Page 14 of Ace of Spades (Hidden Creek Ranch #1)

HAILEY

I slam my head down on the surface of the diner’s table, my forehead throbbing from the impact.

“Ow,” I mutter to myself, sitting up and rubbing it.

I’d been sitting here all morning, desperately trying to figure out a place to go from here.

Thankfully, there were some trees around back that I was able to park the trailer underneath, offering shade for Casino, Vegas, and Blackjack.

My last hope had been Ava, but the bunkhouse apartments that she lived at didn’t have any openings for either a trailer hookup or stalls for the horses.

“You still doing okay, Hailey?” Dalia, my waitress, asks.

“Just fine, thank you,” I tell her, plastering a smile onto my face .

“You sure you don’t want some coffee?”

“I’m sure, thank you.”

I want to cry as the smell of coffee hits my nostrils when she walks past. I didn’t have the heart to tell Dalia that I couldn’t even afford a cup right now, let alone leave her a tip even if she offered me one on the house.

Who would have thought—Hailey Sorrels, too broke to buy a cup of coffee. My life was laughable at the moment, and I only had myself to blame.

As if the universe decided it would be a fun little joke to make my day even more miserable, I hear the bell above the door ring, looking up to find none other than Weston’s date from the Spring Dance.

With beautiful golden hair and bronze skin, she was just as stunning as I remembered.

I looked down at myself, in my oversized hoodie and worn-down jeans, my dark hair hanging over my shoulder in a loose braid and not an ounce of makeup on my face.

I looked like I just got dragged out of bed, while she looked so well put together not a flaw in sight.

I slam my forehead back down on the table, trying to figure out if I should laugh or cry.

“Rough day?”

I look up to find the blonde now standing at my table, a radiant smile showing off her perfectly white teeth.

“You have no idea,” I mutter, offering her a pathetic smile that doesn’t reach my ears.

“I’m Dakota,” she says, reaching a hand out.

“Right,” I say, accepting her hand. “Weston’s date right?”

“Huh?” she asks, looking puzzled .

“From the dance. That was you, right?”

“Oh, right!” she laughs. “That would be my brother.”

“Brother?” I ask, trying to piece things together when it suddenly clicks.

“Kota—as in Dakota?”

“So he has talked about me, then!”

I chuckle, my smile warming and the lead in my stomach melting away.

“He has,” I admit. “He said you guys were very close.”

“Well, as close as a brother and sister can realistically be. He’s pretty much my favorite person, but don’t tell him I said that.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” I tell her.

“Mind if I sit?”

“Not at all.”

She slides into the booth, smoothing down her sundress and waving down the waitress.

“So, you wanna tell me why you’re having a rough day?”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“I’ve got time,” she tells me, turning to Dalia as she approaches our table. “Two coffees, please! Lots of cream and sugar with mine.”

Dalia turns to me expectantly.

“Oh no, I’m fine, really,” I say.

“Oh, please—It’s on me, I insist,” Dakota pushes.

“Thank you,” I tell her, turning to Dalia. “I’ll just have mine black, please.”

She smiles and walks away ,

“Sonny Side Up diner,” Dakota says. “How cute is that? Did you know that the guy who runs this place is named Sonny? I used to be super close with his wife, Lisa, before she passed. I come here every Wednesday, and yet I’ve never seen you here.

So spill—what’s going on? Does it have anything to do with the fact that your horse trailer is parked out back even though it’s the middle of the week and there aren’t any rodeos until this weekend? ”

“Let’s just say I had a little bit of a disagreement with my dad.”

“Do tell.”

“I’m sure you’ve heard of him—my dad, I mean.”

“William Sorrels? Of course, who hasn’t”

Dalia swings by the table, dropping off our coffees. I waste no time picking mine up and blowing on it, no patience in sight as I swallow a much-needed mouthful, burning my tongue in the process. Definitely worth it.

“Right, well to make a long story short, I’ve recently come to the realization that I don’t love the way he does business.”

“Ah, I see,” Dakota says, taking a sip of her coffee.

“I feel so dumb about how blind I’ve been for so long,” I admit.

“I guess that with all the stuff he always got me, I felt loved—as if it was his way of showing how much I meant to him. But I guess it took me this long to realize that it wasn’t him showing his love, it was him distracting me from the fact that he was never there.

