to the Big House and to the rest of the ranch. It’s all pretty much wide open. You could easily put a gate across the road, along with signage making it clear the ranch is private property and not open to the public.”

  Will shrugs. “Makes sense. The next issue is one of housing. People are going to come in and need somewhere to stay. There’s a room for let over the saloon, but that’s about it, and honestly it’s not the nicest.”

  “I know, I stayed there,” I say, my voice dry. “My answer to this one is twofold. First, we’d build an inn. Something in keeping with the rest of the village—not a hotel or motel, but more of a boutique sort of place. A dozen rooms max, probably fewer, like a bed-and-breakfast. That would be within the village itself. I also toyed with another idea, which I’m not so sure you’d go for, and that’s us buying a whole separate chunk of land, away from the ranch and the village a ways, where it won’t impinge upon your ranch operations or the feel and aesthetic of everything, and we’d build a little resort community, some small hotels and more B-and-B’s, some condo buildings, restaurants and stores and the like, and maybe even a decent-sized lake, stocked for pleasure fishing, and of course just outside it, a stable where folks could rent horses for the day, take guided tours of certain portions of the ranch, perhaps, trail rides, take riding lessons—all provided and sourced through Bar-A Ranch, of course.”

  Will blinks at me. “You’re talking building a whole different town.”

  I nod. “That’s the big idea. It wouldn’t all pop up overnight, and it would be basically phase two of this whole thing, once we have the village up to where it can support an increase in traffic.” I hesitate. “All this, of course, would bring eyes to Bar-A Ranch, and to the quality of your horses. Bring you new contracts, perhaps. Certainly we would contract you for stock in the village, as there would need to be horses available to ride, as well as hands to take care of them and guide the rides, which obviously would include making sure the tourists stay in designated areas.” I wave a hand. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves, however. Details like that would get ironed out later—this is all assuming you even agree to the whole idea in the first place.”

  Will is silent for a long, long time, his eyes downcast; he’s utterly still, nothing of him moving save the pulsing of his pulse in his throat and the ticking of his jaw.

  And then he looks up and meets my eyes. “Where do I sign?”

  13

  I stare at him, my mouth agape. “I—where do you sign?”

  He nods. “I’m in. It solves a lot of problems, and brings us new business.” He rolls a hand. “I’m resistant to change, but this one is necessary.”

  I hold up a hand. “That was the idea, William. After the way things happened, I’m not at all certain I want to do business with you at all.”

  He tilts his head backward. “I should have heard you out when I had the chance, and I’m sorry I didn’t.”

  I lean forward toward him, a tense frown on my face, disbelief all over my face. “You really think that’s it? One little I’m sorry and I’m over it and back to square one? I chased you across half of fucking Colorado! I nearly died under the hooves of your idiot monster horse! All just to get you to listen to me for five damned minutes, because I had an idea that would save your ranch, your family. Yes, it will profit me and my family’s business, but we don’t need it. I’m wrapping up the last details for an all-inclusive resort in Costa Rica as we speak, and there’s been no drama whatsoever, and certainly no near-death experiences. Resistant to change I get, but you took that to a whole new level, Will. And that’s only the less personal aspects of what happened between us.” I’m on a roll now, and the words pour out—and if Dad’s
listening, if Tina’s listening, if the rest of the bloody office is listening, I don’t care. As previously mentioned, once I get my ire up, the fire has to burn out on its own.

  “So, seeing as you are here, let’s discuss that, shall we? Not only did you run away from me professionally, refusing to hear me out, like a little boy with his hands over his ears, you ran away from me later. And after what we experienced together in that little cabin, I think—at the very least—I deserved a ride back the Big House. But no, you ran. You vanished. Literally, you ran away in the middle of the night, in the middle of the storm.” I stab a finger at him. “Scared much, William? Couldn’t face me in the light of day, much less in the aftershocks of whatever the hell that was. You think I was any more ready for that level of connection, that kind of intimacy than you were? What did you think, Will? That I’d suddenly demand a ring and a house with a white picket fence? Fuck that! It was intense, yes, and it was unexpected, yes, and it was something unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I would have appreciated talking about it a little, perhaps, but I’d have gone back to my life and left you to yours. I’m honestly not even sure what it was you ran from, because I didn’t have time to even process what happened before you bolted like one of your spooked horses, much less put a name to it or develop expectations.”

