“You’re one sorry son of a bitch, Hartwell,” he muttered as he brushed down the horses. Karly was hurting from his insistence that she ride a horse and his carelessness about the hours she spent in the saddle. They’d both signed divorce papers that she was eager to file. But all he could do was think about what a pleasure it would be to make love to her again. If that didn’t make him a prize jerk, he didn’t know what did.
Blake took a deep breath to relieve some of his building tension. She obviously didn’t want him touching her that way and if he wanted to preserve what little sanity he had left, he shouldn’t want that, either. But as long as he kept his hands to himself, he could drive her over to the ranch house for some time in the hot tub to ease her discomfort.
Of course, that would require introducing her to Silas. Blake wasn’t worried about the old guy telling her that Blake was the owner of the Wolf Creek Ranch. He knew that if he asked Silas to keep that information to himself, the old man would take it to his grave before he told a soul. But introducing his soon-to-be ex-wife and then keeping secrets from her was going to add a lot of fuel to the fire of the many lectures Blake would have to endure before Silas found something else he felt compelled to preach about.
With his mind made up, Blake took the saddles and bridles to the tack room, brushed down the horses, then led them back to their stalls. Giving them generous scoops of oats and flakes of hay, he reached for the cell phone clipped to his belt as he left the barn.
“I’m bringing Karly over for supper,” Blake said when the old man answered.
“So you decided I’m decent enough to meet your bride after all?” Silas queried, his tone filled with sarcasm. “What changed your mind, boy? Did you finally fess up and tell her you own this spread?”
“You ask a lot of questions,” Blake complained.
“Well, I would never find anything out if I didn’t,” Silas retorted. “So did you tell her?”
“No.”
“Tarnation, boy! Why not?” The old man grunted his disgust. “The way I see it, that little gal’s got a right to know just who she’s hitched up to.”
“I told you, I don’t want my net worth influencing her decisions,” Blake said, irritated that they were having the same argument they’d had every time he’d talked to Silas since Karly arrived on the Wolf Creek.
“Not every woman is as money-grubbin’ as that heifer your daddy married or as connivin’ as that little tart that tried to rope you into marryin’ her by claimin’ you were gonna be a daddy,” Silas insisted. “All this gal did was take a trip down the aisle with you. And she did it so fast she must not have cared if you had millions or if you were flat broke.”
Blake groaned at the mention of the fiasco with the buckle bunny that had taken place several years ago. He didn’t like thinking about the hell he’d gone through proving that he wasn’t Sara Jane Benson’s baby daddy. Just the fact that he’d given the rodeo groupie a reason to accuse him had been bad enough. There were some women a man could have a good time with and then there were the ones that when they came toward him, a man would do well to turn around and run like hell. Sara Jane fell into the latter category.
But he’d been a little drunk that night and pissed off over his stepmother’s latest refusal to sell him his family’s ranch. He’d regretted his lapse in judgment the following morning, but he’d been fit to be tied when Sara Jane showed up a month later claiming that he’d made her pregnant. When he finally discovered that Sara Jane had lied—that there wasn’t a baby and never had been—he didn’t think he’d ever been more relieved in his entire life. After he confronted her, the woman had finally admitted it was all a ruse to try to get money from him after she discovered that he wasn’t just a dust-covered rodeo rider. But aside from narrowly missing the trap she’d set, the incident had taught Blake a valuable lesson about letting anyone know that his family owned one of the largest private ranches in the state of Wyoming.
“She may have married me fast,” Blake finally answered. “But she divorced me just as fast. I’ll tell Karly when the time is right.”