He tried to buy my love to hide the fact that he was never present. ”

“Wow. That’s deep,” she says, placing her coffee back down .

“I know, I’m sorry, it’s too early in the day for me to be trauma dumping on a stranger.”

“Not a stranger,” she immediately cuts in, offering me a warm smile. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re friends now.”

“But we just met?”

“Yeah, but you’re friends with my brother—that automatically makes us friends. Unless you’re not a nice person, and he has brought home some not-so-nice girls before, but I just tell him I don’t like them and he kicks them out. You seem nice though, I like you already.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say we’re friends. And second of all, you just met me. How would you know what kind of person I am?”

“Technicalities. You may not be friends, but you’re also not enemies like you both pretend to be,” she says.

“I have a good radar for these types of things. Besides, I heard about how you refused to let him sleep in his truck when it was below freezing out and he didn’t have a working heater, even though you guys claimed to hate each other at the time.

That tells me everything about you that I need to know. ”

I think back to that night, and how much I had to fight him before he finally agreed to get out of the cold.

“He’s quite stubborn, you know.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” she lets out an exasperated sigh.

“He gets it from our mom, she’s just as hard-headed.

He’s always felt like he needed to step up and take care of the family since Dad left, but he doesn’t realize that we’re capable of taking care of ourselves.

He cares so much about others around him that sometimes I think he forgets to take care of himself. ”

“I can see that,” I admit.

“Anyways, back to you and your dad—that doesn’t explain why you’re sitting here sulking with your horses loaded up in your trailer out back.”

“I sort of… left. I guess you could say I moved out. It was a rash decision, but I’ve had enough. He was trying to get me on board to be the new face of the brand for some tourist destination idea that he stole from your brother and his friends, and I couldn’t take it anymore, so I just… left.”

“Oh boy, that is rough. Where are you gonna stay?”

“I wish I had an answer to that,” I breathe.

“Okay, so I know you’re not going to like this idea, but you could always come stay at the ranch. I’m staying there now, just moved there, actually. There are a few rooms open in the bunkhouses—you could even stay in the one across from mine!”

“I’m sorry, Dakota—”

“Call me Kota,” she says.

“Kota,” I smile. “I don’t think it’s a great idea. Weston and I still aren’t on speaking terms, and I don’t want to be all up in his space. I promised to stay away from him, and moving onto his ranch would definitely break that promise.”

“Okay, well…” she thinks for a moment. “How about you stay at the Cedar Creek trailer park? It’s where my mom lives—where we grew up, actually.”

“I don’t know—”

“Just hear me out,” she says. “There are water and electric hookups for trailers and campers at the back of the property. For some reason, the new ownership—sorry, I mean, your dad—thought it would be a wonderful idea to charge the residents more for those, even the residents who don’t use them.

Basically, my mom is having to pay for a hookup even though she’s not using it.

So, theoretically, if you were to park your trailer there and could help pitch in a little bit for rent, it would actually be helping my mom out a ton. ”

“That’s actually…” I think it through. “Not a horrible idea. But I don’t have anything I can give her right now, I’m kind of… low on money.”

“Hailey Sorrels is low on money? I understand the fight with your dad and all, but aren’t you a pro rodeo athlete? I’ve been keeping up with the rankings, you’ve been killing it since the beginning of the year!”

“Yeah, well, I pretty much just spent every last dollar I had in savings to buy my horses back from my dad.”

“No way, are you serious?”

“Unfortunately,” I say.

“Well don’t worry about it, then, I promise. You can just help her out when you start making money again after the next few rodeos.”

“I can’t let you guys do that,” I tell her.

“I insist, and I know she will too. That’s the kind of people we are in this family.”

My heart warms at seeing the kindness that their family is willing to extend to a complete stranger. Weston hadn’t been lying when he said that Dakota had a heart of gold.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Positive. The only downside is that there isn’t an arena, so you won’t be able to practice much.

There are turnouts and stalls for the horses, though, so at least you’ll have somewhere to keep them.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re super worn down and nobody uses them because of how sketchy they are, but it’s better than nothing. ”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I say.

“It’s settled then. You can follow me there after breakfast, I was going to pop by and say hi to my mom anyways. Grab a menu, breakfast is on me!”