Billionaire Mountain Man

“Not really.” I meant to spend the morning combing the internet. I didn’t have many friends left in Round Rock that I could ask. Most everyone had run off to colleges all over the state after high school. Not everyone had come back. But I liked Round Rock and couldn’t imagine wanting to live anywhere else.

“I’ll keep an eye out in the Register,” he said.

I bit my tongue. The Round Rock Register was the local paper. They did have a help wanted section, but most places listed their job openings online now and had for a number of years. I didn’t bother telling Daddy that. He was old school. He didn’t even have a computer. It had taken a lot of coaxing to get him to buy a cell phone a few years back. He still only carried it half the time, never seeing the reason behind keeping a phone on him for the twenty-minute drive into town to get to work.

Without Kasey chattering nonstop in the dining room, it was easier to sit and enjoy each other’s company. I liked this, the times when we could be alone together. I loved my sister and counted her as one of my best friends, but she couldn’t stand a single silent moment. Things were easier between Daddy and me. Always had been.

I’d missed him something terrible in Austin. Not that I hadn’t driven home, but it was different. It would still be different now, I supposed, since I had my own place a little ways up the road. But I could see him every day now if I wanted. He wasn’t the type to talk on the phone more than once a week, and even that was pushing it.

I watched him from the corner of my eye. He hadn’t changed much in the last few years. His skin, browned from a lifetime spent working outdoors in the blazing Texas sun and lined with light wrinkles, his dark hair, now more gray than brown but still just as full as it had been when Kasey and I were girls, and his light eyes, the only blue pair in the family. Mama’s had been green, too, but dark like mine, not Kasey’s watery emerald.

We finished our meals in that companionable silence, listening to the sounds of silverware lightly scraping plates, both of us considering the day ahead and our part in it.

Chapter Three

Pete

Sunday

I’d run into some nasty weather during the trip to Dallas — high winds, hail, and pouring rain. It wasn’t safe to transport the new colt with all that plus a tornado warning, so I spent the night holed up in a hotel down the street from the ranch while the power flickered on and off for half the night.

The following morning, I drove over to the ranch, loaded the new colt into my horse trailer, and drove the nearly two hundred miles home under blue, cloudless skies. I made pretty great time, too. The roads were empty this early on a Sunday. I pulled up to my ranch at just past ten.

I got out of my truck and walked around back to let out the new colt just in time to see a big gray pickup pull in behind me, so close I didn’t have room to unload the trailer. I lifted my hand, waving at Sawyer, who was grinning behind the wheel. He hauled himself out of the truck and came over, fixing his the cowboy hat on his head as he approached.

“Hey, Pete,” he said, reaching to shake hands.

I pounded him on the shoulder. “What’s going on, Sawyer?”

“I saw Lacey in town this morning. She said you drove out to Dallas yesterday.” He hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans. They looked brand new. Sawyer was the only guy I knew whose jeans always looked fresh from the clothing supply store. Not his boots, though. They were so worn, you’d swear they were the ones he was born in.

“Yeah, I was expecting to run up there and come straight back again, but the weather went sour on me. A tornado touched down outside of the city, and there was hail as big as baseballs. It wasn’t safe to bring a horse home in that.”

He hawked some spit onto the hard-packed dirt driveway. He had some chew tucked in behind his bottom lip. “Sure enough.” He wiped his mouth. “How far into the city did you have to go?”

“The breeder’s place is outside of Dallas, but I had to go through the city to get there. I wouldn’t want to put up with that kind of traffic every day.” I whistled to show how bad it had been as I shook my head and leaned back onto the trailer.

The colt was moving around inside, curious to check out his new surroundings. The rancher had named him Elroy, which might’ve been part of the problem. Sticking a poor horse with a name like that. I’d have to see what Lacey thought about it. She’d named all the other horses we’d had come through the ranch for the past fifteen years. Hell, she’d even given Riley his name after he showed up on the farm as a scrawny, underfed puppy. “I got a good deal on him because he’s so difficult to handle.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“The breeder’s older and doesn’t have a lot of help on his farm. The colt just hasn’t been socialized well. He’s only a year old. It’s nothing Lacey can’t fix. She’s got the magic touch.” I tipped my cowboy hat back off my head so I could mop my sweaty brow with the handkerchief I kept tucked in my back pocket before putting it back on again. “Speak of the devil.”

Sawyer turned to watch Lacey pulling up in her big red truck, keeping far enough back so he’d be able to maneuver his own pickup around when he was ready to head out to town again. We watched Lacey step down from her truck and saunter our way, already smiling her big, shit-eating grin.

She wasn’t wearing her hat — she must’ve left it sitting on the passenger seat in her truck — and her curly blonde hair was hanging down around her shoulders. She almost never wore it loose, so it caught me a bit by surprise. As though reading my thoughts, she pulled it back out of her face and tied it low on her neck with a band she’d been wearing on her wrist. How she could mess with her hair and walk at the same time was a complete mystery to me. I had to stand still in front of a mirror when I combed my hair. Daddy used to tease me that I couldn’t chew gum and ride a horse at the same time.

“I’m running into you everywhere, Sawyer,” she said. She gave him a brief hug before coming over to stand next to me by the trailer. She stepped up on the back to peek in, getting her first good glance at her next project. She stepped down again and turned to face us.

“Y’all ever do anything besides stand around bullshitting?” she asked.

Sawyer laughed, showing us his mouthful of white teeth. He hawked another dark glob of spit onto the ground before he answered. “I just came over to see how Pete here got along in Dallas. And, to tell you about the bet I have going.”

That piqued my interests. I wasn’t really a betting man, but I didn’t mind a friendly wager now and then. “Oh yeah?”

Lacey cocked her head, hands planted on hips, but didn’t say anything.

“A couple of us in town are betting on how long it’ll take before you and Lacey finally admit to your feelings and just go ahead and get hitched.” He looked back and forth between us, laughing even harder than before at our reactions.