  “I left—” he starts.

  “Yes, you left a note,” I snap over him. “Whoop-de-doo for you. Less than twenty words, max, and nothing about what happened.” I snort angrily. “So, sorry, you don’t get points for that.”

  Will’s jaw grinds audibly. His eyes do not move from mine, searching, piercing, seeking. “I have a name for it,” he says, his voice low, rough, gravelly and uncertain.

  “And what would that be?” I ask, my own voice skeptical and hard.

  He lifts his chin. “Love.”

  I rock back in my chair, gobsmacked into stunned silence.

  Will taps the table, waiting for my response, but I’m still unable to utter a single word.

  Because the one word he said is still echoing in my head.

  Love.

  Love.

  Love.

  It jangles and echoes and reverberates in my skull, in my chest, in my gut, in my heart.

  He did not just say that.

  He didn’t. He couldn’t have.

  I’m not even prepared to admit that I like him, that I’m even attracted to him on the most basic physical level.

  I shake my head, my mouth closed shut. I stand up and storm out of the room.

  I make it to the hallway and thank god no one is around. My eyes are blurred, my lungs seized. I’m a complete and utter mess.

  “Brooklyn.” His voice is right behind me, that low soothing murmur, and I hate the way it works on me.

  I twist away to face the floor-to-ceiling windows. A crow flies by, floating on a breeze. Sunlight shines and glitters off the glass of the high-rise buildings around us, and even the multi-million-dollar view of the glass canyons of Manhattan are dull compared to the roaring of my nerves, the screaming of my heart, the gibbering terror in my brain—the blazing, pounding, pulsating heat between my thighs. And this is just from his mere presence.

  I feel him behind me and he guides me back into my office. I hear the door click closed. The lock chunks into place.

  I hear steps on the carpeting, drawing closer. I tense as I feel him move up behind me.

  “Brooklyn?”

  I shake my head. “You don’t get to do this,” I whisper. “It’s not fair.”

  “Ain’t a single thing about life that’s fair, Brooklyn.” His voice is nearly inaudible, but I feel his voice, his words. “You think I wanted this? You think I wanted to fall in love with you? With a rich city girl? And that was before I realized who you were. We’re the most different people who could ever meet. From totally different worlds. I don’t understand what motivates you, what you’re scared of, what you want. I don’t know the first goddamn thing about you, Brooklyn.”

  “So then where the fuck do you get off using that word?” I hiss, whirling on him—I know I don’t have to explain which word I mean.

  Mistake. Big mistake.

  His eyes are a blue flame, rife with conflict, fueled by fear and uncertainty and boldness of conviction. “Because I don’t know what the hell else to fucking call it!” he snaps. “What else do you call the fact that I can’t sleep at night—that I haven’t slept more than three hours at a time for almost two months, because whenever I fall asleep, I dream of you. What else am I supposed to call it when I can’t stop thinking about you while I’m awake? Everything on that damned ranch makes me think of you. The whole cabin smells like you. My sheets smell like you. Even my goddamn horse is mopey because he misses you.”

  “Dammit, Will,” I whisper.

  “I didn’t want this,” he whispers back. Louder, then. “I don’t know the first thing about you, but I know you inside and out, somehow. I know you hate me for how I acted, and I deserve it. I was a goddamn coward and I oughta be horsewhipped for how I treated you, and I can only ask you to forgive me.” He turns away, raking his fingers through messy blond hair.

  A long, hard, tense silence.

  He spins back to face me, finally, agony on his face. “I’m losing my damned mind. I’ve lost my touch with horses.”

  I frown. “How do you mean? And why does it feel like you’re suggesting that’s my fault?”

