Page 71 of Ride Me Cowboy

“I don’t know. Maybe because you know I’m only here a little while. I feel it, too.”

He grins, slowly, and my heart stops trembling and starts flipping. Then, his expression sobers, his eyes focusing on the stars overhead.

“The ranch is in trouble.”

“What?” It’s literally the last thing I expect to hear from him.

“I had no idea how much until the old man died and I took things over. It’s a mess, Beth. He left it in a mess.”

I sit up, propping my weight on the palm of one hand, so I can see him properly. “How big of a mess?”

“If I can’t turn things around in the next six months, I’m going to have sell off a fair bit of land.”

I close my eyes, instinctively knowing how much he hates the idea of that.

“This land that’s been in my family for generations, and I’ll be the one to carve it up.”

“That’s not your fault,” I say sharply. “If your dad left things the way he did…”

A muscle jerks in his jaw.

“How did this happen?” I ask, softly.

“It happened the day he let his big, stupid heart take over his decision making,” he mutters. “Never could help himself fromwanting to fix everything. So, when some old childhood friend of my mom’s got in trouble, asking to borrow money, he couldn’t say no. Especially not when this friend kept going on about mom, how much she meant to him.” He shakes his head angrily. “I had no idea about any of this, until after he’d died, and I saw the emails. This guy led my dad down a merry path.”

“But surely you can get the money back.”

“It was a scam, Beth. This bottom feeder preys on whoever he thinks he can sweet talk into handing over cash.”

I shake my head, hating that. “How much money?”

“More than dad had in the bank, so he took out a loan.”

“Oh, God, Cole…”

“It seems like by the time he started to wise up to it being a scam, he was in too far. I wish he’d told me. I hate to think of him having lost sleep over this.”

I nod, pressing a hand to his chest. “But surely between you and the others, there’ll be something you can…”

“They don’t know,” he cuts me off. “And I plan to keep it that way.”

That makes no sense to me. I’ve seen how close they all are. “But, why?”

“Because he wouldn’t want them to know. He wouldn’t even want me knowing. He was a proud man, and this ranch was everything to him. I owe it to his memory to protect that.”

I shake my head, disagreeing. “He might have been a proud man, but he was still a man, as capable of making mistakes as the rest of us.”

“My brothers, Mack and Cass, they idolize him. I’m not going to ruin that.”

“You wouldn’t be ruining it for them by painting a true picture. And you can share the burden, work as a team to turn things around.”

“It’s not that simple. Costs are out of control. We need more money to grow the herd, to use the land better. The smaller we get, the less able I am to fix this.”

He stares right up at the sky.

“All I want is to fix it.” He says the last sentence for his own benefit, not mine. I can tell by the way he half swallows the words.

I want him to be able to fix it, too. Suddenly, I want that more than I can say, and it’s like this bolt of lightning pierces my mind, reminding me of who I am and, more importantly, what I have.