Page 23 of Ride Me Cowboy (Coyote Creek Ranch #1)

Chapter Fourteen

Cole

H ER WORDS RING IN my mind as I pull onto the street.

I’m conscious of every movement she makes.

The way her hands fidget in her lap, and her chest moves as she breathes, the way her hair catches in the breeze of the air conditioner, flying loose around her face.

It takes all my willpower not to look at her.

Not to push Beth to talk about her late husband.

Especially with you.

I don’t know why she’s singling me out like that. Maybe she knows I’m not regarded as a fantastic conversationalist. Or perhaps it’s what happened between us the other night, and the fact she feels like it was a betrayal of the man she still loves, and will never see again.

“I’ve been thinking,” she says, softly, after a few minutes of silence.

I zone back into the car, frowning, to realize we’re almost halfway home.

I’ve driven here on autopilot, barely concentrating.

I angle my face to her briefly, catch the way she’s looking at me, and turn back to the road, chest pounding.

The one woman who makes me want to start something up and she’s unavailable. Of course. I tighten my grip on the steering wheel ‘til my knuckles glow white.

“That house, with the hole in the roof—the one the tree fell onto?”

“What about it?”

“Just about its potential,” she says. “I know you joked about having tourists on the property, but farm stays are a total thing. You could document the renovations on TikTok or Insta, get people along on the journey, build a following even before you decide to open the doors.”

I snort. “Do I seem like someone who does social media?”

“You should,” she says, seriously. “You and your brothers would go viral.”

I let out a choked laugh. “That’s a good thing?”

“I know you haven’t been living that much under a rock.”

“But why would we want to do that?”

“Lots of reasons. Money,” she says, after a beat, and my foot lifts off the accelerator without me realizing it. I turn to her, sharply. Has she seen something? I’ve been real careful to keep overdue notices off her desk, but maybe something’s tipped her off about how tight things’ve been.

“Cole,” she says, nodding toward the windscreen.

I look straight ahead, frowning, because we’ve almost stopped. I press the gas again, keeping my expression neutral with effort. “How would being on social media make us money?”

“Sponsorship. You get lots of followers, and suddenly you’ve got denim companies, hats, stock feed, I don’t know, whatever else has brand synergy with what you do.”

“And this relates to the guest house how?”

“It’s just different revenue streams,” she says. “Ways to make the most of what you’re doing here. You could even build a barn for people to get married in.”

“Married,” I splutter. “On the ranch?”

“Sure. I mean, I don’t know about you, but this is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. The wedding party could stay at the guest house, the night before the wedding…”

“Beth, woah. Slow down.”

She leans back in her seat. “Too much?”

“I mean…I like that you’re thinking about the ranch like that.

” I do. I really like it. Because she doesn’t sound like someone who’s just here for a few months.

She sounds like someone who’s let it get under her skin.

Who’d maybe think about staying a while.

But what the hell am I thinking? I’ve never wanted a girl to stick around.

I’ve never wanted anything with a woman to last for more than a month or two, tops.

It’s easier that way. Safer. “I just wouldn’t know where to start. ”

“But I would,” she says. “My degree was in marketing.”

I glance at her, surprised. “It was?”

“I did dual majors,” she says with a nod. “Accounting and marketing. I did my final project on social media branding.”

I let out a low whistle. “But you’re working as a bookkeeper.”

She tenses and I could kick myself for the stupid question. After everything she’s been through, she’s looking for something familiar and temporary.

“Sorry,” I say, voice gruff. “It makes sense, that you’d just want a job you can handle in your sleep right now. Given everything you’re going through.”

She looks at me with those piercing blue eyes, like she’s sizing me up.

I turn the car into our drive, and the tires crunch the gravel as we make our way to the house.

Once there, I cut the engine, staring straight ahead where the headlights still beam against the stucco walls.

I know I need to get out, but I kind of don’t want to.

I want to stay here, close to her. Breathing her in.

Which is just damn stupid.

I reach for the door, half-hoping she’ll say something to show she feels the same way, but she just sits there, staring at the same wall I was.

I cross to her side of the car and open the door.

Still, she sits.

“Beth? Y’alright?”

“Huh?”

“Everything okay?”