  “Horses are empathic,” he explains, sounding annoyed at himself for falling into lecture mode. “They feel what you feel—they pick up on your energy. If you meet your friend for drinks, and she’s in a terrible mood, she’s obviously had a bad day, and you can feel that. Now multiply that by a hundred. Horses can pick up on the smallest change of your emotions. You bring a bad mood to the stable, try to ride your horse, or even groom him while you’re in a bad mood, he’ll know. You have to bring a calm to the stables, or the horse will act up.” He shakes his head. “I’ve been a fucking disaster. Treated everyone around me like shit. Haven’t even dared get near Demon or the herd for fear my bad mood will infect them. Gopher has been my primary horse for so long he can work through my moods, and he’s honestly the only thing that’s kept me sane.”

  “Will—”

  He blows out a breath, shakes his head again. “I don’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to come here. Didn’t want to face you. Didn’t want to hear your business plan. Didn’t want to say any of this. But I couldn’t not.” He sidles closer to me, and I back up away from him. “I don’t know what to do with this any of this. With how I feel. I thought at first it was just…physical. You know? Like, desire. The sex, right? That’s all it was—that’s what I tried to tell myself again and again.”

  He comes closer, and I back away again until my back bumps up against the window, and I’ve got nowhere to go.

  “I thought, maybe if I just got one more night with her—not even a whole night, just once more, you and me, we’d get it out of our system.”

  I laugh, a nervous, hysterical giggle. “That won’t work.”

  He smirks, shaking his head. “Exactly. You see the foolishness in that.”

  “It wouldn’t work.”

  He laughs. “No, it wouldn’t.” Closer yet, until you couldn’t fit a piece of paper between his chest and mine; he’s serious, now, no laughter, no smile. “Why wouldn’t it work, Brooklyn?”

  “Because—” I shake my head. I can’t get it out, can’t go there.

  “Say it.”

  “Once wasn’t enough the first time,” I whisper. “Once more wouldn’t get it out of our systems.”

  “Why?”

  I shake my head. I won’t, can’t answer that.

  Will does, instead. “Because it’s not just about the sex, Brooklyn.” He shifts forward, and now there’s no space between us at all, my breasts are crushed against his chest. “The intensity of the sex is a symptom, not the cause.”

  I can’t breathe. He’s too close, too much. His eyes b
urn into me, bore into me. “A symptom,” I echo.

  He nods, a subtle downward tilt his jaw. “A symptom of something much bigger—much more intense.”

  There’s nowhere to go to get away from him—he fills my senses, he’s my entire field of view, my nostrils are full of his scent, my skin is afire with his proximity. “I don’t want to hear this.”

  “I didn’t want to come to this conclusion,” he says. “Yet there it is. Can’t deny the truth forever, apparently. How’s that saying go? The truth will out.”

  “I was fine lying to myself.” I close my eyes, try not to feel his big hard body up against mine, his breath on me, try not to hear the hammering of my heart. “We can keep doing that.”

  “No, we can’t. It wasn’t working for me, and I’m willing to bet it wasn’t working for you either.”

  “Damn you.”

  “I didn’t create this,” he says. “I’m as much a victim as you are. Fate or whatever you want to call it apparently has other plans for us, and we don’t get a say in the matter.”

  I rest my forehead against his chest. “I don’t know how to do this, Will,” I whisper. “I can’t deny that everything you’re saying is exactly what I’ve been going through, but that doesn’t mean I know how to—how to do this with you.”

  “I don’t, either.”

  “So what, then?”

  He shrugs. “We do it anyway.” A bitter laugh. “Not knowing how doesn’t mean we can’t try. I think we have to. I don’t think we have a choice. We could keep playing pretend and try to live our separate lives, but…” he growls wordlessly. “I’ve been fucking miserable, Brooklyn, and I’m making everyone around me miserable. I’m quickly coming to the conclusion, as scary as it is, that I’m just somehow not built to survive without you. I made it this far in my life simply because I hadn’t met you. You revealed a hole in my life, and only you can fill it. I can’t explain it, Brooklyn, I just know it’s true.”