She blinks up at me, undoes her seatbelt, then goes to step out of the car, so I have to step back a little, to make good and sure we don’t brush against one another.

“Cole, listen,” she says, and I really wanna hear what she says next, at the same time as being shit scared for her to finish this sentence.

But I brace myself, waiting. After all, I’ve offered to hear her out. To let her talk, if it’ll help.

“What I said before, about you being the last person on earth I’d want to talk to about Christopher?—,”

I furrow my brow, not sure she put it quite as harshly as that.

“I didn’t mean it like it sounded.” Her throat shifts as she swallows, the silver of the moon picking up the delicate gesture. She looks so tiny and vulnerable, so sweet and lost. So haunted. My chest hurts for her.

“It’s fine, Beth. I just wanted you to know I’m here. I mean, if you need anything.”

Her eyes flutter closed, and she sways a little. Not from wine, because she’s been drinking soda all night. “I just don’t want you to hate me,” she says, and the words are so raw, so achingly sensitive that I burn to reach out and hold her.

I stand my ground though, the hand on her car door gripping it tighter, giving me strength.

“I’m not gonna hate you.”

“How do you know?”

I pull a face. She steps further away from the car, her body tense, her movements showing extreme agitation. The gravel scrunches audibly as she paces toward me and then away.

“I mean, you don’t really know me,” she says. “No one does.” She fidgets with her hands again and I feel all kinds of confused.

“I haven’t known you that long, but I do know you, Beth. And I know I could never hate you.”

“I’m a terrible person,” she whispers, dropping her head. I feel like she’s carrying every single responsibility in the world right around her neck. She stares at the ground for a long time and then her shoulders stoop.

“I’m not grieving my husband. Everyone expects me to be, but I’m not. I’m not in mourning. I’m not sad.”

Her voice trembles though with the strength of her feelings, and it’s something I understand.

“When my dad died, I wasn’t sad either, Beth.

I was angry. So damn angry. Why’d he go get himself killed?

Always putting others first, that was my old man.

Going into a fire, trying to save someone?

That’s him. Never mind that he left us. I was furious.

” I move to her, needing, above all else, to offer comfort.

“You can’t predict how you’re going to react to the death of a loved one.

There’s no one way to chart your way through loss. ”

She fixes me with a sympathetic gaze, then shakes her head quickly. “It’s not that.”

“Anger is just a sign of how much you loved him.” I hate saying it, but why should I? This guy was her husband. “I’m pretty sure it’s normal.”

“You don’t understand. I was angry before he died.

I was…I hated him, Cole. I hated my husband, and I’m glad he’s dead.

” She throws the words at my feet, almost victoriously, but she’s trembling from head to toe, like she can’t think straight, and then the words are coming out of her like a chemical reaction, as though they’re just overflowing of their own accord.

“I didn’t always hate him. In the beginning, I thought we were in love. I mean, I’d never met anyone like him before. He was so charming and smart, and his money meant he could open whatever doors he wanted. His lifestyle, everything about it, it was such a luxury, such a novelty.”

I take that in, nodding slowly, like I know who she’s talking about.

Her eyes are locked to mine, like she’s trying to show me what she’s feeling, but all I can do is stand there and wait for her explain it to me. Or maybe it’s not even me she’s seeing, but a vision of her past, playing out before her?

“The first time he hit me, we were on our honeymoon.”

Fuck. I feel the ground tilt beneath me.

My hands form fists at my side. Anger pummels me from the inside out; it is a tide rising in my chest, filling me with bitter hatred.

I stand perfectly still, because even through the mist of my rage, I know she’s telling me this because she needs to say it.

She needs to get it out. Like a blood letting, of sorts, but of her past. Her awful marriage.

“I told myself it was just a slap, like there could be any such thing.” She touches her cheek.

“He apologized. Told me he’d been stressed with work.

I loved him, and we’d just had this huge society wedding.

We were in the goddamned Times. I mean, what could I do?

” She squeezes her eyes shut. “I was such an idiot. I just wanted to belong. For the first time in my life, I had a family…I felt loved. I didn’t have anyone else, you know?

It was just my mom and me and she died when I was seventeen.

” Her voice is so soft, I can’t believe I haven’t brought her to my chest yet, to hold her tight.